10:00 PM The Silver Nugget Room, Tonopah Nevada
As Max stood at the mirror in his boxers, brushing his teeth his mind wandered back over the events of the day. It had been a full one. But no event had been more bizarre than the trip to the Sheriff’s office. There were only about three people on duty there, but another three or four had come and gone while they’d been there filling out the forms. All had thanked them for what they had done, then continued to look upon them with indulgent smiles. It had been a surreal experience.
Most of his childhood, Isabel and he had considered the Sheriff in Roswell as kind of the boogey-man, the guy who would get them if their origin ever became known. These people seemed to be falling all over themselves to be nice. He’d noticed an APB from Roswell New Mexico sitting on the desk of the secretary, she’d noticed him looking at it and quickly fed it into a shredder, explaining they got a lot of ‘junk mail’ like that. When they were done, the Sheriff had inquired about their education and they told him they’d already made plans to start courses through the alternative high school, to get their GEDs and take a few college courses by correspondence. He’d offered to help with tuition…said that he knew they were just starting out…that the people in the office had taken up a collection. Liz had politely refused, asked him to put it in a college fund for the two children of the slain deputy telling him they were getting by fine, just on their own earnings. They’d wound up being dragged to the restaurant for a dinner…sitting at the de facto law enforcement table as various deputies and state patrol guys stopped by with thanks and words of encouragement for the newlyweds.
Six months ago, Max would have never believed that such a thing would ever be possible.
As he started to get into bed he noticed the t-shirt and boxers on the floor…the ones Liz had worn when she had brushed her teeth. Liz had certainly changed too, after their marriage. And sometimes he missed the demure little girl who would sometimes blush and pull away if she accidentally bumped into her lab partner in the midst of an experiment…but as she put her arms around his neck and pulled her body over to his, as he felt her nipples harden as they moved across his chest, as he felt her lips cover his and her tongue plead with his lips for entrance…..well, this was definitely NOT one of those times.
Discipline Malfunction (M/L Mature) [COMPLETE]
Moderators: Itzstacie, Forum Moderators
10:15 PM, Hangar B, Area 51 Nevada
Slammer had been at the gym, jogging and using the weight machine. He had challenged his young exec to a racquetball game, but a certain young Lieutenant had shown up with a tennis racket, so he’d quickly claimed a pulled muscle, and suggested that they’d have to do it some other time. He smiled as he watched them go hand in hand out to the court, then slowly jogged back toward his room. As he past by Hangar B, he slowed. His quick orientation tour had only allowed him ten minutes in the hangar, with a short briefing given by a junior aeronautical engineer. On a whim, he chose to take another quick look.
As commander he had access to almost all parts of Area 51, although a few of the labs were no-lone zones, not permitting any single person to enter them unaccompanied. Even here in Hangar B, there would be security cameras watching, and guards to challenge anyone who seemed to be doing anything inappropriate. But rank has its privileges, and being a commander even more. He ran his security badge through the card reader, punched in his PIN code, allowed the retinal scanner to verify his identity, and the door slid open before him. He stepped into the airlock and the door closed automatically behind him. There was a moments hesitation while the computer verified visually and through the weight sensor in the floor that Colonel Steven M. Randolph was alone, and then the inner door of the doorlock slid aside to permit his entry.
It was a huge hangar and in it were two spacecraft. In truth, only one of the spacecraft was real, and that distributed in parts on the western half of the hangar. The one on the eastern side was just a mockup, totally nonfunctional, the current ‘best guess’ of what the original spacecraft had looked like….back before the crash.
Slammer had seen crashed aircraft laid out in a hangar before, it happened with many aircraft mishap investigations, in the first month after the mishap. But this reconstruction job had taken almost twenty years, and details were still being fine tuned, even after fifty years, because there was no blueprint, no engineer who had worked on it before it had crashed, no examples with which to compare it. Every bent piece of metal, and there were tens of thousands, had been treated as a piece of an elaborate 50 ton jigsaw puzzle. Over twenty years it had taken to piece together this approximation of the actual craft, and even after a half century, they were still only at the beginning of understanding what they had.
Slammer was surprised to hear music playing in the hangar, surprised that someone was sitting in the middle of the reassembled wreckage, slowly sipping on a glass of wine, then putting it down so his fingers could fly deftly over the small laptop computer. He was sitting on a folding chair, before a small table that held the CD player and a wine bottle. Slammer hadn’t met the man, but his age alone gave him away. The only sixty year-old on the site that he had not met, and certainly the only one with access to THIS facility, was Dr. Stanbeck.
Dr. Peter Stanbeck was the other STS on site. An STS-3, he had been with the program for over thirty-five years. His specialties were cosmology and astrophysics. Slammer knew that he was in his own way, one of the most productive researchers on site, at least in terms of scientific articles and presentations. A few worthwhile spinoffs had come from his work, to the Stealth program, and the hypervelocity engine program, but most of his work was theoretical....theory so deep that only a dozen or so people in the world could follow it. His department was small, he was a big picture guy, not an engineer.
Peter Stanbeck liked the music, he liked the wine, and he liked the long messages he traded with his longtime penpal. It was true, Stephen’s responses took longer now, his voice transcription module not really transcribing formulae all that well, but they were always worth waiting for. They were seldom on voice messaging anyway, with an eight timezone difference between Nevada and Cambridge.
As he pushed send, he caught the advancing stranger out of the corner of his eye. The man appeared to be in his late thirties or early forties and the sweats gave no indication of what he did, but there were only a handful of people who would have access to unescorted entry to this facility, and in Stanbeck’s opinion, even that was too many. You didn’t have to be, as the saying went, a rocket scientist, to deduce that this was the new commander.
“There’s another folding chair..I believe I even have another wineglass, if you don’t mind the music.”
“Thank you.”
“There is a certain inherent hazard in this place. It would be well to not disturb anything you look at.”
Slammer opened the folding chair and sat down. “Dr. Stanbeck, I presume?”
“That’s correct, and you, I presume, would be the new commander.”
“Yes. And I learned early in the game that you tread lightly around crashed aircraft, too many things that can hurt you.”
“Would that my predecessor had been as cautious…..of course then, I might not have advanced so quickly.” He looked out at the wreckage strewn out on the hangar floor. “I fear too few people appreciate the danger that lies there.”
“I was under the impression that all of this stuff had been pretty well looked over by now…that it was pretty safe.”
Dr. Stanbeck swayed a little bit as he poured more wine for himself, and a glass for Slammer. He chuckled. “The ignorant savages are safe from the danger….simply because they don’t know how to open the box.”
“Have you had a lot to drink,” inquired Slammer, watching the professor sway slightly.
“Not yet, Colonel…..but the night is young. I do my best to get drunk once a month, and this is my night this month. It helps me to deal with the frustrations of the place.”
“And what would those frustrations be?”
“I already told you…not knowing how to open the box.”
“Perhaps you’ll run that one by me a little slower. I’m just an old fighter pilot, not a PhD.”
“Follow me,” said Stanbeck.
Slammer followed Stanbeck down the path through the wreckage. In what he assumed was the aft portion of the spacecraft, there were two identical cylinders of silvery iridescent metal, almost the size of large helium tanks. They looked harmless enough.
“These are two of the four powerplants that once powered this craft. Do you realize the energy those can produce? Just to raise fifty tons into space….even without considering the power necessary to accelerate it to near its cruising speed…just to get out of the gravity well of the earth?
And there they sit. The answer to the energy shortage, the answer to carbon dioxide emissions, the answer to air pollution, the answer even to our own space travel perhaps…those cylinders, and the one larger one forward. But the ignorant savages don’t know how to open the box.”
“I think, doctor, that you’ve probably had enough to drink for tonight…unless you want to continue it in your own room.”
“I believe I shall do JUST THAT,” said Dr Stanbeck, picking up the wine bottle and staggering toward the door.
Slammer watched him leave, then went to the airlock, making sure that the professor had exited the building. Slammer opened it and went inside, then approached the security console. He slid in his badge and punched in his PIN number.
“Security, this is Colonel Randolph. You are ordered to lock out Dr. Peter Stanbeck from unescorted access to all secure areas until I tell you otherwise. Please read that instruction back to me.”
“Sir, we are to lock Dr. Stanbeck out from unescorted access to all secure areas, until you tell us otherwise.”
“That is correct, Security.”
As he left Hangar B, the little CD player was still playing Mozart.
Slammer had been at the gym, jogging and using the weight machine. He had challenged his young exec to a racquetball game, but a certain young Lieutenant had shown up with a tennis racket, so he’d quickly claimed a pulled muscle, and suggested that they’d have to do it some other time. He smiled as he watched them go hand in hand out to the court, then slowly jogged back toward his room. As he past by Hangar B, he slowed. His quick orientation tour had only allowed him ten minutes in the hangar, with a short briefing given by a junior aeronautical engineer. On a whim, he chose to take another quick look.
As commander he had access to almost all parts of Area 51, although a few of the labs were no-lone zones, not permitting any single person to enter them unaccompanied. Even here in Hangar B, there would be security cameras watching, and guards to challenge anyone who seemed to be doing anything inappropriate. But rank has its privileges, and being a commander even more. He ran his security badge through the card reader, punched in his PIN code, allowed the retinal scanner to verify his identity, and the door slid open before him. He stepped into the airlock and the door closed automatically behind him. There was a moments hesitation while the computer verified visually and through the weight sensor in the floor that Colonel Steven M. Randolph was alone, and then the inner door of the doorlock slid aside to permit his entry.
It was a huge hangar and in it were two spacecraft. In truth, only one of the spacecraft was real, and that distributed in parts on the western half of the hangar. The one on the eastern side was just a mockup, totally nonfunctional, the current ‘best guess’ of what the original spacecraft had looked like….back before the crash.
Slammer had seen crashed aircraft laid out in a hangar before, it happened with many aircraft mishap investigations, in the first month after the mishap. But this reconstruction job had taken almost twenty years, and details were still being fine tuned, even after fifty years, because there was no blueprint, no engineer who had worked on it before it had crashed, no examples with which to compare it. Every bent piece of metal, and there were tens of thousands, had been treated as a piece of an elaborate 50 ton jigsaw puzzle. Over twenty years it had taken to piece together this approximation of the actual craft, and even after a half century, they were still only at the beginning of understanding what they had.
