He watches it roll through her, feels it in the flex of her palms through the pillow. He can't stop looking at her face, her eyes. Whatever is happening in the depths of him rises perilously close to the surface, his throat closed by some great and terrible swell of emotion.

"It's," tries John, but his voice fails him; this goes nowhere. He starts again: "I don't," and then abandons that tack too. For a very bad moment it's clear in every line of him: he's afraid.

His grip squeezes and steadies on her arms. He blows out a long breath, then drops into the tone which uniformly means he is about to say something she will hate.

"I'm not saying it's aliens," he says to her, almost gently, "but it's aliens."