Radecker had been so busy setting up his dragnet and feeling sorry for himself, he didn't get around to questioning the chauffeur until the next morning. The man had spent the night sleeping on a bench at the police station. He repeated everything that had been said in the car, including a verbatim account of Freiling's infernal jabbering.
"In my opinion, it's something the young guy saw in the newspaper." He described how Okun had snatched the paper out of his hands and was still holding it as they began the drive toward the cemetery. "If these guys were dangerous criminals, why wasn't I warned? And who's gonna pay for fixing up the hearse?"
When one of the cops handed Radecker a copy of Saturday's paper, it didn't take him long to figure out which story had caught Okun's eye. Now it was his turn to nod. By the time he was finished reading the story, he knew exactly where they were headed.
He grinned at the chauffeur and wrote a phone number on the back of his business card. "You've been very helpful. Call this number. They'll fix your car." Then he turned to one of the cops. "I need to use a phone for a private call."
He was shown into a small office and dialed Spelman's direct line. "I think I've figured out where they're headed."
Spelman told him to hold the line, then passed the receiver to someone else. "Is this Radecker?"
"Yes, sir. Who's this?"
The man ignored him. "We found out your boys rented a car at Ontario Airport yesterday. The vehicle is a gold Ford LTD station wagon with wood-trim panels, California plates CYS 385. You got that?"
"Yes, sir."
"You say you know where they're headed?"
"I believe so, sir. But before I say anything, I'll need to know who I'm talking to and if you have proper clearance."
"This is Deputy Director Nimziki. Now where are they?"
"Mexico, sir. Somewhere in the State of Chihuahua, probably in the town of Guerrero." He went on to explain Okun's sudden interest in the newspaper and the likely connection to a paragraph in the Majestic 12 documents he had personally inked out before handing the document over to Okun. "He must have learned about it from Wells."
"You think they're down there looking for an alien vehicle?"
"Yes, sir," Radecker said almost apologetically. He'd been given very few specific instructions on how to do his job, but one thing had been made crystal clear: deny Okun access to information concerning other spacecraft. It seemed simple enough, but he had failed miserably. Okun had learned everything, despite his efforts. "With your permission, Mr. Nimziki, I'll fly down there immediately and round them up."
There was a pause while the man on the other end thought it over. "No, that won't be necessary. You've served your purpose. Collect your things and report back to Company Headquarters for reassignment."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." He hung up the phone, confused. Until that moment he had no idea who'd been pulling the strings on the project, and he was surprised it went right to the top, Nimziki's office. Everyone in the company knew the presidential appointee wasn't the real power at the CIA. Day-to-day operations and who-knew-how-many covert operations were increasingly run out of the Deputy Director's Office. It was only a matter of time until he was named to head the Agency. But what had he meant by You've served your purpose? That sounded ominous. At least he'd mentioned reassignment. Radecker allowed himself to be optimistic in spite of the mess he'd allowed to happen. Perhaps he was going to be promoted after all. At least he knew that wherever they sent him, it couldn't be any worse than being trapped in Area 51.
The front wall of the cave was an ingenious construction of meticulously stacked stone, woven grass, and mud. After baking in the desert sun for twenty-five years, it was almost as hard as solid stone. When Okun hesitantly stepped through the opening, he noticed another curious piece of construction material: a large section of shell armor. He recognized it as the circular door of the alien ship. The last light of day was coming through the squarish hole Okun had found earlier. When he lit one of the candles and approached the hole, he made a rather gruesome discovery. Something was lying in front of it. The thing looked like a degraded plastic bag with hands and feet. He moved closer and discovered it was the decomposed body of an alien. The hands and feet, made of a thicker, tougher material than the rest of the body, were decaying more slowly. Lenel came up behind him, holding a candle of his own.
"He must have been looking out his little window waiting to be rescued when he died. The electromagnetic field generated by the power lines must have created a ceiling which allowed the signal to travel laterally, but not upward. That must be why the aliens never located the distress signal."
Okun lowered himself toward the body until his face was only inches above the decomposed corpse and looked through the opening. "Guess what the last thing he was looking at when he died?"
"A large Y standing in a desolate landscape?"
"Bingo."
"It looks like this one has been dead for years. But we picked up his visual signal less than two years ago. Does it mean there's a telepathic interface between the creatures and their ship?"
