Independence Day: Silent Zone (17 page)

Suddenly
dejected, he switched off the lights. It would be nearly a year before
he
turned them on again.

A
month to the day after the arrival of the Wells report, Radecker came
dancing
into the kitchen waving a telegram in the air. "Pack your bags,
gentlemen,
we're taking this show out on the road! This just came in from
Spelman,"
he announced, dropping the printout on the table in front of a gloomy
Okun.
"They've approved your proposal!"

"You
must be kidding. I wasn't serious about that." After being depressed
and
listless for two weeks, Brackish had realized he had to do something,
anything,
to stay busy. With the help of his colleagues, he'd
written a
half-demented proposal to retrofit the alien spacecraft with
human-built
technology—half of which would need to be invented. The men had laughed
at
their ideas, realizing how ludicrous most of them were. For Okun, it
had been
just like sitting around brainstorming with the Mothers in his dorm
room—except
his new group would have been called the Grandpas of Invention.

One
of the minor ideas called for in the proposal turned out to be
astonishingly prophetic once the secrets of the alien technology were
revealed
years later. Although there was no particular need for it from an
engineering
standpoint, he decided to base the steering and velocity controls on
telekinetic energy. Okun recalled Dr. Solomon's theory on how the
aliens
controlled their biomechanical suits through acts of will. Based on
their
fetuslike riding position inside the chest cavity and the fact that the
visitors had no tentacles, Solomon had ruled out the possibility of the
suits responding
mimetically to the physical actions of the wearer. It must have been
done
through mental signals. Okun wanted to apply similar principles to the
operation of the ship. Years before there was any such thing as Virtual
Reality, he conceived of a "sensory suit" to be worn by pilots which
would read their slightest physical impulses and translate them into a
series of
commands intelligible to the ship's control system. In his proposal,
he'd
called this function the "Look, Ma, No Hands Interface," explaining
that it would "significantly reduce pilot reaction time."

Dworkin
was struck dumb that the document had been taken seriously. He had
urged his
junior colleague not to submit it, warning that it would damage his
credibility
with the powers-that-be. After he read the telegram, he turned to Okun
and
raised his eyebrows. "Somebody up there likes you."

Spelman
thought the plan was ridiculous. It showed how little serious work was
being
done at the secret labs. As soon as he was finished reading the
document, he
phoned CIA headquarters and asked to be put through to the Office of
the Deputy
Director. "Al, I'm worried about our boy. I think he may be losing his
marbles. He just sent me this proposal to rebuild the blackbird with
conventional technology. There are so many weird ideas in this thing my
first
thought was, 'uh-oh, we've got another Manny Wells on our hands.' "

"What
does he want to do?" Nimziki sounded like he was
busy doing something else, not really paying attention. Spelman ran
through the
basic outlines of the plan, making sure to mention some of its nuttier
aspects.

"And
get this," he quoted from the report. ' "In order to accomplish these
goals, we will need to spend time at the following research
institutions: the
Los Alamos National Labs, the Massac husetts Institute of Technology,
the
Lawrence Livermore Labs, the University of California at Berkeley, Oak
Ridge'...
There are about twenty-five places they want to go to."

"Let
them go, it can't hurt."

The
colonel couldn't believe what he was hearing. "In my opinion, it would
be
faster and easier simply to feed him some more clues. Radecker's
obviously
doing a better job than you'd anticipated."

"Not
yet," Nimziki snapped. "I have my sources, and everything's going
along fine out there. The kid needs a vacation is all. He's been down
there
long enough. Let's send them out. You take care of it."

Reluctantly,
Spelman agreed, but not before chopping back the proposed itinerary to
just a
pair of sites: Los Alamos and JPL. He also arranged special security
procedures. Dworkin and the others, he knew, could be trusted not to
reveal any
information about Area 51, but Okun was untested. Although Spelman had
never
met him face-to-face, everything he knew about the young man suggested
he would
be a major security risk. He assigned two of his craftiest agents the
task of
getting Okun to divulge sensitive information.