Slammer was surprised to hear music playing in the hangar, surprised that someone was sitting in the middle of the reassembled wreckage, slowly sipping on a glass of wine, then putting it down so his fingers could fly deftly over the small laptop computer. He was sitting on a folding chair, before a small table that held the CD player and a wine bottle. Slammer hadn’t met the man, but his age alone gave him away. The only sixty year-old on the site that he had not met, and certainly the only one with access to THIS facility, was Dr. Stanbeck.
Dr. Peter Stanbeck was the other STS on site. An STS-3, he had been with the program for over thirty-five years. His specialties were cosmology and astrophysics. Slammer knew that he was in his own way, one of the most productive researchers on site, at least in terms of scientific articles and presentations. A few worthwhile spinoffs had come from his work, to the Stealth program, and the hypervelocity engine program, but most of his work was theoretical....theory so deep that only a dozen or so people in the world could follow it. His department was small, he was a big picture guy, not an engineer.
Peter Stanbeck liked the music, he liked the wine, and he liked the long messages he traded with his longtime penpal. It was true, Stephen’s responses took longer now, his voice transcription module not really transcribing formulae all that well, but they were always worth waiting for. They were seldom on voice messaging anyway, with an eight timezone difference between Nevada and Cambridge.
As he pushed send, he caught the advancing stranger out of the corner of his eye. The man appeared to be in his late thirties or early forties and the sweats gave no indication of what he did, but there were only a handful of people who would have access to unescorted entry to this facility, and in Stanbeck’s opinion, even that was too many. You didn’t have to be, as the saying went, a rocket scientist, to deduce that this was the new commander.
“There’s another folding chair..I believe I even have another wineglass, if you don’t mind the music.”
“Thank you.”
“There is a certain inherent hazard in this place. It would be well to not disturb anything you look at.”
Slammer opened the folding chair and sat down. “Dr. Stanbeck, I presume?”
“That’s correct, and you, I presume, would be the new commander.”
“Yes. And I learned early in the game that you tread lightly around crashed aircraft, too many things that can hurt you.”
“Would that my predecessor had been as cautious…..of course then, I might not have advanced so quickly.” He looked out at the wreckage strewn out on the hangar floor. “I fear too few people appreciate the danger that lies there.”
“I was under the impression that all of this stuff had been pretty well looked over by now…that it was pretty safe.”
Dr. Stanbeck swayed a little bit as he poured more wine for himself, and a glass for Slammer. He chuckled. “The ignorant savages are safe from the danger….simply because they don’t know how to open the box.”
“Have you had a lot to drink,” inquired Slammer, watching the professor sway slightly.
“Not yet, Colonel…..but the night is young. I do my best to get drunk once a month, and this is my night this month. It helps me to deal with the frustrations of the place.”
“And what would those frustrations be?”
“I already told you…not knowing how to open the box.”
“Perhaps you’ll run that one by me a little slower. I’m just an old fighter pilot, not a PhD.”
“Follow me,” said Stanbeck.
Slammer followed Stanbeck down the path through the wreckage. In what he assumed was the aft portion of the spacecraft, there were two identical cylinders of silvery iridescent metal, almost the size of large helium tanks. They looked harmless enough.
“These are two of the four powerplants that once powered this craft. Do you realize the energy those can produce? Just to raise fifty tons into space….even without considering the power necessary to accelerate it to near its cruising speed…just to get out of the gravity well of the earth?
And there they sit. The answer to the energy shortage, the answer to carbon dioxide emissions, the answer to air pollution, the answer even to our own space travel perhaps…those cylinders, and the one larger one forward. But the ignorant savages don’t know how to open the box.”
“I think, doctor, that you’ve probably had enough to drink for tonight…unless you want to continue it in your own room.”
“I believe I shall do JUST THAT,” said Dr Stanbeck, picking up the wine bottle and staggering toward the door.
Slammer watched him leave, then went to the airlock, making sure that the professor had exited the building. Slammer opened it and went inside, then approached the security console. He slid in his badge and punched in his PIN number.
“Security, this is Colonel Randolph. You are ordered to lock out Dr. Peter Stanbeck from unescorted access to all secure areas until I tell you otherwise. Please read that instruction back to me.”
“Sir, we are to lock Dr. Stanbeck out from unescorted access to all secure areas, until you tell us otherwise.”
“That is correct, Security.”
As he left Hangar B, the little CD player was still playing Mozart.
0730 Det. 24 Executive’s Office, Area 51, Groom’s Lake Nevada
“Captain Hawthorne, I’d like to..”
Slammer had just come through the door but he stopped talking abruptly as he walked in on his Executive officer kissing a young female Lieutenant who was sitting in his lap. They looked up abruptly, their faces reddening, as they came to attention.
“OK, my fault for not knocking….but by regulation, you and Lieutenant DelGado really should not be doing that in uniform. What you do when you take your uniforms off is not the Air Force’s concern, but the Air Force frowns on displays of affection between personnel while in uniform.”
He noticed the eyes of both junior officers widen, and their blush become even more pronounced.
Blushing somewhat himself he smiled slightly, “I have to believe I could have somehow phrased that a whole lot better…Captain Hawthorne…I’d like to talk to you in my office in…oh five minutes or so, if that would be convenient. In the meantime…well, as you were, I guess.” The commander exited, closing the door behind him.
0736 Det. 24 Commander’s Office, Area 51, Groom’s Lake Nevada
The Captain knocked and entered.
“Sir, I’m sorry….” He stopped as Slammer’s hand went up.
“OK, Jim. I’ll learn to knock…you learn to lock the door. Right now I need to talk to you about Dr. Peter Stanbeck. What can you tell me about the man?”
“Well sir, he’s kind of an interesting guy. He’s kind of the old stereotypical absent minded professor type. Sometimes gets working on some theoretical problem and will go for a couple of days overlooking things like…eating…sleeping. He’s a bit of an odd duck…but a lot of theoreticians are I guess. Only has one real close friend…..they email back and forth constantly, get together at international meetings occasionally…oh, and they have this ritual….they both go online once a month, sit there drinking wine, listening to Mozart, and debate theoretical physics…trying to come up with a unified field theory…something that explains how everything in the universe works, gravity…electromagnetism….time…the whole enchilada.”
“How often does he get drunk?”
“Drunk sir? I don’t believe in 35 years anyone has ever seen him drunk. He usually makes that one bottle of wine last for about eight hours. Justs sits there listening to Mozart and discussing the cosmos online with Stephen Hawkins.”
"The British physicist?"
"That's the one. They've been friends for almost 40 years."
Now Slammer was starting to be just a little bit confused. His confusion was interrupted promptly though by a buzz on the intercom.
“Yes, Maggie?”
“Sir, Dr. Stanbeck is here and is asking if you might be able to spare a minute to talk with him?”
Slammer looked at his schedule. His first meeting was at 0830, with Lieutenant DelGado and her two doctors.
“Sure, Maggie….,.” he said. "Send the gentleman in…”
Peter Stanbeck walked through the door. The Commander was seated at his desk, the young Captain sitting in a chair to the left. The commander gestured to the empty chair in front of him.
As the professor sat down he had a half-smile on his face. “My badge wouldn’t open my office this morning, Colonel….I assume you had something to do with that?”
“Yes I did…..do you care to explain to me what that farce last night was about, Dr. Stanbeck?”
“Call me Peter…it looks like we may actually wind up being friends.”
“Well as a friend…would you tell me what that performance was all about last night, the whole ‘savages can’t open the boxes drunk routine’?”
“Unfortunately, the ‘savages can’t open the boxes’ part is actually true, the feigned intoxication..??...well, you are the sixth commander I’ve played that game with……the first with the good sense to restrict my access when you thought I was intoxicated. I meant what I said about the equipment from that crashed spaceship. Too many people don’t believe it, but we are dealing with incredibly powerful technology here…technology that we don’t understand…..technology that can destroy this base…perhaps destroy this planet, if we don’t handle it properly….and out track record has not been terribly good. It has always frightened me how few of our researchers here understand that…how few of our commanders have ever understood that. ”
“So if I passed your little test…what is my prize, Dr. Stanbeck?”
“Please commander, Peter will do nicely. If you would accompany me back to my office I will show you…of course, you’ll have to open the door for me…I no longer have the clearance to enter it. You’re invited as well, Jim.”
“Captain Hawthorne, I’d like to..”
Slammer had just come through the door but he stopped talking abruptly as he walked in on his Executive officer kissing a young female Lieutenant who was sitting in his lap. They looked up abruptly, their faces reddening, as they came to attention.
“OK, my fault for not knocking….but by regulation, you and Lieutenant DelGado really should not be doing that in uniform. What you do when you take your uniforms off is not the Air Force’s concern, but the Air Force frowns on displays of affection between personnel while in uniform.”
He noticed the eyes of both junior officers widen, and their blush become even more pronounced.
Blushing somewhat himself he smiled slightly, “I have to believe I could have somehow phrased that a whole lot better…Captain Hawthorne…I’d like to talk to you in my office in…oh five minutes or so, if that would be convenient. In the meantime…well, as you were, I guess.” The commander exited, closing the door behind him.
0736 Det. 24 Commander’s Office, Area 51, Groom’s Lake Nevada
The Captain knocked and entered.
“Sir, I’m sorry….” He stopped as Slammer’s hand went up.
“OK, Jim. I’ll learn to knock…you learn to lock the door. Right now I need to talk to you about Dr. Peter Stanbeck. What can you tell me about the man?”
“Well sir, he’s kind of an interesting guy. He’s kind of the old stereotypical absent minded professor type. Sometimes gets working on some theoretical problem and will go for a couple of days overlooking things like…eating…sleeping. He’s a bit of an odd duck…but a lot of theoreticians are I guess. Only has one real close friend…..they email back and forth constantly, get together at international meetings occasionally…oh, and they have this ritual….they both go online once a month, sit there drinking wine, listening to Mozart, and debate theoretical physics…trying to come up with a unified field theory…something that explains how everything in the universe works, gravity…electromagnetism….time…the whole enchilada.”
“How often does he get drunk?”
“Drunk sir? I don’t believe in 35 years anyone has ever seen him drunk. He usually makes that one bottle of wine last for about eight hours. Justs sits there listening to Mozart and discussing the cosmos online with Stephen Hawkins.”
"The British physicist?"
"That's the one. They've been friends for almost 40 years."
Now Slammer was starting to be just a little bit confused. His confusion was interrupted promptly though by a buzz on the intercom.
“Yes, Maggie?”
“Sir, Dr. Stanbeck is here and is asking if you might be able to spare a minute to talk with him?”
