Invasion Cue

A story by Keith Croes

8:33 a.m. Friday

He'd worked at WSRK for more than a year and had met the program director only once--the day he was hired. That's what happens on the graveyard shift. They think about you only when you're coming or going and someone else is going or coming. And if he was going, they sure picked a fine time for it.

The PD's office was a monument to beige. The PD was a fat beige that hadn't been repainted in a year. He had only aged. He was an aged beige. Porter sat in a beige chair.

"Well, Porter, you're looking good." The PD retrieved a dead Marlboro from the ashtray and relit it. His teeth were the same color as the filter paper--sort of an orangish-beige.

"Your mustache is longer," Porter said.

The PD exhaled a smoky laugh. "Well, you're probably wondering why I asked you here." He waited for a reaction and got none. "You're not fired. In fact, Mr. Halpren thinks you're doing a great job. Smashing, really. Have you seen the numbers?"

Porter shook his head.

"We've had some other indicators, but the latest Arbitron is your first real report card." He leaned back and took a deep draw on the cigarette. "You're the top jock in town between 2 and 6 a.m. What do you think of that?"

"That's great, Dick."

The PD coughed into his fist and leaned forward. "Of course, there's not much of an audience then. But what I really wanted to talk about is...well, we heard about you and your wife, and Mr. Halpren just wanted me to ask you if everything was all right, if there was anything we could do." He coughed again.

Porter pursed his lips and looked warily around the room. He wanted more money. He wanted off the graveyard shift. But he'd just received a raise and could bring up the rest later, so he opted for diplomacy. "Thanks, Dick. But I'm okay."

They talked for a few minutes about Porter's empty apartment, how he walked through a K-Mart the day before and realized he needed everything--sheets, silverware, furniture, a can opener, Q-tips--everything. Then Porter left, thinking as he closed the door to Beige World that he had yet to meet Mr. Halpren. And didn't care if he ever did.

12:59 a.m. Saturday

Ed Schockley pressed his forehead against the microphone and screamed. Ordinarily no one would have heard him. The microphone was closed and except for the jocks the studio was empty from 6 in the evening to 6:30 the next morning when the news director arrived (or the assistant news director, on weekends).

But Porter was early. He put his headphones on the counter behind Ed, who had his headphones dangling around his neck and was rubbing his ears.

"What gives?"

Ed turned in surprise, his pained face a sweaty scarlet. "I hate this damn dance music!" he hollered. He suddenly snapped his headphones in place and opened the mike. The on-air light above the door glowed red and he spoke softly into the mike over the fading phrase of some synthetic syncopation. "WSRK's Friday Night Dance Party. This is Ed Schockley. And this is Janet Jackson. She wants my body."

Porter strolled out the door and Ed's shout followed him down the hall to the music library: "Porter, I hate this damn dance music!" Ed was a Philadelphia institution and a little crusty by definition, having developed a case of arrested musical development in 1977. Porter picked out a stack of LPs and singles, then puttered around in the production room.

At 2 a.m. Ed fled the control room and Porter edged into the chair, hitting the Dance Party outro over the waning strains of Billy Ocean. At the close of the outro, he opened the mike. "It's 2-o'clock high and this is Porter Thomas with your second wind. And something for Ed Schockley on his drive home. Wake up, Philadelphia. The Rolling Stones, 'Gimme Shelter.'"

Insomniacs, coke-heads and wackos, Porter thought. But it was the largest audience of insomniacs, coke-heads and wackos in Philadelphia.

4:02 p.m. Saturday

Porter called his wife Saturday afternoon. He had left her three weeks before. There was no other woman and, so far as he knew, no other man. After six years, while her career sparkled and his stalled, he had simply had enough of her. She thought it was over money. He was only sure it was over. He had already gone through his savings getting his apartment together. He was back to square one. Or less. He missed his son like a black hole in his soul.