Radecker
and his staff were away from their labs for ten months.
Seven of them were spent at the prestigious Los Alamos National
Laboratories,
where the group enjoyed full access to the knowledgeable technical
staff and
the ultramodern equipment, before moving on to a shorter stay at the
Jet
Propulsion Labs in Pasadena, Okun's old stomping grounds. Twice a day,
he
glimpsed his alma mater from behind the tinted windows of the van that
shuttled
the crew between the labs and their hotel. Since they received the red
carpet
treatment everywhere they went, the trip turned out to be relaxing and
enjoyable for everyone except Okun. Since he had never studied many of
the
subjects that the engineers around him—even Freiling—knew like the
backs of
their hands, he was forced to play catch-up. He spent most of the year
with his
nose buried in books about rocketry, aerodynamics, or the newly
emerging field
of computer science. It was his graduate school. Under the patient
tutelage of
his elderly companions, he crammed three years of study into ten
months.
Without revealing why they needed the information, the scientists were
able to
learn many things that would help them repair the ship once they
returned—everything from advanced, solderless welding techniques to the
design
of micro-circuitry. As for security concerns, Spelman's worries proved
unnecessary. Okun was far too busy to sit around gabbing with
strangers.
Besides, both facilities were staffed by very normal, very responsible,
people,
who had reached their positions by following the rules. They dressed,
spoke,
and wore their hair in the manner they felt was expected of them. When
these
squares saw Okun trucking toward them in a hallway, they dipped into
nearby
doorways to avoid him. He caused a small panic among a group of
secretaries one
morning when he came in wearing his security clearance card pinned to a
happy
face T-shirt worn over a brand-new pair of plaid pants which
revealed—and this
was what horrified them—he wasn't wearing any socks under his EARTH
SHOES. He
had about as much chance of conversing about national security issues
with
these employees as if he had been a leader of the Black Panther Party.
Spelman's spies never got close to him.

They
began their trip "home" on a warm spring morning.
Okun persuaded Radecker to let him pay his mother a quick surprise
visit. But
when the van pulled up in the driveway, a neighbor told Radecker that
Saylene
had gone shopping. On the long drive back to the desert, Okun found
himself
thinking about his mom and his friends. But then something triggered
another
memory. This one concerned a film he'd seen at Los Alamos months
before. It was
a dull old documentary about the work of the labs—the Manhattan
Project, rocket
experiments, and the history of the U.S. nuclear program. In one clip,
Brackish
got his first look at Dr. Wells. He appeared in the background of a
scene at
the laboratory. But the footage that kept replaying itself in his mind
had been
shot in the South Pacific. It was a bald and awkward moment of military
propaganda that featured a Navy officer speaking to a group of coyly
grinning
native islanders. They were being moved off the Bikini atoll, part of
the
Marshall Islands Group, in preparation for a test of the newly built
hydrogen
bomb. The officer made it annoyingly clear these simple people were
leaving of
their own free will and had plenty of other islands to go to. A
disturbing
moment of history caught on film, but Okun couldn't figure out why he
kept
thinking about it. It seemed important somehow.

The
moment he walked into his room and saw the Wells report sitting on his
desk
exactly where he'd left it, he knew. He stood stock-still staring at
the pages,
still holding his luggage. Very slowly he began to nod.

The
next morning, after a phone call to Los Alamos, he gathered everyone
for a
meeting. "Remember that movie they showed us about Oppenheimer and von
Braun? And there were all those scenes about the rocket tests they
conducted
around the time of the H-bomb?"

"Yes,
what about it?"

"There
was that one rocket that exploded, remember? It blew up after it left
the
atmosphere, and nobody could figure out why. This morning I called the
labs and
had them check the date of that footage for me. The explosion happened
at 4:30
P.M. on July 5, 1947."

"So?"