"Makes sense. And this little guy must have programmed the ship's sending unit to repeat the message endlessly." He looked over his shoulder at Lenel. "Now I know why the image felt so lonely. This would be a crummy way to die, marooned in a cave on some foreign planet."
Lenel grunted. He wasn't about to start feeling sorry for the extraterrestrials. He walked deeper into the darkness to take a look at the ship. They lit a dozen candles, which cast an eerie, dancing glow around the ceiling. Like the first cave they'd explored, this one had mud-brick apartments standing side by side around the perimeter of the space. Staying close to one another, the two men began walking around the ship.
"This one didn't crash," Lenel observed. "There's no sign of damage anywhere. The shell armor seems to be in perfect condition. I don't even see scrape marks."
Okun squatted down. "One problem. Where are the thrusters? This baby's lying flat on its belly. Shouldn't it be raised up off the floor?"
Lenel shrugged and moved on. They walked all the way around the exterior of the ship, pausing to make an investigation of the small rooms farthest from the mouth of the cave. They found several Mogollon artifacts, including what seemed to be a grinding stone, but no evidence at all that the alien had used the rooms. As they returned to the ship and came around toward its nose, Okun's attention was drawn to something happening behind the windows. He was about to say something when he took another step and fell into a hole. The sudden scream and downward flicker of candlelight scared Lenel half to death. "Okun? What happened?"
"I'm OK," he said, "but be careful. There's a hole over here." When he struck a match and relit his candle, Lenel came to the edge of the three-foot-deep pit. He reached a hand down to help Okun climb out, but Okun didn't take it. He was sniffing. 'The ammonia smell is stronger down here." He turned around and noticed he was in a trench that led in the direction of the ship's door. "It looks like this tunnel leads inside the ship. Should we go in?"
"What if I said no, that we should wait for the help to get here?"
Okun admitted, "I'd probably go in anyway."
"So why are you even asking?" the habitual sour-puss snapped. "Help me down into this hole."
They crawled the thirty feet to the center of the ship on their hands and knees, the ammonia smell growing stronger. When they were under the open hatch, Okun saw the light of his candle flickering across the dark interior of the ship. Something suddenly struck him as terribly wrong. As Lenel caught up with him, muttering something under his breath, Okun reached out and arrested the old man's progress with a hand clamped onto his shoulder. He was looking up into the ship in a way that made Lenel very uneasy.
"Now what?" he whispered.
"Listen. You hear that?" Okun was moving his index finger around in a very slow loop to show how the sound was repeating itself. After watching him do this for a minute and not hearing anything, Lenel spoke a few decibels louder than he needed to.
"My ears are shot. I can't hear anything."
Cautiously, Okun stood up, not sure he was going to like what he saw inside. Was it possible there were survivors after all these years? He thought of Trina Glucks story, and how she'd been nose to nose with the Tall One. Although there was no one moving inside the ship, he was amazed when he located the source of the repetitive noise: the instrument panel at the front of the ship was surging to glowing life every few seconds. He climbed inside and walked to the front of the ship. He knelt and timed the surges against his wristwatch. To find part of the ship working didn't amaze him. He'd expected to discover the signaling system still carrying the message with the Y. But what he saw happening around him made no sense. All the systems were pulsing to a very slow heartbeat. "This is impossible," he yelled. 'This thing is using way way way too much energy. Why does it have so much juice left?" He turned and went to confront Lenel with these questions but suddenly leaped backwards, sprawling against the dashboard, his heart suddenly pounding like a fire bell.
"What's the matter with you now?" Lenel demanded, crawling into the cabin.
A speechless Brackish could only point to something on the floor. Lenel walked over and found three more decomposed bodies in the corner. They had been left in sitting positions, but, over the years, the heads and chests had collapsed in on themselves, sinking to the floor. Three sets of legs pointed toward the front of the ship. Okun had been so intent on checking the instrument panel, he'd literally walked right over them without noticing. The papery remains of a leg had been packed down under his shoe.
"Don't worry. They're just as dead as the one outside, and you didn't seem scared of him."
Okun looked at the cadavers like he'd just swallowed a mouthful of chunky milk. "But the way they're sitting there. Creep-o-rama extraordinaire."
