

### The Mysterious Disappearance of Kurt Kramer

### Book 1

### by

### Mike Wells

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Mike Wells

http://www.mikewellsbooks.com
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblances to persons living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Praise for Mike Wells' The Mysterious Disappearance of Kurt Kramer

5 STARS! "I really like Mike Wells's style, and this story did not disappoint. The pace is fantastic, and the plot is engaging. I could not put the book down. It did it for me, once again!"

5 STARS! "Cool story! Rachel is awesome and my hero. She is always there for Kurt and she is the only one who really understands and her love guides her to save him from his own curiosity. The ending was a surprise too I was inspired by it. This book is heart-warming and very different from most paranormal romance."

5 STARS! "What attracted me to the novel, in the first place was the mention of Aruba, my favourite place on the planet! But soon I discovered that there is more to the book than the exotic scenery. The phenomenon that the book is about is mysterious and too fantastical for comprehension, but at the same time I wanted to believe that supernatural communication was possible... I also enjoyed all the people in the story, especially Kurt's parents. In the story their son disappears and their reactions are dramatic but not unbelievable. In fact, reading this book was like watching a good science fiction movie, where the great acting brings out all the high points of the plot. The main characters were good, too, but probably younger people could relate to them better. I definitely sympathized with the parents, especially with Kurt's father. He is so much like my husband!"

5 STARS! "This is an enjoyable book which gives the reader a thrilling and exciting ride, very well-paced, yet has some tender moments. A nice balance of romance and action. Recommended!!!"

5 STARS! "My favorite character was Kurt's dad. He is really awesome! And the other professor who came to help out. I like science. This book was fun to read and I couldn't stop till the end."

5 STARS! "I am an adult and maybe this book was meant for teenagers but I loved it. I read the whole thing on the train on my Kindle from London to Birmingham. It was fast-paced and enjoyable, colorful characters but believable ones, too, I was totally wrapped up in the story. I am giving my daughter a Kindle for Christmas and this book will definitely be on it. Wonderful work, Mike Wells!"

5 STARS! "I saw Mike Wells bold claim about his "unputdownable" books on Twitter, and I thought it was just the usual marketing hype. But it is true. I've read Wild Child and the sequel, Baby Talk, and now this book Kurt Kramer and all of them are very hard to put down. Rock on, Mike, keep 'em coming!"

5 STARS! "Read this book in one afternoon on my laptop! Fantastic!!! Go out and buy it cause you will not be disappointed."

For Regina
Chapter 1.1

"...Happy _Birth-_ day to Kurt, Happy _Birth-_ day to Kurt!" the three sang.

"Make a wish!" Rachel said.

Kurt Kramer closed his eyes for a moment. Just as he leaned down to blow out the candles on his Black Forest cake, something behind Rachel caught his eye. His jaw dropped so far down Rachel thought it might bang against his chest.

"Wow," he gasped.

"Did you see that!" Lance said, pointing somewhere behind Rachel's head.

She turned around, and Mitch did, too. But Rachel didn't see anything but the velvet blackness of the Caribbean sky.

"What was it?" Rachel asked. "A shooting star?"

"I'm not sure," Kurt said, stunned.

"What'd it look like?" Mitch asked, in a beer-slurred voice.

Lance said, "It looked like a Roman candle to me."

"It wasn't any Roman candle," Kurt said, slowly and ominously. He was still staring up at the heavens, oblivious to the 16 ordinary candles that were burning on the cake in front of him.

Rachel found herself irked with all three of the boys. "Blow out the candles, Kurt, before the wind does it again." The wind in Aruba was so strong and gusty it had taken two packs of matches to light them all.

Kurt finally directed his attention back to the cake.

"Don't forget to make a wish," Rachel added.

Kurt looked into her eyes, smiling. "I already made my wish, Rachel."

She felt her cheeks flush, even though she knew it was silly. Kurt always made suggestive comments like that, but he hadn't ever actually _done_ anything. They had known each other since the seventh grade, and he hadn't ever even tried to kiss her! She had actually thought he might try it for the first time, three days ago, when they were on the plane on their way down to Aruba. They had been lucky enough to get two seats by themselves—Kurt's parents, Mitch, and Lance, were sitting about ten rows in front of them. Rachel had put her head on Kurt's shoulder to "sleep" and, as she began to doze, she felt his lips brush against her hair. But that was all.

Kurt looked down at the cake again, closed his eyes, and blew hard. All 16 candle flames bit the dust. Fortunately, he had enough finesse not to spit all over the cake, the way Mitch always did. Kurt smiled at Rachel when he finished, that devious look still in his eyes, but his gaze was drawn back to the sky behind her.

" _Now_ what are you looking at?" Rachel said, annoyed again. She turned around and glanced up at the sky, but there was nothing there but stars.

"You should have seen it," Kurt said, in a hushed tone. It was awesome...bright, bright red. It looked like a meteor at first, but when it got closer to the ground, it slowed down and looked like it was almost...floating."

"Yeah," Lance said. "Like it slowed down to _land_."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "You both drank too much beer."

Lance said, "I haven't had _any_ beer, Rachel."

"I only had two," Kurt said.

Mitch belched loudly. "I lost count."

"You _don't_ count," Rachel said. Mitch was only 14 years old and was already far down the well-paved path of alcoholism, at least in her humble opinion. She didn't understand why Kurt wasn't more concerned about him. If Mitch were her little brother, she wouldn't let him drink anything. Or smoke anything, either.

Kurt stood and walked across the balcony to the railing, apparently still looking for the meteor or whatever he had seen, or thought he had seen. Rachel gazed past him, out to the north side of the island, at the lighthouse. The main reason Kurt's parents had rented the vacation home was the breathtaking view it afforded. From the front balcony, which bordered the master bedroom, you could see the Caribbean Sea and Arashi Beach, along with the top of two shipwrecks that poked up out of the water like poorly hidden animals. From the back balcony, where the two guest bedrooms were located, all you could see were hills covered with cactus—that part of the island looked almost like the set of a Western. If she hadn't known she was in Aruba, she might have thought she was in Nevada or Arizona. Beyond all the cactus, you could see the "California" lighthouse. Rachel thought it was a bit odd to have something named after California in Aruba. But then, there were a lot of strange things she had discovered about the island during her short three day stay there—the prehistoric-looking iguanas that sauntered around the swimming pool as if it belonged to them; the little geckos that clung to the walls at night, their beady black eyes seeming to peer steadily back at you; the eerie Divi-divi trees, all permanently bowed in the same direction from the wind. And what wind! It was so strong and gusty Rachel always had a feeling that a storm or a hurricane was brewing. But there were no storms or hurricanes, just crystal clear, cobalt-blue skies. In fact, there didn't ever even seem to be any clouds. Still, Rachel hadn't felt completely at ease since they had arrived on the island. She didn't know why, exactly. Maybe it was just because it was so _different_ from home. It had been snowing when they left Illinois, but the thought of snow now seemed unreal.

Kurt and his parents were nuts about Aruba—they had been there several times before. Kurt's dad liked to take the family on "back to nature" vacations and insisted that everyone leave all their electronic devices at home—computers, smart phones, and video game consoles. Mitch was always miserable, as Mitch loved to play video games.

On this particular visit Kurt's dad had told Kurt he could invite Lance and Rachel along to celebrate his birthday and his admission to MIT. Kurt was the youngest kid in Urbana, Illinois who had ever been admitted to the prestigious engineering institute—he wouldn't even have to finish his senior year of high school before he started. Rachel was proud of him, of course. But the idea of Kurt leaving at the end of the next year...well, it wasn't something she wanted to think about.

Kurt and Rachel and Lance had been friends for almost four years, all of them living on the same block in Urbana. But Rachel pined for more than a friendship with Kurt...

"I think it hit the ground near the lighthouse," Kurt said, pulling Rachel from her thoughts.

"You think we can find it?" Lance asked.

"Just cut your cake, Kurt," Rachel said. "One heart attack a day is all I can stand." They had all taken a windsurfing lesson that afternoon, and Mitch had nearly drowned. Nobody was paying attention to him and he drifted out too far. A strong gust of wind knocked him into the water and the sail board got away from him. If Rachel hadn't heard him yelling, he might not be sitting here with them now. The boys had a good laugh about it, acting as if it wasn't a big deal, but Rachel knew it had scared Mitch down to his gangly, pubescent bones. And it had scared Kurt, too.

Kurt came back to the wicker table and sat down, looking lost in thought. He picked up the knife and sliced out big chunks of the cake. Black Forest cake was Kurt's favorite. Rachel had wanted to bake one for him herself, but the kitchen had no cake pans and they had ended up buying a ready-made one at the local grocery store.

"Too bad there's no ice cream," Mitch said. "It's a lot better with ice cream."

Rachel took a bite of the cake. Despite the fact that it had melted a bit in the heat on the way home from the store, it was quite good. The chocolate was rich and moist, the white icing sweet, but not too sweet.

They all ate their cake in silence, listening to the wind rustle through the palm trees out in the garden below them. The gusts were so strong that it made the house whistle and moan as it passed through the spaces around the windows and sliding glass doors, which was at least part of what made Rachel uneasy. Kurt said the constant blowing was caused by "trade winds" that were in turn caused by the circulation of the sea water. Rachel didn't understand the theory behind it, but she took Kurt's word for it. When it came to anything scientific, Kurt knew what he was talking about.

Kurt was looking up at the sky again. He wiped the chocolate from the corner of his mouth, swallowed with some difficulty, and said, "We _have_ to go look for it. We can't miss an opportunity like this."

"I'm game," Lance said.

"Me, too." Mitch punctuated this with another loud belch.

"Shhh," Rachel said. "You'll wake up your parents."

Kurt and Lance both laughed, though Rachel had not intended it as a joke. She thought Mitch's constant belching was nothing but a juvenile way to call attention to the fact that he was drunk. He was always trying to show off and prove that he was as grown up as his big brother. Rachel actually felt sorry for him. Even though he was always clowning around, there seemed to be a sadness behind his wide-set, hazel eyes, as if he had a low opinion of himself. He often did crazy, reckless things, especially when he was drinking. At times it almost seemed like he had some kind of death wish. His mother suffered from bouts of depression and seemed to have a drinking problem, too, though Rachel and Kurt had never spoken about it. Maybe it was something Mitch had inherited. But Kurt didn't seem to have any problems like that.

Kurt tossed his fork in his empty plate and stood up. "Lance, you get the flashlight out of the jeep—I gotta find my shoes."

"You're not serious..." Rachel said.

"Sure I'm serious. You think I'm just going to ignore something like this? It might be a chance to make a scientific discovery."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "It was just a shooting star, Kurt. Do you really believe it landed on this island? And you're going to _find_ it?"

"I don't know, Rachel. What difference does it make? We can just go up to the lighthouse and see if we can see anything. It'll be cool."

"Yeah," Mitch repeated, "it'll be cool." He and Lance had already stood up, though Lance was stuffing a second piece of cake in his mouth.

Rachel did not move from her wicker chair. "Your parents will freak if they wake up and find us gone."

"They're out cold," Kurt said. "Did you see how many Aruba Aribas they drank at dinner?"

"I want to try one of those," Mitch said.

"It's just rum and fruit punch," Lance said matter-of-factly.

Rachel groped for an excuse—any excuse. The last thing she wanted to do was sneak out of the house in the middle of the night and go tromping around a strange island. Though neither of Kurt's parents had actually said it, she had the feeling that they both expected her to "keep the boys in line." It didn't make any logical sense—Rachel was just six months older than Kurt, and almost exactly the same age as Lance. But she got the feeling that because she was a girl, Kurt's parents assumed she had some kind of inborn motherly responsibility that would kick in whenever the boys got too spirited. That incensed her, but what could she do about it? If this was the way Kurt's parents thought, it was the way they thought. Plus, she was already treading on thin ice with Kurt's mother. It was obvious that Sally Kramer didn't like her very much, that she thought Rachel was somehow corrupting her "innocent" son. Again, Sally had never come out and said anything like this, but Rachel got the message loud and clear—the way Sally would make sure that they were never left alone at the Kramer's house; the condemning glances she would give if Rachel dressed the least bit sexy; the way she always steered conversations away from anything that touched on sex. Once, when they had gone to the movies, Sally asked if they minded if she came along and then actually had the nerve to sit _between_ the two of them, like a human barrier! Kurt never said or did anything about this kind of thing, but Rachel knew that it made him angry.

Rachel had to admit there was a little truth to Sally's concerns. Rachel didn't know for sure, of course, but Kurt did seem pretty innocent in the sex department. But so was she! And was sixteen too young to experiment a little bit with someone you really liked and trusted? Rachel certainly didn't think so.

All this went through Rachel's head in a matter of seconds—these thoughts had run through her head many times before. Lance and Mitch were already standing up, rarin' to go on their meteor-hunting expedition. Kurt was watching Rachel's face, waiting for an answer.

"Are you coming with us or not?" he finally said.

Looking for an out, Rachel glanced at the birthday present she had bought for Kurt. "Why don't you ask Dr. Fate if we should go?" At least there would be a 50-50 chance to call it off—you could only ask it yes or no questions.

"Yeah," Mitch said. "Let's see what Dr. Fate has to say about it."

Rachel handed Kurt the plastic human head. In appearance, it reminded her of photographs she had seen of Albert Einstein. Dr. Fate had bushy eyebrows and long stiff strands of gray hair that stuck out from his temples at wild angles. There were wrinkles across his forehead, and the eyebrows were raked upwards in an expression of surprise, as if some deep insight had just popped into Dr. Fate's mind. They had been playing with the gadget all evening, shaking it, asking it questions, and then reading the answers, which appeared in a little circular window in the top of his head.

Kurt closed his eyes and shook it. "Dr. Fate! Should we go try and find the meteor?" He squinted and read the message.

" _If you have the nerve_."

Mitch laughed, and Lance did, too.

Kurt set Dr. Fate back down on the table. "Well, I guess that settles that."

"Maybe you should ask him again," Rachel said.

"Look, Rachel, if you don't want to go, you can stay here."

"Yeah," Mitch added. "It's not a girl-thing, anyway."

"Oh? And exactly what is a 'girl-thing,' Mitch? Playing with Barbie dolls?"

Mitch picked up the beer he had been drinking. "You said it, not me." He emptied the rest of it down his throat.

Rachel glared at him. The three boys headed across the balcony towards the stairs. She remained firmly planted in her seat.

Kurt turned around on the top step. "You're really not coming?"

Rachel didn't know how to answer. She wasn't sure exactly why she didn't want to go. She just had a bad feeling about it, a faint tingling in the pit of her stomach.

Something moved on the wall just behind Kurt's head. Rachel jumped and let out a little shriek.

"Hey, it's a gecko!" Kurt cried.

The little lizard-like creature was frozen in mid-crawl, the way they always seemed to be, a few inches below the ceiling. Their skin was an odd yellowish green color, appearing almost translucent—Rachel imagined they would feel rubbery and sticky to the touch, like a gummy bear, not that she would touch one in a million years! They also had tiny suction cups on their fingers and toes, or whatever you called the fingers and toes on a lizard—that was how they were able to cling to walls. Kurt had told Rachel that geckos were completely harmless, that they just ate spiders and other insects and were very "shy" around people.

Kurt watched Rachel's reaction, enjoying her squirm.

"Geckos mean good luck," Kurt told her, but she already knew that, too. It was an old Caribbean superstition—Kurt's father had told them about it the first time they had seen one in the house.

"They still make my skin crawl."

"Oh, they're nice. They won't hurt you—watch." Kurt reached up and, very slowly, moved his finger closer and closer to its stubby tail. The little creature suddenly scampered across the wall and disappeared around the corner—in the direction of Rachel's bedroom.

"Thanks a lot, Kurt."

He laughed. "He'll keep you warm tonight, Rachel. Geckos are very cuddly."

She merely sighed at the joke.

Kurt watched her for a moment, became almost as still as the gecko had been.

