Roswell Fanatics

Hangar 23
Holloman Air Force Base, NM

The radio played in the background as the engineers carefully laid out the busted remnants of what once had been a Beechcraft 1900D.

“This is KNMZ AM and FM – classic rock for the entire Tularosa Basin – now interrupting our playlist of classic songs of the 60's, the 70's, and the 80's for a little brief weather and news.

Right now the temperature in sunny Alamogordo is 58 degrees and we are looking for a high in the low 60s later this afternoon. Since the clouds from that thunderstorm have now cleared out of here we are looking for it to be clear and cold tonight, getting down to the mid-30's here in town, but colder temperatures are expected in the higher surrounding areas with hard freeze warnings in Cloudcroft, High Rolls, Carrizozo and Mescalero.

But that's just a hint of what we have coming later in the week Tomorrow Alamogordo is expecting a high only reaching 52 degrees and a low tomorrow night of 28 degrees. It looks like that weather patern stays with us pretty much the rest of the week with highs in the low 50's and lows in the mid to high 20's, but hopefully we will get a little improvement by Saturday with highs reaching up to the mid 60's, persisting through the weekend and the early part of next week.

On the news front, Search and Rescue personnel continue their work in the Lincoln National Forest where the recent severe thunderstorm lead to an avalanche that devastated an RV camp. Fortunately, there were no fatalities and the two serious injuries have both been evacuated to the El Paso trauma center. Search and rescue personnel continue in their efforts to evacuate the remaining forty or so campers from their Recreational vehicles which now appear to be stranded in the park until rather extensive road repairs are possible on Forest Road 247.

More locally, Both the Air Force and the National Transportation Safety Board will be investigating the tragic crash of Air Mesa Flight 526, a twin-turboprop aircraft with twelve people on board. The crash apparently occurred after a midair collision with an F-117A during last night's thunderstorm. It appears that all aboard the airliner perished in that tragic mishap. The F-117A was able to limp back to Holloman after the crash with rather extensive damage to one wing. The pilot of that aircraft is in good condition. The names of those on the airliner have been withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Now returning us to our regular programming, we start with a top 40 hit from 1973 by Cher....

I was born in the wagon of a travelin' show
My mama used to dance for the money they'd throw
Papa would do whatever he could
Preach a little gospel
Sell a couple bottles of Doctor Good

Gypsies, tramps and thieves
We'd hear it from the people of the town …

“Somebody want to shut that damn thing off?” asked the NTSB team leader.

Robert Hamilton saw one of the engineers reach over to the radio and snap it off. After that all eyes were on the team leader.

“OK, listen up – the Air Force has already done a lot of our housekeeping sort of stuff for us – we have a hangar for storage and reassembly, several working areas, billeting and rental cars. What we don't have yet is all the teams filled out. We have teams filled out for powerplant and airframe, but the avionics rep won't get here until tomorrow morning, and our human factors people probab ly not for another twenty-four hours. Team leaders need to identify any deficiencies of personnel or equipment they have to me by end of business today, and we'll get to work on them in the morning. Any major show-stopper type of gripes right now?”

Around the room no hands went up and Bob saw a number of heads turn from side to side.

“OK, for those who haven't met him, this is Robert Hamilton. Bob is our makee-learnee this trip, so I'd appreciate you sharing what your teams doe with him. We'd like him to get as good an experience of what we do here as possible, because within the next six months or so he'll be on the team. That'll do it for right now – back to work – team leaders see me sometime in the next couple hours.”

Bob watched the team leader come toward him.

“It's going to be slow right now – it always starts that way. Once the full teams are here it'll go a lot faster. But that gives us a chance for you to get with the radar people and the Air Force investigators – see if you can't track down as close as possible to the actual mid-air position. Tomorrow morning we need to get you and some other searchers out looking for debris at that impact site. The Air Force has said they'll put a helicopter at our disposal for tomorrow.”

“Yessir,” said Bob, “I'll get right on it....”



It had been three hours since lunch and they had traveled almost two miles – and their shoes were almost shot. The Carizzoza Malpais was known to tear boots apart. Their running shoes weren't anywhere near that tough.

“I'm not sure what we can do,” said Liz, looking at her shoes, “...but we sure can't travel much farther on these...”

“Well, we'll have to fix them somehow,” said Max.

Liz looked around and saw the Cholla Cactus.

“I wonder if we could somehow use this – it's got a pretty tough skeleton,”she said.

Liz bent over and picked up one of the long-dead cholla skeletons.

“I heard that the guy who made Nike made his original shoes in his wife's waffle iron by pouring urethane in. If you could somehow melt this stuff into the soles of the shoes, maybe we could wear away this rather than the sole itself. There's also some guayule here. That's been used to provide latex commercially. Maybe that would give you enough additional latex to some how stick on the cholla wood – or at least some pieces of it.”

It might work,” said Max,”...and it sure can't hurt to try.”

After thirty minutes of gathering materials and Max separating latex from the guayule and putting a choola skeleton laminate on the bottoms, their shoes were both back in workable condition. They continued walking toward the east - Liz helped along by a cholla skeleton walking stick – now with only about two and a half hours of daylight left.

“We still need to look for stuff for dinner,” said Max. “...and then we are going to need to find some shelter before nightfall.”

“Well, there's still plenty of prickly pears,” said Liz, “... but good luck finding any sort of shelter.”

As far as either could see in front of them there was only a sheet of lava broken only by isolated islands of low brush.

“Well, we'll have to find something,” said Max, “...because when the sun goes down it's going to get cold fast, and neither one of us is dressed for it.”

It was after school and the middle schoolers and the high school kids congregated at the Crashdown just as they did on every ordinary weekday afternoon. Of course, it wasn't just any afternoon. The kids in the dining room knew that – even before the Evanses showed up.

Roswell was still a small community, and the word of the crash of Air Mesa Flight 526 had shocked everyone – especially the classmates of the two teenagers who had been aboard that aircraft. They'd been numb throughout most of the day – just staring at the vacant seats where Max and Liz should have been sitting. Isabel's seat had been empty as well – no one had actually expected her in school that day. Nobody had expected her to come to the Crashdown either – most of them had just gone there without conscious thought – just what you did on a Monday after school.

