At first, Randy thought it was a fire alarm. The luminous dial read 3:18 A.M. But his mind was all sleep-fuzzy. The ear-splitting noise came again. He reached across the empty bed, fumbling for the phone.

Empty bed. Liz had disappeared three days ago after the precinct party. Maybe this was Sergeant Alvarez. The phone jangled again. He captured the receiver and untangled the cord from the bedclothes.

"Am I speaking with Randall Jefferson?"

The funny clipped lilt made the voice slightly difficult to understand. "Yes, this is Randy," he said.

"Mr. Jefferson, sir," the voice continued in a tonal sing-song, "your spouse is ready for fetching. I regret to inform you that you will be, do they not say, coming for her."

Kidnapping, he thought. And though she'd told him angrily last week he'd lost his spontaneity, he knew she wouldn't just up and leave. "I don't carry much cash," he said stupidly. "I'll need to get to a bank. Just name the amount and I'll . . . ."

"Money is not what we seek," soothed the androgynous voice. "But you, we do seek you. You have a writing stick?"

"A what?

"Pen, pencil, writing stick. Please prepare yourself for my dictations."

"Are you telling me where to bring the ransom money?"

"I instruct you on the location of your spouse. Fill your vehicle fuel tank as it is some distance travel from your domicile."

"How much must I pay to get my wife back."

"Oh, I see your direction. We are not in the slave-trade. Your spouse-person has no price to us."

"Is she alive. Is she Ok."

"The health of your spouse is excellent. And we have repaired the myopia and the asthma impairment. You have read perhaps handbook of the Boy Scouts. They say, 'Leave a place cleaner than you find it.' We always try to leave a spouse fitter than we find her. But I am, you people would say, throwing time in the dumpster. Have you the writing stick?"

Numbly he took down the directions. Twenty kilometers south on Route 4, west ten leagues (leagues?) to the Briar Patch exit, left over the Greensboro Bridge and across the state line. At least the foreigners did seem to know their way around the back roads as well as any of the locals.

Randy had to warm the Toyota up for three minutes before he could trust it not to conk out. The gas gauge registered empty. He tried to remember where an all-night station was and cursed himself for being such a fool. Can't be spontaneous, can't be prepared, can't be anything but a first-class idiot.

All the way there he thought about Liz's captors and whether they were from Pakistan or Iraq. They actually hadn't sounded like any foreigners he'd ever heard of. He forced himself to think logically, the way they'd taught him in the academy. He thought back over the details of the last few days.

The call from Alvarez had awakened him early yesterday morning too. Alvarez was trying to tell him about the dispatcher they'd hired, or was it about the dispatcher's friend. Something terrible had happened at the party. And he had interrupted the sheriff to say that Liz was gone.

He'd told Alvarez he wouldn't go off on any wild-goose chases. "Just because you're a good cop," Alvarez had said, "doesn't mean you will exercise good judgment in a situation involving a family member. If for some reason she is being held hostage, we'll want a trained team out there. Don't go off half-cocked." And Randy had promised he would not.

But then, this situation didn't sound ordinary. He'd been on the Cloverdale force for ten years now, and figured he'd seen about everything. Something about that voice made him decide to go out to the rendezvous site alone.

Randy had been expecting something more sinister than a hen party. He turned up a gravel drive and saw about forty women lounging on the old farmhouse porch, spilling out of the open front door, milling about chattering. It looked for all the world like a Sunday afternoon church social.

Randy spotted Liz after he had gotten out of the car. She was leaning on the railing, gesturing animatedly at another woman beside her. As he watched openmouthed, Liz tipped her head and giggled into her hand. It triggered a rush of memories: fraternity row and the first time they'd done it together. And all her confidence fled in the back seat of his Rambler when she admitted she didn't know how to roll a joint and he admitted he didn't either. And they'd planned it out for months, acquiring the ultimate aphrodisiac -- she'd called it a scientific experiment being a zoology major, but they'd laughed together so hard, cuddled together so long that his hard-on had held together about as long as her joints. But that was twenty years ago, he was now an adult, a law enforcer. But as he hurried towards Liz, he saw again the coquettish co-ed who had stunk up his car with two ounces of spilled weed and stole his heart.

