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“As the officer makes out the second ticket for the illegal detector unit, the man glowers at his wife and says through clenched teeth, ‘Damn it, woman, can't you keep your mouth shut?’

“The officer frowns and says, ‘And I notice that you're not wearing your seat belt, sir. That’s an automatic seventy-five-dollar fine.’

“The driver says, ‘Yeah, well you see, officer, I had it on but took it off when you pulled me over so that I could get my license out of my back pocket.’

“The wife says, ‘Now, dear, you know very well that you didn’t have your seat belt on. You never wear your seat belt when you’re driving.’

“As the police officer is writing out the third ticket the driver turns to his wife and barks, ‘Why don’t you shut the hell up!’

“The officer leans down, looks over at the woman, and asks, ‘Does your husband always talk to you this way, ma’am?’

“She says, ‘Only when he's been drinking.’”

Charli chuckled, shook her head against his chest and said, “No more jokes.”

She unbuttoned his shirt from the top, kissing him as she went. She unbuckled his belt and pushed against his chest with her forehead so that he fell backward onto the bed. An image of her ramming Boondoggle with her head in the Oval Office came to mind. She smiled. This had much of the same warm feeling. Jake was less furry, of course.

In the morning she was still cuddled against him. At times her mind had been so overwhelmed, she’d even had warm, cozy hallucinations. She saw the two of them snuggling under a down comforter in a mountain cabin. She didn’t want it to end.

* * *

June 14, 2019

“And remember, don’t enter the stadium until a few minutes after noon. I can hold him off for five minutes.”
At least I think I can. Five minutes isn’t very long.
Jake clapped the twins on their shoulders, and they broke the huddle. The twins headed back to their DC lab.

He walked over to Charli. “Shall we get going?”

“Did you say goodbye to Sophia?”

Jake sighed. “I did. I don’t want to think about that now. Let’s go. I want to be there early so I can get a feeling for the place.”

Charli tilted her head to one side. “You’ve got a plan.”

He put his lips against her ear. “I can’t talk about it. Kiss me.”

She shook her head, pulled him down, and gave him a warm kiss. He looked forward to many more.

They took the presidential SUVs over to the stadium, and Jake walked out onto the field at 11:40 a.m. The sun was shining, but it was cool enough to feel like fall. Jake was talking to Charli when a glass-like wall appeared between them. Like an inverted glass mixing bowl with Jake on the inside and everyone else on the outside.

The transparent dome started expanding. Charli and the other advisers and technicians were pushed toward the sidelines, sliding and somersaulting like tumbleweeds in front of a snowplow. When it was covering most of the field, it stopped.

With a boom and a contrail, Cronkite’s sphere slipped through the dome as if it were a soap bubble and smashed into the ground at the thirty-five yard line. Jake, the sphere, and Cronkite were now isolated inside dome.

Jake looked at his watch. 11:45.
It’s too soon!
He glanced over at Charli on the sidelines. The wall of the dome came between them. He looked up at it. It was like a bubble! Adina Golubkhov was right after all. He pointed up and looked at Charli.

She nodded. Jake saw that she got it. The man she loved was in a bubble.

Cronkite’s sphere opened, and “Let’s get ready to RUM-BLLLLL” boomed out over the crowd. Although Fedex Field could hold seventy-nine thousand fans, only ten thousand brave spectators were present in the stands. Brave or foolish. This was ground zero. Bombers flew overhead.

Cronkite came charging out of the sphere and ran around the perimeter of the dome at a clip that was much faster than Jake would have expected. Jake checked his watch again. Would the twins know the contest had started early?

Jake looked for weaknesses. Did one of the delicate cricket appendages look smaller than the other three? Was that a wound on the side of his ladybug-like body?

Cronkite changed direction and came directly at Jake. Fast. Jake set himself.
This is it.
Kill him and the world will be saved. Do or die.
Got to grab a cricket arm.
Cronkite bowled into him at full speed, and Jake was thrown into the air. He came down heavily on the shoulder that had been injured when rescuing Sophia. The pain knifed through him.
I’ll be ready next time.

Cronkite made another fast circuit waving a few of his arms. Was that his victory lap?

Jake overplayed his shoulder pain and put on an exaggerated limp, bending over like an old man. He faced away from Cronkite as the creature made his next run.
If I can break off a cricket limb …

The instant Cronkite arrived, Jake dropped flat on his back. Cronkite trampled over him. Jake reached in to grab one of the fragile appendages. There was nothing there. Cronkite must have retracted those vulnerable parts the way a turtle pulls his legs into his shell. But Jake’s left hand brushed against the body and came away covered in the same liquid that had come out of the arm he’d pulled off in the sphere. Blood from the fight in the sphere? Could he exploit that weakness?
His drop and roll trick probably wouldn’t work next time.

He looked carefully as Cronkite rested and then started another circuit. Was he traveling slower?
Not much.

On the next pass, Jake ran. He couldn’t go as fast as Cronkite. It was like being chased by a dog.
Okay, that’s enough mock cowardice.
He dropped to all fours and braced himself, so that his back was low. Cronkite’s armored legs hit him hard enough to knock the wind out of him, but Cronkite tumbled over him and rolled along the ground, curled up like a pill bug.

Jake jumped after him and reached in when the underside of the bug was facing the sky. His hand felt the hard exoskeleton of a delicate leg, and he latched on and pulled. Snap. It came right off, and a gusher of funky brownish liquid geysered into the air. But one of the strong legs hit Jake in the temple, and he blacked out for a second. Or was it longer?

Jake got to his knees and then pushed to a standing position, pulling in ragged breaths. Where’s Cronkite? Jake spun around and dizziness washed over him. Cronkite was behind him. His victory circuit was slower now, his circle smaller. The flow of brown blood had stopped completely, but the wound on his side was still oozing.