When the Evans family – what was left of it at least – came in the door, it didn't look like any of them had slept the preceding night. The adults were soon in the back room, talking about what they had heard and deciding what they should do – but Isabel couldn't go back there with them. The pain was too great, the wound was too fresh. She sat in a vacant booth with her elbows on the table and her head in her hands and the tears slowly trickled down her face.

Even as a middle schooler, Isabel was extremely attractive – the one that almost all the boys fantasized about in their dreams and daydreams. She also already had a reputation as a budding Ice Princess – certainly not someone approachable. Normally that was just the way she liked it – but this was scarcely normally. But there she sat in solitude her heart breaking – more alone right now then she'd ever been in her life.

Alex watched her from across the room. She was his dream girl – although in fact they barely knew one another. But he'd dreamed about her countless times. Not the crude dreams and daydreams of his peers - graphically sexual in content with the subject of their dream invariably either being an unwilling participant or lascivious to an extent that went well beyond crude. No, Alex's dreams hadn't been like that – not at all. They had been strolls hand-in-hand along golden beaches and dancing – dancing in ballroooms and under the open sky surrounded by all the constellations. Oh, Alex didn't really know her – for all his dreams of her – and had never considered her anyone he could aspire to. He was a geek and she was the most attractive girl in the school. Normally he wouldn't have dared even try to talk to her. But there was nothing normal about today – and with a heavy heart he went over and sat on the bench beside her.

“Isabel, I am so terribly sorry,” said the voice beside her. Isabel looked up from her hands.

She had never admitted to herself how much she needed him – never wanted to believe how desperately her sanity depended on those dreamwalks with Alex. She had told herself it was only a lark – but somehow she'd always known it was more important to her than that.

“I'm sorry for you, too, Alex. I know you and Liz were close.”

Alex nodded. He'd have never guessed that Isabel had noticed he and Liz were such good friends – he hadn't been altogether too sure she knew his name was Alex. The next part surprised him even more.

The loneliness was overwhelming and the tears came freely now and as she started to sob he wrapped his arms around her – not quite remembering that this wasn't a dream until her head was on his shoulder and he was being hugged back.

Her sobs almost broke his heart and he caressed her hair softly as his arms enfolded her and rocked her softly to comfort her.

The room grew quiet as all of the students watched the geek make a fool of himself with the Ice Princess – waiting for the explosion – but it never happened. She looked up at him and he took a napkin and blotted her tears.

“I wish,” he said, looking in to her eyes,”... that I could somehow make it all better, Isabel, but I know I can't.”

“I think that will take a long, long time, Alex, but you being here for me helps. Can I just keep my head on your shoulder for a little while longer?”

“Keep it there as long as you like.”

She kept her head there until her parents came back from talking to the Parkers. It didn't stop her from hurting – maybe nothing would ever stop her from hurting, she realized. But Alex helped – just like he always helped when she was feeling so alone. Somehow being with Alex always made everything a little better.

It was an hour before dark when they decided to stop walking and prepare dinner. They had reached the edge of a later lava flow that had cooled quickly and left a ridge of lava three feet deep across their eastward path. But apparently the lee of the ridge somehow allowed the infrequent sandstorms to fill up the adjacent area with the sand and dust that gave purchase and nourishment to vegetation. It was relatively plentiful there.

“You know,” said Liz, “...that's agave. We could use that...”

“And I thought you had your fill of tequila Saturday night,” came the quick reply – followed by a quick jab of her fist into his right tricep.

“Oww! What did you do THAT for?”

“If I never so much as taste tequila for the rest of my life it will be too soon,” said Liz. “Uhh -thanks, by the way, for what you did Saturday night.”

“Forget it, Liz. To tell the truth, I already have.”

“That's not the sort of thing someone can forget, Max.”

“Yes it is. I meant it – all the stuff that the policeman said about me doing mouth-to-mouth...? I can't remember it. Apparently I'm more sensitive than you are to tequila. I remember seeing Drevins leave the room and going in to it – I remember you not breathing and starting to – you know, like we learned in CPR class – and then the taste of tequila on your lips, and – well, there I was in the jail ward with the guard telling me I'd smashed Drevins face in. That's the thing that really bothers me. I don't even have the satisfaction of remembering hitting Drevins.”

He knew as he said it that it was only partly true. The thought of his lips pressed firmly against hers – sharing the very air they breathed – now THAT was a memory worth having. Only he didn't. Which was possibly just as well. He had been strangely happy all day – knowing that she knew the truth and didn't fear him. Even the punch in the shoulder made him happy – that he could kid Liz and she could even punch him in the shoulder - not worrying for a moment that his difference was a threat to her.

But that alone – that was far more than he'd ever believe could possibly happen. No, Max put the thought of those lips against his out of his mind. It was enough just knowing she could know his secret and still remain his friend. He couldn't really expect her to be more accepting than that – and wasn't willing to risk her friendship by doing or saying anything that might make her uncomfortable.

“Well I'm still very thankful for what you did, Max, even if you can't remember it.” Liz's eyes got a distant look and she looked apprehensive. “Max, about Drevins...., he scares me, ...even just thinking about him scares me.”

The arm went around her shoulder without conscious thought.

“Don't worry, Liz. I'm not sure how, but but I think that Drevins..., well, maybe it's karma. Somebody on a bench in jail with me yesterday seemed pretty sure he'd get what was coming to him.”

It was only then that he noticed where his arm was … and pulled it back quickly, changing the subject, “...but you were talking about agave I think.”

Liz smiled up at him, the memory of his arm around her shoulder still warming her in the cooling evening.

“What I was about to say, Max, was that the center of the agave here is real starchy and it has agave nectar in it – it's sort of sweet. In the poorer areas of Mexico they take out the stalks and cook them and mash them to make something not too different than poi. It's got a lot of calories and after the walk we've had today, we probably need them.”

“OK, we'll give that a try. Getting tired of my nopalitos already?”

“No, not at all, it's just that this would have more calories, and it looks like it's going to be a cold night. We'll probably need some fuel to stay warm.”

“Yeah, and shelter too – but you are right, first let's get ourselves fed. Maybe we'll be able to spot someplace to keep warm afterward.”

“But you are going to make Prickly Pear a la Maxwell, are you?” asked Liz, her eyes pleading with him.

“Yes, of course. But I'm telling you, you need to try them with jalapenos or other peppers. They are so much better that way.”

