Jeffcott tried to fall asleep. He figured that strange, time stretching illusions wouldn't work if he was asleep, and so he settled back in his seat and tried to allow the gentle rocking of the wagon to lull him away. When he awoke he would be in Maricopa. Maybe the others would tell him that a week had seemed to pass on the road but he would have missed it and be ready to get to work.

He did fall asleep, but it had a side effect he hadn't expected. He had a nightmare, worse than any he'd ever had before. In the nightmare his body was swelling and distorting as tumors grew inside him. Living tumors that moved and squirmed around like tentacled monsters, pushing their way between bones and organs, bulging under his skin. The skin of his hand stretched until it was almost transparent allowing him to actually see the monster sitting on the bones, pseudopods reaching down to his fingers and up into his wrist, writhing in constant motion. Then an eye opened. The thing looked out at him through the drum-tight skin and he could feel its hatred as it contemplated how it was going to cause him the most pain...

He was awoken by a hand shaking his shoulder. He was drenched with sweat, whether from the Arizona heat or the terror of the dream he couldn't tell. The hand belonged to Duffy and he was looking at him with concern. "You okay?" he asked.

"Fine," said Jeffcott, looking at his hand. He was relieved to see that it looked completely normal. "Where are we?"

"Sweetwater," his colleague replied. He pointed and Jeffcott looked to see that there were other roads running alongside the interstate, some of them crossing it. "We're stopping here for a bite to eat."

"Sounds good," said Jeffcott, rousing himself and jumping down from the wagon. "I'm starving."

"We all are," Duffy agreed, "which is strange."

It took Jeffcott a moment to realise what his colleague meant. "What time is it?" he asked. "How long has it been since we left the command post?"

"According to Mister Singh's wonderful clockwork apparatus, it's nine twenty, which would mean we made good time. We got here in less than two hours."

There was a frown on his face as he said it, though, and Jeffcott understood the reason for it. "I feel like I haven't eaten in twenty four hours."

"Those of us who stayed awake feel as if twenty four hours has passed. Well, not literally, but we're tired as if we've been awake for a full day."

Jeffcott looked up at the sky. The sun still hadn't reached its zenith. It was about where it would be if it were nine thirty in the morning. "We thought the anomaly was affecting our perception of the passage of time," he said, "but if we're all hungry, is it possible that all the biochemical processes of our body have sped up? We're thinking faster, digesting food faster..."

"If I remember correctly, none of us ate much this morning," said Duffy. "We were all too scared. It ruined our appetites. Maybe that's the reason we're hungry now. Maybe it's as simple as that."

"Maybe," Jeffcott conceded. "We can put it to the test. When we set off again, I'll count to a hundred and we'll ask Mister Singh to tell us how long it took according to his watch."

"Count out loud so we can all hear you," the other physicist suggested. "It'll allow us to directly compare how fast you think you're thinking to how fast you're actually thinking."

Jeffcott nodded feeling better. Using science to study the phenomenon somehow made it a lot less scary. They were taming the monster. Tying it down with chains made of numbers and measurable quantities. It made him feel in control, and looking at Duffy he saw that he was feeling the same way. We're scientists, he thought proudly. We don't tremble with fear when the universe does something we don't understand. We study it and use it to push back the boundaries of human knowledge. The unknown isn't scary to a scientist. It's exciting. It's a discovery waiting to happen.

The two men made their way to the supply wagon where the soldiers were handing out army rations. Jeffcott and Duffy took one each and moved a short distance away to eat them. Jeffcott found it bland as he chewed it, but didn't doubt that it contained everything the human body needed. Some army scientist would have made sure of it.

He looked around at the dusty horizon. Apart from the other roads running close to theirs it looked like just another patch of desert. "So what is this place?" he asked. "I assumed that Sweetwater Village would be, well, a village."

"Private Seabreeze says there was once a stagecoach station here," Duffy replied. "Back in the days of the old wild west. A village grew up around it, but it became a ghost town as all the business went to Maricopa. Now there's nothing left."

"Nothing but tumbleweeds," said Jeffcott, now feeling full of good humour. "Except there are no tumbleweeds. Just the grass."

"The tumbleweeds probably died out," Duffy replied. "They're not native to this country. They came over from Russia with grain shipments. Their proper name is Russian thistle. It amuses me whenever I see them in westerns."

The soldiers were spreading out, Jeffcott saw. Searching the area. "This is the road," he heard one of them calling out to the Sergeant. "This turnoff leads to Casa Blanca road. We follow it west to Maricopa road, then turn south."

"Very good," the Sergeant replied.

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"Sergeant, looks like there's a pile up down that way. The whole road's blocked. We could go around it quite easily..."

The Sergeant squinted his eyes as he looked in the indicated direction. Jeffcott looked as well and saw an eighteen wheeler laying on its side, just visible in the distance. There was nothing to tell what had happened to it.

"No," the Sergeant replied. "Let's not risk a horse breaking a leg in a gopher hole. We can shift that thing by hitching the horses to it. We've only got a drag it a little way, open up one lane. With everything else going weird around here, I'd feel safer with good, solid tarmac under our feet. Organise it please, Corporal."

"Yes, Sergeant."

Suddenly a soldier, looking down at the ground, recoiled in horror. What's the problem?" asked one of the other soldiers, going across to him. "You okay?"

The first soldier could only point at something on the ground, though, while backing away from it. The second soldier moved forward to see what it was. "There's nothing there," he said. The first soldier said nothing but walked further away. He looked as if he wanted to run.

