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last night?”
    “No,” I said, thinking about my popcorn and movie night with the kids. It was a painful memory. I wondered if there would ever be another. I thought then about cutting this talk short and going into Medical to check on the kids. What were the robot arms doing to them? Did I really want to know? Did I really want to see it? I supposed I had to trust them. The kids were already dead. Those arms were the last slim hope I had.
    “The news people have been talking about UFO sightings all day,” Crow said, “but as the night wore on and they got to the States, as best we can tell, the numbers grew. It was just a few ships at first over Asia. Now there are hundreds.”
    “Seven hundred and forty-six, according to the Alamo.”
    “That many? Well, we can’t do much about most of them. We can only communicate with people who finished the tests.”
    “Why do these ships need us to tell them what to do? Did their old commanders all die or something?”
    “No one knows. Personally, I think the goat-people most of us found on the ships were the old command personnel. Maybe they failed and we are the replacements. Doesn’t matter. What you need to do is set up the ship so you can see outside. Just a few webcams and some computers will do it. It’s not the best video, but it works.”
    I shook my head, baffled. “If these are robot ships, why don’t they have equipment like that built in?”
    “Nobody’s figured that out yet, either. Listen, are you with the military?”
    “I was in the Army Reserve.”
    “Reserves? An officer?” he asked quickly.
    “Yeah, First Lieutenant. It was a way to pay for graduate school.”
    “Did you see any action?”
    “One tour in the Gulf… but that was a long time ago. I’m a college professor now.”
    “A professor?” snorted Crow. “That’s a first. What do you teach, martial arts?”
    “No, computer science.”
    He made an appreciative, grunting noise. “Unusual, but I’m sure you will be useful. Most of the survivors are military, or crazy guys who sleep with guns under their pillows. You’re the first teacher I’ve heard of making it through the tests.”
    “I own a farm,” I explained. “And I had a shotgun handy when they came.”
    “Ah, good, I see,” Crow said.
    I could tell that just being a farmer moved me up in his estimation. I thought about the type of person who was likely to survive the tests I’d been given. Logically, they would be physically tough, quick-minded, decisive people who were probably somewhat paranoid. That didn’t describe my colleagues at the University, I had to admit.
    “Listen, Jack,” I said, “have any of us contacted our governments yet? Why don’t we fly these ships to our capitols and set them down and hand them over to the authorities?”
    Crow snorted. “Rude, since the ships would shoot up anyone who threatened us. But it just doesn’t work that way, in any case. These ships chose us . They won’t let us do whatever we want.”
    “So far, the ship has done everything I’ve asked.”
    “Try landing and getting out. It won’t let you. Not unless you do some very nasty things to yourself—and maybe not even then. It won’t let other people around you either, now that you have established full control.”
    “I opened up the floor by accident and could have killed myself.”
    “It might have looked that way, but the ship wouldn’t have let you fall out.”
    “You mean we are prisoners?”
    “We can do what we want. But we have to stay in our ships. We are on our own, and setting up our own organization. That brings us to my next question.”
    “What?”
    “Will you, Kyle Riggs, join me—join us? I have over thirty ships in my fleet. I’m an ex-naval captain and I know what I’m doing to some extent. We need you, and I’ll give you the rank of Ensign to start with.”
    I stopped talking for a moment, stunned. What was this man talking about? Was he forming some kind of political force