Slammer looked at his schedule. His first meeting was at 0830, with Lieutenant DelGado and her two doctors.
“Sure, Maggie….,.” he said. "Send the gentleman in…”
Peter Stanbeck walked through the door. The Commander was seated at his desk, the young Captain sitting in a chair to the left. The commander gestured to the empty chair in front of him.
As the professor sat down he had a half-smile on his face. “My badge wouldn’t open my office this morning, Colonel….I assume you had something to do with that?”
“Yes I did…..do you care to explain to me what that farce last night was about, Dr. Stanbeck?”
“Call me Peter…it looks like we may actually wind up being friends.”
“Well as a friend…would you tell me what that performance was all about last night, the whole ‘savages can’t open the boxes drunk routine’?”
“Unfortunately, the ‘savages can’t open the boxes’ part is actually true, the feigned intoxication..??...well, you are the sixth commander I’ve played that game with……the first with the good sense to restrict my access when you thought I was intoxicated. I meant what I said about the equipment from that crashed spaceship. Too many people don’t believe it, but we are dealing with incredibly powerful technology here…technology that we don’t understand…..technology that can destroy this base…perhaps destroy this planet, if we don’t handle it properly….and out track record has not been terribly good. It has always frightened me how few of our researchers here understand that…how few of our commanders have ever understood that. ”
“So if I passed your little test…what is my prize, Dr. Stanbeck?”
“Please commander, Peter will do nicely. If you would accompany me back to my office I will show you…of course, you’ll have to open the door for me…I no longer have the clearance to enter it. You’re invited as well, Jim.”
Stanbeck shuffled quickly through a small box of DVDs. Finding the one he wanted, he put it in the player.
“I mentioned the four cylinders that appear to have been supplying energy. Of course, we never had the fourth one. Reconstructing the wreckage, it appears that there should have been four, but there was an explosion in the area of the missing one. It would appear that the damage that ultimately led to the crashing of the spacecraft occurred as a result of the explosion of that missing fourth bottle. That is suggested not just because that would make the arrangement of the cylinders symmetrical, but because the same power leads that went to the remaining three went to the area of the missing fourth.”
“So the theory is there was an explosion in that fourth cylinder,” asked Slammer. “What would have caused that?”
“We simply have no way of knowing. My guess was that it was breached by something that penetrated the ship…a meteorite, for example. Or perhaps, if they were involved in conflict, some sort of weapon.”
“Or perhaps just materiel failure….it may have simply been defective,” said Jim Hawthorne.
“Possibly,…yes…but I think that is unlikely….and the reason for that is what you will see on this video disc.
First…there are a few things you need to understand about my predecessor in this job. The spacecraft crashed in 1947. This country had no expertise in spacecraft at that time, and the only experts on rocketry we possessed were the 500 or so scientists and engineers taken from Germany at the end of the war. But even these people knew very little.
The greatest of their accomplishments, the V-2, was scarcely a weapon at all. It was produced by slave labor…each one built individually. Even the parts were not truly interchangeable. The V-2 distinguished itself among weapons in killing more people during production, through the conditions of the slave labor, than the missiles themselves ever killed in warfare. And yet the designers of the V-2…these barbarians, were entrusted with an artifact of immense power created by a civilization that is likely millennia ahead of us.
My immediate predecessor, Dr. Albus Sawatki was in charge of V-2 production at Peenemunde and, when the British bombed that facility, at the prison factory at Mittelwork. He was originally assigned to Ft. Bliss, with Von Braun and the others, but was recognized by a Buchenwald survivor at a scientific meeting. He was sent here, in part to hide him, when the spacecraft was moved here in early 1950. He was a brutish thug of a man, who worked his people like slaves.
It took almost twenty years to sort out the three dimensional jigsaw puzzle. By that time his fellow Nazi researchers were in NASA, putting men on the moon. He wanted to outshine their accomplishments. So he took one of the three cylinders, set up a test stand in Hangar A..”
“Where’s Hangar A?” asked Jim. “The lowest lettered Hangar is B. Was there once an A?”
“Watch the monitor and you will see what happened to Hangar A.”
The DVD was apparently a collection of old films and TV images, spliced together and put on disc. It started with the movement of a cylinder from Hangar B to Hangar A, an identical building where the athletic field now stood. The cylinder was loaded onto what appeared to be a small bomb trailer, and towed into the building. It was fastened securely with the end below a large circular saw, as a figure stood over it, apparently shouting orders. A variety of machines were brought up toward it, as well as recording cameras.
“They had attempted to x-ray the cylinder but even our strongest industrial x-ray machines, even the Cobalt-60 units wouldn’t penetrate it. They had tried the primitive ultrasound of the time…little more than sonar, really, to no avail. And even now, even with nuclear resonance imaging, with positron spectral imaging, the container is black…it neither gives off or passes any signal. That should have told them something, should have given them caution, and perhaps for some who worked there it did, but not Dr. Sawatki.
What he could not understand, what he could not open by intellect, he sought to open by brute force, like trying to discover the workings of a watch by smashing it, then reassembling the pieces….but he was dealing with technology of immense power, power that would have frightened any reasonable person.”
As the diamond saw started to grind against the edge of the cylinder there were many sparks, most from the diamond saw itself as it eroded away far more quickly than it bit into the cylinder. In fact, it appeared to have taken three blades before there appeared a barely visible scratch. But as the grinding continued, the cylinder pulsed an iridescent blue, causing the workers to look at the man who had shouted the orders questioningly. He urged them onward and they renewed their efforts. Second later the cylinder pulsed again, and as the men hesitated he shouted at them again, urging them to redouble their efforts. As the saw drove deeper into the wall of the cylinder the pulses came with increasing frequency. While urging them on, the man backed slowly toward the door, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the rapidly strobing cylinder. The pulses came with ever increasing frequency until it reached the point where the pulses must merge to become a steady glow…a glow that lasted for less than a second…when the flash came.
The DVD showed the same scene from several viewpoints, all terminating in the bright flash, then the scenes from outside…the destruction of the building..the fire…the one survivor.
“Apparently there is justice of a sort in the cosmos,” Stanbeck said. “The others were consumed in the fireball, they never knew what hit them, poor devils. Sawatki had flash burns over half of his body…second degree, and most of the rest of him received burns as the wooden building was consumed, before he could be rescued. He died two agonizing weeks later…his body cremated just as had been the bodies of all of his workers at Buchenwald.”
“And the flash?” asked Slammer.
“A thermonuclear explosion.”
“Impossible,” said Jim. “That would have destroyed the whole base.”
“I’ve looked at the emission spectra from the spectrophotometers,” said Stanbeck. “I’ll show them to you. It SHOULD have destroyed the whole base….should have destroyed all of southern Nevada. It didn’t because it was damped.”
“You can’t damp a thermonuclear explosion,” said Jim.
“Oh, I can’t Jim, you can’t…..the cylinder did. There were only small bits of it left after the fusion explosion, just specks really that had not been vaporized….but apparently it has internal logic,” said Stanbeck, then as he noticed Slammer’s confusion, “It has built in computer components that apparently regulate it…some sort of internal control that regulates the fusion…regulates the power of a small star. I believe the blue iridescence was that control system’s way of warning…warning that the cylinder was about to be breached, trying to attract attention to the ongoing damage from the saw. Apparently at the same time, there was a similar blinking light strobing in unison with it on what we believe is the control panel, they called Dr. Sawatki about it but he was too engrossed with the opening of the cylinder…couldn’t be bothered.”
“But the control panel wasn’t connected, the wiring must have been torn away,” protested Slammer.
“We have never found any wiring…apparently the logic circuits of the control panel communicate electronically…it makes sense, really. Our first aircraft had wires and push-pull rods to operate the control surfaces and engines, later this was done hydraulically, now by electrical wires, the next step likely is to eliminate the wires..save the weight,” said Jim.
“And yet somehow….even in its death, the control logic reached out and damped that reaction…damped a hydrogen bomb….holding it to a few meters across. There was some blast damage….just as there had been in the spacecraft from the fourth cylinder….but remarkably little, considering those men unleashed the fires of Hell.”
“I can see why you are cautious, Peter,” said Slammer. 'That was terribly unfortunate. How many men were lost?”
“Seven, if you don’t count Sawatki…and I don’t. But it wasn’t unfortunate Colonel, it was most fortunate indeed. Had the saw somehow disabled the damping logic….as it might well have done….my calculation from the spectrographic analysis was that the explosion would have been approximately 35 megatons. The base would have been gone…most of Las Vegas as well.”
“My God,” said Slammer, staggering to the chair. “It would have been that devastating?”
“Oh yes,” said Stanbeck, “..and we have two more. And the other cylinder, the bigger one, somehow I fear that most of all.”
“I mentioned the four cylinders that appear to have been supplying energy. Of course, we never had the fourth one. Reconstructing the wreckage, it appears that there should have been four, but there was an explosion in the area of the missing one. It would appear that the damage that ultimately led to the crashing of the spacecraft occurred as a result of the explosion of that missing fourth bottle. That is suggested not just because that would make the arrangement of the cylinders symmetrical, but because the same power leads that went to the remaining three went to the area of the missing fourth.”
“So the theory is there was an explosion in that fourth cylinder,” asked Slammer. “What would have caused that?”
“We simply have no way of knowing. My guess was that it was breached by something that penetrated the ship…a meteorite, for example. Or perhaps, if they were involved in conflict, some sort of weapon.”
“Or perhaps just materiel failure….it may have simply been defective,” said Jim Hawthorne.
“Possibly,…yes…but I think that is unlikely….and the reason for that is what you will see on this video disc.
First…there are a few things you need to understand about my predecessor in this job. The spacecraft crashed in 1947. This country had no expertise in spacecraft at that time, and the only experts on rocketry we possessed were the 500 or so scientists and engineers taken from Germany at the end of the war. But even these people knew very little.
The greatest of their accomplishments, the V-2, was scarcely a weapon at all. It was produced by slave labor…each one built individually. Even the parts were not truly interchangeable. The V-2 distinguished itself among weapons in killing more people during production, through the conditions of the slave labor, than the missiles themselves ever killed in warfare. And yet the designers of the V-2…these barbarians, were entrusted with an artifact of immense power created by a civilization that is likely millennia ahead of us.