'That
means," Okun announced proudly, "it was 10:30 P.M. on July 4 in New
Mexico.
Which in turn means..."

"...
it was just before our alien vehicle crashed," Cibatutto finished the
sentence.

"Yup."

"And
you think there's a connection between the two events?"

Freiling
interjected. "That test was halfway around the world in the Southern
Hemisphere. How would that affect something in the skies over New
Mexico?"

"I
have no idea," Okun lied, "but it's too much of a coincidence not to
investigate."

Dworkin
glanced at Lenel, and said, "I seem to recall seeing a report on that
rocket's failure."

"Of
course there's a report," Lenel groused. "Anytime you blow up several
million dollars' worth of government equipment, you end up writing a
report.
Finding it is going to be a different matter."

Okun
gestured grandly in the direction of the stacks. "After you,
gentlemen." The old men let out a collective groan, realizing they
would
spend the rest of the day thumbing through old documents. Reluctantly,
they allowed
themselves to be herded toward the stacks.

A
day and a half later, they found what they were looking for. The staff
members
opened a bag of pretzels and passed them around the kitchen table as
Okun read
from the report.

"We
have returned to the Garden of Eden with the intention of
blowing it up. The beauty of this tropical island is so astonishing one
senses
everywhere the hand of God in its creation. We can only pray He will
forgive
us." So wrote an English electrician of the Bikini atoll. He was one of
over two hundred men employed by the Manhattan Project for a series of
rocket
and bomb tests to be conducted in the Marshall Islands. Although the
tests were
classified experiments conducted by the United States, half of the
conversations took place in German. A large contingent of technicians
who had
been working for the Nazis a year earlier now formed the backbone of
the U.S.
rocket program. In the closing days of the war, Wernher von Braun and
his crew
had been ordered to return from the northern island of Peenemunde to a
country
inn near Berlin. Hitler, determined to prevent them from joining the
allies,
sent a team of SS agents to execute them all. By sheer luck, a cousin
of von
Braun's learned of the assassination plot and led the engineers into
American-held
territory, where they surrendered. Within weeks, these talented
scientists were
reunited at the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico.

During
the war, they had developed the deadly V-2 rocket, the world's
first ballistic missile, which was capable of reaching altitudes of
seventy-five miles. But the new rocket they were preparing to test at
Bikini,
the first of the Redstone weapons, would reach higher still. It would
soar
three hundred miles above the earth before making a controlled reentry
and
exploding a small bomb in its nose cone on the nearby island of
Kwajelin. The
film crews and reporters who had come to the island ignored the
Germans,
focusing instead on the upcoming test of the first hydrogen bomb.
Nevertheless,
these engineers felt their experiments were just as significant as
those being
conducted by Oppenheimer and company. If the launch was successful, it
would
mark the beginning of the space program.

State-of-the-art
equipment had been brought to Bikini in order to monitor the rocket's
flight.
Highspeed cameras with newly improved telephoto capacity,
ultrasensitive radar
equipment along with infrared and radio tracking systems were set up
under
thatch huts not far from the launchpad. After a final check of all
systems, the
countdown began. Liftoff occurred without complications at 4:18 P.M.
local
time. With an earsplitting roar, the forty-ton assembly lifted into the
cloudless sky, leaving the graceful arch of a contrail in its wake. The
ground
crew watched it rise until it disappeared from view, then gathered
around the
banks of monitors. Without warning, the rocket disintegrated at 185
miles.
Until that moment, everything had gone exactly according to plan—a
rarity in
highly complex tests of this kind.

Radar
watchers reported seeing something in the rockets vicinity flash across
the
screen a split second before the blast. The "ghost" had appeared out
of nowhere and vanished just as suddenly. The consensus among the
technicians
was that it had been a false reading caused by energy related to the
explosion.
There was just one troubling aspect to the way the shape had moved. It
seemed
to
accelerate.
As one of
the observers put it: "It was like a fish resting in the sand that
darts
away a moment before you step on it."