“Maybe someday... but for dinner tonight, how about plain?”

“OK, I'll help you with the agave, then you can help me gather prickly pears.”

It was like digging in the quarry together, Max thought. Somehow when she was at his side, every job was a pleasure, every moment a delight. Unknown to him, Liz was thinking exactly the same thing.


Back in Roswell

It had been several years since she'd been to church – or even IN church like she was now. But it was devastating to lose a friend – especially a best friend – a wonderful person like Liz. So that's why she had come here – to sit quietly in the pew of an empty church and pray for the soul of Liz Parker.

Not, of course, like that ought to be a problem. Oh sure, Liz had fantasized quite a bit about Max, but between her being the 'perfect Miss Parker,' and Max being the shyest kid in their class, it wasn't like Liz ought to have a whole lot of sins to work through in Purgatory. Which, thought Maria DeLuca, was a damn shame. If she was going to die so young she should have at least had a FEW of her fantasies come true.

As she got up from her knees she saw the other person in the cathedral get up and turn fumble his way back out the door without the appropriate ritual. She quickly crossed herself and turned to find him holding the door for her.

“I wasn't aware you were Catholic?”

“I'm not... is this a Catholic Church?”

Ordinarily Maria would have rolled her eyes skyward at the stupidity of the question, but tonight her heart wasn't into picking a fight – not even with Michael Guerin.

“Yeah, it's a Catholic church, Michael.”

“I didn't know. I just wanted to come somewhere quiet where I could think about him – Max I mean, and of course Liz.”

“Well, after all these years you are probably every bit as good a Catholic as I am, so you probably shouldn't let it bother you. I was here for the same thing I guess. I don't think He,” Maria said, nodding back to the church, “... is going to mind either of using His church.”

“Well, at least they went together – that probably didn't matter to Liz, but I'm pretty sure that's the way that Max would have wanted to go. It would have never worked out, of course, but Max had such a crush on her...”

“Max had a crush in her? Liz had such a crush on him I could barely believe it. But she didn't think he was interested – not at all.”

“Well, like I said, it probably wouldn't have worked out anyway, but - well, yeah, Max was interested.”

“It's a pity that they both died without even knowing they cared about each other,” Maria said, the tears rolling down. “Maybe it would have never worked out, but they at least should have given it a chance.”

“Yeah,” said Michael, “...I guess they should have.”

That's really all they said to each other as he walked her home. They held hands just to support one another in their common sorrow – didn't even think of doing anything but telling the other goodbye at the door and giving the other hand one final soft squeeze. Both of them were too sad right now to do anything but grieve.

But that moment of common sorrow would be remembered – and the day would come eventually when they both would decide to take the risk of allowing themselves to be open and vulnerable and to admit what they felt for each other – the day when they would finally give it a chance.

The eruptions that formed the Carrizoza malpais all took place over a period of about thirty years - but they did not take place continuously. Near the major vent at Little Black Peak, multiple eruptions piled lava to a depth of 162 feet. Most of the malpais - except along the edges - is the result of multiple lava flows and the area where Liz and Max were was no different. They had been walking on the older flow which was rippled by lava tubes and had been shoved up by the irregular cooling of the lava underneath it as it flowed. The new area had been hotter lava - and it had flowed out onto the existing basalt. The Pahoehoe lava to the east of them flattened out to a smoother sheet. It would make traveling easier, but foraging for food and water more difficult.

The interface between these two flows - while certainly no Garden of Eden even by Tularosa Basin standards - was probably as good as it was going to get by the spartan standards of the malpais. 1500 years of sand storms had blown through the area - a surprising amount of the sand ending up in the lee of the edge of the younger lave flow. Such rain as the region received would pool briefly on the plain of smooth lave to the east but soon travel downhill - just as the lave had one cone - ultimately depositing itself in the narrow strip of sandy soil along the edge of the two flows. Here - more than anywhere else in the malpais - vegetation was abundant and this soon after yesterday's thunderstorm puddles of water were still present.

It took Max and Liz surprisingly little time to gather an impressive quantity of cactus leaves - small ones to eat and larger ones to use as plates for the agave paste Max was determined to make. Liz sort of went overboard on the prickly pear gathering. Within a short time the smaller leaves were made into nopalitos, a fair quantity of a gelatinous looking white paste was heaped on the others and Max had worked his magic - at Liz's insistence - on what had first seemed like a ridiculously large pile of prickly pears. She insisted that they could carry them along with them tomorrow - peeling them and eating them as they needed them. Max had looked at the flat sparseness of the course ahead and quickly agreed. Things looked like they would be tougher in the future than they had been up to this point.

While there certainly was no shortage of food in this meal - eating implements, however, were a different story. Fortunately, cerebrums are inhibitory to midbrains - otherwise what occurred may have been a reprise of the Tom Jones dining scene. But the cerebrums were neither drunk nor drugged and they reined in the primal libidos of the midbrains fairly well - still, there was a certain atavistic primitiveness about eating with your fingers that furthered the ongoing bonding process.

The first attempt was to make sort of sandwiches out of the starchy agave paste - scooping it onto a nopalito, placing another one on top, and eating it like a sandwich. It seemed reasonable enough and they did it together.

"Ummmmph...," said Liz as the gelatinous mass of the agave paste squirted out the sides of the nopalito sandwich and plastered itself to her cheeks.

"Mmmmph...," said Max simultaneously, not faring any better.

Each looked up at the other - then Liz started to giggle - which set Max to chuckling. They both scooped the paste off of their face with their fingers and scraped it into their mouths. The taste and texture seemed to be somewhere between that of wall paper paste and paper mache'.

"Well, it's not going to make the Good Housekeeping cookbook," said Liz, "... but at least it has the calories we need to keep us going."

"It isn't that bad," said Max. Liz favored him with a disbelieving look. He opened up his sandwich and ate it open faced - taking a bite of the paste covered nopalito. "No, really not bad at all .... of course my standards got lowered considerably by that two weeks of Izzy's cooking."

"Max, how can you say things like that? The girl isn't even here to defend herself."

"Well, if she were here I probably wouldn't say it, but since she isn't there's no reason not to tell the truth."

"Max, you are incorrigible..."

"When it comes to Izzy's cooking, that's probable,... almost a certainty. Wait until you try it sometime - then see if you defend her."