My immediate predecessor, Dr. Albus Sawatki was in charge of V-2 production at Peenemunde and, when the British bombed that facility, at the prison factory at Mittelwork. He was originally assigned to Ft. Bliss, with Von Braun and the others, but was recognized by a Buchenwald survivor at a scientific meeting. He was sent here, in part to hide him, when the spacecraft was moved here in early 1950. He was a brutish thug of a man, who worked his people like slaves.
It took almost twenty years to sort out the three dimensional jigsaw puzzle. By that time his fellow Nazi researchers were in NASA, putting men on the moon. He wanted to outshine their accomplishments. So he took one of the three cylinders, set up a test stand in Hangar A..”
“Where’s Hangar A?” asked Jim. “The lowest lettered Hangar is B. Was there once an A?”
“Watch the monitor and you will see what happened to Hangar A.”
The DVD was apparently a collection of old films and TV images, spliced together and put on disc. It started with the movement of a cylinder from Hangar B to Hangar A, an identical building where the athletic field now stood. The cylinder was loaded onto what appeared to be a small bomb trailer, and towed into the building. It was fastened securely with the end below a large circular saw, as a figure stood over it, apparently shouting orders. A variety of machines were brought up toward it, as well as recording cameras.
“They had attempted to x-ray the cylinder but even our strongest industrial x-ray machines, even the Cobalt-60 units wouldn’t penetrate it. They had tried the primitive ultrasound of the time…little more than sonar, really, to no avail. And even now, even with nuclear resonance imaging, with positron spectral imaging, the container is black…it neither gives off or passes any signal. That should have told them something, should have given them caution, and perhaps for some who worked there it did, but not Dr. Sawatki.
What he could not understand, what he could not open by intellect, he sought to open by brute force, like trying to discover the workings of a watch by smashing it, then reassembling the pieces….but he was dealing with technology of immense power, power that would have frightened any reasonable person.”
As the diamond saw started to grind against the edge of the cylinder there were many sparks, most from the diamond saw itself as it eroded away far more quickly than it bit into the cylinder. In fact, it appeared to have taken three blades before there appeared a barely visible scratch. But as the grinding continued, the cylinder pulsed an iridescent blue, causing the workers to look at the man who had shouted the orders questioningly. He urged them onward and they renewed their efforts. Second later the cylinder pulsed again, and as the men hesitated he shouted at them again, urging them to redouble their efforts. As the saw drove deeper into the wall of the cylinder the pulses came with increasing frequency. While urging them on, the man backed slowly toward the door, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the rapidly strobing cylinder. The pulses came with ever increasing frequency until it reached the point where the pulses must merge to become a steady glow…a glow that lasted for less than a second…when the flash came.
The DVD showed the same scene from several viewpoints, all terminating in the bright flash, then the scenes from outside…the destruction of the building..the fire…the one survivor.
“Apparently there is justice of a sort in the cosmos,” Stanbeck said. “The others were consumed in the fireball, they never knew what hit them, poor devils. Sawatki had flash burns over half of his body…second degree, and most of the rest of him received burns as the wooden building was consumed, before he could be rescued. He died two agonizing weeks later…his body cremated just as had been the bodies of all of his workers at Buchenwald.”
“And the flash?” asked Slammer.
“A thermonuclear explosion.”
“Impossible,” said Jim. “That would have destroyed the whole base.”
“I’ve looked at the emission spectra from the spectrophotometers,” said Stanbeck. “I’ll show them to you. It SHOULD have destroyed the whole base….should have destroyed all of southern Nevada. It didn’t because it was damped.”
“You can’t damp a thermonuclear explosion,” said Jim.
“Oh, I can’t Jim, you can’t…..the cylinder did. There were only small bits of it left after the fusion explosion, just specks really that had not been vaporized….but apparently it has internal logic,” said Stanbeck, then as he noticed Slammer’s confusion, “It has built in computer components that apparently regulate it…some sort of internal control that regulates the fusion…regulates the power of a small star. I believe the blue iridescence was that control system’s way of warning…warning that the cylinder was about to be breached, trying to attract attention to the ongoing damage from the saw. Apparently at the same time, there was a similar blinking light strobing in unison with it on what we believe is the control panel, they called Dr. Sawatki about it but he was too engrossed with the opening of the cylinder…couldn’t be bothered.”
“But the control panel wasn’t connected, the wiring must have been torn away,” protested Slammer.
“We have never found any wiring…apparently the logic circuits of the control panel communicate electronically…it makes sense, really. Our first aircraft had wires and push-pull rods to operate the control surfaces and engines, later this was done hydraulically, now by electrical wires, the next step likely is to eliminate the wires..save the weight,” said Jim.
“And yet somehow….even in its death, the control logic reached out and damped that reaction…damped a hydrogen bomb….holding it to a few meters across. There was some blast damage….just as there had been in the spacecraft from the fourth cylinder….but remarkably little, considering those men unleashed the fires of Hell.”
“I can see why you are cautious, Peter,” said Slammer. 'That was terribly unfortunate. How many men were lost?”
“Seven, if you don’t count Sawatki…and I don’t. But it wasn’t unfortunate Colonel, it was most fortunate indeed. Had the saw somehow disabled the damping logic….as it might well have done….my calculation from the spectrographic analysis was that the explosion would have been approximately 35 megatons. The base would have been gone…most of Las Vegas as well.”
“My God,” said Slammer, staggering to the chair. “It would have been that devastating?”
“Oh yes,” said Stanbeck, “..and we have two more. And the other cylinder, the bigger one, somehow I fear that most of all.”
“Something you fear more than two 35 megaton thermonuclear explosions?” asked Slammer incredulously. "That alone would peg my scared-o-meter. What’s worse than that?”
“I think the larger cylinder is the faster-than-light drive.”
“The what?”
“Normally the speed of light is the fastest anything can go,” Jim explained. “An FTL drive would let you go faster.”
“Why would you think they’d have to go faster than light?” asked Slammer.
“Well,” said Dr. Stanback, “..these people obviously aren’t from around here. It’s not so much that they are physically different…the variation between groups of humans is as great as the difference between the average human and the bodies that were recovered.
But nobody could hide the development of this level of technology on Earth, therefore it must be from somewhere else. But none of the planets in this solar system are Earth-like enough to harbor life that is so much like us….therefore they are not just extraterrestrial, but from outside the solar system.
This ship clearly wasn’t built for long duration voyages…the area for provisions, for example, was quite modest, so they couldn’t spend decades getting here…therefore, faster than light.”
“What kind of propulsion would that take?” asked Slammer.
“Well..propulsion isn’t really the issue. The main power leads from the fusion cylinders go right in to the drive mechanism, which was smashed in the crash. We believe it to be something called a pitch drive which locally changes gravitation. The theory is that with enough power you can change the local gravity…essentially lifting the spacecraft like an airplane wing is lifted by traveling through the air.
That would also solve the problem of the high accelerations you would expect in a spacecraft, to get out of the atmosphere. We think we are actually making slow progress on the drive mechanism itself…it’s just that we have nothing comparable to the fusion cylinders that can give us the vast quantities of energy we need.”
“What kind of energy are you talking about,” asked Slammer.
“The energy seems to be simple electrical energy. It apparently involves direct conversion of the fusion energy to electrical energy. That’s theoretically possible….it’ll just take us a couple hundred years to figure it out.” said Stanbeck.
“Yeah,…once we figure out a workable hydrogen fusion power plant…like the cylinders,” said Jim.
“Well, we’ve been working on that for about 50 years…with Tokamaks and the like…with no real results so far, but within 50 or 100 years, it’s possible.”
“But what has this to do with the other cylinder?” asked Slammer.
“That’s just it,” said Stanbeck. “Nothing. A pitch drive will never get you faster than light. That’s why I think this cylinder is the FTL drive….or at least part of it.”
“I guess I don’t understand how, if you can’t go faster than light, you can have a faster-than-light drive?” said Slammer.
“Look here,” Stanbeck said, keying in his computer. After a few keystrokes an imageappeared. “This would be one way. You bend space…create a wormhole, then travel through it….faster than the light which must make a longer journey.”
“You believe this might be a wormhole generator?” asked Jim. “How could it do that?”
“Well, theoretically there are several ways….but the scary thing is that this was all by itself in the nose of the spacecraft…with no power leads going to it. That implies it is self powered….like the fusion cylinders. And the number of things that are self-powered and could start a wormhole…..there are a few…but they are all pretty scary.”
“Scarier than 70 megatons?” asked Slammer.
Suddenly Jim got very quiet and the color drained from his face. “Yessir,” he said. “Much scarier. We are talking about some things that could potentially destroy the Earth itself."
“I think the larger cylinder is the faster-than-light drive.”
“The what?”
“Normally the speed of light is the fastest anything can go,” Jim explained. “An FTL drive would let you go faster.”
“Why would you think they’d have to go faster than light?” asked Slammer.
“Well,” said Dr. Stanback, “..these people obviously aren’t from around here. It’s not so much that they are physically different…the variation between groups of humans is as great as the difference between the average human and the bodies that were recovered.
But nobody could hide the development of this level of technology on Earth, therefore it must be from somewhere else. But none of the planets in this solar system are Earth-like enough to harbor life that is so much like us….therefore they are not just extraterrestrial, but from outside the solar system.
This ship clearly wasn’t built for long duration voyages…the area for provisions, for example, was quite modest, so they couldn’t spend decades getting here…therefore, faster than light.”
“What kind of propulsion would that take?” asked Slammer.
“Well..propulsion isn’t really the issue. The main power leads from the fusion cylinders go right in to the drive mechanism, which was smashed in the crash. We believe it to be something called a pitch drive which locally changes gravitation. The theory is that with enough power you can change the local gravity…essentially lifting the spacecraft like an airplane wing is lifted by traveling through the air.
That would also solve the problem of the high accelerations you would expect in a spacecraft, to get out of the atmosphere. We think we are actually making slow progress on the drive mechanism itself…it’s just that we have nothing comparable to the fusion cylinders that can give us the vast quantities of energy we need.”
“What kind of energy are you talking about,” asked Slammer.
“The energy seems to be simple electrical energy. It apparently involves direct conversion of the fusion energy to electrical energy. That’s theoretically possible….it’ll just take us a couple hundred years to figure it out.” said Stanbeck.
“Yeah,…once we figure out a workable hydrogen fusion power plant…like the cylinders,” said Jim.
“Well, we’ve been working on that for about 50 years…with Tokamaks and the like…with no real results so far, but within 50 or 100 years, it’s possible.”