"You coming with us or not?"

"Do you really want me to?"

They gazed at each other, Kurt's blue eyes locked on hers. He knew she had grown tired of Mitch and Lance and wanted to spend some time with him alone. Maybe he hadn't ever kissed her, but she had a feeling he liked her more than just a friend. But Rachel certainly couldn't blame him for wanting to bring Lance along on the trip. Lance was his best buddy. And Mitch was part of the family. Rachel just wished they didn't have to go off on some crazy new adventure every two hours.

"I want you to go, Rachel," Kurt finally said, "but only if _you_ want to go."

She thought it over another moment, then said, "I want to go." It was a lie, but she decided that it was better than being left behind with the geckos and God only knew what else.

She pushed her chair back and stood up, motioning to the cake. "Should I bring some along? You might get hungry."

Kurt grinned, his dimples showing. "Good idea. Why don't you bring some drinks along, too. It's a long hike up there."

* * *

It was almost 3:30 a.m. by the time they climbed the hill to the lighthouse. When they reached the towering, beige-colored structure, Rachel was relieved. The entrance was covered with a rusty metal door that looked like the ones used on prison cells. And there was a large, heavy padlock on it.

"Well, I guess _that_ settles that," Rachel said.

Kurt laughed. "You think a little padlock is going to stop us?" He tilted his head back and surveyed the area around the door. Above it was a ledge, and above that and to the left, a rectangular window. In the semi-darkness, it looked to Rachel as if it was blocked from the inside with a piece of wood.

Kurt apparently didn't notice this, or simply didn't care.

He began to climb.

Rachel glanced over her shoulder, towards the road that led up to the lighthouse from the beach. "I'm not sure this is a good idea."

"Then why don't you go home," Mitch muttered.

Rachel ignored the comment. She watched as Kurt deftly pulled himself up onto the ledge and eased himself around to the window. She couldn't help admiring his movements, and his body in general. He may have been a whiz in science and math, but he was no "geek." Tonight, he was wearing only some running shorts and a sleeveless shirt, and his muscles in his arms and legs were clearly visible in the dim light. She also found his masculine, square-jawed face incredibly sexy.

_So do half the girls in the tenth grade, a voice in her head said_. He'll never think of you as anything more than a friend. "You're like a sister to me," he once said. Thanks a lot!

Lance had a big birthday bash two months ago, and Linda Eastland was there, who Rachel knew liked Kurt, and it seemed that he was paying a lot of attention to her. Rachel had wanted to strangle her, and then hated herself for feeling jealous.

Kurt started pounding on whatever it was that blocked up the window. A second later, there was a _thud_. "We're in!" he called down to them in a loud whisper. "You first, Rachel. Then Lance and Mitch."

Rachel hesitated—Kurt had first stepped up on the padlock and eye-hook to climb up to the ledge. It looked easy enough, but his legs were longer than hers.

"I'll give you a boost," Lance said.

"No, _I'll_ give her a boost," Mitch said.

"You can both keep your hands to yourself," Rachel told them. She tried to step up onto the lock, her sneaker slipping a couple of times. She managed to get a foothold and climb her way up onto the ledge, the same way Kurt had. She was only wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and both Mitch and Lance seemed particularly interested in monitoring her progress from below. She was thankful that it was dark.

"That's it," Kurt said reassuringly, as she made her way around the side, towards the window. Something tugged at her shorts. A split-second later, the sound of tearing fabric cut through the air.

"Oh-oh," Mitch said, laughing.

As soon as Rachel was within Kurt's reach, he grabbed her arm and helped her over to the window. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," she said, turning around to look at her shorts. There was a small rip at the bottom, but nothing serious.

Kurt leaned out and peered at the wall. "Lance, be careful—there's a nail sticking out."

"Great," Lance muttered.

"This should be interesting," Mitch said, with a giggle.

Lance ignored him and made a futile attempt to tuck his immense Polo shirt into his shorts, looking a bit self-conscious. Lance wasn't fat, exactly.  
"Beefy" was what Kurt diplomatically called it. When they had taken the windsurfing lesson, the instructor had to give Lance the largest board on the premises because the others kept sinking under his weight.

Lance grunted and began to climb up the gate. He made it onto the ledge with surprising grace, at least with more grace than Rachel had displayed. Though Lance may have been heavy, he certainly knew how to move his extra weight around.

Mitch finished off the rest of his beer and threw the can over his shoulder. He first tossed the beach bag up to Kurt, then climbed up onto the ledge in no time flat. He had a wiry frame and looked as if he was built to climb around on things, like a monkey.

"Let's go," Kurt said, after they were all assembled on the ledge. He pushed the beach bag through the window, then wriggled through himself and dropped down to the inside. "I can't even see my own hands in here." When he spoke his voice echoed a little bit—it sounded like he was inside a cave. A few seconds later, he found the flashlight and turned it on. He was standing on some steps. From Rachel's vantage point, it appeared to be a spiral staircase. Kurt motioned through the window to her.

Rachel wriggled through and Kurt helped her down to the steps. It smelled dank and salty. Lance and Mitch followed. Lance got stuck about halfway through, but Mitch gave him a little playful assistance from behind and he finally made it, cursing Mitch under his breath.

They began to climb the winding concrete staircase, Kurt leading the way. Every dozen or so steps there was another rectangular window in the wall. Rachel glanced out each of them as she passed by, catching a view of the palm leaf covered huts on Arashi beach, and farther away, the sparkling strip of high-rise hotels on the east side of the island.

"Look!" Lance said. "I see it!"

Lance was behind her, staring out the last window Rachel had passed.

Kurt scrambled back down the stairs and brushed past her.

"Where?"

"Right there! A red light out in the sand dunes."

Rachel and Mitch joined them, all four of them bumping heads as they tried to peer through the small window.

"I see it!" Mitch said. His voice dropped to a whisper. "It looks like it's glowing."

Rachel had seen it too, though now, Mitch was blocking her view.

"Let's go all the way to the top," Kurt said, as he started up the steps again. "We can see better up there."

Rachel followed the three of them, lugging the beach bag with her. In his excitement, Mitch had carelessly left it next to the window. It was a lot heavier than it was when she had packed it—apparently, Mitch had slipped in a few cans of beer along with the soft drinks before they had left the house. As she made her way up the stairs, the bag slammed against her knee a couple of times. There was something sticky on her skin. She stopped for a few seconds to see what it was and found that the cake had been pulverized by all the beverage cans—the icing was seeping through one side of the thin material. Rachel dreaded what Kurt's mother would say when she saw it. The light blue bag was actually hers, an Aruban souvenir she had bought, a green Divi-divi tree embroidered onto the front. Now, the tree was almost obliterated by a greasy circle of melted icing.

Wonderful, Rachel thought. She would undoubtedly get blamed for it.

As she resumed her ascent, the faint tingling in the pit of her stomach returned. She had been sure that if Kurt and Lance had actually seen anything, it was only a shooting star. Now, however, she had seen it herself. And whatever it was, she had a feeling it was no shooting star.

When they reached the top of the lighthouse, Kurt encountered a solid steel door with another padlock on it.

Kurt banged on it with his fist, cursing.

Rachel stepped back down to the nearest window. "You can see it from here."

Lance tromped down the stairs and looked out, followed by Mitch and Kurt.

The red glow was much more visible now.

"It's just past where we stopped yesterday," Kurt said, "near the cliffs where we were watching those guys windsurf."

Rachel thought he was right—she could barely make out the cliffs, and the whitecaps of the waves beyond them. They had stopped and watched as some local boys did flips, even double flips on the large swells, expertly landing upright again on their windsurf boards. Mitch said that he wanted to try it, but Kurt told him that anyone who tried to windsurf there was crazy. The waves were good, but there were lots of hidden rocks and "coral heads," razor-sharp pieces of petrified coral that lurked just below the surface of the water. When one of the Aruban boys finished and carefully picked his way up onto the cliff, they noticed that his tanned body was covered with long, snaking scars, all crisscrossed by white stitch marks. The sight of him made Rachel shudder.

There were a lot of sand dunes there, too. The flashing red light seemed to originate between two of them. The spot was at least a mile away, maybe farther. It had taken them about ten or fifteen minutes to ride there on the bicycles they had rented.

"It looks like its blinking," Lance said.

"Yeah," Kurt said.

"It's the light on top," Mitch said. "Spaceships always have little red lights on top so airplanes won't crash into them."

"Very funny," Lance said.

None of them spoke for a moment, the wind making a foreboding, hollow sound as it blew through the window. Rachel was at first surprised by the boys' silence—she had expected them to be more excited. Then she realized that they felt just as much fear and apprehension as she did. It was one thing to sit around a campfire or a TV set with your friends and speculate about the possibility of UFO's and alien creatures, but to actually _see_ something with your own eyes, something that might actually be from outer space...that was quite another matter.

"I think we should call the police," Rachel said.

Mitch laughed.

"Are you kidding me?" Kurt said. "This is _our_ discovery. _We_ saw it, and _we're_ going to check it out."

"How do you know nobody else saw it?" Rachel said.

"If they did," Lance said, "then where are they?"

Kurt gazed out the window. "If anybody else saw it, they'd already be over there. And I don't see any car lights."

"Me either," Lance said.

"Then let's get our butts over there before someone else does."
Chapter 1.2

Half an hour later, they were walking along the dirt road that ran parallel to the beach, approaching the cliffs. Nestled in the sand dunes nearby lay the meteor. Or whatever it was.

Though they had all been more or less trotting along ever since they had left the lighthouse, over the past few hundred yards, they had slowed down considerably. Lance was breathing hard. He was the only one of them who smoked, and he seemed a bit short of breath.

"It's just a meteorite," Kurt said, the red glow now visible on his face.

"Meteorites...they don't...glow like that," Lance said, sucking in sharp, quick breaths of the salt air. The wind was blowing so hard that it made his normally wavy brown hair fly straight back from his head.

"Sure they do," Kurt said, though his voice lacked much conviction. "Haven't you ever seen hot coals in a barbecue? They shimmer just like that. Meteorites are hot as hell when they first hit the ground. The wind's making it shimmer, that's all."

"It's not shimmering," Lance said. "It's _pulsating_. There's a regular rhythm to it—it's not random."

Rachel hoped that Kurt and Lance weren't about to engage in one of their hour-long scientific debates. Normally their discussions just bored her. At this particular moment, however, such talk was scaring the hell out of her.

But Kurt did not say anything else to Lance. The three boys stood gawking at the light, looking as if they were all waiting for the other to take a step forward.

"I still think we should call the police," Rachel said.

"What are the police gonna do?" Mitch snapped. This was the first time he had spoken since they had left the lighthouse. He glared at Rachel, then grabbed the beach bag from her hand and pulled out what she hoped was his last beer. After he popped the top and took a gulp, he looked back at Rachel for an answer. "Well?"

She didn't answer. They all just stared nervously at the red glow in the distance. The actual object, whatever it was, was not visible. It was lying just on the other side of a sand dune.

"Let's just go a little farther," Kurt said, "until we can at least see what it is."

No one seemed to question this. Lance and Mitch followed. Rachel hesitated, but didn't feel she had any choice, now. She wasn't about to try to find her way back to the house by herself.

They soon veered off the dirt road and began to make their way across the soft sand and into the dunes. It was difficult to walk—the ground seemed to sink like mud under Rachel's feet. As they neared the water, she could hear the pounding of the surf. The wind howled in her ears, blowing sand in her face and, every so often, into her eyes. Her heart had been thudding steadily in her chest from the brisk pace they had maintained from the lighthouse. Now, it seemed to slam against her ribcage.

As they reached the top of one of the dunes, Kurt stopped in his tracks.

Rachel nearly bumped into him.

"Good God..." Kurt said.

The four of them stared down the sloping dune, their mouths agape. At the bottom lay a box-like object. It sat upright in the sand, as if planted there. There was a bright red circle of light on the side facing them, flashing on and off at perhaps one second intervals. Both the light and the object itself were much smaller than Rachel had thought.

"It looks like a refrigerator," Lance said.

"A deep-freeze from space," Mitch said drunkenly. He grabbed Rachel's arm for support, then managed to stand up straight again.

"What do you think it is?" Rachel said.

"I have no idea," Kurt replied, in a low voice. "It's not a meteorite, that's for sure."

He started down the sand dune, but Rachel grabbed his shirttail. "Are you crazy? It might be dangerous!"

Kurt pulled free of her grip and continued as if hypnotized by his own curiosity. Lance followed him. Mitch hesitated only a second, then stumbled down the dune after them, still carrying the beach bag.

Rachel stood alone for a few seconds, watching. Kurt had the flashlight. Now, she was standing all by herself in the darkness.

"Don't leave me here!" she yelled. None of them paid her any attention. She had known coming on this trip to Aruba with three boys was a mistake. Why hadn't she listened to her instincts?

She glanced over her shoulder at the lighthouse, which looked miles away, then back at Kurt and the others, who were moving steadily away from her. She finally skittered down the dune and caught up with them.

The object was sitting in a little valley between two dunes, the light steadily flashing.

"Maybe it's a satellite," Lance whispered.

They approached the thing very slowly, huddled together, Kurt shining the flashlight on it.

"I've never seen a satellite that looked like that," Mitch said.

"Whatever it is," Kurt said, "I hope it isn't radioactive."

Rachel grabbed Kurt's arm. "Radioactive? What'll happen if it is?"

"If it is," Kurt said, "it's too late now. We'll all be dead in a few days."

Rachel felt queasy, wondering if the radiation could already have affected her. Why hadn't they called the police? They had no business being so close to something like this, something that had fallen out of the sky. It probably belonged to NASA or the CIA or somebody.

They cautiously approached the strange object until they were only a few yards away from it. Kurt shined the flashlight all over it, up and down and from side to side. The surface looked silvery, yet it wasn't shiny, exactly. It looked like canvas that had been covered with cheap silver-gold spray paint.

"Are you sure it's not some kind of satellite?" Rachel said.

"I guess it could be," Lance said. "They send all kinds of top secret stuff into orbit."

Kurt didn't seem to be listening—he was still shining the flashlight all over it. "That's weird."

"What's weird?" Rachel whispered.

"I can't see the flashlight beam hitting it. Can you?"

"It seems to go right through it," Lance said, his voice uneven. "You know, I'm thinking maybe we should get out of here."

"I think he's right," Rachel said quickly, but Kurt didn't even seem to hear them. He stepped even nearer to the object, almost close enough to reach out and touch it, and shined the flashlight all over its surface. Rachel could now see that it wasn't perfectly rectangular in shape—it was tapered at both ends and slightly bowed out on the sides. It reminded Rachel of a gigantic silvery acorn, only unlike an acorn, the top and the bottom looked exactly the same.

Kurt reached out with one hand, palm up. "I don't feel any heat coming from it."

"I told you it looked like it landed," Lance said. "It didn't just slam into the ground. There'd be a big crater here, otherwise."

"Is that true?" Rachel asked.

Kurt nodded, then swallowed. He did not take his eyes off the mysterious object—he seemed completely enthralled by it. He turned his palm down, then tentatively reached out, his fingers extended.

"Don't touch it!" Rachel blurted.

By the time Rachel had uttered these words, Kurt's forefinger had already made contact with the surface.

Kurt gave a little laugh. "It's not even warm." He ran his fingertip along the weird-looking material. "It doesn't feel cold or hot or...or anything. It's strange. It feels like your finger's numb, or something." He looked at Lance. "Touch it."

"I'm not touching that thing," Lance said.

"No telling where it's been," Mitch said.

Kurt and Lance both chuckled, but Rachel failed to find any humor in the situation.

Kurt gazed up at the flashing red light. It was a perfect circle, about the diameter of a softball. Kurt shined the flashlight on it at various angles, but it had the same effect—or lack of effect—as before. It was as if the flashlight wasn't even turned on.

"Some kind of button?" Lance said.