"What's this power issue you were hollering about?"
Brackish got back to business. "Look at these instruments!" The two of them watched the instruments run through their four-second cycles. The yellow shell glowed dimly, the bony arms of the steering mechanism twitched, the set of tubes under the pod chairs expanded. "Where is all this energy coming from?"
"Beats me." The old man shrugged. He started to say something else, then stopped.
"What? What were you going to say?"
"Based on what we know about these ships, what's the most logical energizing source?"
Okun's mind toiled in darkness for a few moments until a lightbulb popped on. "You're suggesting these power surges are coming from another ship? Which must mean there's another alien vehicle within transmission range. Which means..."
"Exactly. They could be on their way down here right now."
This theory did not brighten the mood of any of the life-forms inside the cabin, living or dead.
"Wait a sec," Okun complained. "We worked out the Van Allen connection a couple of times. We're supposed to have until tomorrow!"
"Don't get your knickers all twisted up, son. It's only an idea. Who knows where this power is coming from. Maybe this ship is using the earth's natural electromagnetism as a battery, or maybe this is what happens every time the belts show increased radioactivity."
But half an hour later, the instruments were pulsing in three-second cycles. Both Okun and Lenel were convinced an alien ship, perhaps even a small armada of them, was approaching Chihuahua.
"I figure we've got an hour, maybe two if we're lucky," Lenel said. "This ship is in perfect shape. We've got to learn as much as we can before they get here. I'll go below and try to get a look at the aqua-box. You stay here and learn what you can about the control mechanisms." Okun, mind racing in a thousand directions at once, vaguely agreed. "And because this is an emergency, I'm going to lend you my secret weapon." Lenel reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a three-inch-long screwdriver. "Pull that panel apart and make us some schematics drawings we can use on the ship back home."
As Lenel trudged off, Okun absentmindedly set to work prying the control system components out of their fittings. When he began to sketch, his mind began to wander. He'd poured his heart into finding this ship, and now it looked like he was going to lose it again. He wondered how tough the aliens really were. Could he and Lenel, like the ancient Mogollon Indians, defend their cave? He imagined pelting the unwelcome visitors with rocks as they tried to climb the hillside. If that failed, there was always the tire iron.
When they saw Mad Dog Okun at the top of the slope wearing a menacing sneer, would they turn and run? Would they fight? Or would he feel his body go numb and the weapon drop from his hands like Trina Gluck's toothbrush had dropped into the sink?
Then there was another possibility. When the approaching aliens were close enough, the craft he was sitting in would most likely be able to fly. He pictured himself glued into the pilot's pod chair. When the first eebie showed itself in the freshly cut doorway, he would slam the ship in gear, blast through the wall, and fly north to Groom Lake before the aliens knew what hit them. Two drawbacks of this plan were that Okun had never flown any type of aircraft in his life, and he didn't have the foggiest notion of how the ship's controls worked. He went back to the tire-iron scenario.
He had finished sketching the major components of the control systems into his notebook when he heard Lenel cursing and grumbling below the hatchway. He checked the cycles again. The power throbs were coming every second and a half now and appeared to be growing stronger. Very soon, the ship would be receiving a continuous flow of energy. Staying as far as possible from the straight-legged remains of the three bodies, he went to see what all the noise was about.
"I can't dig this out. I'm too damn old." Okun stepped down into the tunnel and checked Lenel's progress. He'd managed to dig about a foot and a half back toward the aqua-box. That left three and a half feet to go. Okun took the tire iron and began working furiously, driving it into the earth walls and breaking off handfuls of dirt with each thrust. He should have been doing this job all along. None of the schematics he'd made would be worth anything if they couldn't figure out the power-generating system. But the floor of the cave was packed hard, und it quickly became clear he wouldn't reach the door to the aqua-box in time.
He and Lenel both froze when they heard an unfamiliar sound. It was coming from inside the ship. When they looked inside, they saw that the lights on the instrument panel were no longer strobing. The ship was up and running.
"It's time to get out of here."
"Not yet," Okun said. "We've got to get a look at the power system." He proposed the idea of defending the cave to Lenel, who looked at him like he was crazy, then got down on all fours and started crawling out from under the ship.
"You stay here if you want to. That's not the way I want to die."