"Porter, there's a problem," she said. "When I picked up David after work yesterday, I told him he would be going to his Dad's on Sunday. He asked me if I would be going too, and when I told him no he got this terrible, scared look on his face. Why don't you just pick him up and spend an hour or so with him around here someplace. You could take him to lunch at McDonald's or something."

Porter felt a desperate anger well up. "But I want to bring him here."

"I don't think it's in his best interest."

"It's natural from him to be a little scared. He's scared, you're scared. But he'll be fine. I'm his dad, for crying out loud."

"You're only thinking of yourself."

"Maybe we should just wait for Domestic Relations to decide whether I can see him or not," Porter shouted, but quickly realized that the hearing date was three weeks away. He hadn't seen David since he left. "No. Look, Bonnie, we'll do it your way. I'll be over about noon."

"Are we going to have problems about this?"

"Yes. If you're not going to let me see David, we're going to have problems."

"You only think of yourself. You were never this eager to spend time with him when you were here."

Porter's teeth clenched. "I said I'd do it your way. And I spent more time with him than you did. Goodbye." He hung up without waiting for a response and looked across his barren living room at the cardboard box in the corner. He had bought David a Turbohawk Attack Spacefighter the other day at K-Mart, something for the 5-year-old to play with in his Dad's new apartment. For the first time in his life he empathized with the pathetic gesture of the lost and the lonely to buy their way into the hearts of others.

Tuesday, three weeks later

The hearing was held on a Tuesday three weeks later, and took most of the afternoon. After a futile attempt to catch some fitful sleep, Porter showed up for his shift determined to get a date, perhaps with Debbi-with-an-i who often called about 2:30 and once told him that she looked like a blonde Linda Rondstat. She called at 2:27.

"Oh, I'd love to meet you somewhere," she bubbled. "You're terrific. But I thought you were married?"

"Separated," Porter said. They arranged to meet at Quincy's that night at 9:30.

But Porter felt an emptiness that grew with every song as he made his way through his program and by 4 o'clock he was hardly talking, just running one tune into the next. Every morning from 5:30 to 6 Porter brought in a syndicated program of jazz music from New Orleans. At 5:28 he patched into the satellite feed and listened on the cue monitor for the countdown. What he heard was a voice.

We have become this frequency and are sending this message ahead so that you may prepare for our arrival.

Something about the voice made him stand, sending the wheeled studio chair crashing back into a rack of commercial carts.

We come as representatives of a nearby intergalactic civilization that has studied your radio transmissions. We will materialize at your receiving station in three of your days.

Porter's legs wobbled. The emptiness was gone, replaced by a cold jellyfish on the back of his neck. "Wooo," he said. He looked at the tape decks, which sat empty. Three naked, useless Sony's.

"This is the Jazz Network with Morning Jazz coming to you 60 seconds from now."

"Oh, geeze," Porter yelled at the countdown tone. And then the voice was back, filled with a soulless, ominous arrogance.

We come only as fellow seekers and explorers of our universe.

"Morning Jazz coming to you 30 seconds from now." Porter jumped at the tone.

We invite you to join our civilization.

"Morning Jazz coming to you 15 seconds from now."

Porter stood, blinking.

We will not kill you.

"Morning Jazz in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6..." With the thoughtlessness of habit, Porter turned the volume pot from cue into broadcast position, then listened to the best of Coleman Hawkins for a half hour. Martin Start, the crown jewel of WSRK's morning drive, breezed in at 5:55.

"Martin, have you ever heard anything strange over cue at the end of Morning Jazz?" Porter asked.

Martin looked puzzled. "Now why would I listen to cue? I just go right into my program." It was Wednesday morning.

6:01 a.m. Wednesday

Porter wandered into the production room and thumbed through a stack of new releases, flipping some of them on the turntable and not really hearing them over a debate in his head as to whether he should tell the PD about the voice. The first argument against that was that he would have to tell the PD about the voice. The second was that he would have to wait around the studio until 8:30. After a few minutes he headed to his car and home, blinking his way into the sun through a rush hour streaming mostly in the opposite direction.

