by Stan Mason
‘Trust in God,’ he whispered. ‘He is with us here at this very moment looking down at us... safeguarding us.’
Thunder Cloud glanced at his second-in-command and made a brief nod of his head. The brave whooped and yelped as he ran forward with a number of others setting fire to the wooden cabins within the fort. When they had done this, they returned to their chief’s side. Thunder Cloud raised a long spear and threw it by the side of Strut as if to intimidate him watching it quiver in the ground. The Quaker seemed unmoved by the action. His faith was stronger than anything material in this world. If God wanted to claim him, then it was his turn to die.
‘We believe in God and all his wonders,’ exclaimed Strutt proudly, seemingly completely unafraid of the armed Red Indian who sat on his horse before him. ‘Do what you wish to us because we are guided by the will of our God in Heaven.’
The Indian chief stared at him thoughtfully. He had no idea what the white man was saying but he could see that he was unafraid to die and full of courage. At first, he thought about capturing the Strutts and taking them back to the reservation. He could either kill the man where he stood or tie him to a stake and make him work with the women. After all, the white man was big and strong. However, it was the white woman who caused him most concern. She was extremely weak and thin... too thin to work, too thin to take as a wife. The children were very young and could be brought up with those of his own tribe. Then he thought about the man once more and his courage to stay at the fort when all the soldiers had retreated somewhere to safety. Either the man was insane or he was extremely brave and wanted to die with his family. Nothing that was happening that morning was conceivable to the chief’s mind. Firstly, instead of entering into battle with the white soldiers, he had found the fort empty. Secondly, instead of the fort being deserted, he had found one man, one woman, and two children completely unarmed waiting to be sacrificed. He was a warrior. It wasn’t his way to fight and he didn’t intend to become involved. Consequently, to the Quaker’s surprise, the chief pressed his knees into his horse to move forward as he plucked a white feather from his head-dress. He leaned down and placed it in the breast pocket of the Quaker’s shirt before muttering something in his own language which Strutt took to be a commendation of courage. Then, without hesitation, he picked up his spear, turned his horse around, called out to his warriors, and they all departed from the fort poste-haste.
The Quaker kissed his wife on the lips and then did the same to his two children. God was the deliverer. He had ensured their safety when all the soldiers at the fort had deserted it. After eating their breakfast, they loaded up their small gig and, with the horse installed at the front, soon went on their way, north-west to Amarillo. When they arrived there, Strutt made some enquiries and shortly found Brother Beckingham, the man who had written to him. Within two days, he became employed on a full-time basis in the zinc smelting factory.
‘Brother,’ he asked one day during their lunch break. ‘What is the significance of a white feather when it is given to a person by a Red Indian?’
Beckingham thought for a few moments before replying. ‘Well, brother,’ he answered. ‘If it’s given to thee by a white man, it’s a sign of cowardice. However, if it’s given by a Red Indian, it’s considered to be a sign of great courage. One would have to do something very great, very great indeed, to be awarded such an honour.’
Strutt nodded and fell into deep thought. It wasn’t as though he had showed courage. God had granted it to him and his family. He continued to work hard for three years at the factory. However, he realised eventually that he had a great gift for helping other people. There was much more he could do for them. Consequently, after a further two years of helping in the community, he became involved in politics, becoming the duly elected the Mayor of Amarillo. As he sat in his office, he gazed at the picture frame fixed on the wall opposite his desk which contained the large white feather given to him by Thunder Cloud for his courage to stand against the Commanche tribe unarmed with his wife and two children at Fort Worth. Underneath he had arranged for an inscription which read: “A Gift from God”. Not that he considered the Red Indian Chief a deity but that his life, and those of his wife and children, had been saved by the Almighty as a result of sound faith. As such, the feather acted as a reminder that his life was a gift from God!
The Large Green Egg
In life, many things happen which are beyond human understanding and belief. At times when they do occur, rational explanation is often absent while reason and logic are questioned without receiving any kind of satisfactory answer. Such events seem to occur without warning and with insufficient cause or explanation for a rational conclusion. These phenomenal activities tend to be listed under the title of ‘mysteries’. They tend to include such manifestations as poltergeists, ghosts, UFOs, out of body experiences, spontaneous human combustion, black holes in space, details of previous existence, extra-sensory perception, monsters which appear out of thin air... such as the Loch Ness in Scotland ... and even the topic of life after death. These observations and experiences are way beyond the normal parameters in which people pursue their ordinary lives and it is quite likely that human-beings will continue to remain ignorant of the true answers on all these matters for eternity for they are totally beyond our knowledge, understanding, activities and concept. However, whenever they do occur, they always tend to cause surprise, discomfort, sometimes pain and often mental anguish. Those who explain the evidence of their phenomenal experiences to others are regularly ridiculed and humiliated, despite the fact that they claim to have actually witnessed the events and often suffered at the hands of some unknown spirit, spectre, pixie, or alien. These occurrences which are regarded by most as irrational, matter little to those who never have to face the unknown, although a large number of people could claim to have seen the large green egg.