"Maybe if you push it, the thing will open up," Mitch said. "Maybe it's a birthday present for you Kurt. A gift from the stars."

Lance and Kurt both laughed, though it was clearly out of sheer anxiety.

Kurt glanced at Rachel, at Mitch, and then at Lance. "Should I touch the light?"

"I don't know," Lance said. "What if something's in there? Something alive, I mean."

"Wouldn't it have come out already?"

Lance considered this. "Maybe. Then again, maybe it's frozen and needs somebody to thaw it out."

"I told you it was a refrigerator," Mitch said. "Probably has some ice cream for your cake, Kurt." He paused, looking up at the sky. "I wonder if they have Baskin Robbins up there."

"You're not funny, Mitch," Rachel said. She stepped back from the weird object, feeling anxious. "And I think you're crazy, Kurt, for touching that thing. I'm going back to the house and call—"

Before she could finish, Kurt reached up and tapped on the button, or whatever it was, with the tip of the flashlight.

Nothing happened.

He tapped on it a few more times. The flashlight made a dull _clunk_ against the material, whatever it was.

"Anybody home?" Mitch giggled.

The object just sat there, and except for the blinking light, was completely inert.

Kurt glanced around at the sand dunes. "I don't see how it creates so much light. Look—it's all over the place, but you don't see any light coming out of the thing."

Rachel glanced behind them, at the sand dunes. Kurt was right—it was odd. The light coming from the button-like thing looked very faint, yet the nearby dunes reflected splashes of red light, as if an ambulance were parked somewhere nearby.

Kurt walked slowly around the object, shining his flashlight up and down. It was just a little taller than he was. When he stepped around the back, it obscured him from view, and Rachel felt a twinge of panic. It subsided when she saw him come around the other side again.

"This is bizarre," Kurt said, looking back up at the flashing light. "No matter where you go, that light looks like it's aimed right at you."

Lance walked around the object, too, and then so did Mitch, repeating Kurt's experiment. Rachel stayed right where she was standing. Her legs were starting to feel like rubber.

Kurt said, "The light must be inside of it, in the middle, and there's some lenses or something that reflect it around."

"Like a hologram," Lance said.

"Maybe." Kurt looked utterly perplexed. He reached out and touched the side of the object, then pushed on it.

It rocked a little bit.

"Wow! Did you see that?"

"I saw it," Lance said.

"It's so light...it can't weigh more than a hundred pounds!"

Lance gathered his courage and finally touched it, too. He gave it a push like Kurt had. It rocked again.

"Whoever's in there might not like that very much," Mitch said.

"It _can't_ be man-made," Kurt said, paying his brother no attention. "There's no material like this, so light and strong at the same time. At least, I don't think there is."

They all stood motionless, staring at it.

"Okay, so now let's go," Rachel said. "There's nothing more to see."

Kurt glanced at her and laughed.

"Please, guys," Rachel said, "I don't like this. It's probably something the air force sent up, and we'll just get in trouble for messing around with it. For just _knowing_ about it."

Lance gave her an uneasy glance, as if this thought had already occurred to him.

"Maybe it's a bomb," Mitch said.

Kurt and Lance suddenly looked at each other. Everybody but Kurt took a step back from the object.

"It's not a bomb," Kurt said, though without much confidence.

"How do you know?" Mitch and Lance both said this, almost simultaneously.

"It's too light for a bomb. Anyway, why would anybody want to blow up Aruba?"

Mitch said, "Maybe it's supposed to blow up the whole planet."

Kurt laughed. "You've played too many videogames, Mitch." He moved a little closer to the object, looking up at the red light. "That damn button or whatever is...that's what gets me." Kurt held his palm out again. "I can hardly even see any light on my hand, but—"

"Ahhhhh!" he wailed.

All four of them leaped backwards.

A gaping hole appeared in the side of the object, opening like the iris of a camera, until it covered almost the whole side that faced them.

"Holy shit!" Lance said.

They all stared at it, frozen with fear.

There didn't seem to be anything inside of it. Nothing at all. Just blackness. _Perfect_ blackness.

"It's empty," Lance finally mumbled.

Kurt had dropped the flashlight on the ground. Rachel was standing right behind him, holding onto a fist-full of his T-shirt.

Without taking his eyes off the object, Kurt squatted and picked up the flashlight. Moving very slowly, he guided the beam into the opening. It seemed lost in the blackness. He moved the flashlight to the left, to the right, up and down...then shined the beam on the inside walls. "There's no back or sides...or top or bottom...or anything. It's like a black hole, or something."

"The button's gone, too," Lance said.

They all looked up at the spot where the red light had been. Apparently, when the hole appeared, the light had disappeared.

Kurt squatted again, and still moving very slowly, picked up a rock from the sand. With Rachel still clinging to his T-shirt, he tossed the rock inside the opening and quickly stepped back.

The rock disappeared.

There was no sound, no other light—nothing. It was just swallowed up by the blackness.

Lance let out a ragged gasp. He gingerly stepped to one side and peered around back of the object, as if to convince himself that his eyes weren't deceiving him.

"It's like a hole into nothingness," he muttered.

"What is it, Kurt?" Rachel whispered. Now, her heart felt like it was in her throat.

"I don't know," Kurt said.

None of them spoke for a moment.

"Let's go," Rachel said, pulling on Kurt's shirt.

"Give me a cigarette," Kurt said to Lance.

Lance looked at Kurt like he was nuts.

"I'm not going to _smoke_ it, Lance. I want to try an experiment."

Lance pulled a Marlboro from his pocket. Rachel could see that his hands were shaking.

"Light it," Kurt said.

Lance pulled out his lighter and, after striking it half a dozen times in the buffeting wind, finally got the cigarette going. Kurt took it from him and took a long drag. He leaned forward and, shining the flashlight beam into the opening, blew the smoke out in a narrow stream. It was cut off in a flat, crisp plane even with the top and bottom of the object.

"That's what I thought," Kurt said, sounding shaken.

"What's what you thought?" Rachel said.

"The space inside this thing...it's not normal space. It's something else. Another dimension maybe."

"Another dimension?" Mitch said, laughing. " _You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind, a journey into a wondrous land who's boundaries are_ — "

"Will you shut up, Mitch!" Lance yelled.

"Shut up yourself, you wimp. You're just scared."

"And you're not?" Lance spat back.

Suddenly, Mitch stepped past Rachel and snatched the flashlight out of Kurt's hand. Before his brother could stop him, Mitch thrust the flashlight at the opening.

The end of it disappeared, along with the beam it gave off. It was a strange sight—it looked like the flashlight was sliced cleanly in half.

"Give me that," Kurt said, pulling Mitch back from the object. He took the flashlight and examined it, turning it off and on a few times, as if to see if it had been damaged in some way. But it worked just as it had before.

Kurt then did the same thing Mitch had just done, moving the flashlight slowly forward into the opening, then withdrawing it, watching the end of it disappear and reappear.

"That's awesome," Lance said.

"Maybe the flashlight's all still there and you just can't see it."

Mitch said, "Why don't you stick your hand in there and see what happens?"

Kurt laughed. "Why don't you, Mitch?"

"Okay." Mitch reached out, but Kurt grabbed his arm before he could even get close to it.

"Are you out of your mind?" Kurt shoved him towards Lance. "Keep hold of him, will you?"

"Let go of me!" Mitch grunted, trying to twist his wiry arm free from Lance's grip.

"Stop it!" Rachel screamed.

Kurt grabbed hold of Mitch by both the boy's skinny arms and shook him a few times. "Mitch! Calm down!"

Mitch became very still, his eyes looking glazed in the semi-dark.

"You're drunk! Are you trying to kill yourself?"

"I'm not drunk," Mitch said, belching.

Kurt shook his head in frustration. "Just relax, okay?"

Mitch gave a loose nod. "Okay."

"Okay," Kurt repeated, and he carefully released his grip. Lance kept a firm hold on Mitch's left arm and pulled him a safe distance away from the object, behind Kurt and Rachel.

"This is incredible," Kurt said, peering into the gaping hole's absolute blackness. "It's like you're looking into outer space, only there aren't any stars."

"I want to get out of here," Rachel said.

"I think you're supposed to step through it," Mitch said from behind them. "It's a doorway that leads somewhere."

Kurt picked up another rock, a bigger one, and tossed it into the opening.

It disappeared just like the other one had.

"Weird," Kurt muttered. "I wonder where they go."

"They probably appear on some other planet," Lance said, "a billion light years away from here." He paused, then added, "I think Mitch is right—it's a gateway that leads somewhere. Whoever sent this thing, they want a visitor. Some brave Earthling." He smiled nervously at Kurt. "Like you."

Kurt gazed at the object, his eyes looking almost as empty and black as the space inside it.

"Don't even _think_ about it!" Rachel said, pulling him back.

A beer can flew over Kurt and Rachel's head and disappeared into the opening.

"There's a souvenir from Milwaukee," Mitch mumbled.

"Stop it, Mitch!" Kurt yelled.

The boy had broken free of Lance's grip and was swinging the beach bag around and around his head. "Maybe they'd like a souvenir from Aruba, too."

"Don't throw that in there!" Kurt said.

He tried to grab hold of the bag, but Mitch nimbly kept it out of his reach. Because he was smaller and thinner than Kurt, he could move quicker.

Rachel screamed for him to stop, but Mitch wasn't paying any attention to her, his teasing, glazed eyes focused on Kurt. When the bag came around in her direction again, she grabbed one corner of it. Mitch yanked on it a couple of times. On the third yank, she lost her grip and let go.

Mitch went tumbling into his big brother.

Kurt staggered backwards.

"Kur—!" was all that came out of Rachel's mouth. She was sure he would fall into the opening.

Kurt was swinging his arms wildly in the air, trying to regain his balance. One arm shot out for Mitch, but he missed. He sprawled haphazardly towards the opening, but landed on the sand. His left arm, however, was partially extended into the blackness. Everything past the middle of his forearm was gone, sliced off cleanly as if by an invisible plane, the same way the flashlight had looked.

Only Kurt couldn't seem to pull his arm back out.

"Help me!" he screamed, trying to stand up, drawing his legs underneath him.

Mitch reached for him.

"I can't—"

Shhhhhhhuuuuuuuk!

Rachel, Lance and Mitch stared wide-eyed into the blackness, the wind whistling in their ears.

Kurt was gone.

It happened so fast it was hard to believe. Rachel blinked a few times as if it might change what her eyes perceived. But he was gone—disappeared.

Rachel gasped, terror welling up inside her. An instant later, the opening collapsed again into a small circle of blackness, then vanished completely.

The strange entity just sat there in the sand, dormant. The wind howled in Rachel's ears.

"Where is he?" Lance said.

Rachel threw herself at the object, no longer afraid to touch it. "Kurt?" She banged on it with both her fists. "Kurt! Where are you?"

It rocked back and forth. Her knocking made almost no sound at all, just a muffled thumping.

"Uh-oh," Mitch said.

"Oh my God oh my God oh my God..." Rachel pounded on the strange metallic surface again. "Kurt!" She looked up and searched for the button, but it did not reappear.

Lance stepped back from the object, his face white with fear. Mitch shrank back, too, his eyes wide.

"Where _is_ he?" Rachel screamed into the howling wind.

But the wind did not answer.
Chapter 1.3

Professor Jack Kramer stood in the living room of the rented beach house, looking from one babbling teenager to another, wearing only a pair of jeans, hung over and still half-asleep, trying to make some sense of what he was hearing.

"—his arm got stuck and then—"

"—thought it was a meteor and when we got closer—"

"—got sucked into the opening and then—"

"Hold it, hold it," he said, waving his arms in the air. "I can't listen to all of you at once."

"But we've got to _hurry_ ," Rachel said, in between gasps. They had run the entire way back to the house, and she couldn't seem to catch her breath. "That thing—that swallowed him—it might take off again or something."

"If it came down—" Mitch blurted, "—it could go back up."

"Just keep quiet for a minute," Dr. Kramer said, motioning to the boys. "Let Rachel do the talking." He gave Mitch an admonishing glance. "She seems to be a lot more coherent than you do."

Rachel suddenly felt self-conscious, a sense of unreality sweeping over her. What a far-fetched story to be telling to Dr. Kramer...to anybody.

The professor gently placed his hand on her shoulder. "Just tell me what happened, Rachel. Calm down, take a couple of deep breaths, and start from the beginning."

"Okay," Rachel said, gulping air. "Okay." She composed herself for a few more seconds, then said, "What happened was, we were up on the balcony, singing _Happy Birthday_ to Kurt, and he saw something in the sky ...."

* * *

Dr. Kramer listened patiently as Rachel recounted everything that had taken place. He nodded and said "uh-huh," as she told the story, but he kept glancing at Mitch and Lance as if he was scrutinizing both boys for signs of...well, she wasn't sure what. It was hard to blame him, though. The more she talked, the more unbelievable it all sounded, even to her.

When she finished, Dr. Kramer gazed at her for a moment, then eyed Mitch and Lance again. "Well, that's certainly an interesting story."

"It's not a story!" Rachel blurted. "It's the truth." She pointed frantically towards the beach. "Dr. Kramer, we've got to go try and get Kurt out of that thing!"

Dr. Kramer nodded calmly as he looked them over, one by one. "I'm going to ask you a question," he said in a tone of an elementary school teacher. "I want you to be honest with me. Okay?"

Rachel could hardly stand still, but she made herself nod. The boys nodded, too.

"Are you tripping?"

The three teenagers exchanged surprised glances. Rachel thought he was going to ask them if they had been drinking. She didn't answer, and neither did Mitch or Lance.

"Have you taken some kind of psychedelic drug?"

"No, Dad!" Mitch finally said, looking offended.

"Mescaline?"

"No, nothing!"

"Ecstasy maybe?"

"Dad, we haven't taken _anything_."

"Are you sure Mitch? You look pretty out of it to me."

"No. I had a...a coupla beers, that's all. The reason I look 'out of it' is probably because I'm scared shitless."

"I haven't had any alcohol," Rachel said.

"I only had one beer," Lance said guiltily.

"Well, you shouldn't have had _any_. You all promised me you would behave yourselves on this vacation. I'm responsible for anything that happens to you. Rachel, and Lance, you're parents have trusted me to—"

"Dad, this isn't the time to give us a lecture! Don't you _get_ it? Kurt is _gone_! Disappeared!"

Dr. Kramer nodded again, but he still didn't appear concerned. "Okay," he said, running one hand through his sleep-tousled hair. "When and where was the last time you saw him?"

Mitch let out an incredulous gasp. "She just _told_ you, Dad. About fifteen or twenty minutes ago he got sucked into that... _thing_ on the beach."

"The 'thing' on the beach," Dr. Kramer said doubtfully.

"Yes," Rachel said, trying to keep her voice calm. Maybe he would believe her if she seemed more in control of herself. "You have to take this seriously, Dr. Kramer. Kurt is in really bad trouble, believe me."

A look of genuine concern flashed across Dr. Kramer's face. "Were you in the water?" he said quickly. "Swimming or skinny-dipping or something?"

"No," Rachel said.

"We didn't get near the water," Mitch said. "Not very near, anyway."

Dr. Kramer at once seemed wide awake. He looked anxiously from one face to another, then bolted for the door.

Chapter 1.4

All four of them packed into the jeep Dr. Kramer had rented, Mitch in the passenger seat and Lance and Rachel in the back. The first light of dawn had appeared, the sky smattered with wispy, pink clouds. As they passed the lighthouse, Rachel half-wondered if they had imagined everything. The first light of day, combined with the fact that they were now in the presence of an adult—a very sober and wise adult, at that—made the incident seem completely unreal.

"Keep going," Mitch said. "It's about a mile or so down the beach."

Dr. Kramer nodded, though it was clear he didn't expect to find anything, except perhaps his other intoxicated son. It was hard for Rachel to understand how he remained so calm. Maybe the story was unbelievable, but the fact that Kurt wasn't with them should have at least told him something was wrong. Then again, maybe he had so much confidence in Kurt that he didn't think there was anything to worry about. She wished her own parents had that much confidence in her.

