by Allen Steele
“Forget it,” Franc said. “Point is, how do we get out of here?”
No one said anything for a moment. Metz finally cleared his throat.
“First thing,” he said softly, “we have to find out what time it is.”
3:00 P.M.
The second time the Rangers visited the sandbar, they approached the saucer from the opposite side of the tiny island, with four men in each of the two inflatable boats. They rowed slowly enough as not to cause any ripples when they dipped their oars in the water, and they observed strict silence during the journey, using hand signals to communicate. They went armed, with two of the soldiers carrying 35mm cameras and camcorders.
Colonel Ogilvy placed Lieutenant Crawford in charge of the operation; Murphy accompanied the landing party in the role of a civilian advisor. Not surprisingly, Meredith Cynthia Luna objected to being left behind. After two hours of psychic meditation, she declared that the UFO was inhabited by aliens from a planet located somewhere in the Crab Nebula; on the eve of the third millennium, they had come to invite Earth into the Galactic Federation. Ogilvy heard her out, then handed her an M-16 and asked if she need a refresher course in how to use it. It was a good ploy; she dropped the unloaded rifle as if it was a medium-rare steak, and although she bitched about approaching peaceful emissaries from another star system with weapons, the argument was effectively ended.
Murphy felt the bottom of his boat slide over the sandy shallows a few feet from the island. Crawford pointed to the sandbar, then balled a fist and pumped it down twice. The two Rangers at either end of the raft hopped out; their boots had barely splashed into the freezing water before they grabbed guy ropes and started hauling the boat ashore. About twenty feet away, the four soldiers in the second raft were doing the same. Everyone crouched low, rifles in hand, yet the Rangers were so quiet that a handful of ducks lounging in high weeds at the tip of the sandbar hardly noticed their presence.
It wasn’t until the troops had taken positions behind the two oaks that Crawford signaled Murphy to get out of the raft. The sandbar was littered with beer cans, washed-up sandwich wrappers, and lost fishing lures. Between the two trees was a small circle of blackened rock, a rudimentary fireplace left by boat bums. The tree trunks were carved with initials; as Murphy knelt behind one of the oaks, something jabbed against his knee. He looked down, spied a tiny hand sticking out of the soil, and reached down to pull up a sand-crusted Darth Vader action figure. A toy left here last summer by some child; the irony was inescapable. He smiled and tucked it into a breast pocket of his parka; perhaps Steven would like to have it.
Past the trees, though, there was nothing to be seen on the other side of the island. At least nothing that looked like an alien spacecraft, from the Crab Nebula or otherwise. Yet, as he looked closer, it seemed as if the waterline was distorted in a strange way, the late-afternoon sun casting weird, inconsistent shadows upon the beach. If he could only get a little closer . . .
Murphy glanced one way, then another. The Rangers lay on their bellies on either side of him, nervously peering over their rifles as if expecting some monster from a fifties sci-fi flick suddenly to come roaring out of the water. Crawford tapped him on the shoulder, raised a level palm, lowered it the ground, then pointed toward the opposite side of the sandbar. What the hell did he expect him to do, crawl across the island?
“Aw, nuts,” Murphy said aloud. “This is silly.” Then, before Crawford could stop him, he stood up and started walking toward the area of distortion.
The lieutenant called his name, the Rangers looked up at him in shocked confusion, but Murphy didn’t stop. Moving one step at a time, he raised his hands to shoulder height, hands out flat. His heart trip-hammered against his chest, his parka felt a little too warm; suddenly, he wondered if this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Yet there was no backing down; if he retreated now, Crawford would probably have him hog-tied and rowed back to the campground. And he was already past the trees, only a few yards from the waterline.
The area of distortion had a rounded look to it. As he drew closer, an image of himself abruptly appeared before him, flattened out as if in a translucent fun-house mirror. He reached out his right hand to touch the reflection . . .
His fingers met a cool, invisible surface. He was so surprised that his hand involuntarily jerked back. “Hey!” he yelled. “I found something!”
