EASTERN INDIANA, APRIL 3, 1970
The gleaming government car came to a halt beside a vast field of corn. Other cars lined the road, and everywhere, excited onlookers were scrambling to get a view.
“I really appreciate you taking me along on this, sir,” Eric Crawford said.
“I thought it was time you… came on board,” Owen replied.
“You won’t regret it,” Eric assured him. He glanced about excitedly. “This could be really big.”
Owen said nothing, less pleased than irritated by Eric’s enthusiasm. It was not Eric he wanted by his side, but Sam, who’d gone in the opposite direction, and was now in journalism school. Sam had had the mind and the will and the sheer energy to keep up with him. Eric seemed able to do little more than ride precariously on his old man’s churning wake.
“We get these reports two or three times a week.”
Owen said dismissively. “It’ll probably be nothing of real interest. Mutilated cattle. Dancing lights.”
Eric persisted. “But for you to come personally… there must be some reason.”
Owen shrugged. “Well, these particular reports are a little better than usual,” he admitted.
Owen got out and surveyed the scene before him, a vast field of corn that waved green and lush in the spring breeze. People were streaming in and out of the field, eager to get in on the big news. He paused briefly, then pushed his way through the crowd and the waving stalks of corn, until he came into a clearing where the corn had been leveled and lay flat to the ground as if pressed down by a huge invisible hand.
A helicopter landed a few minutes later, bearing two fresh young government agents.
“Colonel Crawford, I’m Toby Woodruff,” the taller agent said. “Defense Department. This is Ted Olsen. He’s with the NSA.”
They were low-level officials, Owen knew, and their lack of seniority reflected the low esteem to which he and the project had sunk. It should have been President Nixon in that helicopter, he thought bitterly, not two snot-nosed kids.
Owen pointed to the still whirring copter. “Let’s go for a ride-take a look from the air.”
In the air over Indiana, the leveled corn assumed the pattern of a perfect circle.
“It’s a landing field if I ever saw one,” Owen said, suddenly confident that the reports had been accurate, that something very noteworthy had happened in this cornfield. “This has happened before. Here and in France and Germany. But the scale of this. The intent. Look at that formation. It’s like a runway.”
“A landing strip?” Eric asked. “If it’s a landing strip then maybe they’re going to be…”
“Landing?” Owen interrupted.
“Look over here,” Eric cried as the helicopter banked to the right.
Owen stared out the window, down into the undulating corn, where a different pattern emerged, not a vast landing strip at all, but a huge peace symbol, and the single greeting, “Howdy.”
“Landing field?” Woodruff scoffed.
Owen gave him a lethal stare, but couldn’t rid himself of the mockery he saw in Woodruff’s eyes, the way this pasty-faced kid seemed to be looking at a man who’d wasted his life chasing phantoms. He’d once had the proof in his grasp, he thought angrily, but Russell Keys and his tumor had gone up, quite literally, in smoke. And as for his son? The way he just vanished from a bomb shelter? How could he have followed a trail that disappeared in a beam of light?
Owen stared down at the earth beneath him. Jesse Keys might well be down there somewhere, he thought, but it seemed to him that the way he’d been taken was the most powerful argument so far that whatever the visitors were doing, he didn’t have a chance against them.
“I think your control over this project has ended,” Woodruff said with a smirk.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, APRIL 11, 1970
The rocket lifted from the launch pad, and Jesse Keys held his breath as it rose into the empty blue. Men were headed for the moon. The small screen seemed hardly able to contain the magnitude of the achievement, the sheer awesome nature of what was happening.
Willie slouched on the ratty sofa next to Jesse. “Hey, man, what’s the weirdest thing you ever saw?”
Jesse shrugged, his attention still riveted on the rising rocket.
Willie tapped a small portion of brown powder into a spoon and began to heat it with a match. “I think I saw a flying saucer once.”
Jesse wrapped a belt around his arm. “I’ve been on a flying saucer. More than once. One time I saw my father. He’d been dead for four days.”
Willie sucked the solution through a cotton ball and poured it into the syringe. “Okay, my man.” He handed the syringe to Jesse. “That is really and truly weird.” He slouched back on the sofa, watching dully as the rocket continued upward. “Waste of frigging time and money, going to the moon.” His gaze drifted over to Jesse. “You know what I always admired about you? When we were in ‘ Nam, I mean? That you were the only officer who walked point. Every single mission, you walked point.”
Jesse shrugged, his attention on the few balloons Willie had placed on the table before him. “How’s my credit?”
“Sorry,” Willie said.
“I saved your life, Willie.”
“Two times, man,” Willie said. “Now I’ll save yours. Get straight, Jesse.”
Jesse released a despairing laugh. “I don’t want to get straight.”
“I know what you want. You want to get taken to that other world.” He grinned. “Well, that costs money.”
“I’m good for it.”
Willie shook his head. “No, you ain’t. You’re like every other junkie. That’s why it’s strictly cash and carry.”