"It's just a little farther," Mitch said. Rachel could hear doubt creeping into his voice, too. "See those cliffs where the waves are breaking? It's just a little past there."

Dr. Kramer nodded uneasily and kept driving, glancing every so often out at the beach.

"There it is!" Mitch said.

"Where?" his father said.

"Look! Oh...it's too late. It's behind one of the dunes...wait...maybe..."

Dr. Kramer sighed, unable to hide his skepticism. He drove past the cliffs and slowed the jeep down to a crawl. "Well...?"

"It was right here," Mitch said, craning his neck, searching the sand dunes they were passing. "I know it was right here..."

"Stop!" Lance yelled.

Dr. Kramer brought the jeep to a halt, jostling all three of them forward.

"Let me out," Lance said.

As Rachel climbed out of his way, she tried to find what he had been pointing at, but all she could see were sand dunes. Maybe they _had_ imagined it. Maybe it was some kind of group hypnosis. She looked suspiciously at Mitch. She half-wondered if he had slipped something into Kurt's birthday cake that had given them all hallucinations. He was the type who would do something like that. Kurt might just be wandering around on the beach somewhere, lost. Maybe it had affected him worse than the others...

Lance trudged his way up one of the dunes, with Rachel and Mitch on his heels. Dr. Kramer lagged behind, looking now more angry that skeptical.

"There it is!" Lance yelled, as he reached the top. Rachel and Mitch scrambled up the sand behind him.

Rachel reached the top and looked where Lance was pointing.

The top of the object was barely visible in the twilight, a dark, oval form sticking up over a dune, perhaps fifty feet away.

"Where?" Dr. Kramer said, joining them. "I still don't see anything."

"Right over there, Dad," Mitch said excitedly. "See the top of it?"

Before Dr. Kramer could answer, Mitch and Lance dashed down the other side of the dune, heading for it. Rachel and Mitch's father both followed in the boys' tracks, crossing over a half-dozen dunes. He walked a lot slower than Rachel would have liked—he was glancing back at the cliffs, looking more worried.

When they crossed over the last dune, Rachel was relieved to see that the object was still there—at least that part was no hallucination. Mitch and Lance were standing in front of the odd, acorn-shaped thing, staring at it as they had been only an hour before. Rachel hoped the red light would be on again, but the metallic box looked just like it did when they had left it—completely inert.

"So this is your spaceship," Dr. Kramer said, approaching it with both hands in his pockets.

"We didn't say it was a spaceship," Mitch said. "We don't know what it is."

Dr. Kramer casually knocked on it with his fist. "Unusual material." He walked around it once, inspecting it, then came back around and gave it a shove with his hand, rocking it the same way Kurt and Lance had. "I hate to tell you this, kids, but this isn't from outer space."

Rachel felt off-balance. "What is it, then?"

"I think it's some type of float."

"A _float_?" Mitch said.

Dr. Kramer nodded. "They use things like this inside ships, for ballast."

Rachel and Mitch and Lance glanced at each other. That wasn't possible. It couldn't just be part of a boat...

"Dad, touch it again. _Feel_ it. It's not normal material." Mitch ran his fingers across the surface.

His father did the same, but simply shrugged.

"What's it made of?" Mitch said.

"Beats the hell out of me," Dr. Kramer said. "They develop all kinds of materials these days for special purposes." His voice trailed off as he glanced towards the sea. Now, he was beginning to look pale. He walked towards the pounding surf, glancing to the left and to the right.

"Kurt!" he yelled, the wind muffling his voice. "Kurt!"

He walked about halfway to the cliffs where the windsurfers had been.

"He's not there!" Rachel yelled.

"Kurt!" Dr. Kramer screamed again, looking pale and helpless in the early morning light.

"He's not there, Dad!" Mitch yelled, his voice cracking. "How many times do we have to tell you?"

Dr. Kramer slowly walked back to them, a look of despair on his face. In her mind's eye, Rachel saw a ghoulish image of Kurt with scars covering his body just like they had seen on the boy the day before. She immediately blotted it out.

"Where the hell is he, then?"

"He's inside that thing," Rachel said, motioning over her shoulder.

Dr. Kramer closed his eyes, then rubbed his temples as if his head were throbbing. He looked at Rachel. "He's _not_ inside that float, Rachel. It's impossible. It's not heavy enough to..." Dr. Kramer's voice trailed off—he was looking past them.

They all turned around.

Rachel thought maybe the red light had come on, or maybe the hole had appeared again, but she quickly realized Dr. Kramer wasn't looking at the object on the beach. A police car—no, not a police car—a police _jeep_ , was heading down the dirt road.

"Hey!" Dr. Kramer shouted, waving his arms wildly. He started running, then stopped and turned around, pointing at Mitch and Rachel and Lance. "You let me do the talking, do you understand? You don't say a word."

They all nodded.

Dr. Kramer started running again and disappeared over one of the dunes.

"He doesn't believe a damn thing we told him," Mitch said. "He thinks we're all stoned."

Lance glanced at him, shook his head, and the three of them walked back over to the object. Mitch gave it a kick, then said, "Ouch!"

"He's somewhere inside this," Rachel whispered, touching the odd-feeling surface again. "I know he is."

A moment later, the police jeep came over the dune and rolled to a stop. Dr. Kramer climbed out of the back. The two officers, both Hispanic-looking and dressed in crisp blue and white uniforms, followed him.

" _Bon dia_ ," one of them said. Rachel recognized the words from a brochure she had read on the plane—they were Papiamento for "Good morning." Papiamento was the local language, a sing-song mixture of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English Arawok Indian, and African influences. The island was part of The Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the official language was Dutch.

"Hello," Rachel said. Mitch and Lance didn't speak, looking afraid even to greet them. The two officers sauntered up to the strange object. One of them reached out and gave it a shove, rocking it slightly in the sand.

"Well?" Dr. Kramer said.

"I dunno, amigo, what it is. Maybe washed up last night." He motioned to a rocky spot nearby, where the surf was breaking. It was littered with debris—rusty cans, plastic bottles, pieces of driftwood. "Lots of stuff wash up here from Venezuela, Cuba, Columbia... from freighters, too. They just dump garbage in water. It crime, but we can't do nothin' about it."

"This doesn't look like garbage to me," Dr. Kramer said.

The other officer touched the object with a finger. "Yeah, looking new. Maybe fell off one oil tanker."

The first officer motioned over his shoulder with his well-tanned thumb. "Oil refinery on the south side of island."

"I know," Dr. Kramer said.

The policeman smiled at them all, revealing pearl-white teeth. Rachel glanced at his badge— _Herniquez, Segundo F_., it stated, in official-looking block letters.

"Where from, you?" he said.

"The United States," Dr. Kramer said.

Segundo chuckled. "We know. Which state?"

"Illinois."

"Oh, yeah?" He glanced at his partner. "I been to Chicago once." He pronounced Chicago like "Chick-kago."

"We live in Urbana," Dr. Kramer said.

Segundo's face took on a blank look. "No hear of that place."

Dr. Kramer nodded and forced a smile, but tried to keep the conversation focused. "So, you don't have any idea of what this thing might be?"

Segundo shrugged. "Float...I dunno. Maybe new kind of oil barrel." He knocked on it with his knuckles. "Empty. We ask somebody take it from beach today." He turned to his partner and said something in Papiamento, then looked back at Dr. Kramer.

"Anything else we can help for you?"

Dr. Kramer glanced at Mitch, then at Rachel and Lance. Apparently, he had not told either officer that Kurt was missing.

Dr. Kramer spoke very casually. "Actually, my other son seems to be lost at the moment." He looked up and down the beach, then out at the water. "Probably just fell asleep somewhere. I'd appreciate it if you'd keep an eye out for him, though."

The two officers exchanged concerned looks.

"Where see him last, sir?" Segundo said.

Dr. Kramer pointed down at the sand. "Right here." He paused, then said, "Actually, I didn't see him—the kids were all out here together a little while ago. This is my other son, Mitch."

"Hello," the Segundo said, in an accent so thick it sounded like he said "yellow."

Mitch merely nodded, still looking afraid to speak.

Segundo glanced uneasily out at the water, then looked back at Dr. Kramer. Rachel was sure she knew what he was thinking, and what Dr. Kramer was thinking, too. A few years ago an American high school student had disappeared here, while on vacation. She had been out to a night club and then disappeared. Many people thought that the Aruban police had mishandled the case. In any event, it made worldwide headlines and had never been solved—the remains had never been found.

"This place no safe," Segundo said, looking back at the beach. "Waves." He made a sweeping motion with his thick arm. "Break pretty high sometime. Push you in water."

"We weren't over there," Mitch said.

Dr. Kramer shot him a look that said _keep your mouth shut._

"We _weren't_ , Dad."

"Maybe you party a little?" Segundo said, making a drinking gesture with his hand.

"No, sir," Mitch said.

"I'm sure he'll turn up," Dr. Kramer said quickly. "He's probably got lost in the dark and is asleep somewhere. Or, maybe he's already back at the house."

Segundo said nothing more, but his brown eyes focused on the pounding surf. There was a grim look on his face.

"Well," Dr. Kramer said, "thanks for your help."

"You want report your son missing?" the other officer asked.

"No, no, I don't think there's any need for that. I'm sure he'll turn up. If he doesn't, we'll give you a call."

"You sure?" Segundo said, glancing at his partner as if to make sure he took note.

"I'm sure," Dr. Kramer said.

"Okay, then. Adios, amigos. Enjoy vacation in Aruba."

Both officers got back into the police jeep and waved as they drove off.

As soon as the vehicle had disappeared over the first dune, Dr. Kramer turned back to Mitch.

"Are you going to tell me the truth about what happened here, or are you going to keep feeding me this bullshit story about little green men from outer space?" Dr. Kramer was sweating now, looking as if he was having trouble controlling his temper.

Mitch backed away.

Rachel said, "He's inside that thing, that float or whatever you want to call it, Dr. Kramer. We all saw him get sucked inside of it."

"Rachel..." Dr. Kramer shook his head in frustration. He stepped back over to the object and pointed at it. "He's _not_ in here. He _can't_ be in here, don't you get it? It's physically impossible. Kurt weighs a hundred and seventy five pounds." He rocked the object, using both hands to push it. "This whole thing doesn't even weigh a hundred pounds. Furthermore, there's no way for him to get inside. It's just one solid piece of...of material, whatever it is." He paused, peering at it more closely. "No doors, no panels...there aren't even any seams on it anywhere. There's no way Kurt could..." His voice trailed off.

"What's the matter?" Mitch said.

Dr. Kramer didn't answer. He walked slowly around the object, then tilted it to one side and examined the bottom. To Rachel, it looked exactly like the top.

"That's odd," he said. "This thing seems to be made of one solid piece of material. I don't understand how it was manufactured. And it's so new looking..."

"If you shine a flashlight on it," Mitch said, "the light goes right through it. The beam doesn't reflect back at all."

Dr. Kramer glanced at Mitch. "Is that so?"

Mitch nodded.

Rachel wished she had thought to bring the flashlight with her—they were all in such a hurry they had left it back at the house.

Dr. Kramer ran his finger across the surface of the object again. "It does seem to have some strange properties. I see what you mean now about it making your finger feel numb." He tapped on the material a few times. "It feels almost like foam rubber, but it's certainly not made of that." He motioned to Mitch. "You have your knife with you?"

Mitch searched the pockets of his shorts and withdrew his red Swiss army knife and handed it to his father. Rachel had seen it many times. Mitch was forever carving his initials into trees—or school furniture—with it.

Dr. Kramer opened the largest blade and scraped it along the peculiar, not-quite-shiny material. He frowned and looked at the knife blade, then did it again, this time pushing a lot harder, digging the point into it. He inspected the surface, frowned once more, then closed the blade and flipped out several others, as well as something that looked like a leather punch. He tried all of the instruments on the material, one by one. None of them made the slightest scratch on it.

"That is unusual," he admitted, closing the knife up. "I'm no materials expert, but it seems almost indestru...well, I won't go that far." He peered closely at the material, rubbing his finger along the surface. "It is strange, though. It's so tough, but feels almost soft to the touch."

"That's what we've been trying to tell you, Dad," Mitch said. "This thing—whatever it is—it's not man-made."

Dr. Kramer glanced at his son. "I don't think you can jump to that conclusion." He looked from one face to another. For the first time, he looked like he thought they might be telling him the truth.

He gazed out at the sea for a moment, then looked back at all three of them, his expression solemn. He cleared his throat and said, "Listen, kids...if you really know what's happened to Kurt...if he...fell in the water...and you're just afraid to tell me, or you're in some kind of group denial about it...please...just come out with it. Accidents are a fact of life...sometimes they can't be prevented...I'm not going to blame anybody for—

"He's _in_ there, Dad," Mitch said, pointing to the object. "We're not in any 'group denial' or anything else. We all saw him get sucked into it, with our own eyes."

Dr. Kramer was quiet for a moment, looking first at Mitch, then at Lance and Rachel. "All right. I believe you. Or, let me put it another way: I believe that _you_ believe what you're telling me." He took another long gaze out at the sea, then motioned to the object, whatever it was. "We can get this thing in the back of a pickup truck. Does anybody know where we might get one?"

"There was one at the place we took windsurfing lessons," Mitch said.

"Okay, good. I'll drive over there and see if I can borrow one or rent one from them. Mitch, you come with me. Lance, you and Rachel stay here. Whatever you do, don't let anyone move this thing. Lie, tell them your uncle works for the oil refinery and is on the way to pick it up, anything to get rid of them. Okay?"

"Got it," Lance said.

"We won't let anybody near it," Rachel said.

"Good. Now sit tight until we get back."

Chapter 1.5

It was almost an hour before Dr. Kramer and Mitch returned in the pickup truck. The sun had risen, along with the temperature. The windsurfing school had been closed, so they had just driven on to Orangestad, the main city on the island, and stopped the first person they saw who was "driving a pickup truck and looked like he could use some extra dough," according to Mitch. This turned out to be a friendly, leather-skinned Aruban man named Rudolph who looked as if he were in his sixties. He quickly accepted Dr. Kramer's offer to rent the pickup truck for an hour for the sum of $50. The only problem was, he insisted on coming along, even when he had been offered Dr. Kramer's jeep as collateral. Rudolph was no fool—he had noticed the rental stickers on the jeep and had decided not to take any chances. So, he had followed them back to the house, where they dropped off the jeep, and then all three of them came to the beach in the truck.

Rudolph also wouldn't allow them to drive the truck more than a few yards off the dirt road, claiming that it would "easy get stuck." He spoke English even more poorly than the policemen had. Rachel thought this was fortunate, because he seemed very curious about why they wanted to take the "float" that had washed up on the beach back to their house.

"We're going to put it in the garden," Dr. Kramer explained, grunting as he lugged it across the dunes aided by Rachel, Mitch, and Lance. Rudolph did not offer to help. Apparently, the $50 only covered the use of the truck. He just sauntered alongside them in the sand, looking utterly dumbfounded by it all. It really didn't matter, though—the object really didn't weigh very much. Rachel imagined Kurt inside of it, asleep, in a fetal position, for some reason, jostling around.

"Garden?" Rudolph said. "What to? I mean say, why?"

Dr. Kramer didn't answer him.

" _No_ _comprende_ ," Rudolph muttered, staring at them, shaking his head. Americans were very odd people, his wrinkled face seemed to say.

When they reached the truck, he offered the courtesy of lowering the gate for them. They set one end of the "acorn," as they began calling it, on the truck bed and slid it forward until it made contact with the cab. It barely fit, only a couple of inches to spare.

Dr. Kramer sat in the front with Rudolph, Rachel and the boys in the back with the acorn. Mitch and Lance had to hold onto it to keep it from teetering around—because its sides were slightly convex, it did not rest flat against the truck bed. As they bounced along, Rachel kept glancing up and down the road, hoping no one else saw what they were doing. But it was so early in the morning there was no one out except a couple of joggers who didn't seem to pay them any attention.

