As the days passed by, the feeling wouldn't subside, but then, it didn't grow any worse. It just stayed there, a constant leaden sensation in the pit of Merrill's stomach. An ever-present knot of dread that coloured his every movement. This trip was supposed to rid him of his worries, to bring an end to his feelings of horror, a remnant of the invasion. Instead, a feeling of fear had taken root. A fear of what, he wasn't sure, but fear nonetheless.

Asleep at night, the images flashed before his eyes. The crop circles in the field, the lights in the sky above Mexico, the alien at the birthday party in Brazil, the alien's fingers on Morgan, the alien gassing Morgan. Merrill saw each of these scenes in turn, with a growing terror, made all the worse by the fact that this was no nightmare, this was REAL, it had truly happened to him and his. Now and then a different picture would appear in his mind. An afternoon in the park, a night at the movies, one of his baseball games. In all these memories, one face stood out above all others. A face with eyes so dark and deep Merrill some times felt he could drown in them, a face with a smile that had lit up his whole world. One face. Charlie's.

But these visions were always succeeded by more scenes of terror from the attack, so that Merrill woke each morning feeling both fear and longing. Every morning it was the same. He'd wake in a cold sweat to find that he'd thrown the bed sheets halfway across the room in another unconscious struggle. He would shake his head and tell himself to forget the nightmares. But still the images lingered. The cold, heavy feeling remained. And each night it would start again.

This morning was worse than ever. The nightmares had been more terrifying, the memories of Charlie even stronger. This morning he had woken with tears on his cheek. Tears for what though? For himself? For Morgan? For Charlie? God, Charlie. He hadn't thought about her in a long time but recently he hadn't been able to stop. God, how he missed her. "No", he told himself sharply, "dwelling on the past won't help you, the past is what you're here to get away from"

But how can you escape your past?

Merrill got up, got dressed, forced himself to think about something else, anything else but Charlie. If he started to think about her, he knew he wouldn't be able to stop. He would just lie here in a kind of torpor, unable to move, to eat or to drink. That was how it had been before. Before the accident. Colleen's accident had stirred him to his senses, forced him to be strong for Graham and the kids. Pushed all such self-indulgent thoughts from his head. Forever, he had hoped. But no, here they were, back again, and as bad as ever.

Merrill again tried to turn his thoughts away from her. But there was only one other thing occupying his mind. Aliens. Ok, the aliens, let's think about them. Even they were preferable to the moping that Merrill knew would inevitably follow thoughts of Charlie. But Merrill had no solid thoughts about the aliens, all he had were questions. Where had they come from? Why attack a planet that's 70 water when it's lethal to you? Would they be back? Had they really left? All these questions and more swirled around inside his head but no answers came. The same questions had tormented him for months, ever since the invasion. Like the bad feeling he had, they persisted, only they grew in strength until they bothered him day and night.

Merrill knew that in order to make his trip worthwhile, in order to achieve what he had set out to gain - peace of mind - he would need to find the answers to these problems. But how? He was a gas-station attendant and failed baseball player from a little town in Pennsylvania, hardly one of the world's great minds. But something inside him told him he had to do it, had to at least try. He would get no rest until he got answers. So he resolved to find them, with everything he had he would search for the reasons, the solutions, no matter what it took.

But where should he start?