‘It was silvery,’ Miller prompted.
‘I saw nothing,’ the old man growled.
‘You said it was as big as the field.’
‘Jesus Christ… Fucking Jesus!’
The old man kicked his chair back, stood up straight, clutched his head, then let out a terrible anguished scream that lacerated them all. Miller and Epstein stepped back. Stanford glanced at the girl. She smiled and slid her thumb into her mouth, then turned her gaze toward her father. The old man was clutching his head, shaking it wildly and screaming. He suddenly slammed his fist down on the table, swung it back, swept the bottle off. The bottle flew across the room, struck the wall and exploded, the whiskey spraying over Miller and Epstein as they hurried to the front door. Miller pulled the door open. The girl sucked her thumb and hummed. The old man screamed again and grabbed the table and then tipped it over. Epstein followed Miller out. Stanford edged along the wall. The old man grabbed his rifle, swung it wildly around his head, and started sweeping cups and plates off a shelf that ran above the fireplace. Stanford glanced at the girl. She was smiling and humming softly. She was still sucking her thumb and her brown eyes were luminous and teasing. Stanford edged out through the door. The old man screamed and smashed things. Stanford backed into the wind and blowing sand and stumbled down the porch steps. Miller and Epstein were in the jeep, its engine running, the headlights on, and Stanford scrambled into the back, beside Epstein, pouring sweat, his heart pounding. The old man lurched through the doorway, a silhouette in yellow light. He rushed forward and put his hand against an upright and then glared at the three of them.
‘I saw light!’ he shrieked. ‘Light!’
Stanford drove along NASA Highway 1, toward the Manned Spacecraft Center. He felt very strange. He felt terribly alone. Epstein was sitting in the sea right beside him, but he didn’t seem real. Stanford drove fast and recklessly, now ignoring the storm, oppressed by the heat and the noise, obsessed with the girl.
He thought back on what had happened, turned it over in his mind, tried to cast it out and concentrate on his driving, but always returned to the mystery… What had happened back there? What had drawn him to the girl? Was there a connection between the girl’s odd air of distraction and her father’s wild outburst? He recalled the old clutching at his own head, shaking it dementedly from side to side, screaming as if trying to break loose from a terrible anguish. What had actually made him scream? What had made him turn so violent? And what secret did he share with the daughter who sucked her thumb and smiled mindlessly? Stanford tried to think it through. He could only think of the girl. He saw her standing on the porch, in the light from the window, stroking the back of the ankle of one bare foot with the toes of the other. Stanford couldn’t make sense of it. His lust was almost supernatural. It was not based on her breasts and broad thighs, but on her luminous, empty eyes. Stanford felt himself shivering. The howling wind tore at his nerves. He glanced at Epstein, at that lined, bearded face, and wondered what he was thinking.
‘What do you think they saw?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Epstein said.
‘They sure as hell were acting pretty strange.’
‘Yes, they were,’ Epstein said.
‘I think what they saw affected them.’
‘Yes, no doubt it did.’
‘I mean, I think it might have physically affected them.’ ‘You think so?’ Epstein said.
Stanford didn’t reply to that. He didn’t know what to say.
Looking ahead, he saw more clouds of dust sweeping across the dark road. The storm was fierce and unrelenting, blotting out the moon and stars, the spinning dust forming into shapes that seemed almost alive. Stanford cursed again, whispering. The noise and darkness were getting to him. He thought he saw some lights far ahead and that made him feel better.
‘That looks like it,’ he said.
‘The Manned Spacecraft Center?’
