Paul Theroux - O-Zone

It was all magnified in Hooper's viewfinder. He was outraged that these aliens were chasing and poaching this animal — they had probably crippled the doe in a trap. They had no right to be here! His anger gave him speed, but he did not burst out of the woods. He stayed hidden at the edge of the meadow, still filming, as the aliens expertly netted and caught the deer, and then tripped it and pinned it to the grass.

That was the answer. Not burning them, as Murdick kept threatening, but chasing them and catching them in a bag, then emptying that bag somewhere far away. Killing was wrong, and killing was also very stupid — there were too many, it would never succeed, and just the attempt would turn you into a monster. But rounding them up might work— it was what they did themselves. Trap them in their own nets and then take them away.

"They don't look like mutants to me," Fisher said.

"They don't look like taxpayers either."

Hooper was still filming them — the scene, rather than the people. He longed to take this tape back and study it; to let Fizzy analyze it.

The aliens had turned their hunt into a lark. They yelped as the grunting deer was subdued, and when its legs were tied its grunts became rattling cries and snorts. It went on thrashing.

Fisher was breathing hard. "That individual is female. She's coded G."

She was muttering and pointing to the edge of the meadow.

"Murdick," Hooper said.

He had tripped and rolled over, and then climbed upright and was now balancing on his wobbly boots. He was examining his suit for punctures. He picked at the fabric, and when he was satisfied that there were no holes, he looked up and saw that he was being watched by four aliens. He smiled at them in terror.

"Don't bolt," Hooper said into his helmet mike.

There was no signal from Murdick.

"Can you hear me, Willis? Don't raise your hand, don't turn. Just copy. Do you read me?"

Fisher said, "He must have pinched a wire when he fell. The great equipment freak! He's going to choke!"

In his suit and helmet and mask and buskinlike boots, Murdick looked like an astronaut prepared for free-flight— just swimming in space — which was why he looked so strange standing still in those dry slanting woods, up to his knees in ferns, and with yellow jackets buzzing around his helmet,

He was clearly terrified — his arm froze as he motioned to raise it. He held his double-barreled pipe in his gloves, but he did nothing with it. Hooper's was still whirring softly, as he taped this confrontation.

The aliens had become smaller, had silently shrunk into concealment in the brush until their heads and shoulders were indistinguishable from the smooth stones. But Murdick turned away with wooden movements ("Don't!" Hooper shouted, hurting his own ears with his loudness), and tried to drag his legs through the undergrowth. Then the stones became human heads, the aliens materialized again, and rose up. Glancing back, Murdick ran, and one of the net-men started after him, swinging his coil.

Murdick was slow; he pitched against the trees, stamping and sort of free-wheeling, and his helmet swiveled heavily left and right — he had no peripheral vision. He moved into the meadow like a prehistoric animal, lowering his head to look around, and stumbling on his big flapping feet. He had dropped that double barrel and was fleeing in a slow staggering way across the grass. His panic gave him a crazy uncoordinated gait and his boots lurched as if struggling against magnetism.

"They're going to get him!" Fisher said. In his voice was neither pleasure nor fear; it was pure animal excitement — a kind of sudden ignorance. "Chokepoint!"

Hooper did not lower his video camera. He braced himself and slipped his fingers into the grooves Murdick had shown him. He snapped off the safety catch. The net-man was in his eyepiece, poised and steadying himself to fling the net over Murdick — he was arched as dramatically as a spider. Hooper moved him to the center of the cross hairs and squeezed.

The sound of a soft thump reached Hooper as the man exploded into meat and in the same instant flew apart like liquid.

The camera still ticked in the first barrel. There was no one: what had just happened?

Before the other aliens could check their running toward Murdick — the man they had followed had simply vanished— Hooper fired again. There was no bang. The loudest sound was the plop of the plunger, as the second man exploded— swelling, becoming huge, just before he vanished. This one bloodied the other two with the mist of his red pulp.

Murdick turned to face those remaining aliens — the man, the wide-eyed girl. They were screaming, their shirts were blackened, their faces were streaked with blood. They were appalled, and yet they looked like demons, and when they ran they were still howling. Murdick had hesitated, and then he blundered in the opposite direction, toward the hill where they had left the rotor.

Fisher said, "Did you tape that too?" but he was frightened by the wild look on Hooper's face and he did not wait for a reply.

They stopped by the basketlike grove of trees and bushes to pick up their remaining equipment and then hurried down the slope to the sinkhole. Murdick was already in the cockpit and heaving the hatch cover.

"Move over," Fisher said. "I'm captain."

Hooper said, "Were you trying to run out on us, Willis?"

Murdick's eyes popped in his faceplate. He was speaking, but he couldn't be heard — his mike was broken, he was off the air.

Just before they took off, Fisher peered into the faceplate and saw that Murdick was weeping with pink eyes. He pointed to himself and mouthed "captain," and to Murdick and mouthed "fuck-wit."

In the air, Fisher said, "I knew you'd bring irons!" He was more frightened now that it was over. "You used a particle beam on them!"

Hooper said, "Is that what that thing is?"

"You're turning out a dozen kilojoules per square centimeter and you don't even know it!"

"It's a good thing I did," Hooper said. "They were going to eat Willis."

Murdick sulked and fought for breath and let the others fly his plane. He was humiliated and broken, and he looked especially absurd in his expensive flying suit and helmet-his small face in the wide faceplate, his gloves making his hands look like fat mitts. He looked like a child wearing a party costume.

"No one believed me," Fisher said. "They were there! You saw them!"

Murdick winced at this. Every mention of the aliens made him glance sideways wearily. His mouth was slack with self-disgust and his eyes were bleak with pain. Disgrace showed on him like a skin disease. "And now they're all dead," Hooper said. "There's nine more of them!" Fisher said. Murdick's face showed pain once more. "Do you want the world to know that?" Hooper said. "Wouldn't you like to know something that no one else knows, captain?"

Fisher said, "I know a lot of things that no one else knows!"

He was glorying in the speed of the rotor, the way it plowed clouds apart, the slow tumbling of the earth beneath them — all this in brilliant sunlight.

He said, "I once thought I was heliophobic — no crap!"

"Please, Fizzy, pay attention," Hooper said, and braced himself against Murdick in order to look closely at the boy. Murdick was slumped in his bucket seat; Hooper used him as a cushion. Hooper said very carefully, "If we keep them secret, they'll belong to us."

The boy's eyes were cold and almost colorless, but his lids softened them as he became thoughtful; and his lips moved, not in speech, but tightening against his teeth. He was thinking about the aliens. If we keep them secret, they'll belong to us.

Hooper saw that the face in the mask was as strange as the mask itself. He knew the reason: it was the closest the boy had ever come to smiling.