He ran over to the veranda and was stopped by an invisible something. A hush fell over the women. They stared at him and he stared back.

From behind him a voice said, "Ah, Jefferson. You have arrived. That is a goodness. We feared that your vehicle had met with a mishap."

He turned. A hooded figure wearing enormous orange moccasins stood beside Randy's car. It tapped the windshield with a gleaming silver instrument."

"That engine," the figure said, "it is not running on all eight cylinders. I will adjust so it purrs like a cougar."

A tall girl with a purple scarf and huge hoop earnings sprang from the veranda and hurried up to Randy. She pumped his hand vigorously while fixing him with a wide-toothed smile. "I am Emily," she said. "And we mean you no harm. You will have to forgive my partner, Hektar," she gestured briefly at the hooded figure who was already peering under his car, tapping occasionally with the silver instrument. "Hektar is an inveterate tinkerer, and has an abysmal lack of fluency with the late 20th-century slang."

"What are you doing with my wife," Randy stammered.

"We thought you would never ask," Emily bubbled. "We're borrowing her, only temporarily of course."

"And what are you doing with me?"

"We're borrowing you, too. Of course, the Society for Trans-Galactic Synergy always pays its debts to the planets."

He was sure this was some kind of brutal flashback. Any moment he would wake and Liz would be a warm lump beneath the covers. But Emily had hooked her arm firmly through his, and was cheerfully steering him towards the barn.

"At first, we need to keep the genders segregated," she was saying, "But it will be over soon. The important thing is that we make a complete study of your culture -- identify the dysfunctional cross-currents before we send a trained meddler."

The barn was filled with men. Emily ushered him inside with a flourish, introduced him and tapped a code into a black box on her waist. She gave him a light peck on the cheek and zipped back outside.

The men did not look as happy as the women. Most of them were smoking, perched on discarded paint cans and broken lawn furniture. He recognized only two of the others: Arthur Jones who ran the five and dime in town, and Abner Davis who worked at the Chevron station north of his place. He went over to them and asked "What's going on?"

"Them A-rabs done taken our women hostage," Abner drawled laconically like a character out of Bonanza.

"I don't think they're from the Middle East. They act like some wacky college professors and our wives don't look like hostages either."

"Them are A-rabs," said Abner with conviction. "Got turbans don't they. Far's our women goes, they done shot 'em up with some kind of happy drug."

His spine crawled but something about that explanation seemed all wrong. "Why haven't they shot us up then?" he asked.

"Cuz it don't work so good with the male hormones," Arthur said.

"Can we get them out of here?"

"Try an' leave," Abner sneered. "Just you go on and try."

He walked over to the barn door. As he started to step outside, an invisible gust of air blew him gently back across the threshold. He tried again. The wind lifted him and deposited him gently inside the barn.

"I see you're playing with the aerodynamic holding system," said Emily, cheerfully materializing in the doorway. "Wouldn't want to have to round you all up again."

Turning to the group in the barn, she waved her clipboard for silence like a camp counselor. "Quiet down everybody. We have a very important announcement."

Conversation subsided to a disgruntled murmur. Emily said, "Now everybody. Our scientists are dying to measure some pleasure. They'll be monitoring your heart and aspiration rate and such. And checking out your brain waves too. Which one of you wants to copulate?"

The men looked at one another. "What the fuck she want?" growled Abner.

"Fuck," another man said. "Just like you said, Abner. She wants to fuck."

"FUCK," said Emily tasting the word. "Yes. That's the colloquialism, I believe. She flipped through the pages on her clipboard adding brightly, "Like I mean, it's radical, dude!"

The men looked at each other bewildered.

"I've got something here about privacy," she continued. "You won't be copulating here of course. It's probably kind of embarrassing to copulate in front of your horses and cattle. We'll take you up to our lab. It's orbiting above us right now."

"I got a question," Randy said shakily, "Are you guys, kind of like experimenters from outer space?" Liz had always teased about his psych major, but maybe, just maybe if he could humor them, it would come in handy now.

"No," Emily corrected, stabbing a finger at Randy. "We're agents of Trans-Galactic Synergy. Experiments, are, what your people call inhumane. We would not dream to experiment on a living, sentient creature."

"But," he said, "You want us to fly up in a space shuttle to some satellite and, um, have intercourse!"