“Dr. Murphy, get back here!” Crawford shouted.
Murphy ignored him. He laid both palms against the surface, gently moved them across back and forth. He’d rather expected a tingle, and was mildly astonished not to receive it. Whatever was causing the invisibility effect, it wasn’t an energy field. He glanced at his wristwatch and observed that the second hand was still moving. If an electromagnetic source of some sort had disabled one F-15 and detonated the missile of a second, it wasn’t active now.
Behind him, he heard soldiers scuttling closer. Crawford was on the radio: “Grumpy to Stepsister One, Grumpy to Stepsister One. Snow White has approached bogey, established presence. Dwarves in position. Please advise. Over . . .”
He glided his hands across sloping surface, carefully exploring it as he established a mental map of the object. It seemed to go all the way down to his ankles, then it abruptly stopped, as if he had reached an edge of some sort. His reflection became sharper when he got closer, warped when he got farther away. Fascinated, he carefully lifted his right leg and braced his knee against the surface. Yes, it was definitely a metal hull of some sort. Putting his full weight against it, he gradually inched forward on his hands and knees . . .
He almost laughed out loud when he realized what he must seem to be doing: crawling in midair, at least five feet above sand and water. Somewhere behind him, he heard the soft whir-and-click of an automatic shutter. One of the soldiers handling the camera record was taking pictures of him. Murphy was just enough of a ham that he didn’t want to miss the opportunity. Careful to not lose his balance, he shifted his center of gravity to his haunches, rested the soles of his boots against the invisible surface, then slowly stood up. Good grief, he was . . .
At that instant, the UFO materialized.
One moment, it wasn’t there. The next, it was: an enormous silver bowl turned upside down and cast up against the sandbar, with almost half of it submerged beneath the water.
Startled, Murphy turned around too quickly; his feet lost their purchase and he fell down against the side of the saucer. The breath was almost knocked out of him; he slid halfway down the hull before he threw out his hands and braked his fall by sheer friction. As he fell, his head jerked upand. . .
At the top of the craft was a large, round turret, much like the crown of a hat. In the center of the turret was a small, square porthole. As Murphy slid down the saucer, an exterior shutter whisked sideways across the window, closing so quickly that he barely saw it before it molded so perfectly with the rest of the hull that it was impossible to tell it had ever been there at all.
Even so, in that briefest fraction of a second, Murphy caught a glimpse of something peering out at him. No . . . not something, but someone.
A human being.
Time unknown
The amber haze of winter sun briefly set the lake on fire before it set behind the hills, yet the darkness wasn’t complete. The timeship gleamed brightly within the halo of portable floodlights set up along the sandbar; tiny figures moved along the tiny island, some moving equipment into place, others standing guard with weapons in hand. Rubber boats shuttled back and forth across the channel; helicopters orbited almost constantly, their searchlights skimming across the dark waters.
Franc waited until night had completely fallen before he emerged from hiding. He had crouched in the shallows at the farthest end of the lagoon for the past half hour, raising his head above the surface only when he thought the darkness would conceal the bulge of the EVA suit’s helmet. The camp was little more than fifty meters from his position, yet never once had anyone ventured
over here. So long as he remained quiet, no one would know he was nearby.
It was a dangerous scheme, to be sure, but so far it had worked well. The moment he exited the timeship, Metz switched off Oberon’s chameleon. Its abrupt appearance so thoroughly rattled the soldiers who had just invaded the island that no one noticed the telltale air bubbles caused by the opening airlock. Franc had fallen less than three meters before his boots sank into the muddy silt; he waited a few minutes, peering upward through the water to see if anyone had detected his presence, then he began his long hike across the lake bottom.