Monday afternoon he'd racked up his Mastercard--had probably exceeded his limit--by buying a new stereo 19-inch color TV, a VCR and a TV cart, and they'd been sitting in their boxes in his living room for two days. His plan was to set them up this morning, and though the plan seemed to lack some of its former luster, he figured that if aliens were going to invade Philadelphia, he'd at least have three days of audiovideo enjoyment. He'd never have to make even one payment, would never receive the notice that he had charged over his limit, and would never have to figure out how to set the two-week, two-event timer on the VCR to record during the second week.

He decided to assemble the TV cart first, so he shook it loose from its box and discovered he'd need a hammer and a fairly large Phillip's screwdriver. He had to stop and ask directions at a gas station during the drive to a nearby Handyman Hardware store, where he convinced a teenaged employee to accept a temporary check from his new bank account. He bought the hammer and screwdriver, returned to his apartment and put the TV cart together. The antenna connection to the VCR and the connection between the VCR and the TV required a regular screwdriver. Porter used the blade of a Barlow jacknife he kept in the glove compartment of his car. When the TV came on, it was tuned to Oprah. Porter stuck a frozen pizza in the oven.

He didn't sleep well that afternoon but decided to keep his date with Debbi. After all, that had been the plan. It had also been the plan early in the evening to hang up a hanging lamp that had been lumped on the floor of his living room for almost a month. The installation required a regular screwdriver--a real regular screwdriver--so he cashed a check for cash at the drive-in window of the bank and returned to the hardware store, bought a regular-size regular screwdriver, hung up the hanging lamp, showered and headed downtown to Quincy's.

9:36 p.m. Wednesday

The plan was to meet along the fake-stone stand-up bar near the regular fake-wood sit-down bar, and Porter recognized Debbi immediately because she looked like a purple-and-orange-haired Linda Rondstat.

"I thought you were blonde," he said.

"I was," she giggled, outraged. "I thought you were married."

"Separated," he said.

"I think you're terrific."

"Smashing, really." Porter suddenly felt a stab of guilt about showing up. He was in no mood. Two people vacated their seats at the regular bar and Porter and Debbi twisted into the stools. Debbi ordered a Margarita and Porter a club soda. She made a face.

"I never drink before I go on the air," Porter explained, and watched Debbi's pout struggle wonderfully into a smile. "I can't drink before I go on the air. I mean, I can't go on the air if I drink. I put carts in upside down. I destroy records. I'm dangerous."

Debbi laughed and Porter felt a weird mixture of encouragement and fear.

"So you're the voice," she said.

"What?" Porter snapped.

"You're the voice I go to bed by every night."

"Oh, yeah. Porter Thomas, WSRK's rock-and-roll insomniac. And you're the voice that's been calling me in the wee hours for a year." He hesitated. "Are you still working at Zipperhead's?"

"Yeah," she said. Her fingers curled around the stem of the glass as the bartender placed her Margarita on an Amstel coaster. She stared at Porter. "What's wrong, Porter?"

"I don't know." He shook his head. "Could be plenty. I shouldn't have come tonight. I should have cancelled." Porter waved away the club soda and asked the bartender for Scotch on the rocks. He looked into Debbi's eyes and found warm, deep, dark-brown softness. "Look, I'm going to tell you something you won't believe. And if I drink any of this, you'll have to come to the station with me tonight. I'd like you to come. I'd want you to come anyway."

Debbi nodded without hesitation.

"What time is it?" Debbi shrugged and held out narrow, bare wrists. Porter looked at his watch. "Oh. Okay. Get me to the station no later than 1:30. Here goes. I think we're going to be invaded by a nearby intergalactic civilization. I think that members of this civilization are transmitting themselves on a radio frequency toward this planet. I think they may materialize at WSRK."

