Dworkin chuckled. “Mr. Okun, I’m afraid that’s impossible. I believe I’ve already mentioned to you that the energy levels we’re using overheat the circuits and generate intolerably high temperatures.”
Freiling concurred. “He’s right, Breakfast.”
“Brackish. My name is Brackish.”
Freiling didn’t seem to listen. “The inside of the cockpit gets hotter than a skillet. If you touch it, you’ll get burned.”
“Look, guys, I’m young, I’m nimble, I’m a natural athlete. Don’t worry. When it starts getting hot, I’ll get out quick.”
“I won’t allow it.” Dworkin put his foot down. “Mr. Radecker, as director of the lab, would you please forbid this young man from going through with this foolish idea. The temperature inside the craft quickly rises to more than two hundred degrees. He’ll roast. Dr. Lenel, come down off that gun. The experiment is canceled.”
“Stay where you are, Doctor.” Radecker thought about it: No more Okun, no more five-year contract. Without their boy genius, Spelman would have to pull the plug on the project, or at least reorganize. “Mr. Okun, do you honestly think you can get out of there in time?”
Okun’s mind made another odd connection. “Have any of you guys ever seen that show called Thrillseekers? Where these guys crash cars and jump motorcycles over things? Anyways, I saw this one where a guy, a stuntman, walks into a house, a little fake house they built for the stunt, dig? He’s got his crash helmet and these fire-retarding overalls on. So, he waves to the crowd and goes inside. Then these other guys come and set fire to the shack and then throw this honkin’ bundle of dynamite inside. A couple of seconds later, kablooey! The whole thing blows sky-high, and you see the stuntman come flying through the air—Aaaaagh!—in this perfect swan dive, and he lands on this big air mattress. For a minute he just lies there—I might be dead—but then he jumps up and takes a bow.”
“I think I saw that one,” Freiling shouted. “It was at a racetrack.”
“If you have a point to make, why don’t you get to it?” Radecker snapped.
“Are you dense?” Freiling demanded, wheeling around and looking at Radecker like he was the crazy one. “The boy is asking for some safety equipment. He needs a crash helmet and something to land on.”
And fifteen minutes later, that is what he had. Cibatutto had taken a colander from the kitchen, lined the inside with foam padding, and attached a chin strap. By the time this makeshift headgear was ready, Okun and Radecker had created a landing pad by stacking mattresses under the hatchway of the alien ship. Okun strapped on the helmet, climbed the ladder, and practiced diving to safety. It was fun, it was simple, they were ready to go.
When he saw they meant to go through with it, Dworkin announced that he refused to participate and started to leave the hangar.
“Dr. Dworkin,” Radecker called across the room. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Have you already forgotten our deal?” The tall gaunt scientist stood there for a moment while his conscience wrestled with his sense of self-preservation. Finally, he turned around and returned a few steps closer to the ship. “How would the director like me to assist?”
“That’s OK, you can just stand there and watch. Dr. Lenel, why don’t you show me how to work this contraption. I’d like to operate it, if that’s okay with our stuntman.”
Okun realized Radecker was blackmailing the men, holding their embezzlement over their heads like a hatchet. And while it made him sad to see the regal old Dworkin having to kowtow to a man of half his years and a quarter of his IQ, he figured there was nothing he could do about it. Looking completely ridiculous standing next to the spaceship with the big stainless-steel strainer strapped to his head, he offered Radecker a manly thumbs-up, then, after a few deep breaths, climbed the ladder and disappeared into the dark mass of the alien vehicle.
Lenel turned the power dial a tad lower than Okun had requested, then showed Radecker how to activate the power by means of a simple switch. As he turned and stepped off the operator’s platform, Radecker quickly reached down and cranked the power regulator up a full twist to the right. That ought to do the job.
