Cooper’s eyes blinked, then his mouth opened and a string of profanities issued at a blistering rate.

The bastards had done it again, he thought as the computer screen saver scrolled pipes across the tube. Touching a key, he checked the time index and was stunned. They had been out at least half an hour. What had the aliens been doing that required the absence of situation control for so long?

Of course, they were not really controlling the actions of the actors tonight; the aliens had taken over that job. His only remaining function was to record and observe the events as they occurred and even that idea was a joke; he and Turner had spent so much time lost in limbo they had no chance to understand what was happening.

He cycled through the cameras, finding most disabled, only a few cameras in the kitchen area still worked, the rest were blank screens. How were they supposed to know what was happening?

As he fumbled with the keys, Cooper began his report, reciting the litany of desperation. “Maybe we should just get the hell out of here,” Cooper said as he turned to look at Turner.

His boss was sitting glassy eyed and staring at the far wall.

Cooper waved a hand in front of Turner’s face and checked for any sign of consciousness. Effectively, Turner was sleeping in his chair. So that is what we looked like when we were out of it. Cooper noticed something placed on the table next to Turner as he vented his ill temper in crude humor by waving a solitary finger in front of Turner’s open eyes.

Plucking the object from the table, he held it up to the light and swore. It was the side of a camera with identification still written on the plastic with a yellow paint pen. It was from a camera in the attic, focused on the exterior of the house.

The little pricks had not only been in the house, they had been in this room and left this piece of memorabilia as a calling card. “Okay fans, here’s the million-dollar question,” he said with gritted teeth as he checked his automatic. “How have we been getting blacked out in a shielded room?”

At least two times, he had awakened to see events after they occurred.

They had to be in the house from the beginning. Somehow, one or more of the aliens had secreted themselves on the second floor only yards from the room and directed surgical strikes of sleep.

“Should have thought of it sooner,” Cooper chided himself as he stood on legs that had grown numb from sitting in one position too long.

The boss was no help. Turner was still out to lunch, and who knew how long before the aliens would hit the room with their sleep ray?

It was a situation where action was required, and the sitting chafed against his training. Like the men of the team, he was a man of action. It felt good to take the initiative, to hold a gun in his hand again.

He stumbled to the door and cracked it open to check the hallway. Nothing. He stepped into the hallway and considered locations of the alien.

The camera piece had been from an attic; it stood to reason the little pricks had at least been up there. He turned away from the stairs leading to the first floor of the house and walked to the end of the hallway, where the attic door was firmly closed.

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Placing a hand to the wood of the door, he waited for some telltale sign of the alien presence, a noise or feeling to the wood. Conversation from the first floor of the house broke the silence. Nothing came from behind the door.

With the gun cocked and ready, he used his free hand to open the door. An empty staircase led up to the peak of the house. Oddly, the light was on. He could see exposed rafters and the planking of the roof.

Slowly Cooper climbed the stairs, his feet staying to the walls where the likelihood of a creaking board was minimal. By force of habit, he kept his breathing slow and steady, maintaining an even strain.

As he neared the midpoint of the stairs, the floor came within reach. He raised his head until his eyes were above the level of the attic floor and scanned the room while waiting for some alien death bolt to hit him between the eyes.

Happily, there was a decided lack of response. Bare floor and cobwebs greeted his search. He climbed the rest of the stairs and stood in the attic proper.

He knew the layout of the attic from earlier in the day when he placed the cameras and ran the control wires to the computers. It was a simple room that extended the length of the house and peeked a bare six feet above the floor. Everything looked as it had when he had last been in the attic. Tracks disturbed the dust.

Cooper kneeled and looked at the odd tracks left by the intruders in the attic. Small feet certainly, yet the arrangement of the toes in the soft soles seemed wrong. The center toes seemed the longest. But they were small prints, meaning the bastards had been up here. He followed the prints to the front of the house where the prints gathered, presumably while the aliens had disabled the camera he could see tucked into the peak of the house.

There were no messages carved into the wall or written in the dust. He had come up here on a fool’s hunt. In disgust, Cooper turned away from examining the camera and saw the alien standing at the head of the stairs, watching him with expressionless eyes.

The gun was up and Cooper in a combat stance in an instinctive reaction before he could think, yet the alien stood motionless while it examined him.

It was everything to expect from science fiction movies. Small, nondescript, and gray, with an enormous head and big black eyes. It looked exactly like the fake aliens Turner had designed for the fake spacecraft.

“Here kitty,” Cooper breathed while keeping the alien’s head in his sight.

As soundlessly as it had appeared, the alien fled down the stairs, moving so fast he could not shoot it.

Cooper followed the alien, his steps loud on the bare wood floor. The aliens were fast on their feet when they wanted to move. He felt a kind of grudging respect when he reached the stairs and the alien was nowhere in sight. It was a race.

Plunging down the stairs, heedless of the noise he made, Cooper expected to see the alien in the hallway. Instead, he saw nothing. The only logical answer was; a bedroom.

The operations room was not a concern, leaving two doors on the opposite side of the hallway, one a bathroom and the other the main bedroom.

Some sort of commotion was taking place downstairs, but he paid little heed as Cooper walked to the bathroom door and kicked down the door. The heavy wood crashed back against the wall in the bathroom while the shower curtain billowed from the sudden wind.

Holding the gun ready, he shoved the curtain out of the way, the plastic hangers rattling.

The room was empty. Well, he did not expect it to be easy; the alien had remained hidden for this long, so it obviously had a good hiding spot selected.

He left the bathroom and walked to the bedroom door expecting the door to be closed like the bathroom door, instead the door stood partially open as if awaiting his arrival.

Caution seemed in order. The door was probably a trap and Cooper belatedly realized how much noise he had been making. The alien had to know he was nearing the only place left for it to hide. It had to be waiting with a weapon for him to stand in the doorway with a target painted on his chest.

Standing with his back to the wall, Cooper nudged the door open with the heel of his boot, then spun and rolled into the room.