"How do yousay that?" Weaver asked. "Never mind."

"We have to pay very much for the weapons and the teleportation devices. Our mines are being bled dry of gems and currency metals. But wemust have them to fight the T!Ch!R!." She stopped as if she hadn't meant to say that much.

"Oh, crap," Miller muttered.

The military had set up a secure communications room at the UCF gate so they were no longer broadcasting their secrets to the world. At the moment, Weaver was of two minds about that.

"The Titcher are a sentient race that has the ability to open gates and invades through them, colonizing the world beyond," Weaver said, looking at the screen that showed about half the Cabinet. "The Mreee have been fighting them for about fifty years. They have three gates, including the one that connects to us.

One that the Titcher opened, one that was opened by the Nitch and the one thatthey opened, using technology that the Nitch sold them, to us. Nyarowlll is something like a natural scientist; they haven't really separated out physics, biology and chemistry yet. She's the closest thing they have to an expert on gate technology and alien technology. She wasn't really willing to discuss the military situation but it seems the Titcher are well established on the Mreee's world and they are trying everything they can to stop them. The weapons they get from the Nitch are apparently really powerful, but the Titcher forces, once they're established, produce immense fighting biologicals and millions of those dogs and thorn-throwers. I think we've only seen what they can fit through a gate."

"And if they overrun the Mreee?" the national security advisor asked. "Then they'll be attacking two gates?"

"That's right, ma'am, but that's not all," Weaver said. "I was asking Nyarowlll about gate tech and she was puzzled by our experience. They've only been able to open a couple of gates and it takes the tech they get from the Nitch who are getting it from . . . I can't even begin to pronounce it, ma'am. From the Fivverockpit. But the point is, she didn't know why ours were just opening and they'd only had contact with the Nitch and the Titcher before."

"We've had two more open," the President said. "One in south Georgia that is spouting out lava andanother in Boca Raton that is just a disaster."

"Excuse me?" Weaver said.

"Everyone within fifty miles of Boca Raton is dead or hopelessly insane," the director of Homeland Security said, painfully. "Everyone. Millions of people. We have no idea why or what is causing it."

"And before you ask, no, you are not going to Boca Raton," the national security advisor said. "There's a line you just can't cross. A recon plane that was sent in crashed; anyone crossing the line goes insane.

And it's aline from the reports we're getting. There should be a file there called Enigma Site; see if you can find it."

Weaver moved around the Top Secret files scattered, against regulation, all over the desk at the communications center and found the one marked Enigma. He opened it up and looked at the satellite photos.

"All there is is a gray blotch," he said.

"Indeed," the national security advisor replied. "A gray blotch that is some sixty meters wide, appears to be about one hundred meters high and does not cast a shadow."

"Nobody is coming out except those at the very edge," the Homeland Security director continued. "And all we can do with them is put them in straightjackets and sedate them. Psychiatrists hold out hope that with heavy medication they can get some of them back to a semblance of normal. But it's only a hope."

"Are they sayinganything ?" Weaver asked.

"Just ravings about formless shapes and huge shambling mounds," the national security advisor said.

"And most of them aren't even saying that. Just screaming."

"Jesus," Weaver muttered. "Well, trading with Mreee is going to be hard. We might be able to get some weapons from them, thirdhand from the Fivverockpit, but I'm not sure they'll be worthwhile. I'm not sure, frankly,what they can give us. They don't have many of those teleportation belts and not nearly enough of the weapons. But we've got all sorts of knowledge that would help them and that they really need. And I submit that ensuring that we don't have one more gate spitting Titcher is probably worth whatever we give them."

"Any idea why the gates are opening, yet?" the President asked. "Or where they will open?"

"No, sir," Dr. Weaver admitted. "But I've been running around from one fire to the next and haven't really been able to give it much study. That's next on my list."

"When did you sleep, last, Doctor?" the national security advisor asked.

"Sleep?" he said. "A couple of days ago. But I'm okay, I can go for a while without it. I'll probably get some tonight."

"Okay, we'll talk tomorrow," the President said. "Let's hope that another gate doesn't open between now and then."

The lab was now in a trailer and Garcia was installed in front of a computer, looking at randomscrabbles of white on black that Weaver recognized as particle tracks.

"Talk to me, Garcia," the doctor said, collapsing onto a computer chair.

"The gate seems to be generating one boson every forty-seven minutes," Garcia said. "If they're what is causing the gates we should have over a hundred of them by now. But the readings from Eustis show that while there's some muon emissions, there's no boson formation."

"Nyarowlll said that gates can only form at 'thin' spots," Weaver said. "Although they can opento them from anywhere. I wonder what 'thin' spots means? Is that where the bosons are stopping?"