Debbi's mouth opened. Porter looked inside. "When?" she asked.

"Saturday. Saturday morning. About 5:29 a.m. If their timing is good. And there's no reason to believe it won't be."

2:06 a.m. Thursday

"Ed Shockley, Debbi. . .what's your last name?" Porter and Debbi hovered in the doorway to the control room. Ed unplugged his headphones and shouldered his way between them.

"You're late, Porter." Then he was gone.

Debbi put her fingers all over the records as she handed them to Porter, who accepted them quietly, playing most of them at the correct speed. At one point he introduced a Doobie Brothers' tune as "Teeking it to the Straits," and they laughed about that from 3:30 to 4 o'clock. They were both silent as Porter patched into the Morning Jazz satellite feed at 5:28. The countdown and the show were routine. At 5:56, tangled together, they tripped down the hall to the fading licks of Stan Kenton's trumpet, passed Martin Start, who barely looked at them on his way to the control room, and drove from the city toward the sun and Porter's apartment.

6:42 a.m. Thursday

"Just what did the voice sound like?" Debbi asked for the tenth time as they fell into the living room.

"The opposite of everything honest and decent and human," Porter mumbled.

"Oh. What's that?"

Porter followed her pointing finger. "That's a Turbohawk Attack Spacefighter," he managed. They went to bed, the only piece of furniture in the room.

12:14 p.m. Thursday

Porter awoke shortly after noon hungover and scared. Debbi had left for work at 9:30 without sleeping at all. He vaguely remembered promising to see her that evening as he called the PD and arranged to meet with him. In Beige World. The PD had to be told. There was something about the voice, a danger that couldn't be denied.

Dick smoked a Marlboro as Porter told him the story, then snuffed it out in the beige plastic ashtray. Porter noticed that the ashtray bore the address of the Redwood Motel in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

"That's a satellite feed, Porter. That voice had to be heard at every subscribing station." He picked up the phone and dialed a long-distance number. "Ralph, we had a funny voice-over on the Morning Jazz show, what, Wednesday morning?" He looked at Porter, who nodded. Dick's mustache lapped over the beige phone receiver at his mouth. "Yeah, yesterday morning. You're still carrying it, aren't you? Yeah, it was during the countdown. A strange voice. Did your graveyard shift say anything about it? No? Just checking." He broke the connection by pressing the button with his left hand and he held the receiver in his right, dangling it loosely toward Porter. "You want me to keep trying?"

"Dick, something is going on. It all holds together."

Dick pursed his lips and hung up the receiver. "What do you mean, it all holds together? It makes no sense whatsoever, Porter. You heard an alien on the cue monitor."

"You had to be there. You had to hear that voice for yourself." Porter looked at the door and longed to retreat through it.

"Why didn't you record it?"

"It only lasted a few seconds. None of the tape decks were racked. I was moving in slow motion."

"Did you hear it last night?"

Porter's head hung. "You mean this morning? No. Maybe it was a single message. The voice said they were sending it ahead so that we could prepare for their arrival."

"Why would they call ahead? Why wouldn't they just arrive?"

"Because they need a receiver. They need the receiver to be turned on!" Porter was talking loudly and grabbing his thighs with both hands.

"But the receiver is always on. Our dish is always monitoring that satellite. I think it's a Westar--Westar 2."

"Maybe they don't know that."

"What makes you think they're going to invade us? Didn't they say they came in peace, that they wouldn't harm us?"

"The voice said 'We will not kill you.' We will not kill you! Now doesn't that make you just a little nervous, Dick?"

Dick spun around in his chair and looked through the slats of the open venetian blinds. The sun spread yellow stripes on the beige carpet. "But Morning Jazz is one single transmission from Westar--the same transmission picked up by at least ten stations in the East." He turned back to Porter.

"Maybe they plan to materialize at all of them."