Out of frustration, Okun stabbed the earth several more times with his tire iron. But then, realizing it was too late, he collapsed against one of the walls, sweating profusely. As he was considering his next move the whole ship seemed to let out a shuddering moan. There was a loud cracking noise as it began to lift off the ground. It rose slowly, an inch at a time.
Lenel, candle near his face, seemed to rise with it. Standing on his knees, he straightened up as far as the rising ship would allow. He had a wide-open expression of wonder on his face, like a kid watching a magic show. He let out a giddy laugh, looking back toward Okun. "Will ya look at that! It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." The ship continued lifting until it cracked hard against the stone ceiling, sending a few chips of rock skittering down its sloped sides.
"The thruster rockets seem to be in good shape. Looks like they dug holes for them to sit in."
The black alien ship, a perfect twin of the one at Area 51, floated three feet above the ground, an mute and mysterious as a sphinx. Okun, oedipal, wanted to solve one more of its riddles before he left the cave. Ignoring Lenel's protests, he wriggled himself into the freshly created gap between the hull of the ship and the floor of the cave. He began pulling at the cover door of the aqua-box.
"Uh-oh," Lenel said. "What's that?"
"What's what?" Okun grunted between tugs.
Lenel shuffled toward the door to the cave, leaned outside, and searched the sky. Many miles from the nearest city lights, the stars shone down unobstructed and seemed to form a plush and twinkling blanket in the sky. While he was watching, one of these stars seemed to split in two. Part of it remained high in the atmosphere while another one moved closer.
"We've got company! They're here." Lenel turned around and shouted. "It's time to go."
"Almost. I've almost got it." With a final yank, Okun liberated the door from its slot. It came free of the ship and landed heavily on top of him. When Lenel heard the ooof! sound, he repeated his warning that it was time to leave.
"Start without me," Okun called from beneath the door. "I'll catch up."
Lenel poked his head out the door indecisively and looked at the stone shelf leading to the trail. "All right. I'll take the same path we came up on. Meet me at the bottom of the hill. How much longer are you going to be?"
If Okun couldn't find a way to get his head and chest out from under the heavy section of shell armor, he was going to be there permanently. "A minute or two," his muffled voice answered.
"OK, two minutes. No longer!" Lenel warned. He could see the swirl of green light coming from beneath the ship and knew Okun had gotten the door off. He stepped through the opening and began edging along the top of the slope.
Okun concentrated on making himself very skinny and eventually succeeded in worming out from under the door. Then he looked up and beheld the spectacular play of light caused by the aqua-box, its energy racing around the inside of the chamber like a transparent cyclone of crystal green water. An exact clone of the one at Area 51, it exhibited the same paper-thin walls of rock, the same hairwidth filaments arranged in a complex geometrical pattern. But there was one important exception: floating in the center of the hexagonal chamber, suspended in midair, was a small piece of metal shaped like an ankh. Like a gyroscope, it was spinning and rolling while remaining in one spot. It seemed to be gathering the energy off the sides of the hexagon and sending it out in a controlled manner. Each of the ankh's four arms sent out a razor-thin beam. He remembered the chaotic way the other ship's box had purged the system of energy and how the ships would have had to fly improbably close to one another. This was the answer, and it had been hanging around his neck the whole time. Incredible!
When something moved across the doorway, Okun reached out and grabbed the tire iron. But it was only Lenel, who immediately concealed himself behind the rock wall. "Too late. They're here." He pointed up through the ceiling. "They've found us, and it's too dark out there for me to see where I'm going."
Okun gathered up his possessions. He'd seen how the aqua-box worked. He was ready to help Lenel make his escape. But as he made to leave, he decided he needed to try one last experiment. He slipped his necklace off and tried to undo the knot, but couldn't. "Might work anyhow," he muttered. He wanted to switch the two ankhs, to make absolutely sure they were interchangeable. He reached up and pulled the spinning piece out, preparing to switch them. Immediately the ship lost power and began settling toward the floor. Okun hadn't counted on that. He shoved the new piece into the chamber and closed his eyes tight, expecting to feel the weight of the ship crush down on his chest. Luckily, it accepted the second ankh, leather string and all.
If I take both ankhs, they won't be able to fly this ship out of here! He decided to go for broke.