Dinner lasted a half hour - small talk about their families and how worried they must be dragging it out as well as an understandable reluctance to eat wallpaper paste quickly.. They peeled and ate about a third of the prickly pears - the only really tasty part of the meal.

Before they really realized it the sunset was fast approaching and the desert air had already taken on a chill.

"We'd better find shelter," said Max.

Liz nodded. "I really didn't see anything that looked very likely. Did you?"

"There's sort of a depression back there where one of the lave sheets flowed up onto the other - but it's awfully small. I doubt it would fit you."

"Well, maybe we need to start at the other end of the process. Figure out what we need, then either look for it or figure out how to make it. It'll be near freezing soon - if we can get under the rock like we did - sort of - last night, it shouldn't get much below the 50s. That's cold and miserable dressed like we are, but we'll survive it. If we can somehow trap a layer of air around us so the winds don't blow it away it'll give us insulation so the rock doesn't suck the heat out of us. "

"If we find someplace out of the wind I can use molecular manipulation to heat the air - that takes nowhere near the energy of heating water - If we had a small tent or something I could probably make it fairly comfortable - I mean if you didn't mind sharing it with me..."

While Liz's midbrain was saying,'toss me in that briar patch,' her cerebrum was being a little more cautious, this was just a friendship she was working on - right now at least. "Well, that'd be OK I guess, but I don't see much we can use as a tent either. I still think we should find a cave or something. Would you show me where you saw that depression?"

"Sure - but I don't think it would fit either of us."

Thirty seconds later Liz found herself in agreement with Max. The shallow hollow between the lava layers wasn't nearly as big as the area they had shared last night - and even that had been too small. Still, Liz didn't give up easily. "Max, could you manipulate the molecules to make it bigger?"

"Bigger? Yes. Big enough? I don't think so. The mass is just so huge - I don't have the energy to manipulate all of it."

"Could you use your power like a laser? I mean focus it - instead of manipulating the whole thing just manipulate seams in it. Like - well a twenty watt welding laser is only twenty watts, but it can melt steel because it concentrates those twenty watts into a very narrow beam with megawatts of energy per square centimeter but just a tiny little spot. Could you do something like that to carve out more room in this depression? Carve out a little cave where we would be undercover - where we could both fit but just have a narrow opening to get in and out of so that there wouldn't be so much airflow that we got cold?"

"I don't know. I've never really considered doing that. I've always been afraid to use my powers too much - afraid someone would see and suspect something."

"Well, there's just you and me and that cat is definitely out of the bag, Max...."

"OK, here goes..."

Max concentrated his powers - trying to form them in his mind to produce pebbles in the lava. It worked surprisingly well. Soon an area big enough for both of them was hollowed out - Max emptying the cavity of pebbles with telekinesis almost as quickly as they formed.

Liz looked at the pebbles flying from the hole - "Wow, that worked well."

"Yes," said Max, looking inside and rubbing his hand over the surface there. "Yes it did. But I don't think this idea is original to us."

"What do you mean, Max?"

"The inside surface," he said, rubbing his palm over the hollowed out area. He turned to her and looked into her eyes. "... it's just like the inside of the pod chamber. That must be how it was created."

Even before she had been drugged by him, Liz had been uncomfortable in the dorm room alone with Drevins - even surrounded by thin walls where a scream would have likely brought instant assistance. That knowledge was - in fact - the only reason that she had felt comfortable enough to go in to the room with him at all.

In comparison - as she crawled in to the small cave that Max had hollowed out with his powers - there was no question that once she entered the cave she would be totally and completely in the power of Max Evans. Even without considering his powers, she was going to be laying in front of Max - surrounded by solid rock on three sides and Max Evans behind her. Spooned up against him and facing the unyielding surface of the lava it was intuitively obvious that she would be totally at Max's mercy. But the fact was, intuitive or not, she never even considered worrying. Being close to Max had never seemed threatening to her - and it certainly didn't tonight.

As he crawled in behind her it was actually Max that was frightened. She was his friend and he didn't want the closeness to be misinterpreted - like he was thinking she was doing this for any reason other than for simple survival. Nonetheless, as his face brushed against her hair - he couldn't deny he found being close to her very pleasant.

"I pulled the brush in behind us to block the opening. It's not airtight or anything - we'll still be able to breathe - but it should keep serious cold drafts out. I can give us a little light," he said as he touched the wall. A palm size area of the wall in front of Liz took on a soft glow. "...and I can heat the air in front of you - and a few millimeters of the wall - without using too much energy. If you get uncomfortable for any reason and need to gt out - just give me a nudge and I'll get out of your way."

Liz felt the small cave warm up almost immediately. "That's great, Max. It must be seventy degrees in here." Liz concentrated on NOT doing what she most wanted to do - shoving herself back closer to him. It wasn't that she actually wanted to keep her distance - but she was concentrating first on being his friend. As much as she might have wanted to cuddle closer, she didn't want to risk scaring him. She'd almost lost him that way already. Besides, this was just the first night - she'd have other opportunities.

"When it gets cold enough I'll wake up, then I can heat the air in here again. If you get cold, just elbow me and I'll wake up and turn on the heat. OK, Liz?"

"OK, Max. Have a good rest."

"You, too, Liz.."

'Liz is a brave girl,' Max told himself. Of course, he'd known that. That was merely one of a number of things he loved about Liz. Max carefully kept his distance - doing his best to see that his body really didn't press against hers at all. He didn't want to frighten her or offend her - just make sure she was warm and safe. That was all he intended.

With full stomachs and muscles tired from a long day of hiking - warm and comfortable for the first time since they fell from the aircraft, both were asleep within ten minutes. Within fifteen minutes after that his hand somehow found its way around her waist as she snuggled back against him. Soon his face was buried in her hair and her head was pressed back into his chest. The body contact in the closed area was enough. Max never woke up until morning and neither did Liz.








As they slept, the alien invader was only 100 feet away. It had been ready and waiting for nearly three months. Dropped in by air over two years ago it's species had traveled far.

It had started in Equador almost six thousand years ago. It had made its way to the Old World in the hold of a Spanish Galleon in the early 1500s – then overland along the spice routes to China – eventually getting to India by the late 1700s. There it evolved – selectively bred for – well, viciousness one might say – and it had become vicious indeed.