"Back up to the garage door," Rachel heard Dr. Kramer tell the man as they approached the house.

"Garage?" Rudolph said.

"Yes, garage." Dr. Kramer motioned over his shoulder with his thumb. "Make truck go backwards to garage."

" _Si, Senior_ ," Rudolph said, with a smile that revealed more than one missing tooth. He carefully backed the truck up to the garage door. Mitch jumped off the truck and threw the door open. The rented jeep was already inside, but the garage was designed for two cars and there was plenty of extra room.

In less than a minute, they moved the object from the bed of the truck onto the garage's concrete floor. They set it upright, just as they had found it on the beach.

"New," Rudolph commented, touching its shiny surface with his finger.

Dr. Kramer nodded. "Yes. Lucky. We _lucky_." He smiled and handed Rudolph a crisp $50 bill.

The old man nodded appreciatively, stuffed the bill in his shirt pocket, and ambled back to his truck, shaking his head. He glanced once more at the object and said, "You no lucky. You _loco_."

* * *

Rachel and Mitch and Lance were sitting in a semicircle around the acorn, cross-legged, as if it were a religious artifact. The three of them had not said a word since Dr. Kramer had gone inside to wake up Sally and tell her what had happened..

Rachel had no idea what Dr. Kramer had actually told his wife—he had only told them that he needed some time with Sally and would appreciate it if they all stayed out in the garage. But whatever he had told her, it had upset her. The muted sobbing and shrieks could be heard all the way from the other end of the house, where the master bedroom was located.

Mitch looked as if the racket was making him uncomfortable. He fidgeted for a moment, then rose from the floor and stood directly in front of the object, gazing blankly at the cold-looking surfaces.

"I hope that Rudolph guy doesn't tell anybody we took this thing off the beach," he said. Rachel thought it was mostly to break the silence and to cover up the unlovely sounds from inside the house.

"I think he'll keep his mouth shut," Lance said, his wide face drawn and pale. The garage door was closed now, the room was illuminated only by florescent lights, making Lance look almost ghostly. "Anyway, lots of people probably snag stuff that washes up on the beach."

A long silence passed. Now, it sounded like Dr. Kramer and Sally were arguing.

Mitch glanced towards the door that led to the kitchen, then looked back at the object. He ran his forefinger along the front surface again. "Do you think Kurt's really in here?" The question seemed to be directed at Lance.

"Don't ask me," Lance said. "I'm not sure of anything right now."

"Well, I am sure," Rachel said. "I _know_ he's in there." As soon as she said this, however, she felt uncertain. Seeing the object sitting in the garage, under the stark florescent lights, made her once again question everything she thought had happened. Maybe they had imagined it all. Maybe it was some kind of "group denial," like Dr. Kramer said. She had read about such things, especially concerning UFO's. Maybe it was just a float or an oil barrel or some other ordinary object, and Kurt was still out on the beach somewhere...

"How can you be so sure?" Mitch asked. "If this thing is what we thought it was a couple of hours ago, Kurt's somewhere on the other side of the galaxy, along with a few rocks and the beer can I threw in there."

"I just know," Rachel said. "It's common sense." She pushed all her doubts from her mind and told herself to trust what she had seen, and to trust her instincts. "He went in there, and then the door closed. So, he must _still_ be in there."

"Yeah...but if he's in there, is he alive? That's really what I meant."

Rachel swallowed dryly, not wanting to think about this. "Of course he's alive, Mitch."

"But how could he be? How could he breathe in there?" Mitch fingered the cold, metallic box, looking it over from top to bottom. "There aren't any holes or vents, no way for any air to get in. And what my Dad said about the weight—"

"I _know_ what he said, Mitch," Rachel said loudly. She suddenly found herself fighting tears. "He's in there, Mitch, and he's okay. We just have to find a way to get him back out."

"How are we gonna do that?" Lance said.

Rachel wiped her eyes, embarrassed by her emotions. "Maybe Dr. Kramer will think of something." She looked at Mitch. "He's a professor, right? And an engineer, too. He should know something about this."

"He's one of those kind of engineers who builds bridges."

"A civil engineer," Lance said helpfully.

"Yeah." Mitch paused and shrugged. "Anyway, I don't think we need _any_ kind of engineer—I think we need a magician. Or an alien." He gestured towards the object with one of his skinny arms. "Whoever built this thing."

The kitchen door opened. Dr. Kramer stepped back into the garage, a cordless phone in one hand. His face was cheesy and haggard, black stubble showing under the florescent lights.

"Sally's pretty upset," he said. He motioned to the object. "Did it do anything yet?"

"No," Mitch said. "It's as dead as a doornail."

"What about the red light?"

Mitch shook his head. "Nothing, Dad."

Sally stepped into the garage, wearing only a white bathrobe. Everyone turned and looked at her. There were bags under her pale blue eyes, and her tinted blonde hair looked like it needed washing. Her cheeks were sunburned from sitting around the pool the day before, which made the bags under her eyes seem even darker.

She glanced at the acorn, then looked at her husband.

"Did you call the police?"

Dr. Kramer hesitated, fingering the telephone in his hand. "No. I've re-thought that."

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I just don't think it's a good idea, Sally."

Her lower lip trembled. Suddenly, she half-screamed, "Our son is _missing_!"

"Yes...that's true, technically, but..." Dr. Kramer glanced at Mitch, then at Lance and Rachel. "This is an unusual situation, honey. I don't think it's smart to get the police involved. At least, not yet."

Sally turned to Rachel, staring, and began to breathe harder.

Rachel's heartbeat quickened.

"What did you do to my son?" Sally snapped.

Before Rachel could open her mouth to defend herself, Dr. Kramer grabbed Sally by the arm. "She didn't do anything to Kurt, and neither did Mitch or Lance. They don't know where he is."

Sally stood perfectly still for a few seconds, the look in her eyes so fierce that it made Rachel afraid to even blink. Suddenly, she shifted her focus to Mitch and pointed at him. "You've been drinking again." She glanced at Lance, then back at Rachel, and finally at the acorn. She yanked her arm free from her husband's grip and motioned to it with a shaking hand. "You expect me to believe he's in _there_?"

Dr. Kramer looked almost embarrassed. "We don't know where he is, Sally." He tried to put his arm around his wife's shoulder, but she moved away. Her bathrobe fell open, revealing a bra and panties and a lot of sunburned skin. She quickly pulled the robe closed again. "If you don't call the police, I am!" She glared at Rachel and the boys again, then turned and marched back into the house.

"Dad, don't let her do it," Mitch whispered.

"She's not going to call the police," Dr. Kramer said calmly, after the door was closed. He looked at all three of them. "You agree with me, don't you? If we call the police, they'll be all over us."

"You're right, Dad," Mitch said quickly.

Lance and Rachel both nodded.

"We have to get Kurt out of there by ourselves," Lance said. "Somehow."

Dr. Kramer sighed, scratching the stubble on his face. He seemed unsure of himself, uncertain of what to do. Rachel hadn't ever seen him this way before. Dr. Jack Kramer was always on top of things, always in control. He was a lot like Kurt. Seeing him behave like this made Rachel nervous.

Dr. Kramer looked into each of their eyes, one at a time, still apparently not quite believing their story, as if he thought one of them might suddenly tell him where Kurt was. None of them spoke. He finally said, "I'm going to ask each of you this one last time. Do you know what happened to Kurt?" His blue eyes locked on Mitch's face. "Do you know where Kurt is, son?"

"No," Mitch said flatly.

Dr. Kramer looked at Lance.

"No," Lance said, before Dr. Kramer could ask him.

"I know," Rachel said, before Dr. Kramer could even turn her way.

The professor's eyebrows shot upwards. "You do?"

"Yes." Rachel pointed to the strange object in front of them. "He's in there. I...I don't know how, maybe it's not 'possible' according to physics or whatever, but he's inside that thing. I _know_ he is, Dr. Kramer."

Kurt's father looked at Rachel for a long time.

"You say you saw this thing fall out of the sky."

"I didn't actually see it."

"I did," Lance said.

He explained how they had seen the meteor when they had been up on the balcony.

Dr. Kramer nodded, thinking for a moment, then stepped over to the object and ran his hand across the front of it again. "Okay. Let's assume he's in here, in some form or another, or that he _was_ in here. How are we going to get him back out?"

The three teenagers looked at each other, but said nothing.

"No ideas?" Dr. Kramer said.

"Maybe cut it open?" Mitch said. "With a blowtorch or something?"

"I don't think a blowtorch will do anything to this material. Do you?"

"No," Mitch admitted.

"Anyway, hacking away at it isn't very wise. If Kurt's really in there, or it did something to him, or it sent him somewhere, and we damage it..." Dr. Kramer swallowed. He didn't need to finish the sentence.

"Then what are we gonna do, Dad?"

"We'll get some help. But not from the police." Dr. Kramer pulled a small, worn black notebook from his pocket, then picked up the telephone and started punching in a number.

Mitch said uneasily, "Who are you calling, the CIA or NASA or somebody?"

"No. They'll come take this thing away from us so fast we won't even know what happened."

"Who are you calling, then?" Rachel said, a bit timidly.

"I'm calling experts in this field, experts who also happen to be my friends. People I trust who might have some ideas about what to do here. Art Perrini, for starters." He raised the phone to his ear, and after a pause, said, "Hello? Damn. I got cut off." He called the number again.

"Who's Art Perrini?" Mitch asked. "I think I've heard his name before."

"He was one of my friends at Berkeley. He's a genius—he graduated from medical school and earned two PhDs before he was 30. He's an astrophysicist at Stanford now, and also a consultant to NASA. Next, I'll try Roger Parker, at MIT. He's a materials expert, one of the foremost in the world. I want to get both of them down here."

"Are you sure they'll come?"

The phone to his ear, Dr. Kramer smiled for the first time that morning, though it was a weak smile. "Oh, they'll come. To get a chance to examine something that may be of extraterrestrial origin? They'll be down here in a heartbeat."

He abruptly turned away. "Hello. Yes, this is Dr. Jack Kramer, with the University of Illinois. I'm sorry to call at such an early hour, but I need to get in touch with Dr. Perrini. It's an emergency..."

* * *

While Dr. Kramer tried to track down his friends, Rachel went upstairs to her room. She had been sleeping in one guest bedroom, and Kurt and Lance in the other. Mitch had been sleeping down in the den, on the couch.

Rachel paused at the doorway to her room for a moment, then walked down the balcony and peered through the sliding glass door of the other bedroom. She could see Kurt's navy blue duffel bag sitting at the foot of one of the twin beds. On the rattan night stand was his brand new laptop computer, his birthday present from his parents—the only electronic item that Dr. Kramer had allowed to be brought along on the trip. Besides his own phone, of course.

A science book Kurt had been reading, _One, two, three...Infinity_ , was beside the computer, face down and open, just as he had left it. His University of Illinois T-shirt was draped over a chair, a pink stain at the bottom from some watermelon they had bought during their bike ride the day before.

It was all so hard to accept—one minute Kurt was here, and the next minute, gone. Trapped inside the thing they had found on the beach, or maybe just vanished into thin air.

She went over to the chair and touched the T-shirt lightly, feeling the soft material against her fingertips.

"Kurt, where are you?" she whispered.

"What are you doing in here?"

Rachel turned around, startled. Sally was standing in the doorway in her bathrobe, a glass in her hand. Her eyes were red and puffy.

"I was just..." Rachel began, but she didn't know how to finish.

Sally took a sip from the glass, glaring over the top of it as if Rachel were responsible for what had happened. She now looked tipsy.

Tearfully, she said, "Kurt drowned, didn't he, Rachel?"

"What?" Rachel gasped.

All at once, Kurt's mother was furious, her eyes bulging from her head. "He's dead, isn't he! You were all drunk or high on drugs or something, and he drowned. Just like that American girl! You're all scared, just trying to cover it up." She took a gulp from the glass and some of the drink ran down her chin. Rachel knew it was rum—she could smell it all the way across the room. "What a cockamamie story! Maybe Jack believes it, but I don't." Sally swayed a little to one side. "Not for a minute."

Rachel did not know how to respond. Sally seemed unstable to her, always flying off the handle about something. Sally Kramer was the kind of person who always needed a crisis in her life, and if one didn't occur naturally, she created one. Last year, she had spent several weeks at some "health spa" in Nevada, which Rachel suspected was nothing more than a fancy detox center. Rachel was certain that she had a serious problem with alcohol, and maybe with tranquilizers, too—she popped Valium the way some people eat gum drops. It was no wonder that Mitch had the same addictive tendency. Kurt escaped it, somehow.

Sally leaned with one shoulder against the sliding glass door, sipping her drink and scowling over the top of the glass at Rachel. She tilted the glass back and finished off the last of the rum, then clumsily set it down on the balcony railing. After wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, she meandered towards the stairs.

"I'm calling the police," she faintly muttered.

Rachel took a step after her. "Please don't do that, Mrs. Kramer."

Sally turned around, staggered sideways, and slurred, "Why not, Rachel? Afraid of what they'll find out?" She did not wait for a reply—she merely continued down the balcony and made her way down the stairs, lifting the bottom of her bathrobe to avoid tripping over her own feet.

As soon as Rachel heard the kitchen door close, she slipped down the stairs after Sally, taking the outdoor route to the garage to avoid running into the drunken woman again.

When Rachel entered the garage, Dr. Kramer was pacing back and forth across the concrete floor, speaking rapidly into the cordless phone. Lance was sitting in a broken-down beach chair in one corner, a distant, still-stunned look on his face. Mitch was on the floor in front of the object, sitting cross-legged, staring blankly at it. None of them noticed that Rachel was there.

"Yes, definitely," Dr. Kramer was saying into the phone. "You should probably bring a Geiger counter, too, and some kind of portable spectrometer..."

"Dr. Kramer?" Rachel said timidly.

He finally glanced over at her, then covered up the phone's mouthpiece. "Yes?"

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but your wife...she..."

"What about her?"

Rachel didn't know how to put it. "I think she's upset."

"I know she's upset."

"Yes, but...she said something about calling the police again." Rachel's cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "I didn't know what to do...I thought I should tell you."

"Damn it," Dr. Kramer said, under his breath. He shot an irritated glance towards the kitchen, then nodded to the phone in his hands. "There's only one telephone in this house, and I'm on it. I'll talk to Sally as soon as I'm finished." He immediately plunged back into his conversation.

Rachel went back upstairs, feeling guilty for tattling on Kurt's mother. But what else could she do? She thought Dr. Kramer was exactly right—if the police and the other authorities got involved, they would probably never see Kurt again. And Sally was obviously drunk—she wasn't thinking clearly.

A voice started chattering in Rachel's head. _Are you sure_ you're _thinking clearly, Rachel? Do you really believe in the story yourself?_ You _didn't see anything fall from the sky—only Kurt and Lance did. Are you sure that thing in the garage isn't just a piece of junk that fell off an oil tanker? Maybe it was all some sort of group hypnosis, the red light, the hole that appeared...Maybe Kurt really_ did _drown._

Rachel gave her head a brisk shake to try and push away her doubts. No, damn it! She was thinking clearly, more clearly than ever. Kurt was inside the acorn-like thing they had taken from the beach—she was certain of it. She knew this defied logic, that the object was too light to contain him. But maybe he was in some other form. She remembered his words very clearly when he was looking into the pitch blackness of the opening:

The space inside this thing...it's not normal space. It's...something else. Another dimension maybe...

Yes, it defied logic. But so what? A lot of things in life defied logic, but they were still real. Like—

Her eyes focused on Dr. Fate. The little plastic head was still sitting on the rattan table out on the balcony, where they had left it before they had embarked on their adventure. Rachel picked it up and took it to her room. She sat down on the bed and closed her eyes, the gadget clasped between her hands.

