Rusty took several deep breaths to calm himself, then held the Geiger counter's sensor tube out to the flat gray square, which sat on a spongy mat of grass. The needle wavered just below the +5 mark. A background count, no more.
Rusty had little doubt that this flat square object was the source of their troubles. Creatures - not human beings, creatures - were using it to keep them prisoner, but that wasn't all. They were also using it to observe.
And having fun. The bastards were laughing. He had heard them.
Rusty stripped off the apron, draped it over the box with its slightly protruding lens, got up, backed away. For a moment nothing happened. Then the apron caught fire. The smell was pungent and nasty. He watched the shiny surface blister and bubble, watched the flames erupt. Then the apron, which was essentially no more than a plastic-coated sheet of lead, simply fell apart. For a moment there were burning pieces, the biggest one still lying on top of the box. A moment later, the apron - or what remained of it - disintegrated. A few swirling bits of ash remained - and the smell - but otherwise... poof. Gone.
Did I see that? Rusty asked himself, then said it aloud, asking the world. He could smell roasted plastic and a heavier smell that he supposed was smelted lead - insane, impossible - but the apron was gone nonetheless.
'Did I actually see that?'
As if in answer, the purple light flashed out of the hooded knuckle on top of the box. Were those pulses renewing the Dome, the way the touch of a finger on a computer keyboard could refresh the screen? Were they allowing the leatherheads to watch the town? Both? Neither?
He told himself not to approach the flat square again. He told himself the smartest thing he could do would be to run back to the van (without the weight of the apron, he could run) and then drive like hell, slowing only to pick up his companions waiting below.
Instead he approached the box again and dropped to his knees before it, a posture too much like worship for his liking.
He stripped off one of the gloves, touched the ground beside the thing, then snatched his hand back. Hot. Bits of burning apron had scorched some of the grass. Next he reached for the box itself, steeling himself for another burn or another shock... although neither was what he was most afraid of; he was afraid of seeing those leather shapes again, those not-quite-heads bent together in some laughing conspiracy.
But there was nothing. No visions and no heat. The gray box was cool to the touch, even though he'd seen the lead apron on top of it bubbling up and then actually catching fire.
The purple light flashed out. Rusty was careful not to put his hand in front of it. Instead, he gripped the thing's sides, mentally saying goodbye to his wife and girls, telling them he was sorry for being such a damn fool. He waited to catch fire and burn. When he didn't, he tried to lift the box. Although it had the surface area of a dinner plate and wasn't much thicker, he couldn't budge it. The box might as well have been welded to the top of a pillar planted in ninety feet of New England bedrock - except it wasn't. It was sitting on top of a grassy mat, and when he wriggled his fingers deeper beneath, they touched. He laced them together and tried again to lift the thing. No shock, no visions, no heat; no movement, either. Not so much as a wiggle.
He thought: My hands are gripping some sort of alien artifact. A machine from another world. I may have even caught a glimpse of its operators.
The idea was intellectually amazing - flabbergasting, even - but it had no emotional gradient, perhaps because he was too stunned, too overwhelmed with information that did not compute.
So what next? fust what the hell next?
He didn't know. And it seemed he wasn't emotionally flat after all, because a wave of despair rolled through him, and he was only just able to stop from vocalizing that despair in a cry. The four people downi below might hear it and think he was in trouble. Which, of course, he was. Nor was he alone.
He got to his feet on legs that trembled and threatened to give out beneath him. The hot, close air seeined to lie on his skin like oil. He made his way slowly back toward the van through the apple-heavy trees. The only thing he was sure of was that under no circumstances could Big Jim Rennie learn of the generator. Not because he would try to destroy it, but because he'd very likely set a guard around it to make sure it wasn't destroyed. To make sure it kept right on doing what it was doing, so he could keep on doing what he was doing. For the time being, at least, Big Jim liked things just the way they were.