Four years ago the alien had been surreptitiously reimported into the New World by an inhabitant of Hatch, New Mexico – located 100 miles southwest of the Carrizoza Malpais.

Hatch New Mexico is not a big town – even by New Mexico standards – with a little more than 1000 inhabitants. Of course, that's most of the year. One weekend each year Hatch – the self-styled 'Chile Capitol of the World,' hosted a chile festival, and on that weekend as many as 30,000 visitors would come to Hatch for a variety of chile related events – including the hottest chile pepper event.

The latter was the reason for the import of the alien species - Naga Jolokia. Winning the hottest pepper contest was a matter of intense pride for the inhabitants of Hatch and that's why one of them had sneaked the seeds through customs at Dallas Fort Worth airport and brought them back froom an oscure little village in India to the small town in Dona Anna county.

The chile had been protected and grown carefully by the man in Hatch – but chile grows exceedingly well in southern New Mexico. The yield considerably exceeded the expectations of the grower.

With a scoville rating of 600,000 – over 300 times that of tabasco sauce – there was only so much he could use personally, and since peppers contain viable seeds he was scarcely going to sell them or give them away to his neighbors – themselves his competitors in the annual fiery chile event.

So he had carefully taken his extra chiles out into the desert – no shortage of that around Hatch – and dumped them. The discarded chiles had been found by migratory birds on their way northward. The potent capsaicin and its close relatives do not effect the gut of birds. Birds do not have the same sensitivity to capsaicin, because it targets a specific pain receptor in mammals. Chili peppers are eaten by birds living in the chili peppers' natural range. The seeds of the peppers are distributed by the birds that drop the seeds while eating the pods, and the seeds pass through the digestive tract unharmed.

In this case the bird traveled over a hundred miles until the bird rested briefly on a branch in the lava flow. It soon moved on but the seed had already fallen on the sandy soil trapped in the depression in the lava flow. The seed germinated – produced a crop of Naga Jolokia– which was further spread by local birds in the malpais. The plant was one of only several dozen progeny growing in the 250 square miles. Given that that's only one plant per ten square miles, it was really unlikely that Liz would come across the plant in the morning ….but then, a lot of unlikely things had happened recently.

Briinnnnnnggg! Briinnnnnnggg!

The phone at the Mathews house rang twice before he heard his aunt answer it.

“Jim – how is it going at the RV park?”

New Mexico is sparsely populated and when disaster strikes everyone rushes to help their neighbor – even when the neighbor is a neighboring county. New Mexico has big counties – between Chaves county and adjacent Lincoln county they had over 10,000 square miles of land – and precisely two search and rescue teams. Which was of course why Kyle was staying at his Aunt and Uncle's house. His dad had taken the Chaves county search, rescue, and recovery team – ten guys in four vehicles – up to the adjacent Lincoln county to assist the smaller Lincoln County team along with part of the Otero County team in rescuing people from the mudslide that hit the RV park in the Lincoln National Forest.

Kyle watched and listened as his aunt talked to his father, anxious to talk to him as well. Finally he heard his aunt say..., “Sure, Kyle's right here. I'll put him on.”

“Dad...How is it going at the avalanche?”

“Oh, some of those vehicles I think are going to be there until Spring, but we have all the people out finally. I've got the team up in Carrizozo. We are going to be sleeping on cots in the armory tonight – then we'll be on our way home in the morning.”

“Carrizozo? Dad, did you hear about Mesa Air Flight 526? It's the one that Liz Parker and Max Evans were on...”

“No I didn't, Kyle. What about it?'

“Apparently it diverted west to try to avoid the weather. It hit another plane and wound up crashing a little south of Carrizozo. The radio said there were no survivors.”

“Kyle – I'm very sorry. I know they were both your friends and classmates. I'm very sorry for their parents as well.”

“I know there's nothing you can do, Dad – nothing anyone can do - but I thought you needed to know. You knew them too.”

'Damn,' thought Jim Valenti. 'Sometimes you see some horrible things in this business - but two kids who didn't even have a chance to start to live yet....'

“Well, maybe I can do something – not for Max and Liz – but for their parents. I'm going to call the Sheriff – see if I can send everyone else home in the morning and go down to the crash site. Maybe I can expedite getting their remains back to Roswell. Their families won't have closure until that happens. I've seen it before – that's why we do search rescue and recovery. Even just recovering the bodies means a lot to their loved ones.”

“I guess....?” said Kyle doubtfully. It didn't seem to him like that could help much – but then he didn't really suppose that anything could make this better.

Jim talked to his son for another five minutes, then hung up and called back to the Sheriff. It didn't take long to get permission.

“Take one of the team vehicles and go see what you can do, Jim. Take whatever time it takes. Those two families are part of our community – we need to do what we can for them.”


Holloman AFB
Hangar 22

While the NTSB was doing their thing halfway across the flightline, the F-117A mishap board had problems of their own.

“We have almost 15 square feet of radar absorbent material missing,” said Col. Cadwell, the mishap board president. "That stuff is classified up the ying-yang – how do we find it?”

“The recorder – an intelligence weeny – raised his hand tentatively.

“Captain Edgars?”

“Yes sir. I know this is kind of way out there but – well, we have a general location where the mishap occurred. We have a KH-13 that will be overhead by mid morning. If we can get it tasked to look at that area, maybe we can find it.”

“If it's just in the desert that might work. Black radar absorbing material on black basalt lave – that I'm not too sure of...” said Cadwell.

“It'll image in the infrared. Lava and the RAM? they'll have altogether different heat signatures. We still might get it. Besides, it ought to be pretty near the sheet aluminum the Beech lost,” replied the Captain.

Col Cadwell nodded his head and smiled. “Do it, Captain.”

It was 6:30AM on the malpais. Liz had been awake for about thirty minutes – just enjoying the closeness. She knew she had to pull away from him before he woke up - but she hadn't been able to convince herself to do it. It was just too comfortable like this. Not just the warmth of the cave – but rather the warmth of Max. Of course, she would have to pull herself away before Max actually woke up – Max certainly wasn't ready for this but - until he showed some sign of wakening - Liz couldn't bring herself to give it up. Of course she'd have to move fast once he showed any signs of waking up but until then all she wanted to do was enjoy the moment.