The second soldier was still staring at the spot on the ground he'd been pointing at. He bent down and picked up a crushed beer can. "What, this?' he said. He took it towards the first soldier.

The first soldier just backed away faster, though, grimacing with disgust. "Don't bring it to me!" he said, his hands raised to ward it off. "Get rid of it."

"What's wrong?" The second soldier asked. "It's just an old can. See?"

"It's disgusting," the first soldier declared. "Just get rid of it."

"Let me see," said Dennings, striding over to look. She took the can from the second soldier and turned it this way and that, examining it from all angles. "Just an empty beer can," he said. She turned to the first soldier. "How would you describe it?" she asked.

"It's revolting?" the man replied, staring at the psychologist as if amazed that she could bear to touch it. "Disgusting."

"Why?" asked Dennings. "What about it makes it disgusting?"

"I don't know! It just is!"

"I believe you're suffering an anomaly effect," Dennings told him. "It's altering your perception of everyday objects, making your brain perceive this can as disgusting. Intellectually, though, you know it's just a can of beer. Right?"

"It's a disgusting beer can!"

"It's the anomaly making you think that. If you try, though, you can make yourself perceive it as it truly is. Just tell yourself that it's just a beer can. If your brain insists that it's disgusting, ask yourself why it's disgusting. What about it makes it disgusting? Your brain won't be able to answer. Try it. Okay?"

The man nodded. He made himself look at the beer can, but he was looking at it askance, as if he would much rather throw a blanket over it to hide it from sight. Gradually, though, he turned his head to look at it directly, his eyes widening in astonishment, and then he walked over and took it from the psychologist. "It's just a beer can," he said, chuckling nervously.

"It always was," Dennings replied, watching him carefully.

"When I first saw it, I thought it was the most horrible thing imaginable! Like a dead dog, stinking and crawling with maggots. It didn't look any different. It just seemed horrible. You know?"

"False perception," the psychologist replied. "If you know it's a false perception it's easy to overcome it, as you just did. The danger is when you don't know that your perception is being influenced. A feeling of invincibility, for example, or thinking that the gap between two buildings is narrow enough to jump over."

The Private looked scared, and Jeffcott didn't blame him. Not being able to trust your own sense of judgement must be scary as hell. The other Privates didn't get it, though, and were joking with each other, ribbing the unfortunate man mercilessly. One of them found a dirty cigarette packet and was offering it to the poor man, telling him it was an apple flapjack. "It's delicious, I tell you," he insisted. "You're just perceiving it differently." The other soldiers laughed uproariously until the Sergeant barked at them to cut it out.

"Idiots," Dennings muttered to herself. "False perception doesn't affect physical appearance. Just whether it's nasty or nice, ugly or beautiful. They don't get it. Only that soldier, and only because he's experienced it first hand. The others won't understand until they've experienced it for themselves. We should brief them. Gather them all together and tell them what we can expect as we go deeper in. Forewarned is forearmed. It might help them deal with it."

"I'll go suggest it to the Sergeant," said Mark Summers. He walked over to where the soldiers were still unhitching horses from the wagons.

"Is it possible we might experience actual hallucinations as well as these false perception?" asked Robinson, staring at something curiously. There was nothing in the direction she was looking that Jeffcott could see. Nothing but dusty ground and grass.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Dennings replied.

"The reason I ask," Cheryi added, "is that, over there, I can see a wooden building with a stagecoach in front of it. It looks like something from a western."

Everyone stared in the indicated direction but no-one else could see it. "Could she actually be seeing an image from the past?" asked Bright, sounding envious. "I read somewhere that images can be preserved in rocks and released under the proper circumstances."

"Utter balderdash," said Vincenf firmly. "Do you believe in ghosts as well?"

"It could be a logical, scientific explanation for ghosts."

"I assure you it could not."

"What colour are the horses?" Interrupted Dennings hastily.

"Brown," said Robinson. "You know, horse colour. Why?"

"Because I heard an interesting factoid the other day. All the horses employed by the Phoenix stagecoach company were white."

Robinson's eyes widened with amazement. "You're right," she said. "The horses are white. How didn't I see that before?"

"Because it's a hallucination, as you suspected," the psychologist replied. "I made up the fact about the white horses and your brain incorporated the new information into the hallucination."

Robinson grinned with delight. "That's awesome!" she said as Duffy grinned triumphantly at Bright. The linguist turned away in annoyance. "But if we're going to start hallucinating, that could be a problem, couldn't it? How do we tell fact from fiction?"

"The same way you did just now," the psychologist replied. "If you see something out of place, something that doesn't belong, it's probably a hallucination. Ask someone else if they can see it. All we've got to do is keep our wits about us."

"Can you still see the stagecoach?" Jeffcott asked Robinson.

"No. It's gone." She sounded disappointed.

The conversation stopped as they saw Mark Summers and the Sergeant marching towards them. "They told me what happened," the Sergeant said. "The beer can. The doctor says you can brief us on what we can expect out here."

"The important thing to remember," the psychologist told him, "is that it's a known effect of certain kinds of brain stimulation. It's like being affected by hallucinogenic drugs.It doesn't mean you're going mad."

"Don't tell me," the Sergeant replied. "Tell them." He indicated where the Corporal was gathering all the soldiers together.

"Be glad to," Dennings replied, and she followed the Sergeant as he led the way to join them.