"Where is..." she began, but then remembered you were only supposed to ask Dr. Fate yes or no questions. She decided to finish anyway. "Where is Kurt, Dr. Fate?" Rachel gave the plastic head a few brisk shakes.

She opened her eyes and peered into the little window top of Dr. Fate's head.

Funny you should ask

Rachel blinked once, taken aback. She didn't remember seeing that answer before.

She closed her eyes again. "Why is it funny that I should ask, Dr. Fate?" She paused. In a lower, more earnest voice, she added, "Where are you, Kurt?"

She shook Dr. Fate again and looked at the answer.

Things are not what they appear.

Her heart gave an extra thump when she read the words. She was sure she had not seen _that_ answer before.

There were footsteps on the balcony.

Rachel glanced up, afraid it was Sally again. But it was only Mitch and Lance.

They stopped and peered at her through the sliding glass door.

"What's the matter?" Lance said, sliding the door open.

Rachel realized how strange she looked, sitting with Dr. Fate in her lap, her mouth hanging agape.

"I asked Dr. Fate where Kurt was, and it said..." She offered the plastic head to Lance. "Here—you ask it."

"What did it say?" Lance said.

"You ask it," Rachel repeated.

Lance glanced at Mitch, then closed his eyes. "Where's...?" He looked back at Rachel. "You're only supposed to ask yes or no questions."

"I know. Just ask it whatever you want."

Lance looked at Mitch again. Mitch shrugged. He closed the sliding glass door and sat down next to Rachel.

"Dr. Fate," Lance said slowly, "where is Kurt?" He gave the gismo a hard shake. When he opened his eyes, he let out a short, astonished laugh.

" _Things are not what they ap_ —"

There was a shriek from downstairs. Then: a loud crash, the sound of breaking glass.

They all looked at each other. A split second later, they were scrambling towards the sliding door. Mitch ran smack into it with his shoulder, forgetting that he had just closed it. He cursed and then threw it open. There was another shrill scream as they all ran down the stairs.

When they entered the kitchen, all three of them stopped short, bumping into each other again.

Sally was staring at the portable TV set on the kitchen counter, her eyes wide, her hand still poised in front of her as if it still held her drink. A shattered glass lay on the tile floor next to her feet. Dr. Kramer was standing behind her, the phone in his hand, his mouth unhinged.

On the TV screen was a snowy, undulating image, something that vaguely resembled a face. A grating, static-filled noise emanated from the speaker, almost a chewing sound. But there were words mixed in, or sounds that mimicked words...

"Izzzzzzzcrrrshhhhhdon'tzzzzzzzbrrrrrknowwherezzzzzzz Izzzsshhhhzzzzz am."

The image became a little clearer. It _was_ a face. It was—

"Oh my God!" Sally screamed.

It was Kurt!

"zzzzzzzMomzzzzzzzshhhdon't worryzzzzzzzzzzzzpleasezzz."

Sally slumped to one side, her eyes rolling back in her head, then collapsed. Dr. Kramer caught her just before she hit the floor.

Rachel's hair felt like it was standing on end.

"Kurt!" Mitch yelled, rushing over to the TV set. "Kurt! Can you hear me?"

Now, there was nothing but static coming from the TV's speaker. The ghostly, undulating image on the screen faded, then came into focus again. It was Kurt's face, Rachel was certain, but the image was bizarre, just a rough impression of him, his eyes large, sunken sockets, his mouth nothing but a vague slit. It reminded her of a photograph she had seen of what was supposedly the imprint of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin.

"zzzzzzz this is zzzzshhhhhhhh too zzzzzzzzz hard zzzzzbbbrrrr I can'tzzzzz concentrate zzzzzzzzzzzbbbbbrrrrrrr... _POP_!"

The image abruptly disappeared.

Now, they all found themselves staring at a Spanish man who was playing a guitar and singing.

"Holy shit," Lance gasped.

"Kurt!" Mitch yelled again, pounding on the top of the TV set. "Kurt! Come back!"

Dr. Kramer had laid Sally out on the floor. He was slapping her wrist lightly, trying to bring her around, but wasn't looking at her face—his eyes were fixed on the TV screen.

Mitch stared at his father, his skin as white as the kitchen counter behind him. "Did you see that Dad! What happened to Kurt? Where is he?"

Sally started moving and muttered something Rachel couldn't understand. Her eyes opened, then closed again.

"Let's get her onto the couch," Dr. Kramer said, motioning to Mitch, his voice trembling. Lance joined in, too, and they picked her up and carried her into the den.

As they did this, Rachel slowly approached the TV, her legs numb and rubbery, the hair on her head still charged with electricity.

"Kurt," she whispered, touching the side of the set.

But the Spanish man sang on.

Chapter 1.6

Five minutes later, everyone but Sally was sitting around the kitchen table, staring at the TV. Sally was still on the couch in the den, asleep—or simply unconscious.

"I still think he's on another planet," Mitch said, his voice uneven.

"Your brother is _not_ on another planet," Dr. Kramer said, for at least the third time. He had the telephone to his ear—he had called the local TV station, hoping they might shed some light on where the signal may have come from. But they had immediately put him on hold.

"How do you know, Dad?"

Dr. Kramer sighed, looking frustrated. "It's just not possible. It would take too long for a TV signal to reach us from even the nearest inhabitable planet. It would take _years_ , Mitch."

"Maybe he's somewhere on Earth," Lance said. "Maybe it just transported him to another part of the world, some other country. And he somehow got hold of a TV transmitter."

"That's what I'm thinking," Dr. Kramer said. "Well, not _exactly_ what I'm thinking." He gave Lance an irritated glance. "I believe he may have drifted out to sea and some boat picked him up, maybe somebody up to no good—drug smugglers, for example—there are a lot of them in the Caribbean, running cocaine up to the United States from Columbia. Maybe they have a TV transmitter on board, for some reason."

"But, Dad—"

Dr. Kramer raised his hand to Mitch and spoke into the phone. "Hello? Yes, uh, we're renting a house up at the north end of the island, and we just received a strange TV signal here, and I was wondering if you picked it up...Yes, channel three..." Dr. Kramer paused, his face showing disappointment. "Nothing unusual at all...? What did we see?" He paused and glanced at the others. "Well, to tell you the truth, what we saw is kind of hard to explain. You haven't had any other calls or complaints? Uh-huh. I see. Well, thank you, sorry to bother you."

Dr. Kramer hung up the phone, looking rattled. "They didn't see a thing." He motioned to the TV set. "If Kurt was using a television transmitter, he would have appeared on every set on this island that was tuned to channel three, and the station would have been flooded with complaints. I was the only person who called."

Nobody spoke for a moment—they all just stared at the television. Now, there was a commercial, in Spanish, for some kind of toilet bowl cleaner.

Dr. Kramer stared at the tabletop, lost in thought. He had obviously been hoping for some rational explanation for his son's disappearance, anything besides the one he had heard early that morning.

Lance was the first one with enough courage to speak again. "It seemed like Kurt was doing it all with his mind, wherever he is. That's how it seemed to me, anyway."

"Why do you think that?" Dr. Kramer said.

Lance motioned to the TV. "Kurt said, 'it's too difficult—I can't concentrate.'"

"He could have meant that he couldn't concentrate on working the controls on the transmitter. Maybe he was having trouble holding the right frequency—some of those old TV transmitters are pretty hard to operate. The equipment they have on some of those boats is probably ancient."

"I had the same impression as Lance," Rachel said, as diplomatically as she could.

Dr. Kramer glanced at her, then looked at Mitch. "What do you think, son?"

Mitch shrugged. "I don't know. I'm still in shock."

"At least we know he's okay," Rachel said.

"He didn't sound very okay to me," Mitch muttered. He looked at Rachel as if it was all her fault.

"Let's try to keep our heads on straight here," Dr. Kramer said. "We have to stay calm and figure this out rationally. There has to be some logical explanation. There has to be..."

Lance and Dr. Kramer continued to discuss TV transmitters, but Rachel's mind wandered. She didn't think there was any "logical explanation." In fact, she was quite sure there was nothing logical or rational about it. She had thrown out all her own logic when she had picked up the Dr. Fate gadget and asked where Kurt was. And only a moment later, at exactly the same instant when Lance had asked Dr. Fate the same thing, Kurt had appeared on the TV set downstairs. There was a connection between these two events, she was sure. But none of the others seemed to think so. She had mentioned this before Dr. Kramer had called the TV station, but Mitch dismissed it with a wave of one wiry arm and said, "That stupid Dr. Fate toy didn't have anything to do with it, Rachel." Apparently, Dr. Kramer agreed—he hadn't pursued the connection any further.

But what bothered Rachel more than anything else was how lonely and scared Kurt had sounded. Even through all the static on the TV set, she could hear the strain in his voice—he seemed almost choked with emotion. Maybe Dr. Kramer and the boys hadn't noticed it, but she knew Kurt's mother had—Rachel thought this was part of the reason she had fainted.

Rachel listened a little longer to all the theorizing, then quietly got up and said, "I'm going up to my room."

As she left, no one even glanced in her direction.

Chapter 1.7

When Rachel awoke, it was almost 2:00 p.m. She had laid down on her bed with the intention of just resting her eyes for a couple of minutes, but she had fallen into deep sleep.

She sat up, wiping the sweat from her forehead, the grim reality of Kurt's disappearance creeping back into her mind like the remnants of a bad dream. When she remembered seeing Kurt on the TV set, she shuddered.

The bedroom was stifling—she hadn't turned on the air conditioner, and the temperature had climbed to at least ninety degrees. She found the little remote control unit, turned the air conditioner on, and looked at herself in the mirror. Ugh. The shorts and T-shirt she had been wearing the last 24 hours were dirty and wrinkled, and her hair was begging for a wash.

She pulled the curtains closed and stepped into the shower. The water was cold at first, but gradually warmed up the longer she stood in it. She had been surprised to find that the house wasn't equipped with a hot water heater. Dr. Kramer had told her that almost no Aruban homes were—in such a warm environment, you simply didn't need to heat the water, except to cook. In the late afternoon, the water became so warm from the heat of the sun that it felt almost hot to the touch.

When she emerged from the bathroom, she felt a little better—the air conditioner had already begun to cool things down. She put on a fresh set of clothes, some shorts and an Aruba T-shirt with a big green lizard on the front that looked like it was crawling out of the pocket. Kurt had bought the shirt for her just the day before, as a present.

Rachel brushed out her blonde hair, gazing at her tired-looking face in the mirror. She considered putting on a little makeup to cover up the circles under her eyes, but then changed her mind. The whole family had known her for over four years, and they had all seen her look worse. And she was sure that at a time like this, nobody cared about her appearance.

She went downstairs and into the garage. Dr. Kramer and Mitch were there, fiddling with a TV set that was on the floor. Rachel recognized the set—it wasn't the portable from the kitchen, the one on which Kurt had appeared. It was the larger, older one from the den.

Dr. Kramer glanced up at her.

"Anything happen while I was asleep?"

Mitch muttered something she couldn't quite catch and walked into the house.

"Don't mind him," Dr. Kramer said. "He's just upset."

"I'm upset, too."

Dr. Kramer smiled kindly. "I know you are, Rachel. We all are. I think Sally's half out of her mind." He wiped his moist forehead, looking weary. "I gave her a tranquilizer—she'll feel more together later. I hope."

Rachel nodded.

"I do have some good news. Art Perrini and Roger Parker are already on their way down here." He glanced at his watch. "They're meeting up in Miami and will be here at seven o'clock tonight. They're bringing a lot of equipment with them, too." He motioned at the object. "Hopefully, we can get a handle on this thing."

"Hopefully."

Dr. Kramer started fiddling with the TV set again. Rachel watched as he worked with the remote control, flipping through the channels one by one. "I'm trying to keep scanning all the stations, just in case Kurt tries to contact us again. I'm sure he will." The tired-looking professor wiped his brow, his face distraught. "It's just a matter of time."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"I don't think so, Rachel. You can go into the kitchen with Mitch and Lance and keep your eye on the TV set, but don't touch anything. I want that set left exactly as it is."

"Okay."

Rachel went over to the door that led to the kitchen. Lance was asleep on the den couch, his mouth half-open, snoring softly. Mitch was sitting at the kitchen table. He glanced at Rachel, then stared back at the TV set. Now, there was a Spanish soap opera on.

Rachel decided to go back upstairs—Mitch could certainly keep an eye on the TV set by himself. And from the look on his face, he preferred it that way.

When she reached her room, she continued past it and found herself looking into the window of the boys' room again, peering at Kurt's things again.

She opened the sliding glass door and stepped inside. She surveyed the room, her gaze pausing briefly on Dr. Fate's enlightened face, Kurt's stained T-shirt, his open book, and finally, on his new laptop.

It was the most recent model, with "the latest bells and whistles," according to his father. Dr. Kramer had presented the laptop to Kurt at the airport, telling him that it would be good to play with on the plane, to pass the time, but that he hoped Kurt would put the computer away during the time they were in Aruba. But Kurt had only turned on the device on for a few minutes during the flight—he'd spent the rest of the flight talking to Rachel, which was a pleasant surprise. When they got close to Aruba, Rachel had pretended to be sleepy and put her head on Kurt's shoulder. That's when she thought he was going to kiss her.

She stepped over to the night stand, picked up the laptop, and sat down on the bed with it. She glanced up at the walls, at nothing in particular, then said, very softly, "You don't mind if I play with this, do you Kurt?"

Just as she turned it on, she had an idea. She opened the notepad app and a keyboard appeared on the screen, underneath a blank page.

Rachel began to type. It was odd, typing on a flat screen. She composed a sentence, feeling a little silly.

Kurt, you don't mind if I play with this, do you?

She gazed at the screen a full minute, hoping, for reasons she could not explain, that she might get a response.

Nothing happened. The sentence that she had typed hung there all by itself.

Rachel paused, then began to type again.

_Kurt, can you hear me?_ _If you can hear me, do something, please._

She waited again, biting her lip in anticipation.

But the screen remained as still as the T-shirt laying across the chair beside her.

Rachel let out a disappointed sigh. If Kurt could communicate through the TV set, she thought he might be able to communicate through a computer, too. But she had obviously been wrong. It was a crazy idea.

She glanced over at Dr. Fate. He seemed to be watching her, his glass eyes frozen in that humorous expression of astonished insight, his hair sticking out in all directions. Maybe she should try to communicate through him again.

Mitch's cutting remark flashed through her mind.

That stupid Dr. Fate toy didn't have anything to do with it, Rachel.

She ignored it. Why did Mitch have to act like such a jerk all the time!

She set the computer back down on the night stand and started to close the top, but then realized she hadn't turned the power off or closed the notepad program. Just as she reached for the keyboard, her eyes were drawn back to the screen—she thought she noticed something moving.

She blinked a few times, confused. Something had appeared just below the words she had typed:

,klw-0*8uHiasidmopRaaaaachel@gj,-c5q)4

At first she thought maybe she had accidentally brushed her arm against the keyboard. Then she saw her name imbedded in all the gobelty-gook.

"That's weird," she whispered to herself. How could she have accidentally typed her own name?

At the instant she thought this, another line appeared:

9kdyBVR$3Hi, Rachela9l$ducc)f

This time, she knew she hadn't accidentally brushed her arm against the keyboard—she hadn't even touched it. She saw her own name again—no, not only her name, but—

Hi, Rachel.

As stared at the two new words, her hair seemed to stand on end, just like it had down in the kitchen. She leaned forward and peered behind the screen, as if she thought there might be wires connecting it to something else, maybe the telephone line or something...but there were no wires anywhere.

Rachel swallowed dryly, staring back at the screen. She didn't know what to do.

All at once, she was terrified.

Rachel, don't be afraid. It's just me, Kurt.

The words appeared on the screen all at once, in an instant, much faster than anyone could type. With her hands shaking, Rachel picked up the laptop and tried to type a response, but her fingers trembled so badly she kept making mistakes. Hitting the delete key almost as many times as the others, she finally managed to punch out:

Kurt, where are you?