It was 6:30AM on the malpais. Max had been awake for about thirty minutes – five minutes not quite awake enough to realize he was in fact awake, but nonetheless enjoying the closeness and warmth. Then he'd opened his eyes briefly and closed them tight. He had been scared spitless since then.

He'd had no idea he'd actually put his arm around Liz during his sleep until that moment. Worse yet she had apparently gotten cold during the night – he'd been remiss in not waking up in time to keep the place warmer – so she had scooted over toward the only source of warmth in the cave – which was Max Evans. But now he was trapped. If he tried to move now, she'd wake up and find him like this – virtually wrapped around her. What would she think then? Likely as not she'd go running through the desert in stark terror - thinking he was trying to do what Drevins had attempted. The problem was he could barely move without waking her. No way could he somehow slither out the narrow door. For twenty-five minutes he was hoping she would just put some distance between them - it hadn't happened. Then - feeling like a dope - he slowly moved his hand away from her waist and brought it to his side. At least that much he could do.

When Liz felt his arm move, Liz sensed that Max was starting to wake. Nice as it was, she'd promised herself that she wouldn't push him, so before he could completely wake she pulled herself softly away from him.

Max wasn't sure if Liz moved in her sleep or if she had awakened against him and realized where she was. If the latter, she'd been pretty brave just to pull herself slowly away. Either way, it gave him the opportunity to give her some more distance.

"Uh, Liz - are you awake?"

"Yes, Max."

"I.... I uh...I have to get out - ah - a call of nature, so to speak. Can you scoot forward a little bit?

"Sure Max. As a matter of fact, I sort of have to go myself."

"Uh....how about I head north and you head south then?"


The Keyhole satellite was overhead. Well, not exactly overhead, in fact it had a somewhat unfavorable grazing angle. It was actually overhead a spot well west of Carrizozo. On it's next pass it would be over a spot well east of Carrizozo though - even farther away. The KH-13 had electric motors run off the solar panels that could tilt the satellite by pushing on gyroscopes to point it - expending only a little bit of electricity to do so. To actually reposition the satellite it would have had to expend fuel - an irreplaceable commodity reserved for stabilizing the low Earth orbit and repositioning for targets of national importance. Stealth technology that was already thirty years old wasn't that important.

Ideally, what the keyhole wanted was an overhead shot five miles in diameter centered on the calculated collision of the midair. What it got was a grazing shot roughly 20 miles by ten miles.


As Liz walked back past the little cave she found a shallow puddle to wash her hands in. Then - as she looked up - she saw the plant. A New Mexico girl recognizes a chile plant, even if she was unsure of the exact species. Some sort of habanero, she guessed.

Liz smiled. Sweet prickly pear and spicy didn't seem like a good combination to her, but if Max liked them......

As she got back to the sleeping cave, there was no sign of Max. Liz knew she'd have to hurry to have this done before he got back. She opened the skins of three of the leftover prickly pear a la Maxwell, and put the skinned fruit on a large cactus leaf, then she found a shard of lava that was rough on one edge and carefully grated the habanero-looking pepper on to the fruit. She didn't use much – habanero peppers were considerably stronger than jalapenos. That done, she turned and waited for Max.

As he returned from his own trip into the desert, Max saw Liz smiling at him. As he approached her she held up a cactus leaf with three peeled prickly pears.

“You wanted sweet and spicy?” she asked rhetorically, “..well here you are, Max. I found you a pepper,” she said, nodding to what appeared to be a habanero pepper sitting on another cactus leaf next to a rough piece of lava that had obviously been used as an improvised grater.

It was obvious by the look in her eyes that Liz was happy. That alone made Max happy. Oh sure, sweet and spicy prickly pears were a real treat, but what was even sweeter, he thought as he picked up the nearest prickly pear, was that Liz had gone to this special effort to please him – to show that despite what he was, she still accepted him as a friend. At least that's the thought he had until he actually closed his mouth on the prickly pear and started to chew.

'I have never in my life tasted anything so hot,' he thought initially. Then he realized that taste really had nothing to do with this – his taste buds weren't registering taste – simply pain. His lips and the entire inside of his mouth seemed to be on fire.

“Well, how do they taste, Max?” asked Liz, her eyes looking up at him hopefully.

If he'd been alone there was nothing on Earth that would have stopped Max from spitting that prickly pear out – but he wasn't alone. What's worse, Liz obviously had some emotional investment in this pleasing him. Worse even than the fire in his mouth was the thought of hurting her feelings. He chewed quickly and swallowed – at least he hoped he'd swallowed. His mouth was one ball of flame, hardly able to localize the prickly pear. One spot hurt just about as much as any other....

Max could feel his lips start to swell – his tongue was probably swelling too – it was so painful he couldn't really tell.

“Uh – dewicious, Lizth,” was his choked out reply.

“Have another one,” she said, looking at him with those enthused and happy brown eyes.

He gazed at them only for a moment – then not wanting to disappoint her, took the second one and – trying not to wince – shoved it in his mouth. 'It's hardly like it can get any worse,' he rationalized as he started to chew. That turned out not to be the case however – it felt like he was eating napalm. But he froze his face in a stupid grin and nodded to Liz – “Mmmm, good Lizth.”

Liz smiled at him and shook her head. He seemed to have tears of joy in his eyes.

“Well, Max, I have to admit I had my doubts about the whole sweet and spicy thing – but you really do seem to enjoy it...” 'Perhaps,' she thought,'...if I show him he's not all that different from other people, he'd be more at ease,'

Max was still trying to decide whether to spit out the second prickly pear when he saw Liz smile at him and say, “I guess I'll have to give it a try.”

Max watched in horror as her hand picked up the prickly pear and popped it in her mouth. Before he could say, “Lith, thnooooo!” she was chewing it.

Liz's mouth opened immediately and the prickly pear came spitting out – Max's followed less than a second later. Her lips and mouth seemd to be on fire – Max's lips were visibly swollen. He put his right palm up to her lips immediately.

The chemical structure of capsaicin actually wasn't all that complicated. By cleaving off one amino acid the stuff was pretty easily neutralized. As soon as he had turned off all the capsaicin in Liz's lips and mouth he quickly did the same for himself.

“Lizth, I am tho thorry... I thidn't mean for thoo to eat one. That wasth the spisthiest thing I've ever eaten in my entire lithe...”