"They've been increasing in mass as well," Garcia said. "And they seem to be generating in random directions except that some seem to be following the same path as previous bosons."

Weaver spent a little time figuring out how to pull up the course tracks on his own system, then studied them for a while. There was a pattern there but he wasn't sure if it was his imagination. He pulled up a pattern recognition program and fed a couple in and after a while it spat out some equations that he recognized as fractal generation. Taking the course tracks as shown and entering the equations gave him a complex fractal pattern for each of the bosons. Each was different but it spread out widely and in an apparently, but not truly, illogical fashion. Last he brought up a terrain mapping program and overlaid some of the fractals on it.

"Got it," he said.

"What?" Garcia asked, yawning. "You know it's two o'clock in the morning, right? And you've been working on that for four hours?"

"I guess," Weaver said. "The thing is we can determine where the bosons are going, now, and when they'll arrive at various points on their travels. And I think I can determine, based on what limited data we have, where they'll stop."

"You're kidding, right?" Garcia asked, sliding his chair over.

"No," Weaver said. "Look at this track, A-4, generated about an hour after you got the instruments up; thanks by the way."

"No problem," Garcia replied.

"Zig, zag, zag, seventeen degree skew turn, zag, increase in size of moment by a fraction and repeat. Run that through the equation, superimpose and, voila, passes perfectly through Eustis, Florida, after going in a vaguely circular direction past Sanford and Daytona Beach. Doesn't quite match up with Jules Court but damned close, close enough for these instruments and this map."

"What about the rest of them?" Garcia asked.

"I'm mostly backtracking at this point," Weaver said. "I think the Boca Raton boson was B-14. And am I imagining things or are they increasing in mass?"

"They're increasing in mass," Garcia said. "Or charge, not sure which at the moment."

"Charge," Weaver said. "Now it's starting to make sense." He brought up the computer again andstarted plugging in numbers, pulling them up from the data from the instruments. "I need to do a field experiment. Go find somebody with a Humvee."

"Now?"

"Now," Weaver said, not even looking up. "We're going to Disney World."

The staff duty officer had been reluctant to part with a Humvee and driver but when Weaver pointed out that he was going to be a making a report to the President in the morning, not to mention looking for where the Titcher might break through next, things got remarkably easier. The yawning driver took them down the almost deserted Greenway until it connected to Interstate 4 then turned south to County Road 535. More turns led to a guard-shack manned by a young guard in a blue uniform and a nylon jacket sporting an embroidered mouse that was world famous.

"Can I help you?" the guard said, looking at the driver of the Humvee. The only one available at that time of night was a recon Humvee that still had a 40mm grenade launcher mounted.

"Yes," Weaver said, leaning over the driver. "Could you direct me to Bear Island Road?"

"Sir, this is a restricted area," the guard said. "I understand that you think you need to enter here but we're considered a top target of terrorism. Nobody gets in without a pass that has to be preapproved by the security office. I don't see a pass. No pass, no entry."

"Too bad," Weaver said with a smile. "My orders from the national security advisor and the gun on the top of this thing, not to mention the very pissed off and sleepy SEAL in the back means I can go anywhere. Now, could you direct me to Bear Island Road?"

Chief Miller had just laid his head down for the first time in two days when he'd felt somebody kicking his boot.

"Come on, Miller, the game's afoot," Weaver had said, tossing him his M-4.

"What now?" Miller said, standing up. He was almost instantly awake but that didn't mean he was rested. He looked at his watch and groaned. "Jesus, I just got off the horn to SOCOM an hour ago!"

"You're a SEAL? You're complaining about a little sleep? Besides, how long were you out in Shands?"

"What?" Miller asked. "UNCONSCIOUSNESS does not COUNT."

"Whatever, come on. . . ."

So he was in no mood to be held up by some rent-a-cop. And he'd been waiting most of his adult life for a moment like this.

"Son," he said, popping his head up through the gunner's hatch and training the MK-19 until it was pointed vaguely at the guard. "We're in no mood for Mickey Mouse. Get out of the road."

"Where are we and why are we here?" Miller asked as the Hummer pulled to a stop on a stretch of deserted road. There was something that looked like a small factory just down the road and he could see lights and what looked like the top of Cinderella's castle off to the left. To the right was a drainage ditch half filled with water and then dense forest. "I think I know where another boson settled," Weaver said, climbing out of the back of the Hummer and opening the hatch. "I need to get some readings. Help me with this."

"This" was a box about a meter square and a half meter high. There were also two car batteries to be lugged.

"We need more people," Miller said, lifting one end of the box. It wasn't all that heavy but it was bulky as hell. "Where are we going with it?"