‘Yes,’ Stanford said. ‘Straight ahead. You can’t see much from
here.’ Epstein sat up and looked ahead. He thought he saw lights in the distance, but he couldn’t be sure. The dust was everywhere, racing at them and around them, hammering at the car and making it vibrate. Epstein didn’t feel well. He kept thinking of the hundred butchered cattle, the men with faces hidden by masks and goggles. Epstein shivered and coughed and glanced sideways at Stanford; his friend was just a dark form in the night, a faint light in his eyes. Epstein wondered what was wrong: his young friend was too quiet; he sensed a great tension in Stanford and wondered what was causing it. Not the hundred butchered cows. Not the raving old man. Stanford was much tougher than that, was far stronger than he was. Epstein looked again at his friend, heard him murmuring something. He wondered what Stanford was thinking, then he studied the road ahead. He saw the distant lights, shining weakly through the storm, emphasizing the awful desolation of this dark, empty plain.
‘That man, Miller,’ Epstein said. ‘How did you get him to talk. I heard you say something about an apartment. What did you mean by that?’
That finally got a chuckle out of Stanford. ‘God, you’re sharp,’ he said. ‘It’s an apartment that I’ve had for years in Austin, and I let certain friends use it. Miller’s a married man. He’s not a happily married man. I’ve been letting him use the place this past few months for his one great affair. He’s not experienced at that game, so my place is vital to him. He doesn’t want to lose his bit of action, so his tongue started wagging.’
‘That’s blackmail,’ Epstein said.
‘Too true,’ Stanford replied. He chuckled again and looked at the lights ahead and then he started to frown. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘What the hell…?’
Epstein looked ahead and saw the lights through the murk. The car was racing toward them, but the lights remained unchanged: the same size, the same distance away, as if actually pacing them. Epstein sat up very straight. Stanford stepped on the gas. The car roared and raced into the storm, heading straight for the lights. Epstein suddenly felt unreal. He bent forward and strained to see. There were twenty or thirty lights, very weak, not too big, spread out at equal distances in a long line that straddled the road. Stanford cursed and gunned the engine, but the distance between the lights and the car remained exactly the same.
‘Godammit, they’re moving!’ Stanford almost screamed the words. He kept his eyes on the lights. The car raced into the murk, doing seventy miles an hour, but the distance between it and the lights didn’t alter the least.
‘They’re above the road,’ Epstein said. ‘Damned right!’ Stanford exclaimed. ‘They’re a good hundred feet above the road and they’re definitely moving!’
‘How far away do you think they are?’
‘About a quarter mile, I’d say.’
‘Then that line of lights is three hundred feet wide.’
‘Jesus Christ… Jesus Christ!’
Stanford put his foot right down and the car leaped ahead, throwing Epstein back into his seat in an untidy heap. He quickly pushed himself back up, heard the howling, whistling wind, saw the lights in the sky far ahead, glowing through the dense dust clouds. Stanford kept driving, his gaze bright and intense; he went all out, but the distance remained the same, the lights luring him on.
Stanford cursed and kept driving. Epstein held on to his seat. The line of lights was dead straight, very wide, and it kept the same distance from them. There was something weird about it. The car was roaring against the wind. The line of lights appeared not to be moving, but it stayed well ahead of them. Then it suddenly stopped. The lights rushed at them and grew larger. They were glowing down through the dense dust, illuminating the road below.
‘Shit!’ Stanford snapped.
He slammed his foot on the brake pedal, making the car shriek and skid violently around in a spiraling cloud of dust, almost turning full circle. Epstein’s head hit the windscreen, bounced back into the seat, his hands darting out to press against the dashboard as the car continued s
kidding around, its rear facing the motionless lights. Stanford cursed and killed the engine, opened his door and jumped out, was pummeled by the wind and dust and saw the lights rising vertically. Epstein followed him out, wiping blood from his forehead, and they stood there, one at each side of the car, looking up disbelievingly.
The long line of lights was rigid and didn’t sway at all. It was not too far away, about two hundred feet up, the separate lights now yellow, red and blue, glowing through the dust storm. The lights rose slowly, making no discernible sound, growing smaller, moving closer together, then finally merging as one. This one light was long and thin, a shimmering blade of pure whiteness, and it shrank until it looked like a glowing sphere. The glowing sphere slowly climbed above the storm and disappeared in the black sky.