Jesse gave up and returned his attention to the television. The rocket had disappeared into the empty blue by then. Well, not exactly empty, he thought. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of felt, his father’s medals inside it. “These were my dad’s,” he said. He handed them to Willie. “They should be worth something, right?” He closed his eyes wearily. “At least one balloon.”
HAYSPORT, ALASKA, APRIL 11, 1970
Sarah, a young graduate student, set the canned beans and coffee on the store’s plain wooden counter while Dr. Powell, her boss and lead archeologist, went to see if the telegram had arrived. The other people in the store watched them warily, unused to strangers.
“You’re the people digging in the woods, aren’t you?” someone asked.
Powell looked at the little girl who’d suddenly come over to him. “Yes, we are,” he told her. “And who are you?”
“Wendy.”
“Nice to meet you, Wendy.”
The little girl cocked her head, her large eyes filled with innocent curiosity. “What are you looking for?”
“We’re trying to find out about the Indians who used to live up there,” Powell answered. He glanced at the other people in the store, took in their curious resentment.
“That’s nice,” a man said. “You gonna be getting the hell out of there any time soon?”
Sarah stepped back from the counter and turned to the other people in the store. “Why are you all so hostile to us?” she asked. “We’re not doing anything but digging up a few artifacts from…”
“Maybe some things should be left buried,” the man said.
“Like what?” Powell challenged. “What have we dug up that should have been left buried?”
The man hesitated, as if at the mouth of a tomb. “Word is, a mummy.”
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, APRIL 14, 1970
Sam Crawford sat in his father’s study, his attention focused on an article in the Anchorage Daily News. The headline read MUMMY FOUND IN TSIMSHIAN village. An accompanying photograph showed a certain Dr. Powell standing inside what appeared to be an underground chamber, the walls of which were covered with strange markings.
Suddenly the door opened and his father stepped into the room.
“Eric has just started working on the project,” Owen said. “Did he mention that?”
“He might have,” Sam said indifferently.
“I’d hoped it would be you,” Owen said. “But I guess you’ve decided to be a reporter.”
“I won a prize,” Sam said. “Best coverage of an on-campus event.”
Owen was not impressed. “I’m offering you a chance to be a part of history, Sam.”
“I’m not going to live your life over again for you, just so you can make up for your mistakes.”
Owen’s voice turned chilly. “I never made any mistakes.”
“Chasing… little green men your whole life?” Sam replied.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Sam,” Owen said angrily.
“Evidently no one else does, either,” Sam said. “Because now you’ve lost your job.” He smiled. “I read about it at college. How this guy Tom Clarke fooled you with that crop circle. That’s what did it, right? That’s why you lost your job?”
“I was wrong about the crop circle, but I’m not wrong about this,” Owen said. “Something is about to happen. Maybe next week. Maybe in thirty years… but these visitors are moving toward something.” He walked to the safe, opened it and drew out the artifact. “I found this at a crash site in New Mexico,” he answered. “What crashed… it was nothing man made.” He paused to let what he’d just said sink in. “There were five… beings, in that craft. Three of them were dead. The fourth one died under observation. The fifth one…” He glanced upward. “Everything I’ve done since I found the wreckage has been about trying to understand who they were and what they wanted.” He paused a moment, then added, “That fifth one. The… survivor that was never accounted for. I tracked him down to a small town in Texas. He had formed a bond there with a young woman. The woman’s name was Sally. She was Tom Clarke’s mother. The man who made the phony crop circle in order to destroy me. She had another son, as well. Named Jacob.” He looked at Sam pointedly. “A strange boy. Not much emotion. I looked into this boy’s eyes, Sam, and I saw… all my memories and all my fears… more than that… I saw them add up. Do you understand?”
Sam shook his head.
“I saw my own death, Sam,” Owen said. “I saw how I would die.”
HAYSPORT, ALASKA, APRIL 16, 1970
Powell came out of the store and handed Sarah the envelope. “Here are the test results. The body is only around six years old.”
“Well, we knew it wasn’t a mummy, no matter what the locals wanted to call it,” Sarah said.
“I also got a letter from the people at the university,” Powell told her. “The glyphs on the wall are indecipherable. No one in the language department has a clue as to what they mean or who could have put them there.”
“Excuse me, Dr. Powell.”
Powell turned to see a young man with long hair.
“My name is Sam Crawford,” the man said. “I’m a journalism student at UC Berkeley. I was hoping to talk to you about your dig.”
Powell shook his head. “I’m afraid our story’s not going to turn out to be quite as exciting as you’d hoped.”
“What do you make of the writings you found on the walls of the burial chamber?”
“They’re no language we’ve been able to identify,” Powell answered. “Probably no more real than our ‘mummy.’ And the ‘mummy’… was only a few years old. Which makes our dig a crime scene.”
Sheriff Kerby arrived at the dig a few minutes later. “Okay, so where’s the body?” he asked.
“This way,” Powell said.
At the tent, Powell opened the entrance flap and motioned the sheriff and Sam inside the chamber.