“But what has this to do with the other cylinder?” asked Slammer.
“That’s just it,” said Stanbeck. “Nothing. A pitch drive will never get you faster than light. That’s why I think this cylinder is the FTL drive….or at least part of it.”
“I guess I don’t understand how, if you can’t go faster than light, you can have a faster-than-light drive?” said Slammer.
“Look here,” Stanbeck said, keying in his computer. After a few keystrokes an imageappeared. “This would be one way. You bend space…create a wormhole, then travel through it….faster than the light which must make a longer journey.”
“You believe this might be a wormhole generator?” asked Jim. “How could it do that?”
“Well, theoretically there are several ways….but the scary thing is that this was all by itself in the nose of the spacecraft…with no power leads going to it. That implies it is self powered….like the fusion cylinders. And the number of things that are self-powered and could start a wormhole…..there are a few…but they are all pretty scary.”
“Scarier than 70 megatons?” asked Slammer.
Suddenly Jim got very quiet and the color drained from his face. “Yessir,” he said. “Much scarier. We are talking about some things that could potentially destroy the Earth itself."
8:00 AM The Silver Nugget Room, Tonopah Nevada
“Wake up sleepyhead,” she said, as the pillow came flying across the room to hit him in the face. “We need to check out by 11:00, and we’ve still got a lot to do before we can go to the duplex…like grocery shopping, for instance.”
“Oh, so now it’s MY fault?” asked Max “Who kept us up half the night? You did!”
“You were staying up pretty well yourself, Max, or at least ..parts of you were…..although I was probably helping that just a little myself.”
The pillow came flying back. “You shameless hussy. What happened to that shy blushing girl I was a lab partner to for all those years?”
Liz grinned. “You did, Max. So you want to help me dry my hair…or do I have to go get a hair-dryer, which I forgot to bring in your haste to spirit me away from Roswell, and have your way with me?”
“Speaking of which. Do you really think it’s fair for me to have to take a shower ALL BY MYSELF? Who is going to scrub my back…where I can’t reach?”
“I’ve showered with you, Max. Your back is NOT what you reach for.”
Max shook his head, and headed for the bathroom, making puppy-dog eyes at her all the way. Presently, the noise of the shower running was heard.
Max was shampooing his hair when suddenly he heard the shower curtain move and felt a draft.
”OK, she said, “…where is this allegedly dirty back?”
“Wake up sleepyhead,” she said, as the pillow came flying across the room to hit him in the face. “We need to check out by 11:00, and we’ve still got a lot to do before we can go to the duplex…like grocery shopping, for instance.”
“Oh, so now it’s MY fault?” asked Max “Who kept us up half the night? You did!”
“You were staying up pretty well yourself, Max, or at least ..parts of you were…..although I was probably helping that just a little myself.”
The pillow came flying back. “You shameless hussy. What happened to that shy blushing girl I was a lab partner to for all those years?”
Liz grinned. “You did, Max. So you want to help me dry my hair…or do I have to go get a hair-dryer, which I forgot to bring in your haste to spirit me away from Roswell, and have your way with me?”
“Speaking of which. Do you really think it’s fair for me to have to take a shower ALL BY MYSELF? Who is going to scrub my back…where I can’t reach?”
“I’ve showered with you, Max. Your back is NOT what you reach for.”
Max shook his head, and headed for the bathroom, making puppy-dog eyes at her all the way. Presently, the noise of the shower running was heard.
Max was shampooing his hair when suddenly he heard the shower curtain move and felt a draft.
”OK, she said, “…where is this allegedly dirty back?”
0830 Det. 24 Commander’s Office, Area 51, Groom’s Lake Nevada
Dr. Hubertus Blaukopf and Dr. Kurt Emil Schreiber seemed somewhat disconcerted on this visit. Oh, the arrogance wasn’t gone, but overnight they had come to the conclusion they were on shakier ground than they had once believed.
Dr. Blaukopf was pretty sure he’d made an error in pawning off that ridiculous request by the commander to have someone explain the mission of their department to the idiot Lieutenant. It had seemed such a foolish request…..none of the previous commanders had ever done that, and the worthless woman was the natural choice to waste her time doing it.
But apparently she had somehow poisoned his mind, with whatever she had told him. Several other people in the department had confirmed that when the new commander came out of the briefing room, he had indeed stated that the area should be closed off…and instructed his executive to get coffins for the creatures in the freak wall. Whatever she said, whatever she did that had impressed him so…..she was but a woman. His superior intellect could no doubt convince the commander to reverse his orders. After all…the man was a soldier…practically a barbarian….and his only degree had come from the Air Force Academy…a bachelor’s degree…from a trade school. Surely his opinion could be changed…overwhelmed by the force of his personality and his many degrees.
Slammer looked up as the three entered the room. He was trying to not take an instantaneous dislike to the two men….just because of the actions of their fathers. He was rightfully angry yesterday with the way they’d appeared to be acting toward Lieutenant DelGado yesterday. But today they were more cautious, certainly not friendly toward the young woman, but at least ..cautious. It would be unfair, Slammer thought, to condemn them for the actions of their fathers. Perhaps they really weren’t all that bad.
“Dr. Blaukopf…Dr. Schrieber, Lieutenant DelGado indicates that you wished to see me to discuss the disposition of the bodies from the spacecraft,” said Slammer.
“Why yes, Colonel….apparently the Lieutenant’s briefing has confused you….my apologies, I should of course not trusted her with something that important…my fault entirely. But be that as it may…it is clear the young Lieutenant …this…woman…did not understand the significance of that display.”
“The significance. Dr. Blaukopf?”
“Yes, the significance. You are a warrior, Colonel Randolph,…I’m sure you know….Eternal vigilance,” said Blaukopf, Schreiber nodding his head as if to further make the point.
“I know that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom,” ‘and apparently the safety of the world as well,’ he thought, considering the 35 years that Peter Stanbeck had been keeping people from tampering with those remaining three cylinders, “…but I’m not sure what that has to do with the display of people as if they were some sort of obscene war trophy.”
“But that is the very point….they were not people….you’ve seen them…they are subhuman. They are some defective branch of the tree of life….doomed to die off, while we progress in our own evolution to perfection.”
“What I saw, doctor, were crewmembers of a ship who were in an unfortunate accident…..all the more unfortunate because it put the one survivor in the hands of barbarians that tortured and killed it.”
“Two survivors,” muttered Schreiber, before suddenly looking frightened as he drew an angry glare from Blaukopf.
“I beg your pardon, Dr. Schreiber. What did you say?” asked Slammer.
“Oh…nothing…nothing…just thinking about something else…forgive me.”
“The point is, Colonel,” continued Blaukopf, “that these were not humans…they were aliens…vile creatures coming here to spread their spawn….to seize from us what belongs to the true fruit of that tree of life. That wall was created by my father….so that we would look and not forget the nature of our enemies.”
“Well I see little evidence that there was ever any intention to be our enemies, and the technology that they had seems like it would have been enough to wipe us out pretty handily, had they wanted to do so. Particularly back in 1947.”
“We were fortunate then, Colonel. We may not be in the future. And the studies on the survivor….they were necessary. Because of those studies we now have the technology to protect ourselves against these creatures…drugs even stronger than scopalamine to inhibit their powers.”
“It was necessary to vivisect him? To take a sentient being and rip him apart while he was still awake? You actually are trying to justify that?” asked Captain Hawthorne.
“How can you say that, Dr. Blaukopf,” asked Lieutenant DelGado. The samples from the autopsy…the electron microscopy…even the chromosome DNA analysis….these people were essentially just like humans.”
“They were NOT human!” exclaimed Blaukopf, rising from his feet and glaring at the young Lieutenant. And if you were not a stupid, sentimental woman…”
“ENOUGH!” said Slammer, rising to his feet. He strode over to Blaukopf, his face red and his fists clenched. “Dr. Blaukopf, this meeting is over. You will apologize to my Lieutenant, and then you and Dr. Schreiber will leave. This matter is closed. No one is to go into that area until the coffins arrive. Once they do, the display will be taken down and the bodies will be buried. And I would warn you, Doctor, that I do not tolerate people insulting my troops. Have I made myself perfectly clear? Because if not, I guarantee you will have no problem comprehending if I have to have this discussion with you again.”
“Well, perhaps I have been ..uh…hasty,” said Blaukopf. “I’m sure Lieutenant DelGado is a fine young lady…..I mean…given her background…her ethnic group…..graduating from college…getting a PhD…why that’s quite admirable I suppose.”
“Doctor Blaukopf,” said Slammer, “I think it would be real good if you got outside of that door before I finish counting to ten…..I’m at eight right now..”
Hurriedly, Blaukopf and Schreiber departed, leaving Slammer with his two young officers.
Dr. Hubertus Blaukopf and Dr. Kurt Emil Schreiber seemed somewhat disconcerted on this visit. Oh, the arrogance wasn’t gone, but overnight they had come to the conclusion they were on shakier ground than they had once believed.
Dr. Blaukopf was pretty sure he’d made an error in pawning off that ridiculous request by the commander to have someone explain the mission of their department to the idiot Lieutenant. It had seemed such a foolish request…..none of the previous commanders had ever done that, and the worthless woman was the natural choice to waste her time doing it.
But apparently she had somehow poisoned his mind, with whatever she had told him. Several other people in the department had confirmed that when the new commander came out of the briefing room, he had indeed stated that the area should be closed off…and instructed his executive to get coffins for the creatures in the freak wall. Whatever she said, whatever she did that had impressed him so…..she was but a woman. His superior intellect could no doubt convince the commander to reverse his orders. After all…the man was a soldier…practically a barbarian….and his only degree had come from the Air Force Academy…a bachelor’s degree…from a trade school. Surely his opinion could be changed…overwhelmed by the force of his personality and his many degrees.
Slammer looked up as the three entered the room. He was trying to not take an instantaneous dislike to the two men….just because of the actions of their fathers. He was rightfully angry yesterday with the way they’d appeared to be acting toward Lieutenant DelGado yesterday. But today they were more cautious, certainly not friendly toward the young woman, but at least ..cautious. It would be unfair, Slammer thought, to condemn them for the actions of their fathers. Perhaps they really weren’t all that bad.
“Dr. Blaukopf…Dr. Schrieber, Lieutenant DelGado indicates that you wished to see me to discuss the disposition of the bodies from the spacecraft,” said Slammer.