Stanford and Epstein were stunned, glancing wide-eyed at one another. They stood there for a long time, staring up at the sky. Eventually, being pummeled by wind and dust, they went back to the car.
‘Where are we?’ Epstein asked.
‘About a mile from the MSC. I thought that thing was heading straight for it, about to crash into it.’
‘It was low enough,’ Epstein said.
‘Damned right, it was low enough. It was low enough and big enough to level the MSC to the ground.’
‘They must have seen it,’ Epstein said.
‘They couldn’t have missed it,’ Stanford said. ‘Let’s go. I want to find out what’s happening. Those bastards can’t deny this one.’
Stanford drove more carefully now, feeling disorientated, his nerves flayed by the wind and the dust and the night’s weird events. He thought of the girl on the porch, of her luminous, empty eyes, of her firm breasts and naked brown thighs, her belly pressed to the windowsill. His lust returned immediately, a primitive, unreasoning hunger, and he shook his head and tried to think of something else: the old man’s sudden violence… What had descended over the field? Just what had the old man seen? Stanford tried to think it through and failed dismally, his lust growing and blinding him.
Epstein remained silent, feeling stunned and exhilarated, thinking of the vertically climbing lights and their serene, silent beauty. It all seemed fantastic. The whole evening was like a dream. He felt slightly dizzy, coughed a lot and rubbed his eyes, exhausted and excited at once, his heart pounding dramatically. It was his first UFO sighting and it had filled him with awe. He thought of the butchered cattle, of the old man screaming ‘Light!’, and then he wondered if what he had just seen had also materialized over the grazing field.
The storm was almost unnatural and certainly unprecedented; it had emerged from a placid, crimson dusk and showed no sign of abating. Epstein thought of the ascending lights – that line of lights that never swayed – and wondered what kind of object it was that could fly in this storm.
Glancing ahead, Epstein saw another line of lights, slightly obscured behind the dense clouds of dust, hanging dimly in darkness. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, feeling decidedly odd. The lights grew larger and illuminated a fence and a wide metal gate. It was the Manned Spacecraft Center. The lights shone from white buildings. Epstein sighed with relief and then coughed and wiped his lips with a handkerchief.
Stanford drew up to the gate and stopped the car as a guard came toward them. The guard was stooped against the wind, pressing his cap to his head, the dust swirling around him and beating at him, covering his uniform. When Stanford rolled his window down, the dust roared in through the car. The guard’s masked face appeared at the open window, his eyes hidden by goggles.
‘Dr Stanford!’ Stanford shouted, showing the guard his official MSC pass. ‘This here’s Professor Epstein! We have an appointment with Captain Armstrong of the Space Science and Technology Administrative Office!’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the guard said. ‘All appointments have been cancelled. We’re in the middle of a special security exercise and no one’s allowed in.’
‘You don’t understand, corporal… I repeat: We have an appointment.’
‘And I repeat, sir: All appointments have been cancelled. You’ll have to leave now.’
Stanford looked past the guard, saw the closed gate and high fences, the roads between the buildings packed with troops, all heavily armed.
‘A security exercise?’
‘That’s right, sir. Just routine.’
‘That’s an awful lot of men for a routine security exercise. And they’re all heavily armed. What the hell’s going on here?’
The guard’s face was impassive. ‘I’m sorry, sir. You’ll have to leave.’
‘Listen, corporal, we have a serious appointment. Now get on that telephone.’
The corporal straightened up, waved his hand at the guard’s box, and another man, a sergeant, walked out, armed with a rifle.
‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘We have an appointment,’ Stanford said.
‘All appointments have been cancelled,’ the sergeant told him. ‘You’re not allowed in.’
Stanford looked past the sergeant, past the fence, into the complex, saw the troops lined along the linear roads, all studying the sky.
‘Sergeant,’ he said, sounding calmer than he felt, ‘we just saw some very strange lights straddling the road about a mile or so back. They were moving, and then, when we approached them, they climbed vertically– climbed so slowly we couldn’t believe it - then they simply vanished. Any idea what they were?’