Torpeton nestled neatly in a valley in Hertfordshire. It was a small village which boasted one hundred and twenty houses, a butcher shop, a convenience store, a boutique, and a local inn. There was a small brickworks located a short distance away from the village but the main claim to fame was the location of a large government research establishment which had been established at the bottom end of the main street offering employment to clerical and cleaning staff for the local residents.
One Saturday morning, on an auspicious occasion when the local football team awoke to prepare to play their first round game in the Hertfordshire Cup, a strange phenomenon occurred. In the street, outside the gates of the government research establishment, there appeared what could be described only as a very large egg. It was pale green in colour, oval-shaped, about ten feet high and twenty feet in length. Its surface was completely smooth and no joins were evident on any part of it. It simply lay alone in the street without anyone in attendance or claiming to be responsible for it. The first person to find it touched its smooth exterior and ran his hand along it before attempting to push it, to roll it out of the path of traffic passing through the village, but it refused to budge as though fixed firmly to the ground. He stood back in dismay until joined by other people who stared at the object in disbelief. A great deal of speculation emerged and then someone suggested that they telephone for the police. There was no means by which one could estimate its weight but, due to the fact that it couldn’t be rolled in any direction, it was clearly extremely heavy. How it managed to end up in Torpeton was a mystery in itself but even more strange was the fact that no one saw any vehicle on which it might have been carried, nor did they observe anyone placing it in the street at the end of the village. It had simply appeared out of nowhere.
The egg sat quite still outside the perimeter of the building which meant that it was beyond the range of the cameras in action set at specific points of the compound. As a result, nothing concerning its delivery or placement had been captured on film. But why had it arrived at that particular point a short distance away from the main fr
ont gate of the government research establishment? And what was it supposed to represent? Could it be a practical joke played by the local amateur dramatic society who were famed for their ridiculous pranks? If so, it would not receive any accolades from the residents. However, there were no banners or placards which were the trademark of the company when they wished to advertise their next stage production.
A crowd gathered very quickly filled with a kind of morbid curiosity and there was a great deal of bustling and excitement as though they were witnessing a meteorite which had crashed to earth. However, no one there was able to provide any kind of realistic answer to the reasons for its appearance. The large green egg seemed to have been laid by a giant bird and had fallen to the ground from the sky but such a theory was badly flawed because the egg had remained intact... it had failed to break on impact. In any case, not since prehistoric monsters flew across the face of the earth had anyone seen a bird of such proportions able to produce an egg of this size. So how had this phenomenon happened and what was it all about?
It wasn’t long before three police cars arrived on the scene whereby six officers emerged to come face to face with the phenomenon. Without hesitation, they forced the crowd to stand well back asking them to keep clear, believing that the egg might contain a bomb. After sharing this view with the public at large, they soon ensured that everyone in the village gave the egg a very wide berth. After going close, the Chief Inspector examined it carefully. It was smooth to the touch, almost gentle, yet it was a forbidding object and possibly highly dangerous. He walked back to the crowd to try to obtain some cogent information.
‘Does anyone know anything about this thing?’ he shouted to all and sundry. ‘Is anyone here responsible for it?’
There was absolute silence as no one held up their hand or shouted out some explanation. In the absence of any reply, the Chief Inspector knew that the next step was one of precaution. He used his manual telephone to contact the demolition unit in a nearby town which quickly alerted a bomb squad to examine the object. After all, the egg might well be some kind of high-explosive device which had been deposited by a terrorist although no one could fathom who would want to produce such and object and then leave it laying by itself in the middle of the road. It couldn’t have simply fallen off the back of a lorry. The only objective a terrorist might have had was to blow up the government research establishment. However, the Chief Inspector was at a loss to fathom the reason for doing so. There were no experiments being carried on inside against animals. No nuclear materials of any kind were ever used at the base. No chemical products were being processed in any part of the establishment for the purpose of warfare. The only activities carried out were new ideas which were being tested to secure new consumer products for marketing purposes worldwide. Therefore why would anyone want to blow up this particular building? It didn’t make sense! The bomb squad arrived in due course and, after examining the egg, its commander, Captain Orkell, removed his cap and scratched his head. He had been responsible for disarming hundreds of bombs, rockets and mines which had survived the Second World War and considered that he had knowledge of every known explosive device but he had never seen anything quite like this before in his life. The surface of the egg was smooth all over and there appeared to be no visible joins whatsoever. Normally, there was a panel which could be opened to show numerous wires, clocks and devices, but he was unable to find any way into the egg. He pressed his hand against the side of the object trying to force it to roll over but it refused to budge as though fixed firmly to the ground. Then he turned on his geiger-counter to check whether any radiation was being emitted but the instrument remained completely silent. It clearly wasn’t a nuclear bomb unless the deadly warhead had been shielded inside by a thick lead lining. He had to admit to himself that this particular call was proving to be extremely testing and highly enigmatic.