“Why yes, Colonel….apparently the Lieutenant’s briefing has confused you….my apologies, I should of course not trusted her with something that important…my fault entirely. But be that as it may…it is clear the young Lieutenant …this…woman…did not understand the significance of that display.”
“The significance. Dr. Blaukopf?”
“Yes, the significance. You are a warrior, Colonel Randolph,…I’m sure you know….Eternal vigilance,” said Blaukopf, Schreiber nodding his head as if to further make the point.
“I know that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom,” ‘and apparently the safety of the world as well,’ he thought, considering the 35 years that Peter Stanbeck had been keeping people from tampering with those remaining three cylinders, “…but I’m not sure what that has to do with the display of people as if they were some sort of obscene war trophy.”
“But that is the very point….they were not people….you’ve seen them…they are subhuman. They are some defective branch of the tree of life….doomed to die off, while we progress in our own evolution to perfection.”
“What I saw, doctor, were crewmembers of a ship who were in an unfortunate accident…..all the more unfortunate because it put the one survivor in the hands of barbarians that tortured and killed it.”
“Two survivors,” muttered Schreiber, before suddenly looking frightened as he drew an angry glare from Blaukopf.
“I beg your pardon, Dr. Schreiber. What did you say?” asked Slammer.
“Oh…nothing…nothing…just thinking about something else…forgive me.”
“The point is, Colonel,” continued Blaukopf, “that these were not humans…they were aliens…vile creatures coming here to spread their spawn….to seize from us what belongs to the true fruit of that tree of life. That wall was created by my father….so that we would look and not forget the nature of our enemies.”
“Well I see little evidence that there was ever any intention to be our enemies, and the technology that they had seems like it would have been enough to wipe us out pretty handily, had they wanted to do so. Particularly back in 1947.”
“We were fortunate then, Colonel. We may not be in the future. And the studies on the survivor….they were necessary. Because of those studies we now have the technology to protect ourselves against these creatures…drugs even stronger than scopalamine to inhibit their powers.”
“It was necessary to vivisect him? To take a sentient being and rip him apart while he was still awake? You actually are trying to justify that?” asked Captain Hawthorne.
“How can you say that, Dr. Blaukopf,” asked Lieutenant DelGado. The samples from the autopsy…the electron microscopy…even the chromosome DNA analysis….these people were essentially just like humans.”
“They were NOT human!” exclaimed Blaukopf, rising from his feet and glaring at the young Lieutenant. And if you were not a stupid, sentimental woman…”
“ENOUGH!” said Slammer, rising to his feet. He strode over to Blaukopf, his face red and his fists clenched. “Dr. Blaukopf, this meeting is over. You will apologize to my Lieutenant, and then you and Dr. Schreiber will leave. This matter is closed. No one is to go into that area until the coffins arrive. Once they do, the display will be taken down and the bodies will be buried. And I would warn you, Doctor, that I do not tolerate people insulting my troops. Have I made myself perfectly clear? Because if not, I guarantee you will have no problem comprehending if I have to have this discussion with you again.”
“Well, perhaps I have been ..uh…hasty,” said Blaukopf. “I’m sure Lieutenant DelGado is a fine young lady…..I mean…given her background…her ethnic group…..graduating from college…getting a PhD…why that’s quite admirable I suppose.”
“Doctor Blaukopf,” said Slammer, “I think it would be real good if you got outside of that door before I finish counting to ten…..I’m at eight right now..”
Hurriedly, Blaukopf and Schreiber departed, leaving Slammer with his two young officers.
“Lieutenant DelGado,” Slammer asked, “has this happened in the past?”
“Has what happened, sir?”
“You know damn well what, Lieutenant. Doctor Blaukopf or other in your workplace making these kinds of derogatory and demeaning comments toward you.”
“Yes sir, pretty much ever since I came here.”
“Who is the next military person in your supervisory chain? And did you report this conduct to them?”
“There’s no one military senior to me in my department, sir. My immediate supervisor is Major Fredericks, over in Life Support research. I contacted him several times about this.”
”Jim, please call Major Fredericks and give him my compliments, and tell him I’d like to see him this afternoon,” said Slammer.
“Sir,” said Laurie, “I know Major Fredericks talked to your predecessor about this at least once. Colonel Jamieson told him that Dr. Blaukopf and Dr. Schreiber were irreplaceable national assets…that I’d just have to cope with the situation.”
“Cancel the call to Fredericks, Jim,” said Slammer. “Get out the word instead that we are going to have Commander’s Call in a couple of days, two sessions, so nobody misses it. We are going to get this place out of the 1950s, if we have to crack a few skulls to do it.”
“Yes sir…uh…Sir, did you catch that comment that Schreiber said about two aliens being captured alive?”
”Yes. Does either of you know anything about such a thing?”
“No sir,” said Jim. “That’s why I was asking you.”
“Well, sir,” said Laurie DelGado, “I’m not just sure. Shortly after I got here 6 months ago we had a person retire, MSgt Hedges. He had worked in the department for twenty years. He said that someone he had worked with, way back when he’d started, had been with the program since the beginning….back when the pieces of the spacecraft were picked up. That man claimed, according to Hedges at least, that one alien had survived the crash uninjured….that it had come back…stolen something from the hangar the wreckage was stored in when it was still at the base at Roswell. He said the alien had come back a second time and stolen something else from the wreckage, but they’d eventually tracked him down. Whatever he’d stolen was gone, but he’d been locked up, tortured at a facility near Roswell, trying to make him show where the stolen articles were. I mean, this all may be just some fairy tale, sir, but it’s what I heard.”
“OK, Laurie, I need for you to call that man…get the name and any other information you can on this old-timer. If he’s still alive, we need to find him. Check with the Nellis base hospital….if he’s that old, he’s likely using medical services, and he’ll be in the Air Force Hospital Computer system somewhere. We need to interview that man. Jim, you dig into the records, find the complete inventory of everything picked up at the crash site. Then get with Dr. Stanbeck and the two of you go over line item by line item what we don’t have now that we had then. Let’s see if we can find out what may be missing. Considering the potential destructiveness of what we have, it scares me to think there may be other stuff out there. But we need to know. Also, Jim, I’m going to go talk with the chief of Civil Engineering. We have 70 megatons of thermonuclear devices in a 1950s era wood hangar. That isn’t going to do, not at all. In the meantime, post guards at every entrance, no one enters unless it’s you, me, or Dr. Stanbeck, and no one…not even one of us, takes any alien material out. That’ll have to do until we come up with better security arrangements.”
“Yes sir.”
Two minutes later all three were leaving the office, the junior officers to their assigned tasks, the Commander, to corner the CE officer. Slammer saw Jim’s eyes linger on the Lieutenant as she walked down the hall, some unspoken question seemingly on his lips.
“Yes, Jim?”
“Well sir…have you ever considered getting married?”
“I am married, Jim. She’s a nurse,…just made Major, just started a remote tour to Kunsan about a month ago.”
“Well how did you ask her?”
“In my case, in a big hurry. We’d dated about five times, my unit got orders to go fight in Serbia, so I asked her the day before we were to deploy. She said yes.”
“You make that sound too easy.”
“Getting married IS easy. Being together, when you are both active duty…that’s a lot harder.”
“Well, I doubt that Laurie is going to stick around in the Air Force after her ROTC obligation.”
“You never know, Jim. I didn’t expect to stay around past my first tour either. That was 19 years ago.You never can tell…..”
12:15 PM 23B Airway Drive, Old military housing area, Tonopah Airport Nevada
The final load was moved out of the little trailer and Anna had made sandwiches for everybody.
“Well dear,’ Liz said, “our first house.”
“You know, I haven’t carried you across the threshold yet.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“There’s nothing silly about it, it’s tradition.”
“Well OK, if you must.”
Anna watched them as he picked her up and carried her inside. She liked Beth, but she sure didn’t trust her husband. It wasn’t anything he’d done, really, it was just that…he was a guy. Anna didn’t really trust any guy. She watched as he came back out, to take the rental trailer back to town. She wondered how Beth could be so comfortable with him, her experiences were uniformly bad with men….although most had been quite a bit older, boyfriends of her mother. She thought back to that time and shuddered. Even the drugs had been better than that.
Anna picked up the paper plates and went inside, while Liz was putting up blinds in the ‘master bedroom.’
The man was three quarters of a mile away, but the large binoculars followed her every move as he looked through the windows at her. Yes, it was her alright. All he needed to do was to wait until the time was right…probably not tonight…but soon.
“Has what happened, sir?”
“You know damn well what, Lieutenant. Doctor Blaukopf or other in your workplace making these kinds of derogatory and demeaning comments toward you.”
“Yes sir, pretty much ever since I came here.”
“Who is the next military person in your supervisory chain? And did you report this conduct to them?”
“There’s no one military senior to me in my department, sir. My immediate supervisor is Major Fredericks, over in Life Support research. I contacted him several times about this.”
”Jim, please call Major Fredericks and give him my compliments, and tell him I’d like to see him this afternoon,” said Slammer.
“Sir,” said Laurie, “I know Major Fredericks talked to your predecessor about this at least once. Colonel Jamieson told him that Dr. Blaukopf and Dr. Schreiber were irreplaceable national assets…that I’d just have to cope with the situation.”
“Cancel the call to Fredericks, Jim,” said Slammer. “Get out the word instead that we are going to have Commander’s Call in a couple of days, two sessions, so nobody misses it. We are going to get this place out of the 1950s, if we have to crack a few skulls to do it.”
“Yes sir…uh…Sir, did you catch that comment that Schreiber said about two aliens being captured alive?”
”Yes. Does either of you know anything about such a thing?”
“No sir,” said Jim. “That’s why I was asking you.”
“Well, sir,” said Laurie DelGado, “I’m not just sure. Shortly after I got here 6 months ago we had a person retire, MSgt Hedges. He had worked in the department for twenty years. He said that someone he had worked with, way back when he’d started, had been with the program since the beginning….back when the pieces of the spacecraft were picked up. That man claimed, according to Hedges at least, that one alien had survived the crash uninjured….that it had come back…stolen something from the hangar the wreckage was stored in when it was still at the base at Roswell. He said the alien had come back a second time and stolen something else from the wreckage, but they’d eventually tracked him down. Whatever he’d stolen was gone, but he’d been locked up, tortured at a facility near Roswell, trying to make him show where the stolen articles were. I mean, this all may be just some fairy tale, sir, but it’s what I heard.”
