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Chapter 2 The Missouri sky frothed. Clouds wrenched upward, then burst into horizontal columns as explosions of light dashed from one formation to the next. It was August, anaAa 1944. This was a day just two months before 178,000 troops had pushed through the gray fog and landed on the coast of Europe, and one year before the sky over Japan burst into atomic chaos. But here, now, for most of the people of St. Louis, the churning atmosphere meant nothing more threatening than rain. tw to4 deoaa a tte If anyone had paused to take more than a brief glance at the heavens they might have seen that these clouds were different. Different from the thunderheads that precipitate the air mass thunderstorms, which are so common to the summer skies of the Midwest. If anyone did pause and study the phenomenon, they left no record of their a ee observations. In Kirkwood, Missouri, just a few miles from St. Louis, I was the five year old girl who stood in her yard and gazed up at the fast changing cumulus. I knew that the strange clouds were the sign that the strangers were coming. “Um hum.” Better get ready, I thought. I giggled and ran inside, saying aloud to myself. “Dolly.” My mother, busy with dinner preparations, turned, I suppose, just in time to see me disappearing down the hallway. “Where’re you... ?” “Attic.” I called over my shoulder. I was in a hurry. I didn’t want to have to explain. I was sure she knew I toto 1 18 THE BABY IN THE BUBBLE visited with those people sometimes.