A few long seconds passed, her heart beating faster and faster. She stared at the screen, waiting. Another line appeared:

I don't know where I am. I'm scared, Rachel.

Now, her heart was pounding in her chest like a sledgehammer. She had trouble catching her breath. She glanced towards the sliding glass door, torn in two different directions—one impulse told her to dash downstairs and get the others, but another told her that if she did that, she might lose contact with Kurt.

Don't leave me, Rachel.

She gasped. Frantically, she typed out:

I won't leave you, Kurt.

Rachel waited breathlessly for a response. The cursor just sat there on the next line, blinking.

"Come on, Kurt," Rachel whispered. "Keep talking, keep talking..."

She waited about ten more long seconds, then decided she couldn't wait any longer—maybe he hadn't received the last sentence she had typed.

She began to enter it again:

Are you still ther—

Before she could finish, another sentence appeared on the line below.

You don't have to type, Rachel. I can read your thoughts.

Now, Rachel was sure all of the hair on her head was standing straight up. Dr. Fate would look normal by comparison.

"Where are you?" she said in a ragged whisper, her gaze darting around the room.

I don't know.

I'm nowhere.

I'm everywhere.

I don't seem to have a body anymore.

The words filled the screen in quick bursts, as if they appeared at the instant Kurt thought them. A million questions ran through Rachel's mind, but one seemed to scream at her above all the others. It wasn't a question she wanted to ask, but—

No, I'm not dead, Rachel. At least, I don't think I am.

She breathed a sigh of relief. At least some of the hair on her head seemed to lay back down. She half-wondered if it had all turned gray.

No, Rachel, you're still as beautiful as ever.

Rachel's mouth dropped open. "I can't believe this," she said aloud. "I can't believe this is happening."

_YOU can't believe it? How do you think_ I _feel, Rachel?_

There was a pause, then:

I have to go now.

"No!" Rachel shouted. "Don't go, Kurt!"

Can't do this anymore. Takes too much concentration. Have to rest.

Sleep.

"No!" Rachel screamed again. The words echoed so loudly off the walls they made her ears ring.

She stared at the screen, at the blinking cursor, waiting breathlessly for Kurt to say something else. What seemed like five minutes passed, though she knew it couldn't have been more than thirty seconds.

_Kurt_ , she thought as strongly as she could. _Please come back, Kurt._

The cursor just went on blinking.

She decided to try typing again.

Kurt, please come back. PLEASE!!!

No response.

After another dreadfully long moment, she jumped up, grasping the laptop between her shaking hands. She had to show Dr. Kramer. But before she took a step forward, she stopped herself and sat back down on the bed. _Don't screw up, Rachel_ , she thought. _Save the file._

Her fingers carefully selected SAVE. She was asked to name the file, so she quickly typed KURT and punched the enter key. It seemed to work correctly and the window disappeared.

Rachel closed the screen of the laptop and forced herself to carry it calmly out onto the balcony and even more calmly down the stairs—the last thing she wanted to do was drop it on the floor.

* * *

Dr. Kramer looked up from the TV set and cocked his head as if he hadn't heard Rachel right. He glanced at the device in her hands and said, "You what?"

"I talked to Kurt. Or, I communicated with him, at least. Come, quick, I'll show you."

She carried the laptop into the kitchen and told Mitch and Lance the same thing. The two boys exchanged glances. Lance looked like he had just woken up and needed to hear it one more time.

Rachel didn't bother to explain again—showing them the conversation that had taken place would be much faster and more convincing than telling them about it. She set the laptop on the kitchen table, opened it, and turned on the power switch. Dr. Kramer and the two boys crowded around her as the device came to life.

"He talked to you through this?" Mitch said, his voice already doubtful.

Rachel nodded. She clicked the mouse button and opened up the notepad program. "I was trying to communicate with him, typing him messages. All of a sudden, he started sending messages back! Look!"

She opened the file named KURT and text filled the screen. As she read it, she had a sinking feeling.

Kurt, you don't mind if I play with your laptop, do you?

Kurt, can you hear me?

Kurt, where are you?

I won't, I promise.

Are you still there?

Kurt, please come back. PLEASE!!!

Rachel stared at the screen in disbelief, reading and re-reading the text. "Something's wrong...I don't get it. All the stuff he typed is gone."

"Yeah," Mitch snickered. " _Sure_ it is. Dr. Fate probably made it all disappear." He walked away and plopped back down into his seat in the den.

Lance hesitated, looking like he wanted to believe her.

Dr. Kramer eyed Rachel doubtfully.

"I swear," Rachel said, "Kurt answered every line I typed here. He was _talking_ to me. He told me I didn't even have to type anything, that he could read my mind."

Mitch let out a cackle. "It's true love, Rachel. It bridges all gaps, crosses all dimensions— "

"That's enough, Mitch," his father snapped.

Rachel lowered her voice. "I'm telling the truth, Dr. Kramer. I didn't imagine it."

Kurt's father studied her for a moment as if to gauge her overall level of sanity. "Let's go into the garage." Without turning off the computer, he closed its top and carefully carried it out of the kitchen. Rachel followed, and Lance did, too.

Dr. Kramer paused in the doorway and motioned to Lance. "I'd like to speak with Rachel alone."

Lance looked disappointed, but headed back towards the den.

Rachel and Dr. Kramer sat down crossed-legged on the concrete floor of the garage, in front of the object. Dr. Kramer looked at the laptop; the file was still on the screen. He glanced at Rachel and let out a long, weary sigh. "I have to tell you, Rachel, until I saw Kurt on that TV set, I really didn't believe a word of your story about what happened on the beach. I was sure he would walk through the door, hung over, maybe wet and covered with sand...but alive and well. Either that—" Dr. Kramer swallowed "—or the police would show up here, telling me they had found his body washed up on the beach." Dr. Kramer lowered his voice a little, staring past the computer screen. "Now I'm not so sure what to believe. I almost regretted calling Art and Roger, afraid that I was going to look like an absolute idiot by the time they got here, but now..." His eyes focused on Rachel's face again. "Just tell me everything Kurt said. Better yet—" he swiveled the computer towards her "—just type in what he said between the lines you typed. I want you to try and remember every word, verbatim."

* * *

It only took Rachel a few minutes to re-create the conversation that had taken place with Kurt. She was becoming accustomed to the screen's keyboard and didn't have to hit the delete key as much as before. When she reached the point when Kurt had told her he could read her mind, she typed out her thoughts as well as she could remember them.

When she finished, Dr. Kramer read it over, his lips moving slightly as he did so.

As Rachel read it over, she began to have her own doubts, too. "You don't think I imagined it, do you?"

"No, Rachel, I don't." Dr. Kramer studied her face. "I can't think of any reason you would make all this up, unless you're in shock, or..."

Rachel could tell what he was thinking. "We didn't take any drugs, Dr. Kramer. I don't take drugs. I hope you at least know me that well by now."

Dr. Kramer gazed at her another few seconds, then nodded. He looked back at the screen and re-read the text a few more times. "The strangest thing about this is what Kurt said about not having a body. Then he says he needs to rest—he needs to sleep." Dr. Kramer paused. "Are you sure that's the exact word he used? 'Sleep'?"

"I'm positive."

"That's odd. If he's been transformed by that box in some way—into a state of 'pure consciousness' or something like that—would he need to sleep?" He looked at Rachel. "If you didn't have a physical body, do you think you would need to sleep?"

"It doesn't seem like you would," Rachel admitted. She paused and thought a little more. "But your mind can get tired, too. Maybe your mind always needs to sleep, whether you have a body or not." This made Rachel bite her lip; the thought that Kurt no longer existed in a physical form was shocking to her. It sounded more and more to her like he was dead, no matter what he had said. Maybe he was stuck in "limbo" and couldn't go on to wherever it was people went when they died. She wasn't very religious and had always had her doubts about there actually being a heaven and hell, yet she didn't really have any other alternatives. Coming back as an animal, like some people believed, had never seemed quite right to her, either.

The strained look on Dr. Kramer's face told her he was having the same kinds of thoughts.

"Well," he finally said, "let's just leave the laptop turned on with this file open, and maybe he'll contact us again. When my friends get here, I hope they can make more sense of this than we can." He moved the laptop a little closer to the object, as if that might help. "Rachel, why don't you go upstairs and see if you can find the power cable for this thing—I don't want any chance of the battery running out."

Rachel got up and headed for the door, but not without glancing back at the acorn one more time. Kurt was still in there, she was sure of it.

And he was still alive.

Chapter 1.8

They all spent the rest of the afternoon taking turns monitoring the laptop and both TV sets. Dr. Kramer thought Kurt might try to radio as a means of communication, too, so he turned on one in the kitchen as well as the one in the jeep. With all these devices on at same time, the whole house was filled with a crazy potpourri of electronic noise—reggae music, raucous commercials, babbling disk jockeys, grating talk shows, teary soap operas, with much of the programming in either Papiamento or Spanish. Dr. Kramer had carefully positioned a hammer on the remote control for the TV in the garage to make the channels switch from one to another, which only made everything seem even more crazy.

At about three pm, Dr. Kramer suggested that they order some pizza—no one had eaten anything all day, save some potato chips and soft drinks. Lance was so hungry he looked weak. Sally was still asleep, so Rachel was assigned to handle this task. She was surprised to find that there was not only one Dominos Pizza outlet listed in the Aruba phone book, but two.

The driver arrived late, at almost four-fifteen, claiming that he couldn't find the house. Rachel met him and paid him, taking the pizzas from him on the doorstep so he wouldn't see or hear too much. This didn't help, however—he craned his neck to peer inside the house, obviously puzzled by all the ruckus.

"We're having a party," Rachel said, and then shut the door in his face. She immediately regretted doing this, deciding that it would have been better not to try and explain anything. She watched through the window as the man glanced at the house a few times, then got into in his van and drove away. She told herself that he probably believed her explanation—with his job, she was sure he had witnessed a lot of wild goings-on inside the beach houses of Aruba. After all, people came to the island to party and have a good time.

When they finished eating the pizza, Dr. Kramer left to go meet his friends at the airport. Rachel opened the garage door for him but quickly shut it again as soon as he had backed the jeep out into the driveway. Relieved to be left alone in the garage, she sat down in front of the computer. She found herself wondering if Dr. Kramer's two friends could really help get Kurt back. Somehow, she doubted it.

Rachel gazed at the computer screen, concentrating as hard as she could.

Kurt, if you can hear me, PLEASE say so.

She stared at the screen, waiting, but there was no response. Maybe she wasn't concentrating hard enough. She repeated the thought several more times, clenching her fists together, telling herself to focus all the energy in her body on Kurt, wherever he was.

But the screen remained as dormant as the strange, acorn-like object behind it.

* * *

As soon as Dr. Kramer returned from the airport with his two friends, Mitch and Lance came into the garage.

It took a few minutes to unload all the scientific equipment. Dr. Kramer had hired a couple of taxis just to transport it all from the airport, a mini-van and a large sedan. The stuff had filled both vehicles to the hilt. They kept the garage door closed while the taxi drivers unloaded everything in the driveway. As soon as the drivers were gone, Rachel and the boys had helped move it inside.

When they finished, Dr. Kramer paused a moment for introductions.

"This is Dr. Perrini," he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead, "and this is Dr. Parker."

"You can call me Roger," Dr. Parker said, though he wasn't looking at either Rachel or the boys when he said this. He was staring at the object, already enthralled with it.

Dr. Perrini was much more personable. He smiled and said, "You can call me whatever you want. And if you're like most of my students, you'll probably call me a lot of things, none of them very nice."

Rachel and the boys laughed. Both the men were in their fifties, but that was where all similarity stopped. Roger had shown up in a plain gray business suit, sweating like a stuck pig from the tropical heat. He had short-cropped hair and wore black-framed glasses, which gave his head a blockish appearance—he could have walked off the set of one of the black-and-white science fiction movies from the 1950's that Kurt loved to watch. In contrast, Art was wearing khaki shorts, leather sandals, and a colorful Hawaiian shirt. It was open halfway down his chest, revealing a thick mass of gray hair that was the same color as his beard. He sported a coppery tan, which Rachel supposed wasn't surprising, since he lived in California.

Sally came into the garage and said hello. She had gotten dressed and looked like she felt a little better, but her eyes welled with tears when Art gave her a hug. Roger was more stiff and formal; he merely shook her hand.

"So this is it," Art said, finally looking at the object. His gray eyes were filled with a boyish inquisitiveness. Something about his tanned face looked familiar, though Rachel couldn't say exactly what it was.

"It's just been sitting there like that," Dr. Kramer said, "ever since we brought it into the garage this morning. But before you two attack it with your instruments, I think we should have a briefing." He glanced at Rachel. "Some unusual things have happened since I contacted you this morning, things that might help unravel this mystery."

"Is that so?" Art said, his gray eyebrows shooting upwards in surprise. When he did this, Rachel realized why he looked familiar. At that instant, he bore a striking resemblance to Dr. Fate.

* * *

Dr. Kramer and his two scientist friends sat down at the kitchen table. Mitch took the only other available chair, sitting to the left of his father, while Sally banged around the kitchen, making coffee. Rachel and Lance leaned against the counter, listening. Rachel watched the reactions of the two newcomers as Dr. Kramer filled them in on the incidents with the TV and the computer. Art seemed sympathetic to Dr. Kramer's anxiety and grief about what had happened to his son. Dr. Kramer tried very hard to hide his stirring emotions, but it was obvious, at least to Rachel.

Roger, on the other hand, appeared cold and machine-like, only expressing interest in the technical details—whether the TV set was already turned on when Kurt's face appeared on the screen, which program Rachel was using when Kurt had communicated with her, and so on. It was hard to believe that the three men had been such close buddies when they were in college.

Earlier that afternoon, while everybody was eating pizza, Dr. Kramer had talked a little bit about Art and Roger, explaining that they had all been in the same class at Berkeley and had been almost inseparable "back in those insane days." Dr. Kramer had always impressed Rachel as being kind of cool and laid-back, which jibed perfectly with Art's character. But Roger seemed sorely out of place. Maybe back in school, all three of them were a bit on the geekish side. Then again, maybe Roger had just changed a lot over the years. Rachel supposed that often happened to people. She had the impression that he was not a very happy man.

When Dr. Kramer finished his briefing, both men asked a lot of questions. Dr. Kramer had recounted Rachel's experience as if it were fact, though at one point Mitch broke in and said, "That's just what she _told_ us happened—the file on the laptop didn't show _anything_ Kurt said when we looked at it—she typed all that stuff in later."

"That's true," Dr. Kramer said, "but I believe her."

"I do, too," Lance said. This surprised Rachel—she had thought that Lance had probably sided with Mitch.

"Well, I don't believe it," Mitch snapped, glaring at Rachel.

She couldn't understand why Mitch was so angry at her. He acted as if it was her fault that his brother had disappeared, but she certainly didn't feel responsible. She hadn't even wanted to go on the beach expedition to begin with. If you wanted to place blame, it seemed to her that Mitch was more guilty than anyone—if he hadn't been drunk and tried to show off so much, Kurt might still be here.

But this wasn't the time to blame people, not that anyone in particular was responsible. Rachel thought Kurt would have probably ended up sticking at least a finger into the opening of the object, just to see what happened. He had too much scientific curiosity just to let it be. And if it hadn't been for Kurt, they wouldn't have gone off to try and find it in the first place.

The three men talked a little more about what Kurt had said through the laptop, but Mitch's comment had clearly made Roger skeptical. The scientist looked at Rachel for a moment, then said to the group, "But you all saw him appear on the TV set, is that right?"

"Yes," Dr. Kramer answered. "Everybody saw him."

"Sounds to me like this object is some kind of transportation device. Maybe across space, or across both time and space. It's hard to say at this point, though." Roger looked as excited as a biology student who had just been handed his first microscope.