“OK, Laurie, I need for you to call that man…get the name and any other information you can on this old-timer. If he’s still alive, we need to find him. Check with the Nellis base hospital….if he’s that old, he’s likely using medical services, and he’ll be in the Air Force Hospital Computer system somewhere. We need to interview that man. Jim, you dig into the records, find the complete inventory of everything picked up at the crash site. Then get with Dr. Stanbeck and the two of you go over line item by line item what we don’t have now that we had then. Let’s see if we can find out what may be missing. Considering the potential destructiveness of what we have, it scares me to think there may be other stuff out there. But we need to know. Also, Jim, I’m going to go talk with the chief of Civil Engineering. We have 70 megatons of thermonuclear devices in a 1950s era wood hangar. That isn’t going to do, not at all. In the meantime, post guards at every entrance, no one enters unless it’s you, me, or Dr. Stanbeck, and no one…not even one of us, takes any alien material out. That’ll have to do until we come up with better security arrangements.”
“Yes sir.”
Two minutes later all three were leaving the office, the junior officers to their assigned tasks, the Commander, to corner the CE officer. Slammer saw Jim’s eyes linger on the Lieutenant as she walked down the hall, some unspoken question seemingly on his lips.
“Yes, Jim?”
“Well sir…have you ever considered getting married?”
“I am married, Jim. She’s a nurse,…just made Major, just started a remote tour to Kunsan about a month ago.”
“Well how did you ask her?”
“In my case, in a big hurry. We’d dated about five times, my unit got orders to go fight in Serbia, so I asked her the day before we were to deploy. She said yes.”
“You make that sound too easy.”
“Getting married IS easy. Being together, when you are both active duty…that’s a lot harder.”
“Well, I doubt that Laurie is going to stick around in the Air Force after her ROTC obligation.”
“You never know, Jim. I didn’t expect to stay around past my first tour either. That was 19 years ago.You never can tell…..”
12:15 PM 23B Airway Drive, Old military housing area, Tonopah Airport Nevada
The final load was moved out of the little trailer and Anna had made sandwiches for everybody.
“Well dear,’ Liz said, “our first house.”
“You know, I haven’t carried you across the threshold yet.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“There’s nothing silly about it, it’s tradition.”
“Well OK, if you must.”
Anna watched them as he picked her up and carried her inside. She liked Beth, but she sure didn’t trust her husband. It wasn’t anything he’d done, really, it was just that…he was a guy. Anna didn’t really trust any guy. She watched as he came back out, to take the rental trailer back to town. She wondered how Beth could be so comfortable with him, her experiences were uniformly bad with men….although most had been quite a bit older, boyfriends of her mother. She thought back to that time and shuddered. Even the drugs had been better than that.
Anna picked up the paper plates and went inside, while Liz was putting up blinds in the ‘master bedroom.’
The man was three quarters of a mile away, but the large binoculars followed her every move as he looked through the windows at her. Yes, it was her alright. All he needed to do was to wait until the time was right…probably not tonight…but soon.
Last edited by greywolf on Sun Jan 28, 2007 4:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.
1630 Det. 24 Commander’s Office, Area 51, Groom’s Lake Nevada
Lieutenant DelGado and Captain Hawthorne had reported back to update the commander. Apparently the policy was ‘ladies first,’ as Laurie started her report.
“I located MSgt Hedges and got a phone call through to him. The guy we want is another retired Master Sergeant, Jaime Alvarez. I was able to track him down through the base hospital. He’s a snow-bird…lives in Akron, Ohio…but he’s actually here at an RV park at Sam’s Town in Las Vegas. I got a call through to him, too.
If you’ll clear him for site access, sir, he said he’d fly up from McCarran and speak to us. He sounded kind of sentimental…wanted to come back to the area just for old times sake, and never figured he’d get the chance.”
“That’s great, Lieutenant. Jim, can you make that happen?”
“No problem sir, I’ll speak to the security manager…he’ll get him put through all the hoops. We may even still have him in the computer, if so it’ll be real easy, just a few keystrokes and he’s all set.”
“I see that security is in place around the hangar, that’s good. Can we keep doing that with our own security personnel? Or are we going to have to rotate in some of the prime contractor’s rent-a-cops?”
“We can manage it, sir. But even if we couldn’t…a lot of those rent-a-cops are ex-military, got hired by the prime contractor after they completed a tour here, so they already had clearances. A lot of them are pretty reliable too, if it comes to that.”
“Well, that’s good to know, but it’s better if we keep people guarding potential weapons like that who have undivided loyalties.”
“OK, sir. It won’t be a problem. Oh…I also set up the two commander’s calls for Wednesday….after the ceremony. And the coffins came in this afternoon, the wall is being taken down now, and Laurie…uh…Lieutenant DelGado that is, …she and her enlisted troops saw to getting the bodies out, and getting them in the coffins.”
“That’s good, Jim. You know, Senior people somehow always call Execs by their first names. I don’t want things to be awkward, here. Behind closed doors, let’s just call the Lieutenant Laurie, if that’s OK with her, and everybody call you Jim.”
“That’d be fine, Colonel.” Said Laurie.
“Work’s for me, sir,” said Jim.
“Ah, hell, might as well call me Slammer.”
“Slammer, sir?” inquired Laurie.
“It’s a long story, Laurie,” said Jim. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Oh, and sir…uh…Slammer,” said Laurie. I’m no structural engineer, but when they took down that wall….well, CE needs to look at the wall behind it.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt there’s a problem. After my talk with CE I’m pretty sure we have structural problems all over. Apparently the expansion for the saucer was a rush job done in 1948 and 1949. They still had steel shortages due to backups caused by the war. The whole site was only supposed to be temporary…last for twenty years. But no one ever got around to doing the infrastructure upgrades, although they added on to it in the seventies. We have some major problems, and no real way to build a secure area to house those three cylinders…to house all that stuff we aren’t sure of, without some major demolition. We need to have a staff meeting on Friday, with the senior military person in each section, to discuss a number of problems, including civil engineering ones."
"I'll get that scheduled, and get out the info to everyone, sir," said Jim
"OK,...and let me know when you get MSgt Alvarez up here, Laurie. I’d like to be there when you talk to him. Might be a good idea if Dr. Stanbeck was there, too.
Speaking of Dr. Stanbeck, he did a search of the current records, and the old Army Air Corps Records from the original crash site. If it isn’t just a paperwork or terminology glitch, there are five items missing. Something the original recovery team wrote down as four 'pods,' apparently identical in external appearance, and a silver 'orb' with the stylized spiral around a triangle insignia. We still do have one of those, but if there wasn’t just an accidental duplication of records, apparently at one time there were two. Peter said he’d work on that, try to find out for sure.”
“Pods, sir?” said Jim.
“Yeah, that worries the hell out of me too, Jim. Hopefully we can get a better description in some of the old records…, I just hope that 'pods' aren’t the same as 'cylinders'. The prospect of four stray thermonuclear generators is not something I want to think about.”
“Or worse,” said Jim.
“Yeah, or worse…” said Slammer.
Lieutenant DelGado and Captain Hawthorne had reported back to update the commander. Apparently the policy was ‘ladies first,’ as Laurie started her report.
“I located MSgt Hedges and got a phone call through to him. The guy we want is another retired Master Sergeant, Jaime Alvarez. I was able to track him down through the base hospital. He’s a snow-bird…lives in Akron, Ohio…but he’s actually here at an RV park at Sam’s Town in Las Vegas. I got a call through to him, too.
If you’ll clear him for site access, sir, he said he’d fly up from McCarran and speak to us. He sounded kind of sentimental…wanted to come back to the area just for old times sake, and never figured he’d get the chance.”
“That’s great, Lieutenant. Jim, can you make that happen?”
“No problem sir, I’ll speak to the security manager…he’ll get him put through all the hoops. We may even still have him in the computer, if so it’ll be real easy, just a few keystrokes and he’s all set.”
“I see that security is in place around the hangar, that’s good. Can we keep doing that with our own security personnel? Or are we going to have to rotate in some of the prime contractor’s rent-a-cops?”
“We can manage it, sir. But even if we couldn’t…a lot of those rent-a-cops are ex-military, got hired by the prime contractor after they completed a tour here, so they already had clearances. A lot of them are pretty reliable too, if it comes to that.”
“Well, that’s good to know, but it’s better if we keep people guarding potential weapons like that who have undivided loyalties.”
“OK, sir. It won’t be a problem. Oh…I also set up the two commander’s calls for Wednesday….after the ceremony. And the coffins came in this afternoon, the wall is being taken down now, and Laurie…uh…Lieutenant DelGado that is, …she and her enlisted troops saw to getting the bodies out, and getting them in the coffins.”
“That’s good, Jim. You know, Senior people somehow always call Execs by their first names. I don’t want things to be awkward, here. Behind closed doors, let’s just call the Lieutenant Laurie, if that’s OK with her, and everybody call you Jim.”
“That’d be fine, Colonel.” Said Laurie.
“Work’s for me, sir,” said Jim.
“Ah, hell, might as well call me Slammer.”
“Slammer, sir?” inquired Laurie.
“It’s a long story, Laurie,” said Jim. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Oh, and sir…uh…Slammer,” said Laurie. I’m no structural engineer, but when they took down that wall….well, CE needs to look at the wall behind it.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt there’s a problem. After my talk with CE I’m pretty sure we have structural problems all over. Apparently the expansion for the saucer was a rush job done in 1948 and 1949. They still had steel shortages due to backups caused by the war. The whole site was only supposed to be temporary…last for twenty years. But no one ever got around to doing the infrastructure upgrades, although they added on to it in the seventies. We have some major problems, and no real way to build a secure area to house those three cylinders…to house all that stuff we aren’t sure of, without some major demolition. We need to have a staff meeting on Friday, with the senior military person in each section, to discuss a number of problems, including civil engineering ones."
"I'll get that scheduled, and get out the info to everyone, sir," said Jim
"OK,...and let me know when you get MSgt Alvarez up here, Laurie. I’d like to be there when you talk to him. Might be a good idea if Dr. Stanbeck was there, too.
Speaking of Dr. Stanbeck, he did a search of the current records, and the old Army Air Corps Records from the original crash site. If it isn’t just a paperwork or terminology glitch, there are five items missing. Something the original recovery team wrote down as four 'pods,' apparently identical in external appearance, and a silver 'orb' with the stylized spiral around a triangle insignia. We still do have one of those, but if there wasn’t just an accidental duplication of records, apparently at one time there were two. Peter said he’d work on that, try to find out for sure.”