"That way," Weaver answered, looking at a hand-held GPS and pointing into the woods. As he did a car made a screeching turn at the end of the road and came barreling down, yellow lights flashing. It slammed to a stop and two more security guards got out, one of them fingering his side arm.

"If you put your hand on that again, I'll feed it to you," Miller growled, flipping the M-4 up to a hip-shot position.

"What's going on here?" the driver said, coming around the car. When he saw the SEAL pointing an M-4 in his general direction he stopped and raised his hands. "Sir?"

"I think there's a boson over in those woods," Weaver answered. "Thanks for showing up. We needed some more help."

With the two security guards carrying the box and Weaver and the national guardsman carrying the batteries and Chief Miller following along, his rifle in no way pointed at the two guards, they managed to get the material across the drainage ditch and into the woods.

"About seventy-five yards that way and we'll take our first reading," Weaver said, pointing slightly to the right.

The woods were pine with palmetto undergrowth and hard going. The only light was the tac-light Miller had attached to his M-4 and it was great for illuminating about a one-meter patch but otherwise useless.

The guards continually stumbled over the low, spiky, palmettos, occasionally letting out a yelp as one of the fronds pierced their pants.

"Can I ask a question?" the driver said, gasping. The box was a bitch to carry though a swamp and over palmettos.

"Sure," Weaver answered. He looked at his GPS again and stopped. "This'll do. Try to find a flat spot."

The palmettos were close growing but there were occasional open spots and the guards gratefully lowered the box onto one of them, wincing and grabbing at their hands that had been cut by the thin handles.

"What in the hell is a boson?" the driver said, sniffing. "Do you smell something?"

"It's what's causing the gates," Weaver replied. There were levelers on the bottom of the box and he was busy trying to get it level. "This is a muon detector. They should be emitting muons and we should be able to detect them within about a hundred meters."

"Doc," the SEAL said. "There are two coated plastic plates inside. When the muons hit the plates they cause Cherenkov radiation, which emits a flash of light. Light sensors record the flash and with the two plates we can get a reading on which direction they're coming from. That way we can figure out which way the boson is and move it around until we find it. The particle itself will probably be invisible to the naked eye. . . ."

"Doc," Miller repeated, hoarsely.

"But we'll know where the boson settled. And from that we can extrapolate where more gates might open . . ."

"Doc!"

"What?" Weaver said, looking up as he realized nobody was listening.

No more than twenty feet away a large, round mirror was reflecting the lights from Cinderella's castle.

"The planet on the far side has a reducing atmosphere and what looks like an F class sun."

The military responded even faster now that there was an SOP for such things. In no more than two hours secure communications and a string of tents and trailers were set up along Bear Island Road and the national security advisor, rubbing sleep from her eyes, was shaking her head at the physicist's latest report.

"No signs of life at all; it might as well be the primordial Earth. Very low oxygen levels, high levels of ammonia, chlorine, methane and carbon dioxide. Rocky ground, very dry. Slight overpressure so we're getting a fair amount of their atmosphere leaking through."

"No signs of the Titcher?" the NSA asked.

"No," Weaver said. "From what Nyarowlll told me the planet would be of little interest to the Titcher.

But what I don't understand is why a gate opened atall . I've come up with a list of GPS sites and the list is going out to local police for investigation. But ifthis gate is open, it means most, or at least many, of them are going to be open. This explains the magma pile in Georgia, at least."

"Do you think it's the same planet?" the Homeland Security director asked. "I've seen stuff about the early Earth, lots of lava . . ."

"Those shows are . . . slightly overdramatized," Weaver said, carefully. "At the point of advancement of the planet on the far side crustal formation seems to be complete and we'd expect similar tectonic activity to Earth or significantly reduced. This is going to be a good opportunity to find out which."

"But it's not a threat?" the NSA said.

"Other than atmospheric leakage, not so far," the physicist answered.

"How many of these things can we expect?" the Homeland Security director asked.

"Well, the UCF anomaly is producing about thirty bosons per day," Weaver said.

"Oh, my God . . ." the NSA muttered. "If every one opens we're in for a world of hurt," Weaver said with a shrug.

"Even if they don't . . ." the NSA said. "How are these things . . . spreading?"

"They seem to be following, by and large, certain fractal course tracks," Weaver answered. "They zig zag around in an apparently random manner and when they reach a certain point, based upon their energy level, they stop. The energy level is increasing, though, so each one is going farther."

"And they're spreading across the world," the NSA said. "If they're up to Georgia then they're down to Cuba."

"Yes."

"Opening up in open ocean."

"Presumably."

The NSA put her head in her hands and shook it. "Sailboats cruising along and suddenly landing in other planets."