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Benji had ever heard him use, “Christ on a friggin’ cracker, man, I said let’s go.”
    â€œNo,” Benji murmured, eyes still drawn to the disc.
    â€œ What? ”
    Benji understood he should be terrified, too. And on some level, he was. But fear and awe battled inside him, and wonder won the war.
    Twenty feet away, the saucer eclipsed the moon. Its portalopened. The hypnotic light shot out, again rupturing the ice.
    It’s gonna take us up into the saucer.
    CR grabbed Benji’s arm; Benji yanked it free.
    â€œGod damm it, what are you doing?!” CR said.
    At first, Benji did not quite know. He was raising his arm, not sure why he was doing it, just suffused with an inexplicable and absolute certainty that he should do it. He was raising CR’s rifle.
    Which was normally so rusted and rickety-looking. But in that instant, as Benji curled his finger on the trigger, the rifle with its black slender barrel and moonlit sights seemed to undergo a metamorphosis.
    Benji pulled the trigger, and the magic wand blazed.
    The bullet screamed over the misted face of the lake and found its target on the far shore: the cluster of propane gas tanks. CR and Zeeko and Ellie shouted in time with the BOOM as the bullet’s impact ignited the tanks’ flammable payload. BOOM BOOM , and a pair of tanks jetted straight up, missiles ripping skyward with rooster tails of red fire. A chain reaction— BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM— animated a half-dozen more rockets, but Benji’s gaze didn’t trail them to the stars.
    The last of the tanks, like an improvised torpedo, came caroming over the surface of the lake toward the saucer’s beam.
    The portal began to seal but the saucer had reacted too late: The flaming tank touched the rim of the tractor beam and screamed up into the ship.
    Benji spun away, shouting, as the detonation bloomed. Air displaced and threw him to the shore, the heat and light rippling his clothes like a storm. He looked back as the saucer nosedived perhaps fifty feet away. Fire and silver smoke bellowed through a breach in the hull as it crashed through the ice.
    The gun dropped from Benji’s quaking grip. His ears rang.His vision was imprinted with the afterimage of the saucer’s explosion.
    Ho.
    Lee.
    Shit.
    A weak red glow streamed from the impact crater in the ice. The pair of propane tanks that had rocketed into the sky now clanked, malformed, onto the lake.
    The light from the lake bottom flickered off, on, off . . . off.
    And then Benji was stepping onto the lake, heading toward the crater.
    Through the ringing in his ears, he dimly heard CR shout for him to come back, that Benji was out of his mind, that the ice was going to crack underneath him. Benji stomped on the ice ahead of him. Solid.
    When he reached the crater, he went to his knees, looking into the water. It bubbled like a cauldron.
    Someone arrived next to him. He looked over, and was surprised to see Ellie.
    â€œWhat the ass has just happened here, Benji Lightman?” Ellie’s voice shook, and her green eyes filled with . . . not fear, but for a millisecond something purer. Higher. Was it awe? “What exactly did you just do?”
    I don’t know , Benji thought, pulse slamming in his temples. Oh my God, I’ve got no idea.
    â€œHow deep you think the lake is?” Benji asked her, and CR shouted from the shore, “Deep? What does that matter?”
    Benji said, “Where’s Zeeko?”
    Zeeko, who had thrown up beside Ellie’s car, stood up and croaked, “Here.”
    â€œAre you guys okay?” Benji asked.
    CR said, “Compared to what ?”
    Benji’s gaze returned to the water, which was now as seamless as black glass. All he could see was his reflection. “It’s too dark,” he said, mostly to himself.
    â€œHaul ass outta here, that’s what we’ve gotta do. Right? ’C-cause what if more come?” CR shouted, his