“Pods, sir?” said Jim.
“Yeah, that worries the hell out of me too, Jim. Hopefully we can get a better description in some of the old records…, I just hope that 'pods' aren’t the same as 'cylinders'. The prospect of four stray thermonuclear generators is not something I want to think about.”
“Or worse,” said Jim.
“Yeah, or worse…” said Slammer.
6:30 PM 23B Airway Drive, Old military housing area, Tonopah Airport Nevada
Max was smiling. It was the first time Liz had cooked a meal for him, since they had been married. She was a good cook with a lot of experience…at least for things that were on the Crashdown menu. It was a meatloaf and she’d really prepared it in two halves, joined together after preparation. Her half was regular meatloaf, but she’d prepared his half with diced habanero peppers, and it was particularly delicious.
“So tell me, Liz,” he asked. “Where did you say you heard about this ‘tradition’ of…..every room in the house? I mean that utility room doesn’t hardly have room for the washer and dryer, let alone….well, the two of us.”
“It was in a Cosmopolitan I saw at the hairdressers, Max. But if you aren’t interested….”
“Now, I didn’t say that. But I do remember us finding that one live scorpion on the floor when we cleaned up here.”
Liz’s eyes grew wide. “Well, maybe just the bedrooms, the couch in the living room, the kitchen table, and on top the washer and dryer.... That’d keep us off the floor.”
“On top of the dryer?”
“What’s the matter, Max? No sense of adventure?”
23:15 Bioscience area, Detachment 24. Area 51, Nevada
They saw the five sealed metal coffins where the technicians had left them. Doctor Schreiber quickly used the power screwdriver to unseal the fourth one, while Doctor Blaukopf waited with the saw from the autopsy room. It had not been used in fifty years, but nonetheless buzzed into action when the switch was pushed.
“Fortunately, most of the guards are at Hangar B,” said Schreiber.
“At least, Kurt, we will have souvenirs of these creatures. My father said that he actually had a couch covered with the skin of one of the inmates at Buchenwald, although the Army wouldn’t move it for him when he came here, and ordered it incinerated. They didn’t catch the books that were bound with it though. They may have been inferiors, but the coverings they make are better than other leather.”
“What will you do with the hands, Hubertus?”
“Perhaps skin them and make a pair of gloves….and you?”
“I’m not sure. Probably I will have enough skin from the back to make a lampshade. Every time I turn it on, I will think about our superiority to these creatures.”
“Speaking of inferior creatures, we need to think about how to get rid of that mongrel woman Lieutenant.”
”That will be difficult, considering the new commander. He may have to go first.”
The power screwdriver whirred again as the screws were replaced, resealing the coffin.
0612 Area 51, Nevada.
The desert sun was just breaking the horizon as the military formation assembled. A common marker for the five graves had been made up in the fabrication shops. A 2 inch thick slab of aluminum had been carved into the desired shape, then engraved with a carbon dioxide laser. It had then been buffed to a high sheen. Being aluminum, it would oxidize quickly to a fine silver-gray, and this process had already started. It had almost a golden fluorescence in the light of the new day.
In many parts of the damaged ship, the symbol could be seen. A triangle with a stylized vortex surrounding it. It had been engraved above the words on the marker. The same symbol was on the flags that covered the five coffins, made up by the graphics laboratory at the request of Lieutenant DelGado. There was a niche in the base of the monument…the folded flags would go there. Perhaps someday some relative of these beings would come and claim the flags. The inscription, fashioned after an epitaph in an old science fiction story (author’s note: Way Station by Clifford Simak, copyright 1963), made it clear that there was no need to reclaim the bodies. Etched a quarter-inch into the Aluminum it read,
There was actually a chaplain who had clearance to the site, and he had officiated, his words starting, “In my Fathers house, there are many rooms…” It was a dignified, but kind of generic service. No one knew of course what these beings might have wanted, or what their customs were. But it didn’t matter that much, really. This is what the people of Earth did to show respect, and that was really the point of the matter.
As the last coffin was lowered the F-15s screamed in from the west. Slammer had made the call tohis former D.O, the number two man in his old squadron had made squadron commander of an F-15 squadron.
Normally units deployed to Red Flag were prohibited from flying in “the box,” as Area 51 was known. But Slammer had cleared it with Dreamland, and the four aircraft came in low and fast, almost supersonic.
Just before they got to the gravesite the number three aircraft hit the burners and pulled up abruptly, while the other three continued on in a missing man formation, the traditional salute of flyers to their fallen comrades.
In fact the third aircraft was flown by a fairly junior pilot who sort of overdid the afterburner, going supersonic in the climb, but it made little difference. The sonic boom was directed away from the facility, and it doppled down to a series of crackles as the F-15 disappeared from sight. He pulled it back out of burner at 35,000 feet but even at idle glided upward almost to 50,000 feet before the nose came down and he started the sweeping turn to go rejoin his three fellows for their morning mission.
All of the military personnel not on duty had turned out, and most of the uniforms were regulation, a few with minor flaws. Surprisingly, about a third of the civilians had also gotten up early to attend the ceremony. One was Dr. Peter Stanbeck.
Two civilians, on the other hand, had gotten up early to watch the proceedings …and spew their contempt. Sitting 200 meters away, sipping an excellent vintage from the Mosel River valley were Blaukopf and Schreiber.
“Such a fuss for such inferior beings.”
“Such a waste of time and effort. An incinerator would have served as well.”
Max was smiling. It was the first time Liz had cooked a meal for him, since they had been married. She was a good cook with a lot of experience…at least for things that were on the Crashdown menu. It was a meatloaf and she’d really prepared it in two halves, joined together after preparation. Her half was regular meatloaf, but she’d prepared his half with diced habanero peppers, and it was particularly delicious.
“So tell me, Liz,” he asked. “Where did you say you heard about this ‘tradition’ of…..every room in the house? I mean that utility room doesn’t hardly have room for the washer and dryer, let alone….well, the two of us.”
“It was in a Cosmopolitan I saw at the hairdressers, Max. But if you aren’t interested….”
“Now, I didn’t say that. But I do remember us finding that one live scorpion on the floor when we cleaned up here.”
Liz’s eyes grew wide. “Well, maybe just the bedrooms, the couch in the living room, the kitchen table, and on top the washer and dryer.... That’d keep us off the floor.”
“On top of the dryer?”
“What’s the matter, Max? No sense of adventure?”
23:15 Bioscience area, Detachment 24. Area 51, Nevada
They saw the five sealed metal coffins where the technicians had left them. Doctor Schreiber quickly used the power screwdriver to unseal the fourth one, while Doctor Blaukopf waited with the saw from the autopsy room. It had not been used in fifty years, but nonetheless buzzed into action when the switch was pushed.
“Fortunately, most of the guards are at Hangar B,” said Schreiber.
“At least, Kurt, we will have souvenirs of these creatures. My father said that he actually had a couch covered with the skin of one of the inmates at Buchenwald, although the Army wouldn’t move it for him when he came here, and ordered it incinerated. They didn’t catch the books that were bound with it though. They may have been inferiors, but the coverings they make are better than other leather.”
“What will you do with the hands, Hubertus?”
“Perhaps skin them and make a pair of gloves….and you?”
“I’m not sure. Probably I will have enough skin from the back to make a lampshade. Every time I turn it on, I will think about our superiority to these creatures.”
“Speaking of inferior creatures, we need to think about how to get rid of that mongrel woman Lieutenant.”
”That will be difficult, considering the new commander. He may have to go first.”
The power screwdriver whirred again as the screws were replaced, resealing the coffin.
0612 Area 51, Nevada.
The desert sun was just breaking the horizon as the military formation assembled. A common marker for the five graves had been made up in the fabrication shops. A 2 inch thick slab of aluminum had been carved into the desired shape, then engraved with a carbon dioxide laser. It had then been buffed to a high sheen. Being aluminum, it would oxidize quickly to a fine silver-gray, and this process had already started. It had almost a golden fluorescence in the light of the new day.
In many parts of the damaged ship, the symbol could be seen. A triangle with a stylized vortex surrounding it. It had been engraved above the words on the marker. The same symbol was on the flags that covered the five coffins, made up by the graphics laboratory at the request of Lieutenant DelGado. There was a niche in the base of the monument…the folded flags would go there. Perhaps someday some relative of these beings would come and claim the flags. The inscription, fashioned after an epitaph in an old science fiction story (author’s note: Way Station by Clifford Simak, copyright 1963), made it clear that there was no need to reclaim the bodies. Etched a quarter-inch into the Aluminum it read,
- Here are five travelers from a distant star
But the Earth where they lay, is not alien to them
For in death, they belong to the Universe
There was actually a chaplain who had clearance to the site, and he had officiated, his words starting, “In my Fathers house, there are many rooms…” It was a dignified, but kind of generic service. No one knew of course what these beings might have wanted, or what their customs were. But it didn’t matter that much, really. This is what the people of Earth did to show respect, and that was really the point of the matter.
As the last coffin was lowered the F-15s screamed in from the west. Slammer had made the call tohis former D.O, the number two man in his old squadron had made squadron commander of an F-15 squadron.
Normally units deployed to Red Flag were prohibited from flying in “the box,” as Area 51 was known. But Slammer had cleared it with Dreamland, and the four aircraft came in low and fast, almost supersonic.
Just before they got to the gravesite the number three aircraft hit the burners and pulled up abruptly, while the other three continued on in a missing man formation, the traditional salute of flyers to their fallen comrades.
In fact the third aircraft was flown by a fairly junior pilot who sort of overdid the afterburner, going supersonic in the climb, but it made little difference. The sonic boom was directed away from the facility, and it doppled down to a series of crackles as the F-15 disappeared from sight. He pulled it back out of burner at 35,000 feet but even at idle glided upward almost to 50,000 feet before the nose came down and he started the sweeping turn to go rejoin his three fellows for their morning mission.
All of the military personnel not on duty had turned out, and most of the uniforms were regulation, a few with minor flaws. Surprisingly, about a third of the civilians had also gotten up early to attend the ceremony. One was Dr. Peter Stanbeck.
Two civilians, on the other hand, had gotten up early to watch the proceedings …and spew their contempt. Sitting 200 meters away, sipping an excellent vintage from the Mosel River valley were Blaukopf and Schreiber.
“Such a fuss for such inferior beings.”
“Such a waste of time and effort. An incinerator would have served as well.”