Inside, Okun looked around uncertainly. This was starting to seem like a very bad idea. It wasn’t the power surge that would rip through the ship in a moment; it was the dark interior. Being in there alone, he suddenly felt how foreign, how otherworldly this claustrophobic environment was. There was just enough light seeping through the cabin windows to cast dim shadows across the rounded walls, which were dripping with creepy, semiorganic technology. It felt more like a mausoleum than a flying machine. He was on the verge of chickening out, but instead he pulled on his goggles and yelled down through the hatch that he was ready.
As soon as the power switched on, the same loud crack ripped through the ship, knocking Okun slightly off-balance. He reached out to steady himself on the wall. All across the instrument panel lights snapped on, including the shell screen Cibatutto had shown him. He jerked his hand away from the wall when he felt it swell to life under his palm. Unfortunately, the momentum of his arm combined with the uncertainty of his feet to cause the natural athlete to trip once over his left foot, then immediately again over his right, all of it taking him farther away from the escape door. His stumbling landed him flat-ass on the floor directly in front of the shell screen, where he saw something that scared the bejesus out of him. A picture filled the vein-laced screen, a fuzzy, distorted image of a giant Y rising straight out of the ground. The alien technology gave this image a visual texture unlike any Okun had seen before. The picture spoke to him. Not with words, but in emotional terms. For reasons he would never fully understand, this simple image communicated a deep emotional sensation that hit him like a punch in the gut. It seemed like the loneliest, most desolate thing he’d ever seen in his life. He got the sense this great Y-shape was somehow an instrument of torture, an enemy. But at the same time, it was beckoning Okun, urgently calling for him to come. His plan to check the other instruments completely forgotten, Okun sat on the floor, mesmerized by the picture and his strong emotional response to it. Later he would be able to joke about the moment, likening it to reading a travel brochure for Hell written by Samuel Beckett, but at the moment he was in trouble. The temperature inside the ship was rising fast. Fortunately, something nearby started moving. The steering controls, that neatly folded stack of bones, opened itself and twitched to life like a pair of giant lobster legs. This distraction saved his life, occurring as it did just as a butt-bubbling wave of heat suddenly rose in the floor. In one giant stride, Okun crossed the cockpit and dived through the hatch, landing facefirst on the mattress.
Radecker switched off the power.
The scientists looked at the long-haired daredevil stuntman-cum-lab worker and waited for a sign that he would live. His exit from the ship could not fairly be called a swan dive, but it was pretty close, especially for a beginner, so the gentlemen were expecting him to leap up any moment and take a bow.
“Mr. Okun?… Mr. Okun?…”
5
INTO THE STACKS
Standing on a chair with his pants around his ankles and his ass toward the bathroom mirror, Okun examined his burns. The doctor who examined him upstairs in the hangar had assured him they weren’t serious. But they were painful enough to keep him from sitting down for a few days. He gingerly pulled up his trousers, then examined his new piece of jewelry. He’d attached the ankh-shaped gizmo he’d found in the ship to a piece of leather string to make himself a necklace. He admired his new treasure in the mirror. “Groovy,” he nodded. Then, feeling hungry, he went looking for food.
“Howdy, hot pants,” Lenel barked out for the benefit of the other scientists when Okun wandered into the kitchen. The young men ignored the comment. He grabbed a box of cereal and lay down, belly first, on the daybed they’d brought in for him.
Cibatutto couldn’t resist cracking a joke of his own. “We were going to have hot dogs for lunch,” he sniggered, “but
we can’t seem to find any toasted buns!” The old men howled with laughter.
“Fortunately,” Dworkin added, “it looks as though there’s plenty of rump roast.” This witticism brought on yet another round of guffaws.
When they were finished, Okun turned a jaundiced eye on them and tried out a one-liner of his own. “Hardy har har. You guys are so hilarious, you should work in Vegas. Call yourselves ‘Jerry’s kids’—Jerry Atrics, that is.” The scientists didn’t get it. “As in Geriatrics? Oh, forget it.” The men had been in the hole too long to know anything about the telethon.
For the next ten minutes, these distinguished gentlemen of science devoted their attention to the creation of one butt joke after another. The wisecracks were their way of welcoming Okun into their clique. He’d passed a major test the day before. Although he hadn’t exactly spilled blood for the good of the project, he’d brought it to the surface of his skin, and that was close enough.
