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  "This should not have happened," he said. "Forgive me."

  "There's nothing to forgive. I wanted you, too."

  Micah nodded, only half listening to her words. He had mated with Lainey. There might be a child, a child he would never see because he could not stay here.

  He sat up then, cradling his head in his hands.

  "Micah?" Hurt and confused, Lainey placed her hand on his shoulder. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  "My side…" he said, unwilling to burden her with the truth. "It hurts."

  Of course it hurt, she thought. What had she been thinking? She glanced at the bandage wrapped around his middle, alarmed to see a dark stain spreading on the gauze. "Lie down. You're bleeding again."

  He sank onto the floor and she dragged a furry blanket off the sofa and covered him.

  "Wouldn't you be more comfortable on the couch?"

  "I'm fine."

  "Can I get you anything?"

  "No." Pain lanced through him. She had already given him more than he had ever dreamed of.

  "Let me get you something cold to drink," Lainey insisted. "You've lost a lot of blood. You need to drink lots of fluids."

  He accepted her offer because it was easier than arguing.

  Lainey wrapped herself in the sheet Micah had discarded earlier, then hurried into the kitchen. Seven-Up or Coke, she wondered, and grabbing a can of each out of the fridge, she filled a couple of glasses with ice, added the soda, and returned to the living room.

  "Which one?" she asked, holding up both glasses.

  Micah pointed at the 7Up and she handed him the glass. Thinking it was water, he raised himself on one elbow and took a long swallow. The unexpected effervescence took him by surprise and he began to cough.

  Kneeling on the floor beside him, Lainey pounded Micah on the back. "Are you okay?"

  He nodded. "Fine," he gasped. "What is that?"

  "Seven-Up." She frowned at his perplexed expression. "A soft drink? Carbonated soda pop?"

  Micah grunted, then took another, more cautious drink. It was good, cold and refreshing, like the mineral water on Quinton Rells.

  "So," Lainey asked softly, "where do we go from here?"

  "Go?"

  She laughed softly. "What are we going to do about us, about what we feel for each other?"

  Micah stared into his glass, watching the tiny bubbles. What were they going to do? What would she say if he told her the truth about who he was, where he'd come from? Would she still look at him like that, her beautiful brown eyes soft with affection? Would she still want him to hold her, kiss her? Or would she turn away in revulsion?

  "Micah?"

  "I don't know."

  "You're not married, are you?"

  "No."

  "Is there someone waiting for you at home?"

  He thought briefly of Adana, then shook his head. "But sooner or later I must go back."

  "Why? Why can't you stay here?"

  "I don't belong here."

  "Maybe I could go with you?"

  "No, that's not possible."

  "Oh." She looked away, but not before he saw the hope fade from her eyes.

  "Lainey…"

  "You should get some rest," Lainey said. Rising, she pulled on her clothes and stepped into her sandals. "I'm going for a walk."

  He started to reach for her, then thought better of it. He didn't want to hurt her, to make her think that what they had shared had been—what had she called it, casual sex?—but maybe it was better this way. They had no future together. Once he repaired the intergalactic transmitter, he would be able to send a message relaying his situation and whereabouts and someone from home would come to pick him up and he would never see Lainey St. John again.

  The mere idea hurt worse than the nagging pain in his side.

  Chapter Ten

  When would she ever learn? Every time she thought she'd found Prince Charming, he turned out to be a frog!

  She wouldn't cry. She refused to cry. After all, she hardly knew the man. Heck, she didn't even know his last name. Didn't know if his parents were living, if he had brothers and sisters, or how old he was.

  She kicked the corner of a picket fence. How long could it take to get over a man she had only known for a few days?

  A lifetime, she thought, remembering how tenderly he had made love to her. It would take a lifetime to forget a man like Micah.

  Suddenly cold, she wrapped her arms around herself and then, with a sigh, she turned around and went home.