"What in Hades are you doing over there? They'll be coming through the door any second. Let's get—" Lenel, glancing outside, saw something that stopped him in mid-sentence. Hovering directly overhead was the nose of an alien saucer. It crawled forward until it was away from the cliffs, then turned itself around and crept closer. Peeking around the corner of the doorway, Lenel had a clear view through the windows into the interior of the craft. A handful of the large-headed creatures were gathered at the windows, inspecting the cliff.
"How we doin' over there?" Okun called over his shoulder. He was too focused on his task to notice that Lenel's answer was an unintelligible stammer. He was trying to get his ankh out of the aqua-box without having the ship squash him. He had crawled back into the trench and was reaching with the tire iron, trying to snag the loop of leather string. But this was as difficult as a carnival game owing to the fact that the spinning ankh was moving the string in all directions.
The hovering saucer pressed in closer. Lenel picked up a large rock and stood with his back pressed to the wall, his eyes glued to the doorway. He planned to clobber anything that stepped inside. He felt the nose of the spacecraft bump against the wall and wondered if they were going to use the ship as a battering ram to open the cave. He found his voice long enough to whisper hoarsely across the darkness of the cave: "They're right outside."
One last try, Okun told himself. I know I can get it. But before he could take a final stab at the dancing leather string, a powerful blast of white light entered the cave from outside. It was sweeping across the floor and heading his way. Faster than he knew he could move, he rolled into the trench, hiding himself a split second before he was seen. The search beam scanned the cave's interior for several seconds before abruptly shutting off.
"Now do you believe me?" Lenel's voice was trembling. "Please, Brackish, let s go."
Cowering in the trench, Okun asked if the ship had moved away. Suddenly his idea about challenging the aliens had vanished. When Lenel reported that it had flown a little way off, Okun leaped out of the trench and ran for the door. Without a word, he helped his old friend step through the hole and out onto the ledge. The spacecraft was hovering near the bottom of the cliffs, not far from where the station wagon had been parked a few hours before. Okun was more terrified than he'd ever been. He felt the strong urge to sprint away down the cliff and be well hidden by the time the aliens came out of their ship. But he couldn't abandon Lenel, especially after making him wait so long to escape. He tried to pull the man along gently, but was afraid of knocking him off-balance. When they came to a flat section of the stone ledge, he left Lenel for just a moment to run ahead and check the switchback trail Pedro had shown him that afternoon. It looked too treacherous for the old man. As Lenel took the last few steps toward Okun, he lost his way and walked off the narrow trail. He landed on the gravel slope and crashed hard against the rocks. By the time Okun got to him, he had slid ten feet down the hill and was clutching a handful of shrubs. Desperately searching for a way to reach his friend, he heard the old man whimpering in pain. Even the quietest sound was a roar of noise in the Silent Zone.
"Lenel," he rasped, "reach up here and grab my hand. I'll pull you up."
The old man shook his head. "I think I broke something. You get out of here. Get back to Area 51."
"Not without you I'm not." Okun wedged the toe of his shoe into a fissure in the rock and started lowering himself headfirst down the slope. Before he could grasp the old man's wrist, the root of the bush Lenel was holding gave way, and Lenel began sliding down the rocky slope. Horrified, Okun made a last desperate lunge, but couldn't reach him. The old man slid away until he plunged over the side of the lower cliffs and landed a second later with a sickening thud.
"Lenel, are you all right?" he whispered, knowing his voice would carry to the bottom of the cliffs.
No answer. He was about to start down the hillside to find his friend when he heard a metallic click echo through the valley. Then he watched a circular pool of light form on the ground below the ship. The hatch door had been opened. Adrenaline pumping, he ran a few more strides along the trail before diving into a shallow foxhole near the base of the trail leading to the top of the cliffs. Climbing the trail now would definitely expose him.
He looked down on the ship until he saw the little beings step onto the ground and begin wandering around the area. They moved toward the base of the hill, to the place where Lenel's body must have fallen. Although he couldn't see Lenel, he could see the creatures standing around him. He wanted to shout at them to get away from his friend, but was too terrified even to move. Suddenly, they abandoned Lenel and began climbing the hillside. Okun knew that probably meant the old man was dead.