Dick folded his hands on the desk in front of him. "Porter, do you know anyone who would play this kind of a practical joke on you? Do you have any enemies? How about your wife? Could your wife do something like this?"

Porter tilted his head.

"What does she do for a living?"

"She's an electrical engineer," Porter answered. "But her voice is much higher."

6:03 p.m. Thursday

Debbi tried Porter's number every ten minutes beginning at 6 p.m. and got no answer. She swore when she got a busy signal at 7:40. She got a ring again at 8.

"Porter, I know what it is," she shrieked. "It's your wife! She's playing some weird joke on you. She doesn't want you to see David."

Porter was silent, then she heard him sigh. "I don't know. I just talked to her. I don't think she had anything to do with it. I think it was an alien, Debbi. I think we're in trouble. I think I quit."

"No!" Debbi's jaw clenched and Porter imagined it clenching. "I'm going in with you tonight and we'll do your shift and I'm going in with you tomorrow night and we'll just find out what it is."

"Tomorrow morning," Porter sighed.

"What?"

"You're going in with me tomorrow morning and you're going in with me Saturday morning."

"Oh. Right. And we'll find out what it is. I'll meet you at Quincy's at midnight."

"And just when do you plan to sleep?"

"Right now. And I'm taking tomorrow off."

"Okay. But no drinking. I can't drink and go on the air."

Debbi hung up the phone. Smiling, she held the loaded .38 revolver tightly between her breasts.

8:07 p.m. Thursday

Porter looked at the box of frozen chicken on the kitchen counter. On the way back from the station he had stopped at the store for a TV dinner. He picked out the chicken without realizing it was the kind that needed plates and something to cook it on, like a frying pan or baking sheet. He put the box in the freezer and headed back to the store.

12:05 a.m. Friday

They both drank Margaritas and listened to WSRK on Quincy's sound system. Shockley was playing Eric Clapton when they left to walk the half block to the station.

"Ed, you remember Debbi." Porter gestured broadly. "Debbi Franklin." It was 1:59.

Ed yanked his headphones from the control panel and stomped out of the studio. At 2:15 Porter answered the phone, waved Debbi into silence and marshaled himself into simulated sobriety. It was the PD.

"Look, Porter, you'll be glad to know that I called the New Orleans Jazz Network and all 12 of the subscribing stations after we talked this afternoon and no one has reported anything strange about the Wednesday morning broadcast. That means it has to be local--someone hooked in at this end, probably somewhere between the receiver and the cue monitor. I'll put the engineers on it tomorrow and if it's there, they'll find it. I promise."

Porter thought of 12 other jocks on the graveyard shift, maybe tipsy on Margaritas, sitting in control rooms up and down the East Coast, and he was the only jerk stupid enough to report it. The jerkiest jock in the East. "Thanks, Dick. It was yesterday afternoon."

"What?"

"We talked yesterday afternoon. Thursday?"

"Oh, yeah. It's just a practical joke, Porter. A sick practical joke."

"Yeah. Well, that's good news, I guess."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Are you going to show up, uh, tomorrow morning?"

Porter looked at Debbi, who held a hand in front of her mouth. "Oh yeah. Wouldn't miss it."

Debbi was having fun. She picked the music and they necked and Porter laughed when she suggested they play "Alien" by the Atlanta Rhythm Section as their final tune before Morning Jazz. He started "Alien" at 5:26. At 5:28 he patched into the satellite feed for the countdown and the voice came immediately. Debbi screamed and backed against a glass wall that divided the control room from one of the production rooms. Porter looked at the tape decks. They were empty.

We are sending a second message to our friends on the planet Earth. We are representatives of a nearby intergalactic civilization. We have become this frequency and will materialize at your receiving station in one of your days.

