Another sharp jolt of displaced air shook the chopper, whose pilot struggled, yanking hard on the stick and throwing his throttle to full. Desperately climbing.
From the other front seat, Dr. Karen Polandres-Behr stared at the vast Garubis ship, perched on three towering legs over a California desert town. Whatever the mighty vessel was doing — manipulating powerful forces – Karen knew it was beyond human experience. The detector console on her lap told her that much, before every dial and screen burned out.
Frenzied queries rattled her ears — frantic demands for information, shouted by officials in New York, Washington and Belize. But Karen could only answer with a low cry as the Garubis tripod trembled visibly. It changed color before her eyes, from reddish to yellow, to green and finally intense blue.
Then, from the alien vessel’s rim, there fell a curtain of dazzling light, dripping slowly, as if liquid.
In terrified dismay, Karen saw the radiant cone broaden — catching two nearby earthling aircraft in its hem, melting their rotors and tossing them like gnats, sending them a-tumble toward Mojave dunes. Then the curtain tightened inward, narrowing to fit snugly within the great disk’s trio of spindly legs. The fierce illumination seemed to solidify into a bubble of palpable brilliance.
Roaring light heaved around her. Karen held on for dear life as the helicopter dipped, rattled and shook. Alarms wailed. The control panel erupted with red warning flashes. For a minute, all seemed lost.
Then, abruptly, the sensation of powerful energies simply vanished. In seconds the air calmed, releasing her pilot to sob in relief. And Karen’s head was out the door, turning. Peering frantically.
A pall of sparkling dust hung over the town of Twenty-Nine Palms, especially the part near Olympic and Rimpau, obscuring everything beneath. Out of this fog, blew a storm of small cylinders – components of the fast-unraveling tripod, now returning to the mothership. Several thousand of the hollow tubes could be seen rushing skyward, joining their fellows in the belly of the giant, hovering disk. Soon all were recovered and the big hatch closed.
With an audible groan, the mighty vessel began climbing away.
“What happened? What happened? What just happened?”
For a moment, Karen couldn’t tell where the question came from — a simultaneous chant emitted from her headphones, from everyone in the chopper and from her own dazzled mind.
Then, as the starship started moving, an amplified voice took over the radio waves, every channel and frequency, speaking English with weird, alien tonalities.
Thus, repayment is accomplished.
With this gift, our debt is erased.
Where the tripod had been, just minutes before, a stiffening breeze now tugged at the dust cloud, unraveling it — along with every shred of hope Karen had been vainly clutching. For under the clearing haze, she now saw what had become of Twenty-Nine Palms High School and several surrounding city blocks.
A quiet, crystal clarity settled over Karen’s senses. Through headphones she heard someone in authority shout a protest that was immediately translated into Garubis chatter-gabble – the aliens’ tongue — as humanity’s complaint chased after the fast-departing vessel.
“You ugly space bastards! You call THIS a gift?”