‘Probably just a helicopter, sir.’
‘Too big to be a helicopter, sergeant. Try something else.’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘You should have seen them from here, sergeant.’
‘No, sir, we didn’t.’
‘You couldn’t have possibly missed them, sergeant; they formed a very long line.’
‘We haven’t seen anything.’
‘Why are your men scanning the sky, sergeant?’
‘They’re looking for helicopters, sir. It’s a security exercise. They’ve been tasked with reporting the helicopters as soon as they see them.’
‘You have helicopters up there in this storm?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘You think helicopters can fly in this weather?’
‘Yes, sir. I suppose so.’
‘And you’re not going to report the lights we saw?’
‘We haven’t seen any lights, sir. Now please leave the area.’
Stanford nodded, studied the soldiers behind the fence, saw them all staring up at the night sky.
‘Sergeant, please get on that telephone and inform Captain Armstrong that we’re here.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I can’t do that.’
‘What the hell do you mean, you can’t do it?’
‘Captain Armstrong isn’t here, sir. No administrative personnel are allowed in until the end of the exercise.’
‘But he told us to meet him here!’
‘That was probably before he knew about this exercise. He’s not here right now, sir.’
‘Sergeant, we only spoke two hours ago.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘You mean you pulled this security exercise without giving anyone any notice?’
‘Please, sir, you’ll really have to leave now.’
The sergeant straightened up and held the rifle across his chest, squinting down through the dense sand, unprotected by goggles. Stanford glared at him, unwilling to move, then the corporal placed his right hand on his pistol and reached for the door handle. Stanford noticed the gesture, cursed softly and shook his head, then he turned on the ignition, reversed the car sharply, and headed back along NASA Highway 1, cutting a swathe through the storm.
‘Godammit!’ he exclaimed. ‘What the hell’s going on? Those bastards were lying through their teeth. They know something is up there.’
‘They were certainly scanning the sky,’ Epstein said.
‘Damned right,’ Stanford said. ‘They’ve seen something up there and now they’
ve locked the fucking gates and they’ve got that placed looking like a war zone. And now Armstrong… Oh, Jesus!’
He smacked the steering wheel with one hand, shaking his head in frustration, and glanced at Epstein with a dangerous gleam in his eyes.
‘Where are we going?’ Epstein asked.
‘Clear Lake,’ Stanford said. ‘Armstrong lives in Nassau Bay and I’m pretty sure he’s hiding out there right now. I want to talk to that bastard.’
Epstein sank back into his seat and closed his eyes, his exuberance giving way to exhaustion. The car roared and vibrated, pummeled constantly by the storm, and Epstein floated in a weird, light-flecked darkness, now removed from himself. He saw the long line of lights, rising slowly and silently, floating up through the wind and dust with an awe-inspiring majesty. Then he visualised the rancher’s field, the same lights descending quietly, the cattle bellowing in panic and confusion as the dust beat about them… What had happened after that? What had caused the terrible carnage? Indeed, had anything descended at all or had the rancher imagined it…? Epstein coughed and wiped his lips, opened his eyes and surveyed the storm. Clouds of dust swept around the speeding car and raced across the dark flatlands.
‘It’s not like Armstrong,’ Stanford said. ‘I’ve known that guy for years. He’s been passing me information for years, and he’s always been reliable. He told me to meet him there. He’s never missed an appointment. If that was just a security exercise, he’d certainly have known about it and wouldn’t have sent us out there in the first place. Those soldiers are looking for something. They sealed that place off at the last moment. They must have sealed it off just after Armstrong called me, and there must be a reason for that. Armstrong said he had something to tell me. That usually means unidentifieds. I think those soldiers in the MSC and the NASA decontamination team are part and parcel of the very same thing. There’s something over this area.’
GENESIS (Projekt Saucer) Page 15