Porter realized that it was not one voice but many voices in one, all speaking with the same dreadful passionless focus. He gazed around the control room. To the left, Debbi pressed against the glass with her eyes squeezed shut and her hands clasped under her chin. The room behind her was dark. Ahead of him was another dark production room behind another glass wall. To the right was the news room, also dark behind a glass wall. Each wall was actually double glass and threw back two slightly misaligned reflections of the well-lighted control room, the reflection from the closer glass, which was the brighter and more obvious, and the reflection from the farther glass, which was dimmer and more difficult to discern. He could see the three major reflected views--from the left, front and right walls--and the three corresponding minor reflections from each wall. There were also secondary reflections between the left and right walls, the primary reflections from both being visible on the opposite. He and Debbi were alone in the station, standing alone in the control room with dozens of their reflected selves. The Atlanta Rhythm Section sang "Feel like an aaaa-lien" on the air monitor. The voice spoke again on the cue monitor.

It is important that you leave your receiving station on. Your receiving station must be operating to allow our arrival.

"This is the New Orleans Jazz Network with the Morning Jazz program coming to you 60 seconds from now."

"Turn it off, Porter!"

"Feel like an aaaa-lien..."

We come as fellow seekers and explorers of our universe.

"Turn it off!"

Porter rotated the volume knob out of the cue setting. "It's okay," he said. "I can time it." The control room clock had been two seconds slow all night. At 5:29:57, as the record faded, he potted up perfectly to the Morning Jazz intro.

Debbi was sitting again, clutching her pocketbook, her orange-and-purple hair reflected around and within the glass walls. "Who needs a cue, anyway," Porter grinned.

Porter could have listened to cue over his headphones. But he hadn't.

8:10 a.m. Friday

Dick Swanson loved his BMW, loved to close himself in for the drive to work, listening to Martin Start--for the past three years, anyway--on WSRK, 101.5 FM. He had a digital readout on his radio and the numbers were there every morning: 101.5. He even loved the music, though it sure had changed since he was growing up. And he loved it when the swinging glass door of the station closed behind him and the traffic noise disappeared and he could hear the Start the Morning Show on the monitors located throughout the building, sometimes playing the same song he had just been listening to in the car. But this morning he had a feeling that Porter would be waiting for him. As the glass door swung shut Porter looked up from a Billboard magazine. Not a good way to start the morning, chatting about aliens with a panic-stricken rock jock from the graveyard shift.

Porter was out of the green vinyl chair and closing fast.

"Dick, we've got to talk."

"In my office." Dick nodded at the receptionist. "Have you met Porter Thomas?"

She smiled and answered in a sing-song voice, "Yes, he wants to see you."

"I know." The two walked down the hallway and Dick unlocked Beige World.

"It happened again last night. The voice came over the Morning Jazz countdown. Something's going on here." Porter sat quickly in the beige chair and leaned forward.

"And we're going to find out what it is, Porter. I'm going to have the engineers go over every inch of wiring between the dish and the control panel."

"I think you should shut down the dish tomorrow morning--just for a little while, between 5 and 6."

"Can't. And don't have to." Dick slapped his desk as he sat down. "Now why in the hell would we have to?"

Porter noticed a white scrum of toothpaste along the edge of Dick's mustache. "The voices asked for us to keep the receiver on. They sent a second message just to tell us to keep the damn receiver on."

"Oh, now it's voices?"

"It's one voice made of many."

"It's electronic simulation. Or modification. It's a damn stupid joke."

Porter stood, placed his hands on his hips and sought out the PD's eyes. "If you don't turn off the dish for just an hour tomorrow morning, I'll go to the police with this. I'll turn the damn thing off myself."

Dick leaned back in his chair. "Then you'll be out of a job. It wouldn't be convenient, but within 20 minutes I could get somebody to fill in for you tonight. In a week I'd have a replacement."

Porter sat down again.

"Porter, just see this through." Dick lit a cigarette. "You're a good jock and we'd hate to lose you. But think about it! If these really were aliens and if these aliens were smart enough to be able to transmit themselves over a radio frequency, why would they have to rely on our receiver? And why would they tell us to keep it on?"