"That's right," said Emily. "I can see you're one of the bright ones. Naturally, you are copulating only with your wife. We've studied the culture mores and we understand how disrupting it could be to marital harmony for us to pair you otherwise."

"Not to mention moral harmony," Arthur grumbled.

"What are we doing here?" Randy asked.

"That's a very good question." Emily perched cross-legged on a camp stool. "We agents are getting pretty worried about your, facility with thermonuclear toys. Now, if you are a truly violent sort, of course it's better for us to give you a push in the right direction. Warlike races disrupt the synergy, you understand. In fact, we have a special department devoted to aberrant elimination, but that's another story. Our Medialogists are theorizing that you aren't truly warlike. In fact our senior Medialogist watches the Brady Bunch regularly. And he's very fond of Hogan's Heroes, too. So our contingent felt we should send out the Peace Corps to help you in your struggle to overcome your baser instincts."

There was a great deal of muttering. Randy said, "And you are from this, uh, Peace Corps."

"Oh no," Emily laughed. "We'll need a foundation grant to prepare a full peace assault. I'm just from the data collection committee. We need to do a case study focusing on the bifurcation of your disparate proclivities. It is my personal hypothesis that your civilization flows along the lines of your nonviolent currents. We're swimming a bit upstream in the organization and I'm going out on a limb to help your race, you understand. Our department chairman is, speaking quite frankly, against the whole thing. He finds Gunsmoke to be rather quaint and not at all an endangered art form. He accuses us of saving art for art's sake but . . . ."

Arthur was beginning to pale. Glancing over at him, Abner asked, "So what you gonna do to Art here? Fly him up in your saucer to screw in a test tube?"

"Oh dear," said Emily, "I'm afraid you are not one of the bright ones. Service," she spoke shrilly into the black box at her waist, "take subject 74-B away please. And give him his spouse. We don't need to see him copulate today."

A gust of air blew Abner out of the barn.

"There," she said. "I do hate IQ tests. So discriminatory, and they never compensate you if you design one for the aborigines. I'm glad you are able to weed yourselves out. It makes things ever so much easier. Where was I? Our department chair has been playing with the Tachyon-scope in an attempt to focus in on some of your later broadcasts. And he's beamed in some fun stuff on occasion; but, being an iconoclast, he's celibate. I, on the other hand, just love, what do you call it, fucking. So I looked through your county's phone books and chose every male with a peaceful kind of name."

"A peaceful kind of name?" another man asked.

"Yes. It's part of my new theory. Men who were named by progressive parents with procreation in mind. Names like Dick, Peter, Randy. And I am so hot to get my hands on some good pictures of real copulation. We'll be able to show them at our next meeting and the doubters are bound to be convinced."

"You're going to show pornography at a galactic board meeting?" he asked. Then, thinking of Abner, "What have you done with Abner."

"Subject 74-B," she smiled. "He was just part of the control group. He didn't have a love-name, you know. He's back in his domicile. With his spouse, of course. I did have the feeling he would not be a representative sample. We can't jeopardize our mission by letting an unrepresentative sample, such as the rather disagreeable subject 74-B, disprove a theory which I'm halfway through designing my study around. Now, come along to the copulating room. We'll be getting started right away."

Liz was already there, reclining on a padded table, golden curls spilling beneath an elaborate headset. It wasn't a lab exactly, though its wall niches held plenty of gleaming instruments. A furtive glance revealed no sharp blades. Neither was it a bedroom, though the twin examination tables resembled canopy beds complete with pink and blue ruffled coverlets. He thought of his seven-year-old niece's Barbie house bedroom, with its miniature casement windows and tiny twin beds. He wasn't quite ready to hop into his own bed yet, though it waited with its own blue coverlet turned neatly down as if one of those Hyatt Regency maids had just finished freshening the room. A knee-length paper hospital gown materialized on his body. Emily and her cohort were no where in evidence.

He approached Liz and before he could touch her, her eyes fluttered open and she turned her face up to him for a kiss. Involuntarily he stepped back a pace. Was he on Candid Camera?

"Darling," Liz said, "Lover, come to me."