Peeking and ducking, he watched the aliens trying to climb the first steep wall toward the cave. From everything he'd learned about them, he expected them to be much more nimble. But they were having just as much trouble as he had had with the rocky terrain.
It occurred to him he could probably make a run for it. In fact, he probably should because his foxhole was only seventy-five feet from the opening. When they realized someone had been messing around with their ship, wouldn't they come out and search the area? Maybe they'll think Lenel was in there by himself. No, he had to get out of there immediately. He reached down to grab his notebook and his ankh and realized he'd left them inside! He slapped himself in the forehead. The searchlight scanning the cave had scared him so badly, he'd forgotten to pick up his things. He'd come all this way only to blow it at the very end. He briefly considered making a mad dash back to the door, ducking inside to grab his possessions and racing out again. But, like the other heroic plans he'd made that evening, he thought about it too long. Soon six of the awkward little creatures were approaching the mouth of the cave. At the bottom of the slope, he spotted a taller creature, climbing the hillside even more awkwardly than the others. That must be the Tall One.
The smaller aliens had already been inside for a couple of minutes when the Tall One reached the top of the slope. They came outside and flitted around the taller creature, seemingly agitated. As Okun watched this scene unfold, the Tall One turned its head in a very deliberate way and seemed to look directly at Okun across the darkness. Okun ducked out of sight, fighting to control his fear. It was dark; maybe he hadn't been seen. His heart racing like it was going to explode, he quietly turned on his back and tried to clear his mind. He knew he had to stay hidden, but he also knew he had to run. He heard the sound of their feet moving across the gravel again. Were they moving in to surround him? He flipped back over and glanced up at the switchback trail. It was time to find out who could run faster, a terrified earthling or these creatures from who-knew-where. But when he peeked once more over the edge of his hiding place, the creatures were in retreat. The six smaller ones were marching away down the hillside and the Tall One was disappearing alone into the cave.
They climbed down the lower cliff and didn't walk over to Lenel's body. They went straight to their ship and climbed in. Okun counted them again to make sure none of them were sneaking around to ambush him. A moment after the circular door snapped closed, there was a whirring hum and the sixty-foot craft zipped straight up into the air, disappearing into the canopy of stars at a fantastic rate of speed. When the ship was gone, the zone of silence swallowed him once more. He heard the Tall One moving around inside the cave. Somehow, being left alone near this most terrifying of the aliens was worse than being near all six of the others. Is the Tall One reading my mind right now? Does he know I'm out here?
No longer indecisive, Okun began his escape. He pushed himself quietly away from the gravel of his hiding place and stepped back onto the trail. He began climbing the narrow trail to the top of the cliffs, which was littered with pebbles and sand. Each footstep became a matter of life and death. To help him find the Zen of the moment, he imagined himself as Grasshopper, the young Shao-Lin priest from the Kung Fu television series. Hands gliding through the air, knees bent, Okun climbed the treacherous slope as delicately as if it were a rice-paper carpet he could not afford to tear. When he reached the top of the bluff, he found himself on a large mesa. After a final glance over the side to make sure he wasn't being followed, he tore away at a dead run. He ran as fast as he could in a straight line across the open plain, looking over his shoulder every few seconds. When he got to the far side of the plateau, he wasted no time. He ran down this new set of slopes which were every bit as treacherous as the ones outside the cave, something he could never have done if his system weren't overloaded with adrenaline. It didn't matter to him that he was running ever deeper into a waterless no-man's-land where he might die of thirst or starvation. His immediate problem was getting as far away from the cave as humanly possible. He wanted to be miles away when the Tall One came out of the cave to look for him. After twenty minutes of sprinting, a stabbing pain in his side forced him to stop. He limped to a place between two boulders and collapsed in the sand, gasping for air and dripping with sweat. He was sure they wouldn't find him here, even if they came looking.
When he'd been lying there long enough for his breathing to return to normal, he heard a droning sound in the distance. He listened to the sound for a long while until he recognized what it was—an airplane engine. It was coming from the direction of the power lines. Cibatutto and Freiling must have reached a phone and called in the Marines. He wanted to run back the way he'd come and help them locate the cave, but he was beyond exhaustion. All he could do was hope the military found the spot before the Tall One escaped with the ship. Struggling to keep his eyes open, he listened to the plane's engine purring in the distance.