It had taken nearly two hours to reach the end of the lagoon. He didn’t switch on the helmet lamps until he was twenty feet below the surface; by then, he had already paused to allow for pressure equalization. Lea had programmed the heads-up display with a map of the lake, but it could only show what lay above the water, not below it. The lake bottom was covered with man-made debris of every shape and size: rusting soda cans, coolers filled with muck, shapeless pieces of painted wood, fiberglass, and metal, broken fishing poles, even an ancient automobile that had loomed out of the brown limbo like a dinosaur carcass. Artifacts from an age of negligence.
The hardsuit would only be the latest addition to the lake’s collection. When he was out of the water, safe within the woods along the shore, Franc lay on his back and struggled out of its ceramic carapace. The wool suit he had worn on the Hindenburg offered scant protection against the chill night air, but it would have to do; it was the only twentieth-century clothing he had saved from 1937. He took a few minutes to drag the EVA armor back to the lakeshore and shove it into the shallows; he heard a soft gulp as it swallowed water, then it disappeared from sight. With luck, it wouldn’t be found for another dozen years or so, if ever.
Franc pulled up the coat lapels and tucked his hands beneath his armpits. He felt the tiny square of the compad in his shirt pocket, and briefly considered using it to contact the Oberon. No, that was a bad idea; the locals might be scanning carrier frequencies, including microwave. Better not tip his hand until he was good and ready. Lea and Vasili would just have to sweat a while longer. At least they were warm enough to sweat. . . .
Trying not to think about the cold, Franc began making his way through the dense thicket, careful not to step on any frozen branches underfoot. He heard the muted voices of soldiers on the nearby beach; when he paused to look back, he could just make out the lights encircling the Oberon. He regarded the distant timeship for a moment, just long enough to make him wonder at the lunacy of his own idea, then he turned and began trudging up the wooded slope.
Dozens of houses surrounded him, on the hillsides above the lake, but he could see lights from none of them. He briefly considered breaking into one, but decided to hold that only as a last resort. Even if they were presently unoccupied, these homes might have intruder alarms; he didn’t possess the tools necessary to circumvent them.
Besides, his task was relatively simple from here on. All he had to do was locate a public telephone. If he could just make his way to a paved road, he knew that a phone wouldn’t be distant. This was late-twentieth-century North America, after all. The locals loved telephones.
Road. Phone. Information. What could be more easy?
Wondering why Lea couldn’t have done this instead, Franc fought his way through the dark and frigid night.
6:11 P.M.
Dinner was a brown vinyl bag containing an MRE: a Meal Ready to Eat or a Meal Rejected by Ethiopians, depending which definition one wished to accept. Inside were green foil wrappers containing diced cold turkey in gooey brown gravy, a tasteless potato patty, a handful of crackers, a packet of instant coffee, and some wispy blue tissue that Murphy first assumed was a napkin until he was informed that it was toilet paper. Eating at a picnic table by lanternlight, he managed to choke down half of the MRE before he took the rest to a garbage can. He should have been ravenous, but the events of the last couple or hours had left him without much of an appetite.
Shortly after he and Crawford returned from the sandbar, Colonel Ogilvy had held a briefing for the civilian advisors in the command tent. The facts themselves were clear: although the saucer inexplicably became visible at 1505, it had remained silent since then. Listening equipment set up around the craft hadn’t disclosed any new information, no hatches had been discovered, and aside from what Murphy alone had seen in that brief instant before its single porthole closed, the craft’s occupants hadn’t chosen to reveal themselves.
Meredith Cynthia Luna remained adamant that the craft was an alien spaceship from a distant star system, and insisted that it contained emissaries from an interstellar federation. The possibility that these travelers might be human, or at least humanlike, only helped her embroider her revelation a little more: the human form wasn’t unique only to the planet Earth, but is widespread throughout the universe, and these “parahumans” were deliberately seeking out others of their own kind. We shouldn’t be confronting them with weapons, she charged, but had to find a more peaceful means of communication. She suggested that all the Rangers should immediately withdraw from the sandbar and allow her and several other OPS psychics to congregate on the island to attempt telepathic communication.