Freiling called for everyone’s attention. “OK, Brecklish, I got one for you.” He smiled devilishly. “I made it up myself.”
“Brackish. The name is Brackish.”
Freiling seemed to blank out for a moment. “Now I forgot the damn joke! No, wait, I got it. Why did the newspaper editor call the lobster?”
Brackish knew he was supposed to ask why. The Y! “Oh my God,” he burst out, “I didn’t tell you guys what I saw inside the ship!” He turned to Cibatutto. “You know that yellowy shell instrument deal with the all the little whatchamacallits running through it?”
Cibatutto nodded.
“When the energy came through the ship, it had a picture on it, and—I don’t want you guys to think I’m a complete weirdo for telling you this, but—it was giving off feelings, emotions. Seriously, it was like the visual image was only one part of a larger message. There was another layer of communication going on, something meant to be felt—desperation, doom, abandonment, something like that. Now that I think about it, it might have been some kind of SOS, a distress call.”
This announcement dramatically changed the mood in the kitchen. “That would fit nicely with your second-ship theory,” Dworkin pointed out, skeptical.
“Did this image look like anything in particular?” Lenel inquired.
“You bet. It looked like a Y. Like a big old honkin’ letter Y standing out in the middle of nowhere.” His audience reacted strangely to this last bit of information, exchanging wide-eyed looks. “What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?”
Before anyone could answer, Radecker’s footsteps came clacking down the hallway. Dworkin looked quickly across the table and put his index finger to his lips, telling Okun to keep this news quiet.
“It took all day, but I finally got Spelman on the phone,” Radecker announced, marching straight to the fridge and fishing out a soda.
“And?”
“Well, I didn’t explain all the particulars. I just told him we’d proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that the ship can’t fly.”
“And?”
“I don’t think he believed me. He said, ‘Your assignment is to get that ship to fly.’ So I said, ‘I’m telling you it cannot and will not fly.’ ‘Well, sir, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re assigned to the project for a five-year term or until such time as blah blah blah.’ So I asked him what he would like for us to be doing out here. And you know what the son of a female dog says to me? He goes, ‘You’ve got four years, eleven months, and twenty-six days to figure that one out for yourselves. Stay in touch.’” Radecker sat down with the others at the table and drowned his sorrows in a long slug of soda.
“Did you happen to mention the matter of our finances?” Dworkin inquired gingerly.
“Not yet,” he said, with a look which suggested he still might. Glancing over his shoulder, he noticed Okun across the room, preoccupied with a reexamination of his burns Radecker leaned in and whispered to the scientists, “I might be able to keep you guys off the hook. It didn’t sound like Spelman plans to come out here for a visit anytime soon, so we might be able to just start killing off the other names on the payroll one by one. Every couple of months, we’ll call the Treasury Department and say another one has died. By the way, I saw your life insurance policy. Cute trick naming one another beneficiaries. How did you ever get a policy like that?”
“Our banking friends in Las Vegas are very flexible.”
“Also, it sounds like you guys can get everything you want in the way of materials and equipment—as long as Boy Wonder over there approves it.”
“I don’t understand,” Dworkin whispered back. “Our appropriations have to be approved by Mr. Okun?”
Radecker rolled his eyes as if to agree that the idea was ludicrous. “Spelman was pretty clear. Whatever Okun needs in the way of research materials will be automatically OKed.”
Lenel asked, “So why do you say we can get anything we want?”
“Oh, please,” Radecker said dismissively. “Look at this punk. He’ll do whatever I tell him to, and if he doesn’t obey, I’ll make his life miserable.” An idea occurred to him. “Now, listen up. I respect you guys, and I think we can work together. I’ll try to help you out with hiding the names of these dead guys. And I want just one thing in exchange.” The CIA operative leaned in even closer and explained what he expected of the gray-haired men. When he was finished, he looked them in the eyes, one by one. “Are we all agreed on that?”