Art rose to his feet. "I think we should hold off the theorizing until we take a closer look at it. We have to be careful not to jump to any conclusions."

Chapter 1.9

The two men unpacked all their equipment in a matter of minutes. Soon the garage was filled with electronic gadgets of all sizes and descriptions.

"So much for our back-to-nature vacation," Rachel heard Mitch mutter.

Rachel couldn't understand how Mitch could be so cold. Maybe he was just hiding how upset he was.

Art and Roger strung at least a dozen cables across the floor, connecting it all together. Roger finally shed his jacket and tie. With the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, he opened something that looked like a fishing tackle box. It was filled with little glass bottles. He began to search through them, pulling them out one by one, peering at the labels. Art had donned a pair of large headphones and was fiddling with a cable that was connected to something that looked like a high-tech version of a toilet plunger.

In the middle of all this, the doorbell rang.

Holding a bottle in mid-air, Roger looked at Dr. Kramer. "Who's that?"

"I don't know." Dr. Kramer glanced at Rachel. "You didn't order any more pizza, did you?"

"No," Rachel said.

Mitch said, "You want me to go see who it is?"

"I'll handle it."

Roger looked uneasy—he glanced at Art, then went back to his bottles, but he didn't seem to be thinking about what he was doing.

The doorbell rang again, insistently.

Dr. Kramer went through the door that led from the garage into the house. Rachel and Mitch followed.

"It's the cops," Lance whispered to Dr. Kramer, as soon as they were in the kitchen. "I saw them through the window."

Dr. Kramer hesitated, looking as if he was trying to think of what to tell them, then continued into the living room. All the shades were drawn. Mitch lifted one a little bit and peeked out through the window. Rachel stood back, out of sight, as Dr. Kramer opened the door.

Rachel heard a male voice say, " _Bon_ _nochi_."

"Uh, hello," Dr. Kramer said, trying to sound casual. "What can I do for you?"

"May we come in?"

Dr. Kramer glanced over his shoulder at Rachel and Mitch, one hand still on the door. "Is there some kind of problem, officer?" He said this in an almost choked tone of voice. Rachel realized that he wasn't just worried about what the police would find in the garage—he was afraid they had come to tell him that Kurt's body had been found.

"Maybe, maybe no," Rachel heard one of the policemen say. She recognized the voice—it belonged to Segundo. Rachel suddenly became furious. She was sure that Sally had called them.

"We had report," Segundo said, "somebody in this house took float on beach."

"Oh," Dr. Kramer said, in a relieved tone. "Well, I suppose that's at least half-true. We didn't realize we were stealing it, since it just washed up on the shore."

The other officer leaned his head inside the door and glimpsed both Rachel and Mitch.

"Anything wash up on Aruba beach is government property," Segundo said. "Where is it?"

"Well, it's—" Dr. Kramer motioned over his shoulder. "It's in the garage right now."

"Why you steal it?"

"We didn't know we were 'stealing' anything. We didn't think anybody cared whether we took it or not."

"Well, why you take it? It not yours."

"We thought we'd use it here."

"For what?"

"We thought we'd put it in the garden." Apparently, Dr. Kramer hadn't been able to think of any better explanation than this. Rachel couldn't, either.

There was a long silence. Rachel could only imagine the dumbfounded glances the two officers were exchanging.

"In the garden," Segundo said. "No understand. Why you want in garden?"

Dr. Kramer shrugged. "We thought it would look nice there?" Apparently, he had given up trying to fool them.

There was a long silence. "You rent this house, yes?"

"That's right," Dr. Kramer said.

"We need to come in," Segundo said, pushing his way past Dr. Kramer.

"Hey, you can't just barge— "

" _Bon_ _noche_ ," Segundo said, when he saw Rachel and Mitch.

"Hello," Rachel said. She tried to appear calm and relaxed.

Dr. Kramer said, "You need a search warrant to come in here. You can't just barge into my home and—"

"No warrant," Segundo said. "Property you take, belong government of Aruba." He paused, then added, "You forget you no in America." He looked at Rachel and Mitch, then back at Dr. Kramer, one tanned hand lightly resting on his holster. "Where it is?"

Dr. Kramer glanced at Rachel, then reluctantly led the two policemen through the living room towards the garage. Rachel and Mitch were on their heels. Lance lumbered along behind them.

When the two officers stepped through the garage door, they both stopped and stared, wide-eyed. They first glanced around at all the wires and equipment, but were soon looking at the two scientists. Art was on his knees, the headphones still over his ears, slowly running the thing that looked like a toilet plunger back and forth over the object's lower surfaces. Roger had been dripping a pink liquid from one of the eyedroppers onto the top of the object, but stopped when the two policemen entered. He stared back at them, looking nervous and guilty. The TV from the living room was still close by and still automatically switching from channel to channel, its volume turned up.

Segundo seemed baffled by the entire scene. He waved one of his thick arms at all the equipment. "What all this?" He looked at Dr. Kramer, waiting for an explanation.

Roger looked at Dr. Kramer as if he hoped for some kind of miracle.

"If you must know," Dr. Kramer said, "we all work for ExxonMobil. This is a new, proprietary oil barrel design that was stolen from our laboratory in Los Angeles."

"Propri-e-what?" Segundo muttered. He eyed the two scientists with suspicion.

Art slipped off the headphones and nodded vigorously, as if to verify the story.

"Proprietary means top-secret," Dr. Kramer explained. "This new design allows oil to be transported much more efficiently and safely, and minimizes the chances of a spill. It also maintains a constant pressure under a wide temperature range—

"Don't tell them that!" Art said.

For a second, Rachel thought Art was about to blow it. But then he added, "You want to lose your job, Jack? This is _proprietary_ , remember?"

Dr. Kramer feigned embarrassment. "Sorry." He looked back at Segundo. "Anyway, the bottom line is, this barrel belongs to ExxonMobil Corporation, not to your government or anybody else."

Segundo looked confused. He said something to his partner in Papiamento. They started arguing with each other, but stopped when Segundo gave a sharp, annoyed wave of his hand.

He turned back to Dr. Kramer. "We may see your documents, please?"

"Yes, of course." Dr. Kramer pulled out his wallet and started rummaging through it.

"Your _passport_ ," Segundo said irritably, "no driving license. And document show you employee Exxon."

Dr. Kramer stared at the floor, as if lost in thought. "I don't have any of my business cards with me—didn't think I'd need them. I got sent down here at a moment's notice when they found out the oil barrel had washed up here. One of our planes spotted it on the beach."

"Planes?" Segundo said, looking even more confused.

Dr. Kramer nodded.

The cop motioned to Art and Roger. "You have documents?"

"I have my passport," Art said.

"But nothing show you work Exxon."

"No," Art said, glancing at Roger, smiling slightly. "Nothing show we work Exxon. We didn't think we'd need anything like that. This isn't a sales trip."

"Well, how we know you work Exxon? Segundo paused, then motioned to the object, looking it up and down. "Maybe you steal. Where say 'Exxon'?"

"I guess you'll just have to take our word for it," Dr. Kramer said.

Art nodded to all the equipment. "You think all this shit is ours? This stuff is worth more than a half a million dollars."

Segundo surveyed it all again, looking a little less suspicious. He pointed to the eyedropper which was still in Roger's hand. "What you doing?"

Dr. Kramer said, "He's testing it, looking for stresses, cracks. Our management wants us to check it out thoroughly before we have it shipped back to California."

"Uh-huh," Segundo said skeptically. He scratched his rubbery chin and looked at Rachel and Mitch and Lance, then back at Dr. Kramer. "Report, last night, light in sky..." He made a waving motion and looked at his partner for help.

"Meteor," his partner said.

"Yes. Last night, reports big _met-e-or_ in sky." He paused, eyeing Dr. Kramer closely. "Maybe you find this met-e-or?"

Dr. Kramer laughed, as if it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. "We've got better things to do than chase meteors, officer."

Segundo watched him for a moment, one hand on his holster again. The burly man suddenly looked like he felt out of place, surrounded by all the foreigners and complicated equipment. He pointed to the object emphatically. "We need know this belong you. By Aruban law, everything on beach government property, and—"

"Have you had any reports that this oil barrel was stolen from somebody else?" Dr. Kramer interrupted.

Segundo glanced at his partner. "Well..."

"Do you have any evidence that it _doesn't_ belong to us?"

Segundo did not reply.

"No, you don't. So I don't see what the problem is."

"Our job—"

"Seems to me," Dr. Kramer went on, "you're trying to _create_ a problem when in fact there isn't one." He gave both the men reproachful looks. "Don't you guys have any better way to spend your time?"

Segundo looked offended. "I do my job, sir. My job—check stolen property."

"Okay, and now you've checked it. Case closed. Is there anything else we can help you with?"

Segundo became very still. He looked at the others, as if he was trying to decide exactly how far he could push his authority.

"We need check passports," he finally said. "For report."

"Fine," Dr. Kramer said. "Come with me." He led the officers back out into the kitchen, with Roger and Art following. Segundo examined their passports and wrote all three of their names and passport numbers down in a small black notebook. When he finished, he and his partner finally headed towards the front door.

Segundo turned back to Dr. Kramer when they stepped outside.

"Your son. You find him, yes?"

Dr. Kramer smiled and made the same drinking motion with his hand that Segundo had made that morning. "Fell asleep on the beach."

Segundo nodded, then glanced behind Dr. Kramer, at Mitch.

"Where he now?"

Dr. Kramer quickly said, "He's jogging."

"Jogging," Segundo repeated slowly. He made a running motion with his arms, his belly swaying from side to side.

"Yes."

Rachel thought she saw a hint of doubt in Segundo's brown eyes, but he asked no more questions.

* * *

As soon as everybody was gathered back in the garage, Mitch said, "That was the most brilliant load of BS I've ever heard, Dad."

"Yeah," Rachel and Lance chimed in.

Art said, "We're university professors, son. Bullshitting is what we do best."

Everybody laughed except Roger. "Do you really think they bought the story?" His hands were shaking.

"I don't know," Dr. Kramer said. "Things work pretty slowly on these Caribbean islands. I'm sure they'll try to check out what we told them, but it will probably take them a while. Maybe a whole day."

"That doesn't leave much time," Mitch said.

"No, it doesn't," Roger said.

"We have to get your son back," Art said, "and fast. If the news media gets a hold of this, even just the local media here on the island, all hell will break loose."

"I'm not convinced it's alien in nature," Roger said. "I think it might be experimental—CIA, something like that."

"The cops were already asking about the meteor," Lance said, ignoring Roger. "They're not technical guys, but they're not stupid, either. They knew there was a connection."

"I think so, too," Rachel said.

Roger didn't say anything. He was looking at the object with what appeared to be desperation. Rachel didn't think this was out of any concern for Kurt, however.

"Well, I don't see what we can do about what the police are thinking or doing," Dr. Kramer said.

"Me either," Art said. He motioned over his shoulder towards the garage. "But once that object gets out of our hands, though, no telling where it will end up. Hundreds of scientists will swoop down on the island from all over the world wanting to examine it, not to mention such 'humanitarian' organizations as the CIA and the air force trying to take control of it." Art shuddered. "Once that happens..."

"Well, work faster, dammit!" Dr. Kramer shouted.

This seemed to shake Roger back to reality. Both of the men stared at Dr. Kramer, astonished by his outburst.

"I'm sorry," Dr. Kramer said, running his hand shakily through his hair. "I just... I don't know what to do. I'm half-crazy about this already." He made a gesture towards Art and Roger. "What have you guys come up with so far?"

The two men looked at each other.

"We've hardly even gotten started," Art said.

"Well, is there anything I can do to help? Is there more equipment you need? I can have more flown in if—"

"Just try to chill out, Jack," Art said, putting his hand on Dr. Kramer's shoulder. "Go have a drink, try to keep yourself occupied. Be a comfort to Sally—she needs you right now. Just give us a little time to study this thing and figure out what's going on here."

Chapter 1.10

Rachel remained in the garage for a long time. She was overcome with a hopeless feeling as she watched the two scientists work. Despite all their education and impressive array of equipment, she couldn't help thinking they looked like two chimpanzees trying to understand the inner workings of a supercomputer, poking at it, listening to it, dripping things on it, scratching their heads, then trying something else, all of it equally futile. At one point Roger shined what looked like a small laser beam all over it, fascinated by the fact that the little red point of light disappeared and did not reflect back. Later, Art attached some wires to it and began talking into the thing that resembled a toilet plunger, saying things like "Kurt, are you in there?" and "If you can hear me, signal us in some way."

Rachel's job was to keep her eyes glued to Kurt's laptop to see if he tried to communicate again. When Dr. Kramer came back into the garage to check on their progress, Rachel quietly asked him if it would be okay for her to take the laptop up to her room and monitor it.

"I'm afraid you'll fall asleep up there, Rachel."

She couldn't help feeling offended by this. "The last thing I'll do is fall asleep, Dr. Kramer. I can't concentrate with all this noise in here." She paused, then added, "It might help if I try to communicate with him myself, like I did before."

Dr. Kramer studied her face for a moment, then sighed. "I suppose it will be all right. But you have to promise to come get me if Kurt starts communicating. And I mean _immediately_."

"I promise I will," Rachel said.

"Even if I'm upstairs with Sally, just knock on the door and I'll be there in a flash. And don't try to move the laptop while he's talking to you—you might lose him."

"Okay, I won't."

Rachel gathered up the laptop and its power cable. When she carried it across the garage, Mitch said to his father, "Hey, where's she going?" He was sitting in the broken-down beach chair, a can of root beer in his hand.

"Just keep your eyes on that TV set," Dr. Kramer told him.

"But—"

"Just do what I tell you, okay, son? I'm not in the mood to argue."

* * *

Rachel set the laptop on the rattan night stand, just the way she had found it, and turned it on. The notepad app was still there, the last words she had typed still on the screen:

Kurt, please come back. PLEASE!!!

She read the words several times to herself, then thought them as hard as she could. She stared at the screen, hoping to see a response. But the line beneath her sentence remained blank.

She began to type.

Kurt, are you out there somewhere? Wake up, Kurt. You said you were tired and had to sleep. Haven't you slept long enoug—

_Hello, Rachel_.

(End of Book 1 – to be continued)

To purchase Book 2 of The Mysterious Disappearance of Kurt Kramer, please  go to this page.

### A LETTER TO MY READERS

Hello, Dear Reader!

I hope you enjoyed this book. I write in a variety of genres—thrillers & suspense, romance, young adult, and horror. As I say on my website, my goal has always been to write novels that are so engaging and entertaining that you can't stop reading after a couple of pages—"unputdownable" novels. You can read all my book descriptions and read/download free chapters at www.mikewellsbooks.com. Be sure and sign up to my  VIP Reader List (free) so you'll receive news about upcoming books and giveaways.

Also, if you enjoyed this book, I would greatly appreciate your help with spreading the word about what I have to offer. Positive word-of-mouth for independent authors like me is crucial. Please pass this book along to your family and friends—give it to anyone who you think would enjoy it.

I always welcome comments about my books—please feel free to give feedback via email (mike@mikewellsbooks.com) or via my website/blog. Book reviews are also appreciated.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Mike Wells

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### About the Author

Mike Wells is an American bestselling author of over 20 thriller and suspense novels, including _Lust, Money & Murde_r and _Passion, Power & Sin_. He is also known for his young adult books, such as _The Mysterious Disappearance of Kurt Kramer_ , _The Wrong Side of the Tracks_ , and _Wild Child_ , which are used by English teachers in high schools and colleges worldwide. Formerly a screenwriter, Wells has a fast-paced, cinematic writing style. His work is often compared to that of the late Sidney Sheldon, with strong and inspiring female heroes, tightly-written scenes, engaging action/dialogue, and numerous plot twists. He currently lives in Europe and has taught in the Creative Writing program at the University of Oxford.

### Acknowledgements

Editor

Anna Wells

Proofreader

Dax Tucker