“Well, why did you eat the second one???” Liz asked, her hand touching her own puffy lips. Only she knew the answer – even before she asked the question. He hadn't wanted to hurt her feelings.

“Itth thstill a lot betther than Ithy'th cooking,” Max said with an endearing puffy-lipped smile.

Despite everything, Liz found herself laughing uncontrollably – joined a fractional second later by Max.



National Reconnaissance Office
Chantilly, Va

The encrypted data from the KH-13 was squirted down to the receiving station and quickly transferred to the headquarters. Perhaps no single facet of the US military capability is so little understood by the lay public.

Yes – the satellites do have the resolution to read a newspaper over a person's shoulder from low earth orbit. But yes – during Desert Storm they couldn't keep track of SCUD missiles that were 40 feet long and three feet across and mounted on an even larger erector-launcher. As it turns out, those two things are not mutually exclusive – not by a long shot.

A newspaper has – roughly – a square foot of surface area. A twenty mile by ten mile swath of territory – assuming it is flat – has over 54 MILLION square feet. Just to view one screen requires a satellite photo-reconnaissance operator several seconds. One operator could view every bit of the data from that quick look over the Tularosa Basin in a mere thirty THOUSAND hours. Now granted, something like a SCUD is a lot bigger than a newspaper – 120 times as big. So OK – the operator could check a 10 by 20 mile area for one of those in a mere 250 hours. Of course even on a slow truck, a SCUD can move a long ways in 250 hours.

OK, you say, add more photo-recon operators. That's not easy. This is a highly classified and very specialized career field. Less than 200 such operators exist in the United States – and most of those are tied up. At any given time a third of them are sleeping. Others are on vacation – giving birth – going to any of the myriad meetings required of civil service workers – on smoke breaks out in the little shelter set up fifteen feet from the back door – or hovering around the water cooler gossiping.
Many of the remainder are doing detailed studies – spending a whole lot more than a few seconds per screen – on such known dangers as missiles in other countries, weapon development programs in other countries, keeping track of thousands and thousands of other – higher priority – threats.

The difference between the theoretical and the actual capabilities is huge. If a specific location is known it is relatively easy. If you were told to look for the National Reconnaissance Office at 14675 Lee Road Chantilly, Virginia, it would be easy to just look for the building at that location – even to find that guy with the newspaper. If you were told only that the NRO may or may not exist but that if it did it MIGHT be SOMEWHERE east of Washington DC – well, you get the picture.

In fact, there are several mechanisms that are used to – at least in part – get around these restrictions.

The first is to start with a wide perspective and then cone down. Instead of looking at every square foot – if you are looking for a SCUD – look at every square mile. A 40 ft by 3 ft SCUD will occupy .0076 of the length of that square mile and .0006 of the width of that square mile. Put another way, the SCUD will occupy .000044 of your one square mile. If the missile isn't camouflaged you MIGHT be able to see it. Again, you get the picture.

What is more effective is for the images to be scanned by a computer, and the NRO has some of the fastest supercomputers in the world. Through sophisticated algorithms these computers go through billions of high resolution images – scanning for images that MAY be what the operator wanted – rejecting almost all of them and referring only those bearing some semblance to the desired object to the limited supply of human photo-recon operators. But these algorithm programs – called 'filters' in the trade, can do no more (and oftentimes far less) than what they are asked to do.

Like most photo-recon jobs, this one used both techniques. There were good things and bad things about that.

The computer started by running the standard preliminaries. The first of these – for a data stream that represented an area scan of roughly twenty by ten miles – was to generate approximately 220 high level images. On a typical mission these would each show one square mile of the scan viewed from directly above– with 10% overlap of the adjacent picture on each edge to allow them to be combined easily in a mosaic image to be used for search grids. On this particular data stream – because of the grazing angle of the satellite – the actual representations were one mile north-south by 1.3 miles east-west, with the image distortion that implies because the satellite had not in fact been overhead. Nothing about these top level scans was even classified. Better resolutions were in fact available from civilian mapping satellites.

These images were taken in the infrared. That meant that they depended for their contrast on a difference in temperature between the object it was desired to locate and the background. That's what the computer was scanning. On its initial scan it detected several hundred thousand objects to consider through its filtering algorithms. There were not quite 12,000 warm blooded creatures detected in the early morning scan, the overwhelming majority of them rodents – mainly kangaroo rats and a very few lagomorphs such as the desert cottontail although the latter tended to only be on the periphery of the malpais. Almost three thousand of these warm-blooded contacts were avian such as [url=http://www.schmoker.org/BirdPics/Photos ... unner1.JPG]roadrunners.

The two most prominent objects on the malpais when viewed in infrared were in fact Liz Parker and Max Evans. Both were clearly visible as warm blobs on two overlapping large photos – although at 5 ft 1 inches Liz's image was less than .012 of an inch tall and .03 inch wide. Max's blob wasn't much bigger.

Had the filter used to look for survivors of downed aircraft been used – or for that matter had ANY personnel filter been used, the next two pictures out of the printer would have been of these two – the first a picture of Liz just as she was finding the pepper, the second a picture of Max – in the process of providing moisture and no-doubt welcome nitrates in the form of a dilute urea solution urea to a Yucca plant - 180 feet north of Liz.

The personnel filter would have identified Liz as presumptively female weighing 40 plus or minus 5 kilograms and identified Max as presumptively male (which the photo-recon operator would have had no problem whatsoever verifying by his actions peeing on the Yucca) weighing 45 plus or minus 5 kilograms. But personnel filters were not being used. The request had specified lost aircraft parts.

The ground is a huge thermal mass. It takes awhile for cold to penetrate it. When the sun was high in the sky, the ground was warmed. When the sun went down, it would lose heat by radiation – so would any aluminum aircraft debris sitting on top of it. But the metal debris would typically not be in good contact with the ground – airplane crashes tend to twist aluminum into structures that don't lay flat – and in cold weather the debris gets colder quicker and stays colder longer than the terrain around it.