That was when Ogilvy laid down his cards. Since the Pentagon believed that the object posed a possible threat to national security, it had been decided that an attempt would be made to force entry. Metal-cutting torches used by the Navy for submarine rescue work were being flown in from Groton, Connecticut, along with technicians trained in their use. At 2400 hours, they would be deployed on the sandbar, where they would attempt to penetrate the object’s hull.
Luna objected, and for once Murphy found himself in agreement, albeit for different reasons. They didn’t know what was out there, but the fact that it had deliberately dropped its cloak tended to argue that the craft’s occupants meant no harm. He needed more time to study the object; perhaps it hadn’t come from the Crab Nebula, but neither was it from Tennessee.
Ogilvy had held firm: there would be no further debate on this point. This mission was under Defense Department auspices, and his orders had come from the highest levels. The colonel ended the briefing by telling everyone that chow would soon be served at the roach wagon, and then he closed his notebook and walked away.
Sanchez collared Murphy just before he went in search of a hot and tasty MRE. Although the military was handling the investigation, the FBI had jurisdiction over civilians working on this incident; this meant OPS was now working for the Bureau. Because Murphy hadn’t yet received Top Secret security clearance, he would have to sign a document that would ensure that he wouldn’t disclose anything he had heard or seen to anyone who didn’t have similar clearance. So far as the public was concerned, the incident at Center Hill Lake never happened.
The document would soon be faxed to Sanchez. Once he received it, he would bring it to Murphy for his signature. One look at the agent’s face told Murphy that there was no question whether he would sign it. Not unless he wanted to risk losing his job, let alone being sent to prison.
So dinner had been indigestible and the company worse, and Murphy found himself alone once more. The night was cold, the wind rising now that the sun was down. He pulled up his parka’s hood and looked for a place to hide. The command tent had been taken over by Ogilvy and Sanchez, and he didn’t want to see them right now. He briefly considered taking a quick nap in one of the Army trucks, but realized that he wasn’t tired anyway. His eyes roamed to the distant sandbar, and the silver saucer captured within a circle of floodlights. All things considered, he was tired of looking at the bloody thing; just for a little while, he wanted to get away from all this.
So he decided to take a walk.
It was surprisingly easy to leave camp. No one had placed a guard on him, after all, and he didn’t tell anyone that he was going away. A narrow paved road led uphill from the entrance to the picnic area; although a lone soldier stood watch at its gate, he didn’t obj
ect when Murphy told him that he wanted to take a short stroll and would be back soon. The sentry was there to keep people from sneaking in; since Murphy only wanted to stretch his legs, where was the harm? The sergeant informed him that there was a campground store a half mile up the road, near the top of the hill. It was closed down, of course, but there was a Coke machine out front. Would Murphy mind bringing back a soda for him? Murphy didn’t mind: one ice-cold Dr Pepper, coming up.
The breeze seemed to let up a bit once he was away from the water, but it rattled the bare branches around him. He tasted the scent of winter pine as the night closed in around him; the lights behind him vanished entirely, and he threw back his head to check out the constellations. It would have been a rare treat, since light pollution in the D.C. area forbade any decent stargazing, yet the sky was still overcast. A dark night; even after his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could barely see his own hand when he held it at arm’s length. Too bad.
Before he knew it, he reached the top of the road, where the mellow glow of a forty-watt bulb faintly illuminated a crossroad nestled in a saddleback between two short hills. There was a small general store at the junction, one which undoubtedly offered minnows, Moon Pies, and Orange Crush during season. The windows were shuttered, its door locked, but the porch light had been left on, illuminating the battered Coca-Cola machine between an empty bait tank and a pay phone.
Someone was using the pay phone.
At first he thought it was one of the soldiers, perhaps sneaking a call home to a wife or girlfriend, but when Murphy got closer he saw that the figure wasn’t wearing military gear. Indeed, he seemed to be underdressed for the weather: a dark wool suit and nothing more, not even an overcoat. His back was turned, but even from a distance Murphy could tell that he was shivering in the cold.