  Micah met her at the door. "Lainey…"

  She swept past him, relieved to see he had pulled on his laundered jeans and T-shirt in her absence.

  "Lainey, forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt you."

  "You didn't."

  He didn't say anything, only gazed down at her through those amazing silver-blue eyes that seemed able to probe the furthest reaches of her soul.

  "Okay, so you hurt me. I'll get over it."

  "Will you?"

  She lifted her chin defiantly. "Of course I will."

  "But I will never get over you, Lainey St. John," he replied softly, sadly. "No matter how long I live, no matter where I go, your goodness will always be a part of me."

  His words, filled with sincere feeling and regret, melted the wall of ice around her heart.

  "Micah, please don't go. Not yet."

  "Lainey, come and sit down."

  I don't want to hear this, she thought as she crossed the room and sat down on the sofa. Whatever it is, I don't want to hear it.

  Micah paced the floor for a moment, one hand pressed against his wounded side. And then, against his better judgment, he knelt in front of her, determined to tell her the truth before he left.

  "Lainey, there's something I have to tell you."

  "No." She shook her head, knowing that whatever he said was going to alter her life forever.

  "Please, just listen. I'm not who you think I am, what you think I am."

  "You are married!" she exclaimed. "I knew it!"

  "No." He started to reach for her hand, then thought better of it. "Lainey, those men weren't looking for me because I'm some kind of fugitive from your law. They're looking for me because I'm not from your world."

  "Right. Next thing I know, you'll be telling me you can't stay because your flying saucer is ready to blast off to explore a galaxy far, far away."

  "Lainey, it's the truth. Xanthia isn't a country. It's a planet located at the edge of the Milky Way. My spaceship crashed in the woods behind that old house where we met."

  Exasperated, she shook her head. "If this is your way of letting me down easy, I don't find it very amusing."

  "Lainey, look at me. Who do I look like?"

  "What?"

  "Who do I look like?"

  "Except for your eyes, you look a lot like my favorite romance cover hunk. So what?"

  "Do you know why?"

  Lainey frowned. "Heredity, I would imagine."

  "No. I look like this man because I knew he wouldn't frighten you."

  "I don't understand."

  "When you came into the upper room in the mansion, I probed your mind for a male image that you found pleasing, one that you found attractive.''

  "No…" It was too outrageous, too incredible. She didn't believe in aliens or flying saucers any more than she believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. "It can't be true."

  "I can prove it."

  She didn't ask how. She knew how. Images of space monsters flashed through her mind—the bizarre beings in the cantina scene from Star Wars, the gill-man in The Creature From the Black Lagoon, the hideous reptilian creature in Alien, the hulking monster from The Thing. Oh, Lord, what kind of hideous beast had she made love to?

  "Lainey?"

  She shook her head, ashamed of her cowardice. "I don't want to know."

  A rueful smile touched his lips. "I'm considered quite handsome by those who know me."

  "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," she ret
orted. "If you feel the need to go on with this farce, just show me your spaceship and I'll believe you."

  "I doubt if it's a good idea to go back there just now."

  Lainey nodded. He was right, of course. No doubt the police and the people from SETI were still searching the area.

  SETI… outer space… images of the blue glow she'd seen in the bathroom and the odd color of Micah's blood rose up in her mind. Merciful heavens, what if he was telling her the truth? But that was impossible. There were no such things as flying saucers. There had to be another explanation. A logical explanation.

  Micah leaned forward. "Where's the black box I gave you?"

  "In the kitchen."

  "Get it."

  Muttering under her breath, Lainey did as he asked. Returning to the living room, she handed it to him.

  "All right," she said, resuming her place on the sofa, "I'll bite. What is that thing?"

  "It's an intergalactic transmitter. A radio."

  She looked skeptical. "It doesn't look like any radio I've ever seen."

  His gaze held hers. "Exactly."

