It was getting dark. Derek and Amber sat around the fire, eating dried beef and granola. His shirt sleeves hung to the middle of his forearms, his shorts to the middle of his calves. At some point, it would be preferable to just go without clothes altogether. Derek didn't know when he would reach that point. Probably tomorrow, if he didn't stop shrinking by then. He popped two more vitamins and swallowed them with some water.

"How do you feel?" Amber asked.

"A little nauseous. I don't know if it's from the shrinking or these vitamins." He pondered the black plastic bottle in his hand.

"How many are left?"

"There were 20 to start with, so 16."

She nudged the fire with a stick. "Would you be mad at me if I wanted you to shrink some more?"

He looked at her. "How much more?"

"I dunno. A foot tall, maybe a little less."

"Why?"

She shrugged shyly. "I like the way you look at me."

"You mean how I have to look up at you?" he asked inquisitively.

"No, but that's part of it. I feel so… cherished, by the way you look at me. It's like the shrinking has made you fall deeper in love. And it shows in your face."

Derek considered her words. He was crazy about his wife. She was beautiful before. Now she was extraordinary, over 9 feet tall from his perspective. When she agreed to marry him, there was a sense of wholeness, of victory over his youth. He'd made it. He was a man. What he felt now was something more, a serenity despite the strange circumstances. Amber, in her sensual largesse, could make all his troubles go away.

"Like right now," she said. He was staring at her legs, so long and athletic, almost as long as his body and thicker than his chest. Shadows danced over her flawless, tan skin in the firelight.

She put a hand on his shrunken thigh. Her fingers encircled it. "Derek?"

"Huh? What?"

She smirked. He was the size of a small boy. Were his thought processes regressing as well?

"What were you thinking about?"

His eyes traveled up her body to her beautiful face. "I was just thinking how right you are. There's something about shrinking that makes you appear larger than life."

She ran her hand up to his groin and palmed his erection. "What do you want to do about it?"

He reached across his body and slipped his hand under her shirt to fondle her right breast. He stretched his thumb and pinky as far as he could and still he could not encompass her massive tit in his hand.

Her nipple hardened into his palm. "I want whatever you want, babe."

She reached around his narrow shoulders and smushed him into her big, soft body. "I was hoping you would say that."

Matt and Aaron trudged into their campsite, exhausted. They'd been hauling ass for 6 straight hours, bushwhacking up and down the Tetons in evasion of the authorities.

They started a fire and cooked a pot of beans. "You think they'll look for us during the night?" Aaron asked.

"I doubt it. It's too dark in these woods."

"What do you think those women want with us?"

"I dunno."

"Who do you think they are? And what was that newlywed couple doing with them?"

"I don't know!" They'd hashed out these questions a dozen times since they left the site of the meteorite landing.

"There's no point in worrying about it anymore. We're out of here first thing in the morning," Matt said.

Aaron pulled the fist-sized, purple-gray rock out of his pack. "On what grounds would they arrest us? Is taking a piece of an asteroid a federal crime?"

Matt shook his head. He didn't like all these questions, because they only led to more questions, uncertainty, and wild speculation. However, if it would make Aaron shut up…

"All I know is they looked pretty pissed off, and it does us no good sticking around to find out why."

He took the pot off the fire and scooped some beans into Aaron's tin food tray. "Eat up."

Aaron put the rock down and looked at his dinner. All of a sudden he wasn't hungry.

"You can have my share. I'm going to bed." He left his plate by the fire and ducked into the tent.

"Don't forget your space rock." Matt threw it underhand through the tent flaps.

"Ow!"

Matt chuckled and turned to look at the beans. He'd lost his appetite, too. In fact, he felt quite queasy. It must be the excitement, he thought.

He hung the bear bag, grabbed his spade out of his pack, and went downwind to quell nature's call.

"What are we doing here, ma'am?" the park ranger asked, as she unlocked the park headquarters building.

"I need to see the camping permits issued for the area around Prospectors Mountain. We have to track those boys down," Special Agent Perry said.

The park ranger turned on the lights in the large headquarters building and led the FBI agents to a file cabinet in a small office in the back.

"I'm not comfortable doing this," she said defiantly. "These permits contain private information."

Perry puffed up her chest. "The Forest Service said you would cooperate. Do you want me to call them?"

The woman glowered. "No." She unlocked the file cabinet and pulled out a manila folder. She dropped it on a desk. Perry started flipping through photocopied pages.

"Shouldn't we focus on securing the site?" Agent Watson said.

"Those boys took a piece of that meteorite. We can't risk it falling into the wrong hands. They're priority one right now," Perry said.

"Are we going to look for them in the dark?" she scoffed.

"We'll collect them at first light, if they're still there." Perry held up two camping permits to the light. "Derek and Amber Lakins of Ft. Collins, Colorado. And Matthew Blake and Aaron Procisse of Boise, Idaho."

She looked at Agent Chandler. "The makes of both cars matches two of the cars at the trailhead parking lot."

Chandler started dialing her cell phone. "I'll call the towing company to get a boot put on both cars."

The park ranger shook her head. "This should be illegal. You can't do this to those kids just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"I have the FBI Director's authority to do whatever the hell I want to protect the national security of the United States," Perry snapped.

She passed the camping permits to Watson. "Call the Denver field office. I need full dossiers on these kids in 6 hours, tops. Think you can handle that?"

Perry had been suspicious of Watson ever since that girl Amber got the jump on her at the site of the meteorite landing.

Watson frowned sourly. "I can handle it."

"Good. Keep me abreast of their progress."