‘Any idea what it is?’ asked the Chief Inspector as Orkell walked back to take a long view of the egg.
‘Not a clue,’ responded the other man. ‘But I don’t think it’s a bomb. It seems to have been made as a complete unit. I don’t think it has any workings. How the hell did something like that get here? And why in this village?’
‘We’re checking a few leads at the moment but no one seems to know,’ commented the police officer dismally, although he didn’t really have a clue or a lead to follow.
At that moment, a short man wearing a trilby hat broke through the ranks of the spectators watching the scene. He approached the two men in uniform before staring at the object, pulling out a pen and notepad. ‘I’m Stephen Alcock of the Daily Forum,’ he announced boldly. ‘What is this weird thing and how on earth did it get here?’
‘I’m open to any ideas you may have, Mr. Alcock,’ returned the police officer frankly. ‘We took a call thirty minutes ago and you can see what we found. One large green egg.’
‘Is it some kind of a bomb?’ asked the reporter anxiously.
‘That’s yet to be determined,’ stated Orkell solemnly. ‘It’s baffling. There doesn’t seem to be any joins in it, nor any compartments which can be opened. Not anywhere.’
‘Sounds serious,’ muttered the newspaperman excitedly. On what promised to be a dull morning in the office, he was suddenly faced with a fantastic scoop. ‘Well maybe it’s something that’s come from outer space... like a UFO. I mean, it’s not a meteorite. And as it’s all in one piece it may have come from another planet. Have you considered that possibility yet?’ He turned to a tall man following him with a camera. ‘Take a few photographs of it, Ed, from all sides,’ he called out. ‘This is front page stuff. A large green egg lands in the UK from another planet. I can just see the headlines now. Wow! What a scoop!’ He turned to the other two men again. ‘Any idea what might be inside it?’
There was no reply. Neither the police officer nor the bomb commander were obligated to offer any information to the Press and they declined to do so.
‘I’m not giving up that easily,’ declared Orkell. ‘I’m going to check it again with my number two.’ He called out to another member of his crew and the subordinate leapt forward at the command. Together they walked to the egg examining the outside extremely carefully as they searched for a means to find a way inside the object. In due course, they both shook their heads, shrugging their shoulders with frustration.
‘Not a single opening,’ stated the number two, his face puckering up into a frown. ‘Nor any markings or panels or obvious ways of getting inside the thing. I’ve never seen anything like this before. What the hell is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied his chief, banging on the shell more fiercely to try to determine its density. ‘Listen to that sound when I strike it. It’s not hollow.’ He shrugged his shoulders again aimlessly. ‘Well, it’s not a job for us, that’s for sure. If it is a bomb there’s nothing we can do with it. I reckon it might be some kind of a hoax. Alternatively, that reporter may be right. It might have come here from some far distant planet.’
‘Surely you don’t believe it could come from outer space!’ countered his assistant in disbelief.
‘Well, let’s examine the facts more closely. The shell appears to be impregnable. We can’t even scratch the surface. The egg’s filled with something that’s very heavy. There are no markings and you can’t shift it. It’s huge in size and it’s standing here in the middle of the road in a small village in Hertfordshire. If it came from space it must have landed here of its own accord because there’s no dent in the road. Now, you tell me what you make of all that?’
Number two shook his head slowly. He was completely baffled like everyone else. To check the commander’s comment about the surface, he took a screwdriver from his pocket and tried to force it sharply into the shell but it made no impression whatsoever. ‘I don’t get it,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I just don’t get it.’
They walked back to the Chief Inspector gl
umly telling him that they could do nothing to assist him in the the situation. They had no idea whether or not it was a bomb. If it was, they were helpless because they had no means by which to disable it.
‘I don’t believe it is a bomb because of its size,’ declared Orkell ponderously. ‘It’s far too big to load onto an aircraft or a submarine and it’s emitting no radiation whatsoever. Not according to my geiger-counter. I’ve no idea what it is but, in my opinion, it’s relatively safe to move it without fear of it exploding.’
‘Move it!’ echoed the police officer. ‘Move it where?’
‘I don’t know,’ retorted the bomb commander acidly, ‘but you’ll have crowds here later on to see the first round of the Hertfordshire Football Cup. You’ll have to do something.’
‘But we don’t have anywhere to put it. This is a residential area with a government research establishment at one end of the village.’
