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could be complicit in such judgments?
    At the edge of Mark’s consciousness, a subtle change drew his attention. Withdrawing slowly from his link with Heather and Jennifer, Mark shifted his focus toward the thing that had distracted him. The déjà vu feeling reminded him of when he had first detected the pinhole anomaly in his bedroom, the feeling of being watched. But this was different. The cold shiver that crawled slowly up his spine told Mark they had now attracted the attention of something far more dangerous.

The Bandolier Ship filled the back end of the cave, the soft magenta glow so evenly distributed it seemed to emanate from the very air. Against that backdrop, the tables of computers, fluorescent lamps, and monitors made a garish contrast.
    “It’s happening!” Yin Tao’s loud voice startled Dr. Joann Drake so that she sloshed her coffee.
    “Ow! Shit!” She’d burned her hand. But Joann’s annoyance faded as she glanced over the graduate student’s shoulder at the instrument readings spiking across the bank of flat-panel displays.
    Spinning on her heel, Dr. Drake grabbed her iPhone from its docking station, her finger speed-dialing Dr. Hanz Jorgen as she raised the phone to her ear.
    “Yes, Joann?”
    “We’ve got another event.”
    “Now?”
    “Just started.” Joann glanced at the nearest monitor. “Thirty seconds ago.”
    “On my way.”
    The line went dead, and Joann returned her phone to the charging station.
    As badly as she wanted to walk over and ascend the ladder into the ship, Joann knew that Hanz expected her to wait for him, the act a slight deferential nod to the Rho Project’s senior scientist. She supposed that when she had won two Nobel Prizes she’d expect that same level of respect from her staff.
    Besides, despite Dr. Jorgen’s expansive waistline, he could really move when he wanted to, often acquiring so much momentum on his descent of the steps carved into the canyon’s steep wall that Joann regarded his ability to stop at the bottom a violation of Newton’s first law. On cue, Dr. Jorgen passed through the Bandolier Ship’s camouflaging holograph at the cave entrance, his quick stride carrying him directly toward Joann, more specifically toward the bank of monitors behind her.
    His eyes scanned the displays, ignoring Yin Tao’s attempts to offer him a chair.
    “Good Lord!”
    Joann nodded. “The strongest we’ve ever measured.”
    “Why’s it ramping up now?”
    Joann understood the reason for Dr. Jorgen’s query; she just didn’t know the answer. The science team assigned to the Bandolier Ship had first observed the power fluctuations several weeks ago. The events lasted several hours and had recurred every Sunday since. They produced no visible effects, but the sensitive instruments that draped the starship’s interior and exterior recorded significant changes in electromagnetic flux, the signals indicating a dramatic increase in shipboard computer activity. The events correlated with a spike in neutrino measurements atthe Super-Kamiokande Cherenkov detector in Japan and with similar measurements at the Sudbury detector in Ontario.
    But why Sunday? The seven-day week was a human calendar artifact. Why would an alien ship suddenly begin exhibiting an arbitrary human cycle? More relevantly to Dr. Jorgen’s question, why was it suddenly breaking the pattern with a Thursday-evening event?
    “Get the folks at Sudbury on the line.”
    “On it,” Yin Tao said, already dialing the number. He spoke a few words, then pressed the speakerphone button.
    “This is Dr. Hanz Jorgen at Los Alamos. May I speak to Dr. Oswald?”
    “Dr. Oswald is off tonight. This is Dr. Kravitz.”
    “Hi, Joe, didn’t know you were back from Banff.”
    “Got back yesterday. My legs couldn’t take any more. Haven’t skied powder that deep since college.”
    “Listen, Joe, are you guys experiencing any unusual neutrino detections?”
    “Funny you should ask. The Cerenkov