"Curiosity. And trust. They can't take the chance that our receiver would be off and they're relying on our curiosity and trust to keep it on. And maybe transmitting themselves is the only way they can get here."

Dick rose, walked to the window and adjusted the blinds. "Porter, I trust you to get through this thing and to do your job. Why don't you trust me to get to the bottom of it? I understand you had a girl here with you the other night, and that you were late. No, no, that's okay--not being late, but having a girl here. We understand how that happens. Why don't you have her in here again tonight--or anybody else. Somebody to keep you company. Was she here last night?"

"This morning, yes."

"Did she hear it?"

"Yes."

Dick nodded. "I believe it's happening. I believe that you heard what you say you heard. Did you record it?"

Porter sat and stared.

8:47 a.m. Friday

He walked into the coffee shop and spied orange and purple bobbing above a booth across the room. Debbi was on her fourth cup of black coffee.

"Well?" she demanded.

Porter slid in across from her. "We'll have to do it ourselves."

"Okay. What do you want to do in the meantime?"

"Let's go to my place and jump up and down on each other."

"Yeah!"

"Just one thing, Debbi." He held her hand across the table. "This is only one dish."

2:15 a.m. Saturday

The PD called at 2:15 as Porter predicted he would.

"Porter, I tried to call you at home but couldn't get an answer. We found it! It was a tiny receiver tied into the line between the dish and our receiver. It was hooked up at the base of the dish on the roof and it was picking up transmissions, all right, but from no more than a few hundred feet away, like a cordless telephone. Then it fed directly into the line from the dish. If you're going to do something like this, that's the hard way. I'll show it to you Monday."

"Lies," Debbi said when Porter told her the story. Porter nodded.

He knew that the receiver was somewhere in the transmitter room on the third floor, but he didn't know what it looked like or if there were backup systems or alarms or what exactly would happen to the station's normal transmission if he whacked it in half with an axe. But that was the plan and he figured on carrying it out about 5:10, which ought to leave too little time for anybody to fix the thing if there were an alarm of some kind and give a swarm of incoming aliens nowhere to go--at least not in Philadelphia.

5:10 a.m. Saturday

At 5:10 he put on Elton John's "Philadelphia Freedom," picked up the axe, which they bought that afternoon at Handyman Hardware, and walked with Debbi to the foot of the stairway. "You're bringing your pocketbook?" he hissed. She clutched it and nodded. "This is crazy."

Dick had to be lying, he thought as they climbed. All he wants is to get me through the night. On Monday he says, well, we didn't find a thing, but look, no aliens!

"We will not kill you," Porter whispered.

"Oh Porter, shut up," Debbi cried.

About every fifth light was turned on down the long hallway to the transmitter room, forming pockets of darkness. Holding the axe in both hands in front of him, Porter strode into the hallway and began a quick walk, forcing Debbi into a trot.

"What are you doing?" she pleaded.

"If they're already here it's not going to do any good to creep around. Let's go break the receiver." Porter could hear the bass section of "Philadelphia Freedom" and found himself marching in step to it. When they reached the transmitter room, Porter slowly turned the doorknob and pushed open the door.

The room was crowded with the little red eyes of power lights and the greenish glow of LEDs on the equipment inside. Uncertain, they stood in the doorway for a second, then Porter took one hand off the axe and ran his fingers alongside the door jamb, searching for a light switch. There was a scuffling sound in the back of the room and some of the red lights were blotted out like stars behind a cloud. Something was moving toward them.

Debbi backed up two steps into the hallway and Porter continued to grope for the light switch. When the light came on, it revealed a leathery slug. Debbi screamed as an explosion blasted loose bits of the ceiling and Porter spun in time to see something grappling with Debbi in the hallway, pawing at the revolver in her hand. Someone had yelled "Don't shoot" and Porter was eerily sure it had been the leathery slug, so he raised the axe over his head and charged. The slug went down in a heap in the middle of the room, tearing off its head, and Porter caught his swing. The slug was a man. A balding man.