Definitely drugged. Liz's natural affection was exuberant but forthright without sappy terms of endearment. She had only acted like this those times in college when she'd tried to overcome her "allergies", and that had been a let-down for both of them.

"Liz," he said desperately, "Do you know where we are."

"Remember the sorority party," she cooed, "Remember the time Andy spiked the punch and you and I drove to the lake to be alone. But I kept saying I thought I was going to puke."

"I remember," he said. "And then we found the perfect spot in the woods and you sang the song that you only sing in the shower when you are alone?"

"Remember when we tried marijuana, only you coughed so hard we swore to each other we'd just tell people we were violently allergic if they accused us of being chicken?"

He smiled in spite of himself. "Or narcs," he said. "Besides it always made your asthma worse." She hadn't been this playful in years. But a glance around the "copulating room" pulled his stomach in knots. Urgently he repeated, "But Liz honey. Do you know where we ARE?"

"Heaven," she said, "where I can make love with my sweetheart until eternity."

Make Love. And suddenly, he had an idea.

"Liz," he said, "I'd like to make love to you like I've never made love to you before."

"Do it," she said dreamily.

Randy strode to the second bed and sat across it confidently. "Hektar, Emily, " he called "We're ready.

Emily and Hektar appeared from nowhere. Emily brandished a silver cylinder and shrilled "Service! Label session foreplay. Close. Open new session. Commence reading."

To Liz, Randy said, "Sweetheart, do you remember our honeymoon?"

"Oh, yes. Yes!" Liz breathed.

"Tell me about the beach, your morning walks, the sunrises, that morning when you came five times"

"It was beautiful," she said dreamily.

"Tell me all about it," he encouraged, and she did.

When she finished he said, "Take yourself there Liz. We're having a second honeymoon. It's better than the first. I've remembered the sunscreen this time."

And she relived the sun, the sand, the surf and later, the smooching. They discussed sex then with the kind of spirited joy that the marriage counselor would have called "openness" and much later he asked, "And what is your most secret fantasy." And as she wiggled and moaned in the Victorian bed, he tightened the fasteners of the hospital gown and prayed they hadn't lost his wallet.

Liz prattled on while Hektar trotted about the room adjusting a dial here, flicking a lever there. Emily stared at Liz, her fingers occasionally straying to her silver cylinder.

When Liz wound down, Randy got a firm grip on the gown, closed his eyes and leaned back into the pillows. "That was wonderful," he breathed.

"Did you come," Emily asked.

"Yes," they said in unison.

"You know," said Emily, "Lucille Ball never really comes. At least not like the ladies in the next decade's movies. But even in those, there's something always missing. It's so good to record it in the flesh. They never talk about fucking. We only found out about this nonviolent current by accident. When you fuck, is it always this beautiful?"

"Well, not with other pairings," Randy admitted, "But I'm not Randy for nothing."

Next morning the Toyota started without a hitch. He was surprised to see that he'd filled the tank over the weekend and he never remembered it running so well. When he returned with the orange juice, Liz had a hot breakfast waiting. She was reading the Herald without her glasses as if she'd never been near-sighted.

As she cleared away the dishes, Liz said "This is going to sound really strange, but I can't remember the last three days too clearly. I went for a run this morning to clear my head, but it didn't work mentally at least. I feel so alive, but I still think I should see a psychiatrist."

"I guess I'll have to tell you now," said Randy, pouring a second cup of coffee and seating himself beside his wife.

"You'll be late to work," she said.

"It doesn't matter, this is important. Remember the precinct party on Friday."

Liz nodded.

"Someone, we think it was a friend of that dispatcher we hired, someone slipped some dope brownies in the desert line. Just a few. Only a couple of people got them."

Liz giggled. "It's been twenty years. I mean, I haven't even thought about dope since the sixties.

"Me neither. But they hit you pretty hard.

"Was I stoned."

"You were," he said truthfully.

"I thought I was a member of the Society for Consolidated Entropy."

"That's about right," he said.

"But," she said, "You remember how you hated it in college. When I got stoned I mean. You said I just giggled and went to sleep. You said you'd have to hypnotize me to get me to like it. Making love, I mean. And even though I was stoned, something tells me we had a wonderful weekend together. What do the encounter groupies say, very synergistic."

He grinned, "Yes, it was that."

The End.