Sam came in just behind Sheriff Kerby, his eyes combing the interior of the tent, mainly a long table where the body had been laid out, but which was now bare.
“It’s gone,” Powell said, thunderstruck. He turned to Kerby. “The body’s gone.”
“Well,” Kerby said sarcastically, “it didn’t just get up and walk away now, did it? I want you and this whole bunch up and out of here by tomorrow morning.”
Something caught Sam’s eye. “Dr. Powell, there’s something over here you ought to see.”
“What?” Kerby asked.
Sam pointed to a distinct pattern on the inside of the tent, a four-fingered handprint, each finger with an extra joint.
Kerby stared at the print for a long moment, then turned to face Powell menacingly. His lips parted, but before he could speak, a patrol car ground to a halt just beyond the entrance of the tent. A woman sat inside, her gaze wild, desperate. “Wendy’s missing,” she cried. “She went into the woods behind the store and…”
“It’s all right, Louise,” Kerby told her. “Kids wander off all the time. We find them.”
“Not in these woods,” Louise said darkly.
“Don’t you worry,” Kerby said reassuringly. “We took care of that problem a long time ago.”
Louise stared at him. “Do you really believe that, Kerby?”
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, APRIL 17, 1970
Jesse Keys was not sure how he’d ended up in the Veterans Hospital, but only that the last surge of the drug had taken him far, far away, perhaps to the very rim of life, where things shimmered briefly then went dark.
For the last few days, he’d stayed in the ward, talking to three old vets, listening to their war stories. But it was a nurse named Amelia who’d cheered him, Amelia who’d seemed always to be there when he needed something, and who sat beside him now, the two of them together on the riverbank, eating hot dogs and watching a clown blow bubbles into the warm spring air while kids frolicked around him.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Amelia asked.
“Yeah, those kids look really happy,” Jesse said.
A few feet away, the bubbleman took a long wand and blew a bubble that seemed big enough to capture a small child and lift it up and up into the vast forever.
Jesse watched with horror as the bubbleman turned slowly, his face now clearly visible, a thin, emaciated face, with flinty eyes.
“The camy,” Jesse whispered.
“What?” Amelia asked.
Jesse leaped to his feet. “No!” he cried. He dashed forward, charged toward the bubbleman and knocked him to the ground. “What do you want?” he screamed. “Why do you keep taking me?”
Amelia rushed up behind him and pulled him back. “Stop it, Jesse!” she cried.
The bubbleman looked directly into Jesse’s eyes, and suddenly the features of the carny vanished into another face, tired, burned out, a street performer at the end of his rope.
Jesse released him and stepped away, Amelia at his side, her arm in his.
“You can tell me,” she said as she gently drew him away.
Jesse nodded. “Maybe someday I can explain,” he said.
HAYSPORT, ALASKA, APRIL 17, 1970
Sam stood alone in the woods. Several hours before, Powell had handed out whistles and led Sarah and several other people who worked at the dig into the woods to search for Wendy. Since then he’d heard that two of the searchers were now missing. It was as if the woods had swallowed them up.
He looked at the whistle, then at the engulfing woods around him. Even in daylight, the ground was beneath a veil of deep shadow, every sound frightening. He moved forward, determined to continue the search. Gradually the woods thinned around him, and he finally emerged into a meadow where waist-high grass rippled in the wind. He looked up. The sky was still faintly blue, but the light was fading. There was no choice but to return to the camp.
It was deserted when he reached it, all the others still moving deeper into the woods or making their way back.
First he walked to the tent where the body had been placed, examined the bare table, then the floor beneath, grassy, and covered with leaves. Nothing had been touched, not any other artifact from the dig, only the body. And nothing had been left behind, no bit of metal like the one his father had taken from the safe. Only the muddy print of a four-fingered hand.
For a time he studied the print, the extra joint of each finger. It was not a human hand, of course, and the more the studied it, the more he began to wonder if all the crackpot theories, all the weird sightings, all the fantastic tales were true.
He strode out of the tent and over to the earthen chamber where the body had been found. The strange markings he’d seen on the piece of metal his father had kept for so many years were clearly visible on the wall of the chamber. Powell had told him that they were not part of any human language. Nor could they be, Sam thought now. They weren’t letters, as far as he could tell, nor numbers, nor drawings of any kind. Perhaps they were part of a funeral rite, but if so, it was not a human being who’d been buried here.
Suddenly he heard a rustling from the surrounding woods. He glanced about, looking for movement within the shadowy forest. His fear spiked, and he felt its edge like a finger down his spine. He imagined that finger with four joints, amazed at how quickly he’d absorbed his father’s dread, the sense that they were… out there… waiting… watching… that no one was alone.
The rustling sounded again.
Sam wheeled around and thought he saw a shadow pass somewhere deep in the woods. He peered out into the tangled green where a figure suddenly staggered out of the shadows: Sarah, caked with mud, in tatters, her eyes staring wildly, her mouth wide open in a scream.