"If you ever bring another gun in here, you're fired." Porter turned, still holding the axe. A tall, lanky man with a huge Adam's apple had one arm around Debbi's neck and was trying to protect his masculinity with the other.

"Let go of me," Debbi spat. He seemed happy to oblige.

"Who are you?" Porter asked.

"Bill Halpren."

The owner and general manager of WSRK. "And who is he?" Porter gestured with the axe.

Halpren let go a croaking laugh. "Lou Seltzer. WIOP. 106 FM." The slug waved sheepishly.

7:42 a.m. Saturday

The GM's office was green and yellow and brown with a glass coffee table and a couch. Very nice. Porter and Debbi sat on the couch and the GM sat in a matching brown-and-green-striped chair.

"Are you going to press charges?" Porter asked. For some reason, the sight of the police leading the stocky Lou Seltzer out into the morning and directing him into the back seat of the patrol car saddened him. It didn't help that Seltzer was still wearing the lower half of the slug costume, an affair that resembled oversize chaps covered with hairy knobs.

"Absolutely," Halpren asserted. "Trespassing. Criminal harassment. There are a few other civil charges I plan to file. He was after my assets, after all, and by that I mean you."

"I just can't believe that someone would try to pull something like this," Porter said.

Halpren croaked a laugh. "Seltzer and I used to be partners in an AM station in the suburbs. I can believe it. Did you believe that aliens were coming?"

Porter and Debbi looked at one another and Debbi rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

"I brought the gun in, Mr. Halpren," she said. "Porter didn't know a thing about it. I was...well, I just wanted to make sure."

Halpren chuckled and shrugged. "That's the one thing Seltzer didn't count on--that you'd fight back, that you wouldn't run screaming from the station. He was probably shocked you showed up at all. I can understand why he did it, poor guy. Everyone gets the Arbitron numbers, Porter, and Lou saw and heard something he liked. It was a good plan, really, and could've got you fired in a number of ways. Next week you would've received a call from WIOP and bingo, he'd have his afternoon-drive man."

Porter took his fist from in front of his mouth. "With all due respect, that wouldn't be so bad. I've been on the graveyard shift at four different stations in the last six years."

"Maybe, but we're beating lOP by five points and even more in the morning. Why take a step backward?" Halpren rubbed his temples, then walked over to the monitor on the wall and turned down the volume. Sally Lite was playing Van Halen. Saturday morning with Sally Lite.

Porter sank back into the cushion. "Why didn't he just call me?"

"He's too damn cheap. He could've got you for next to nothing if you had quit. He could've got you for what you're making now." Halpren stood with his hands on his hips and cocked his head, realizing what he'd just said. "I think you've been doing a smashing job, Porter."

"Really?"

"How would you like midday--10 to 2--starting next week? Steve Vannoy is the weak spot in our schedule. It was only a matter of time." Then, looking at Debbi: "We'll talk about salary later." He held the door open. "And now I've got to get back to a wife who's wondering why I'm slipping out in the middle of the night."

He put his hand on Porter's shoulder in the doorway. "Best of luck to you two. And Porter, remind me to show you where the off switch is on the satellite receiver."

Porter held up the axe and grinned. "Maybe I can get my money back. Never been used."

Out on the sidewalk Porter pressed Debbi against him and thought of Steve Vannoy. That's the way it is on the midday shift. Some jock working graveyard saves the town from alien invasion and suddenly you're out of a job. And thousands of office and factory workers will find that spot on the dial near 101, crank up the volume to a new voice and a new style and spend lunch with Porter Thomas. Porter tossed the axe in the back seat of the car and he and Debbi drove into the sun.

THE END

MORE STORIES BY KEITH CROES

keith@croes.com