  He tapped what sounded like some sort of code onto the top of the box with his fingertip and the lid popped open. Lainey leaned forward. There was a keypad labeled with foreign symbols of some kind, and several small, square chips that looked like the innards of her computer.

  Micah frowned. "I'd hoped to have it working by now."

  "Hard to find spare parts this far from home, I guess," Lainey muttered sarcastically.

  Micah nodded absently, his attention momentarily focused on the transmitter. Thus far, he hadn't activated the distress signal. Slight as it was, there was always a chance that a tracking station here on earth might pick up the signal, and he had no wish to alert the earthlings to his presence, or risk putting Pergith and his craft in danger. If he could only get the transmitter working, he could advise Pergith of his whereabouts and arrange a rendezvous. There was always a chance someone on earth might pick up his transmission, but with luck, he would be on his way back home before any of earth's tracking devices could pinpoint his location.

  "So," Lainey asked, "what are you going to do?"

  Micah shrugged. "I might be able to salvage what I need from the wreckage of my ship."

  "I thought you said you couldn't go there."

  "Not now. But your people are bound to give up sooner or later."

  "Maybe."

  Micah closed the box and slid it under the sofa. "I don't want to leave you," he murmured fervently. "But I can't stay. And I can't take you with me."

  Suddenly, it was all too much. She needed to be alone, to think, to try and make sense out of something that was totally incomprehensible.

  Abruptly, she stood up. "I think I need another walk," she said, and rushed out of the room before he could stop her.

  It was warm outside. The sky was clear and blue; the sun was shining. The people she passed on the street looked ordinary.

  Outer space. He said he was from outer space. Why would he concoct such an outlandish story if it wasn't true? Unless he was just crazy. But he didn't act crazy.

  Maybe she was. She thought of the strange blue aura around the figure in the photograph, then shook her head. Probably just a glitch in the developing. And the brown blood? Try as she might, she couldn't explain that away, or blame it on a roll of faulty film.

  Increasing her stride, she headed for the library.

  She was surprised by the number of books that had been written about UFO sightings. She picked several at random, found an unoccupied table, and started to read.

  Facts and figures jumped out at her. Since World War II, tens of thousands of reports of UFOs had been gathered by the Air Force and other government and civilian investigative organizations around the world.

  Reports came from ordinary people in small towns, from astronauts like Borman and McDivitt, to police officers like Lonnie Zamora who claimed to have seen a UFO in Socorro, New Mexico, in 1964.

  Ninety percent of all sightings were proven to be misidentifications of airplanes or stars or other natural or artificial objects, but the other ten percent couldn't be rationally explained away.

  Sightings had been reported as far back as 1896.

  In 1975, a man in New York claimed to have seen ten or eleven aliens emerge from a spaceship. He said they were only three-and-a-half to four feet tall and clad in identical hooded, one-piece, light-colored garments. He went on to say they had dug around in the ground, poured some earth in their bags, and returned to the spaceship.

  Another man who claimed to have been abducted described the room he had been examined in as a big, circular, flattened-out oval. He said there was no sound in the room, and the table they examined him on seemed to grow out of the floor.

  There were numerous descriptions of what aliens looked like; some people had described them as tall and skeleton-thin, with enormous heads and sunken eyes; others claimed the creatures were only three or four feet tall, shapeless, with no necks.

  Another described the alien he had seen as being "kinda flat" with broad shoulders, a thin neck, and arms much longer than a human's, with long, bony fingers. Three fingers. And a large thumb. The head was described as egg-shaped, with sharp cheeks, a small mouth that didn't open, eyes like a cat's, very tiny ears, and no hair.

  Still another description, perhaps the most frightening of all, characterized the alien as having leathery, amphibian-type skin that was greenish-yellow and wrinkly.

  One of the books contained drawings depicting beings with thin bodies and large heads. The creatures had no hair, no visible ears, large, almond-shaped eyes, and thin lips.