The computer completely ignore Liz and Max – and the 12,000 other warm-blooded creatures in the scan that were actually WARMER than the ground. It concentrated on objects that were COLDER than the ground, of which there were several hundred. Most of these were rather small – aluminum beer cans blown into the area from Carrizozo during dust storms – but two of the one square mile areas had larger objects clustered together. These objects the computer printed out at a resolution large enough the operator could easily identify them with his or her naked eye – cross-indexed to the larger pictures for location. The pictures demonstrated four severely smashed passenger seats, two passenger seats that seemed only minimally damaged, and a fair amount of fuselage and wing material. The high resolution photos were of course classified.
All of the pictures, classified and unclassified, were sent by military courier to Holloman AFB, to the attention of the mishap board.

Hangar 23
Holloman Air Force Base, NM

Robert Hamilton saw the man enter the door and look around tentatively. He was wearing a jacket with "Chaves County Sheriff Search and Rescue" stenciled on the back. Hamilton wasn't sure exactly where that county was, but it wasn't the one they were in.

"Can I help you, deputy?" he asked, noting the badge.

"Hello Mr. ... Hamilton," said Jim Valenti, reading the man's nametag. "I'm Jim Valenti - I'm a deputy sheriff in the next county east of here. I know the parents of two of the passengers on the crashed aircraft - Hell, I know...knew ... the two kids pretty well also. They were both in my son's class. I was near here - working on the Lincoln National Forest mudslide - when I heard of the crash. My boss and I thought that since I was so close I might as well come here and - well, if there is anything I can do to help expedite getting the remains of those two kids back to their parents - I'd like to do it."

""THAT seems to be a bit of a problem, Deputy. Let me explain..."

1PM The Malpais

Of course the 200 square miles had a lot more than 12,000 warm blooded creatures – that was just the number on the surface. Once again the vast majority of these were rodents like the kangaroo rat, pockey mouse, and woodland rat. Although they could interbreed with their cousins outside the malpais, these animals were technically a separate species. In the 15,000 years since the lava flow had killed all life in the malpais, these creatures had re-established and adapted – taking on the color of the lava itself as protective coloration. That was what made them – technically – a separate species.

The rodents thrived in the malpais. They were light enough that the lava didn't chew up their paws and – just as importantly – their normal major predator, the coyote, would not long stay in the malpais. Certainly an individual coyote might pursue a rabbit into the malpais, but coyotes depend on agility – acceleration – their ability to turn fast in pursuit of their prey. They quickly would abrade their paws and hobble back into the desert to heal and pursue quarry on less painful terrain.

That is not to say that there were no predators on the malpais. Owls and hawks would work the lava flows – alighting only to make their kills and then taking it back to their nests. But the real top predator of the Carrizozo malpais, and the one that could actually follow the rodents down into their burrows was not warm-blooded at all. The snakes of the malpais were also darker than their desert brethren and the one that was just east of where Liz and Max were now hiking was almost invisible as he crawled along the lava. This particular member of Crotalus Viridis was quite a successful predator – weighing almost five pounds. He had come out to warm himself in the afternoon sun – not really hungry – he was still digesting a woodrat he'd caught only two days ago. But he was rather far from his own burrow – and when he felt the vibrations of the approaching teenagers he was instantly alert. Things that made that much noise obviously didn't fear you – it was only prudent to be cautious of them.
The prairie rattler perhaps considered fleeing to its burrow but normally it was the master of all it surveyed – the top end predator in the malpais. Normally it didn't have to run from anything – still it was only prudent to slither back in the shadow of a large outcropping of lava.

“So, it'th almost lunch time...” said Max.

“Yeah, we've come quite a distance since breakfast – and your lips are almost back to normal. I am so sorry, Max, really...”

“Well, I athked for spithey – you were just giving me what I asthked for. “

“Well, I still feel guilty, “ said Liz, looking around. “The pickings here look rather meager though. I don't think I've seen a prickly pear in a couple of miles, and I sure don't want to have to backtrack that far. Maybe we should just keep going and skip lunch altogether. We can have a real large dinner, maybe.”

“Well, if we were thure the pickingsth were going to be better at dinner, thatsth what I would thuggest,” said Max, “...but thereth really no guarantee the pickingsth will be any better east of here. Let'th look around a little bit.”

“OK. You go that way, I'll go this way. We'll meet back here in ten minutes,” said Liz.


Ten miles south of Carrizozo 500 feet above the ground.

Whop – whop - whop - whop - whop - whop ......

The sound of the rotor blades filled the cabin of the helicopter as Jim Valenti peered out at the ground. They'd been doing this for two hours. The NTSB had pretty well established the fact that there were six seats missing. Of course that didn't mean that the bodies of Liz Parker or Max Evans were in one of those seats. It was possible that they were sitting in one of the other empty seats but hadn't had their seat belts fastened and the decompression had just expelled them through thee hole in the fuselage caused by the midair. So they had been laboriously checking through areas along the flight path where ground crews couldn't go – there were plenty of those. Some of these range areas had been used for practice for decades and unexploded ordnance littered much of them. So they were checking these - gradually working their way northward.

Mr. Hamilton had been helpful – convincing the NTSB team chief that he was trained in search rescue and recovery – and playing down his personal relationship to Liz and Max. He'd been invited to join the flight as another set of eyes. So far the hunt hadn't been very successful. There were an incredible number of little ravines and arroyos sprinkled throughout the range areas and an awful lot of junk left over from a half century of military testing and training. Still, the helicopter helped – and in many areas was the only safe way to search.

“Mr Hamilton...” came the voice of the pilot through the headphones Jim was wearing.

“Yes, Captain?” said Bob Hamilton.

“We've been asked to return to base after sweeping this next area. Apparently there is an aircraft enroute to Holloman with satellite pictures of where the debris ended up after the midair. The plan is now for us to wait for those pictures and restart the search from that end. Unfortunately it'll probably be too dark by the time the pictures get here.”

“OK, I guess,” said Hamilton. “Hopefully we'll be able to find the remains of the two kids near the crash scene. The longer we leave those bodies out here the more likely it is that scavengers will find them.”

Bob looked at Jim Valenti almost apologetically, but Jim only nodded. This wasn't his first effort to recover bodies from the desert. It was a harsh and demanding place and the animals that were in it couldn't afford to waste any resource. A few scavengers – like the turkey vultures – pretty much lived on carrion. But most predators would take fresh meat if they found it – even from the body of a human being.

Jim looked out the side window of the helicopter, shaking his head, thinking of two young lives ended all too soon – and two sets of grieving parents.