“What are you guys talking about?” Okun called from his daybed. No one answered, so he asked again. Finally Radecker turned around.
“We’re discussing how we’re going to get this ship to fly. I just talked to my boss, and he’s convinced you can do it.”
“I can,” Okun replied. “Just have your boss send us another ship exactly like the one we’ve got, and our problems will be solved.”
“There aren’t any other ships.”
“Well”—Okun grimaced as he rolled onto his side—“there are other ships. We might not have any of them, but there must be other ships. Otherwise, the aliens couldn’t have come to Earth.”
“Sorry, pal. That’s not the way it works. I can’t tell you how I know, but I have it on very good authority that this ship came here alone.”
Okun snorted. “Right. Who’s your authority, some palm reader?”
“Military intelligence,” Radecker fired back, not liking the younger man’s tone.
“Military intelligence?” Okun asked. “Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Who are you going to believe, a bunch of Army dudes or what you saw with your own eyes? Our experiment showed the ship can’t fly without other ships just like it. It’s proved.”
Radecker shrugged as he stood up. “All I know is what they tell me. And they tell me there was no second ship. From now on our official position is that there are no additional ships.” With that he left the room.
Okun wasn’t finished with the discussion. He threw his legs over the side of the bed and was about to follow Radecker down the hall when he realized he was sitting on his burns. His face contorted into a silent howl as he lifted his buns away from the blanket. When his posterior pain subsided, he appealed to his senior coworkers. “There’s got to be a second ship, right? In fact, there must have been at least three ships at Roswell. If there were only two, both of them would have gone down. When this one crashed, it would have broken the power relay and knocked the other one down. Besides, what about all these people that say they’ve seen UFOs? Don’t they all describe something that looks remarkably similar to the one we’ve got?”
Okun was angry and started pacing the kitchen as he talked. It was a side of himself he hadn’t shown the others until that moment. It wasn’t Radecker’s ignorance of technical matters that bothered him. It was being told what he could and could not think. The idea that future research on the spacecraft would be limited by some anonymous panel of military experts really chapped his ass, so to speak. And then there was that phrase Radecker had used, I can’t tell you how I kno
w. “There’s some kind of government conspiracy going on,” he burst but. “It’s the man, the establishment, the system. See what I’m saying?”
None of the scientists knew quite how to respond to their companion’s ranting. “In fact,” Dworkin said, “except for our latest experiment, there is little evidence to support your multi-ship theory.”
“But that’s all the evidence we need!… Isn’t it?” He could see the scientists were avoiding making eye contact with him. “You said it yourself yesterday: this ship cannot fly without the presence of another.”
Dworkin hesitated, then finally replied. “It’s possible that we’ve misinterpreted the results.”
“OK, what’s going on here?” Okun stood over the elderly gentlemen like an impatient schoolmaster who’d caught them hiding something. “This is about those paychecks for the dead men, isn’t it. Radecker’s holding it over your heads.” Of course, that was exactly what was happening. But none of them would admit it out loud.
Lenel was fed up with the whole idiotic situation. “You want to look for a second ship? Follow me.” He marched out of the room, and, after a moment of hesitation, Okun followed him. The grizzled scientist led the way through the maze of halls toward the steel doors to the outside, muttering under his breath the whole while. Instead of turning toward the exit, however, Lenel stopped in the long hallway that the scientists used for storage and gestured toward the crates and filing cabinets pushed against the walls.
“We call this mess the stacks. In these boxes you’ll find every government document associated with our research. You name it, it’s in there. That means every scientific report, every position paper from DC, every memo, every police report on sightings, reported abductions, strange dreams, everything. Anything and everything that has to do with extraterrestrial life-forms.”
Nodding, Okun surveyed the room. He did a quick calculation and guesstimated there were two hundred crates full of documents, each one holding about twenty reams of paper. At five hundred sheets per ream that meant there were about two million pieces of paper. Adding in the filing cabinets would bring that number closer to three million. “You might want to change the name from the stacks to something like the piles. Does anyone actually read this stuff?”
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 36
