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the sheep, his kids sitting silently beside him. Ellie stayed behind.
    The sheep still wouldn't come within fifty feet of the black plastic. Bob got out and went to it, the mud sucking at his boots as he walked through the mire created a while ago by all the stomping hoofs. He picked up the plastic. You closed your eyes, you could feel its texture, but it definitely had very little weight.No weight. And yet when he tossed it into the back of the Jeep, it fell normally. It ought to float in air, like a feather or like smoke.
    "What is it, Dad?" Mary touched it gingerly. "I'm not real sure. A piece of the plane." They got in the truck and he drove carefully out of the draw. They bounced and rattled along the sandy borders of a wash, then turned and headed up toward the pasture he'd seen from horseback. Soon he could see the wreckage again, still lying scattered along a low rise, glittering in the sun.
    He drove up to the edge of it, then stopped the engine. They all climbed out. It looked just like somebody had taken the tinfoil from a thousand cigarette packs, torn it up and scattered it over tens of acres. The rubble was spread in a long sort of fan, as if whatever had created it had come sliding into the ground out of the southeast. He picked up a piece of the foil. It was strange stuff. Tough. You couldn't even think about tearing it. And it was light, too. Like the webbed belt it had no weight at all.
    "This isn't pieces of a plane," Billy said. He held some of the stuff in his cupped hands. When he let it go, it fell like a handful of dry leaves.
    "Look," Mary said. She bunched up a piece of the foil until it was no bigger than a pill. Then she let it go.
    Instantly it bounced back into its former shape.
    "Damn," Bob said. He did it. The same thing happened. Again he tried tearing it. Nothing.
    Billy put some of it on a stone and beat it with another stone. It didn't even scratch.
    How anything as tough as this stuff could ever have gotten torn up like this just beat all, as far as Bob was concerned. Must have been a whale of an explosion. The stuff was stronger than metal and yet thinner than cellophane. And blown all to hell.
    Then he saw a gleam of violet coming from under a largish sheet of the foil. He lifted the sheet, tossing the two-foot square over his shoulder. The way it fluttered in the air reminded him of the flickering wing of a butterfly.
    What he saw on the ground confused him even further than he was already confused. There lay a T-shaped object a couple of inches long, made of what looked for all the world like balsa wood, with violet glyphs covering it. He looked at it for a long time. He did not touch it. Others were I-shaped.
    There were also pieces of what appeared to be waxed paper, and on these had been painted rows of little figures that Bob surmised were numbers.
    Mary picked up a piece that hadn't been written on and held it up to the sun. "Look, Daddy."
    Bob saw the faint outlines of yellow flowers. He took the sheet in his own hand. It was as if there was a subtle design, or maybe even real flowers pressed between the layers. They were beautiful, like yellow primroses. Evening Primroses.
    You couldn't do anything to the paper, either. It didn't burn or tear. It was as tough as the foil.
    Bob surveyed the field of rubble. The sun shone down, but no birds sang. A creepy sensation overcame him, and he wished he hadn't brought his kids.
    The only sound was their own rustling breath. His big, familiar pasture seemed strange and dangerous and full of mystery. He did not like this, did not like it at all.
    Where were the birds? There had always been plenty of birds around here. What devilment had gone on last night?
    "Were there bobcats crying out in the storm?" Billy asked. Bob did not answer. He could imagine the devil screaming like that. Then, with a toss of his head, he dismissed the thought.
    "Somebody gotta clean this place up," he said. "Who's gonna do it?"
    "It'd take ten loads in the