Fred laughed. "You're taking it too seriously, Charley. If you did some research on it, I'd bet you ten to one that you'd find a natural cause for everything."
"I've done some research," I said tightly. "Only I didn't know that I was doing it at the time."
I felt a little reluctant to talk. This wasn't the sort of setting where you talked about an invasion from another world. The door of the cabin was open and I could smell the lake and the night air and the nearby pines. It made it seem so damned unreal.
"What kind of research?"
"Nothing intentional—just stuff I picked up every day." The level in the bottle went down another half an inch. "They're running a regular commuter service, Fred. They're bringing them in by the thousands. By the hundreds of thousands. And all within the last few years."
He seemed interested. "Why do you say the last few years?"
I shivered. "The number of sightings of strange lights in the sky that have been made, for one thing. And population statistics for another. Our birthrate has been declining for some time. But in recent years the population has shot way up. More than it should."
"It's the veterans. Starting new families."
"Yeah? How many vets do you know with a lot of kids?"
"Anything else?" Fred asked softly.