  Lainey stared at the drawings of the supposed space aliens. Was that how Micah really looked? Was he some nightmarish creature with a huge hairless head and a skeletal body? The thought made her shudder.

  So many conflicting descriptions, Lainey mused. Maybe there were alien beings from dozens of planets zooming in and out of earth's atmosphere, doing their little tests, taking samples of dirt from the earth, blood from the people…

  For a moment, she cradled her head in her hands and closed her eyes. It was too awful, too bizarre, to be true.

  After a few moments' rest, Lainey turned to the back of the book. There were organizations you could call if you thought you'd seen a UFO—the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago, Illinois; the Mutual UFO Network in Seguin, Texas; and the National Investigations Committee on UFOs in California.

  There were thousands of people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens and taken aboard flying saucers. Some said they had been examined, poked and prodded with needles; some said samples of their blood and skin had been taken. There were photos of scars supposedly left by these barbaric examinations.

  The last book mentioned that there were four kinds of encounters with aliens. The first kind was the sighting of a saucer; the second kind involved visual evidence or impressions made by a spacecraft, like burned areas or irradiated soil, grass, or trees; the third kind, the kind Spielberg had made his movie about, were those in which the person involved actually observed or confronted an alien. The fourth kind were encounters where people claimed to have been abducted.

  Lainey sat back in her chair. Well, what do you know, she thought, dazed, I've been having my very own close encounter of the third kind. Very close, she amended, remembering that they had made love only a few hours before.

  From out of nowhere came the memory of the episode of Soap where Burt's wife, Mary, gave birth to an alien baby. For the first time in her life, Lainey was glad she couldn't have children.

  She stared, unseeing, at the books spread across the table. She would have dismissed it all as nonsense except for one thing: almost all those who had encountered aliens mentioned that the space creatures communicated telepathically, the way Micah had communicated with her.

  Head spinning from all she'd read, Lainey returned the books to the shelves and left the library.

  She was surpr
ised to find that it was dark outside.

  She stood on the steps for a moment, her fear of the dark suddenly making itself known as she gazed up and down the deserted street. She wished Micah was there beside her, and then laughed. A lot of help he'd be if a UFO decided to carry her away.

  Shaking off her fears, she started walking home.

  Micah wandered through Lainey's house. Behavioral scientists on Xanthia had been studying earthlings for centuries, marking their progress, the advance of their civilization. He wished now that he had spent more time learning about Lainey's world, but in his wildest dreams, he had never imagined that he would find himself stranded on Earth.

  It took him only moments to figure out how to turn on the television, the stereo, the microwave. All were primitive by his standards, primitive but fascinating.

  He thumbed through her books—romances and mysteries, the plays of Shakespeare, the poetry of William Blake, histories of the Old West, books on other cultures and peoples, on Eastern philosophy, maps and dictionaries, a thesaurus, a book on computers.

  He stopped to smell the flowers that bloomed in the colorful clay pots on her windowsill, touched the leaves of the green plants that were scattered throughout the house. He tasted her toothpaste, ran his hand over the pale pink nightgown that hung on the back of her bedroom door.

  Closing his eyes, he sprayed her perfume on the back of his hand and inhaled deeply. The scent, so much a part or her, only increased his longing for her.

  He was conscious of time passing as he moved through her house on a journey of discovery. She liked flowers and plants.

  There were a variety of odd-looking stuffed creatures on the foot of her bed. She collected unicorns. Pink appeared to be her favorite color. He thumbed through her collection of compact discs. The names of the artists were unfamiliar, of course, and he picked one at random.

  "Yanni." He read the name aloud as he slipped the disc into the player and turned it on.

  He liked the music immediately. It was beautiful, haunting, filled with passion, reminding him of a popular musician on Xanthia.

  Going into the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator. The food on earth was vastly different from that of Xanthia, different but not unpleasant. He liked milk and cheese, apples, potato chips, Milky Way candy bars, chocolate chip cookies.