Jake rolled his sore arm and tracked the position of the oozing sore. It seemed to be on Cronkite’s right front as he moved forward. Perfect.
Bring it on.

Cronkite came in for his next pass. It was slower. Good. No more pretense. Jake got in a wrestler’s pose, not taking his eyes off the wound. When Cronkite reached him, he threw all his weight into a jab of the wound, while simultaneously trying to reach up underneath and find another cricket arm.

He scored a satisfying direct hit on the lesion but had no luck with grabbing an arm. Cronkite trampled over him, landing another devastating blow to Jake’s abdomen, then came back immediately. Jake struggled to breathe. The alien popped high into the air like a jumping spider and came down over Jake’s head, pulling it in to his underside with the four strong running legs and the three remaining cricket arms. His face was wedged against hundreds of worm-like cilia. Each one felt like an earthworm, only slimier. They were running frantically over his face, probing into his nose, mouth and ears.

Maybe Guccio was right. Maybe this was a sexual thing after all. That thought, that he and Cronkite were having some kind of weird alien intercourse, was Jake’s last.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Alex kept the om-ray controller on and pointed directly at Jake and Cronkite. The two combatants lay in a relaxed heap, locked in their meditation trances.
All our work paid off!
He looked over at Charli and winked.

She was chewing on a fingernail. “Keep it on them, Alex. Don’t move it an inch.”

“Don’t worry, Martin’s got another one trained on them. And check it out.” Alex pointed down at the basket holding eight spare om-ray guns. The creature responsible for the world’s suffering, and the loss of Rebecca, was now in his power.

Charli stepped over to Alex, stood on her tiptoes, and gave him a long kiss on his cheek. They both blushed.

“Is he still breathing, Gordon?” Charli grasped Guccio’s arm. The group stood at the twenty-yard line where the dome met the ground. Spectators stood watching from the stands and helicopters flew overhead.

Guccio peered through binoculars. “Definitely. Good job, guys. You have saved the planet.” He tousled Alex’s aquamarine hair.

Charli put her hands against the dome and turned to Alex. “I thought the om-ray device let you push away the effect if you wanted.”

“Yeah, it did. That’s the part we modified.” Alex gave a little happy dance but kept the om-ray steady. “But we were just lucky it works through the dome. And we couldn’t be sure it would work on Cronkite.”

“Now what?” Guccio rapped the bubble with his knuckles.

“Now,” McGraw said, “we figure out how to get through this dome. We have three to five days before Jake dies from lack of water.”

They all looked out at the two interlocked, meditating creatures on the fifty-yard line.

* * *

June 17, 2019

Charli and the other advisers maintained a vigil outside the dome. She’d walked around it several times. There had to be a way to get rid of this bubble. Once again she asked the doctors how long Jake could survive without food and water. They never gave her a clear answer. He’d already survived three days. At least two om-ray guns were trained on the motionless meditators at all times.

In the Iran earthquake of 2004, a ninety-seven-year-old woman survived for eight days trapped in the rubble of her house. In 2003 a woman survived for twelve days in a collapsed building and even had the energy to call out to rescue workers. Jake was motionless. Perhaps that would work in his favor.

No one knew how long Cronkite could survive. No one cared.

The military had tried gunfire, grenades, and lasers. Nothing came close to penetrating, or even damaging, the dome. They tried holding the quantum garbage can against it, but because they couldn’t get enough of the dome into the device’s hole, it had no effect. Tunneling beneath the field revealed that the dome was actually a full sphere.

Martin came up with the idea of using the great-balls-of-fire heat gun. The technicians set up a heat-resistant tripod to hold it eighteen feet from the dome. The twins had devised a wirelessly controlled solenoid that let them turn it on or off from a distance.

They pointed it at a spot on the bubble and flipped the switch. As the heat rose, they kept an eye on the grass just inside the dome. It was unharmed—the heat wasn’t getting through. That was good news for Jake. Charli paced at the top of the stands.
Is it really cool inside? Is there enough oxygen?

They left it on, and the temperature soared. Charli had to move back. The two men holding the om-ray guns were in air-conditioned moon suits. A great wind picked up as the heated air rose, but the grass on the inside remained green and moist-looking.

There was no effect on the dome for forty minutes, but then it started glowing. First red and then white. The grass inside: still green.

Finally, it happened. The bubble popped. It sounded like the opening of a champagne bottle but a thousand times louder. A whooshing sound followed, as the normal air inside equilibrated with the superheated outside air.

Ambulances, military vehicles, and soldiers rushed onto the field. Alex walked over with an om-ray device. Up close, he could point it at Cronkite alone and the EMTs dragged Jake free. He was unconscious. Charli ran onto the field.
Come on, Jake. Get up!

The military set up a cordon around the sphere in case Cronkite recovered and tried to get to it.

They loaded Jake into the ambulance and Charli jumped in with him. Fifteen minutes to Walter Reed Medical Center. No one stopped her from taking his hand.
I’m here, Jake.
Not until a tear fell onto the gurney did she realize she was crying. So much pent-up hope and frustration. A sudden rush of hope. Her hand tightened around his, as if by holding on she could ensure he didn't leave her.

She looked out the back. Soldiers chained and shackled Cronkite with custom-designed restraints.

* * *

June 20, 2019

Three days later, Charli stood by Jake in Walter Reed’s ICU, rubbing the rails of his hospital bed. Nurses bustled around the main room, casting glances at the celebrity whenever they walked past his alcove. Trees of electronic devices and IV bag hangers surrounded him.
Come on, Jake. Don’t leave me.

The doctors had warned her to prepare herself for a bad outcome. Brain damage or worse. They had kept Jake in a medically induced coma to help his body recover. Now, as Charli watched, they brought him back to the world of the living.