Star Trek The Original Series From History's Shadow (16 page)

“And you’re sure we’re heading in the right direction?” Wainwright asked, the air cold enough that he could see his breath.

The older man chuckled. “Sonny, I’ve been stomping around out here since before you were born. I could walk this whole mountain range with my eyes closed and never once run into a tree.”

Walking alongside Wainwright and sporting a similar style of civilian cold-weather coat, Marshall said, “The trees are pretty thick here, sir. How were you able to see the . . . what you say you saw?”

Waving one hand ahead of him, Roberts replied, “There’s
a few small clearings up yonder. Once we get there, you’ll see what I mean.”

His sighting, if that’s what it had been, was one of dozens reported in the days following the astonishing news of the Soviet Union’s successful launching into orbit of the first-ever artificial satellite.
Sputnik 1,
twice the size of a basketball, was at this moment circling the Earth at a speed of more than eighteen thousand miles per hour, completing a circuit of the globe once every ninety minutes or so. According to the classified reports Wainwright had read back at Wright-Patterson, the satellite had stopped transmitting its communications and gone inert a couple of weeks previously, its batteries now drained. Despite being operational for less than a month, the very existence of
Sputnik
had spawned a rash of new UFO sightings around the world. Many of the reports could be explained by the satellite itself, which was visible to the naked eye on a clear night and with favorable weather conditions. Others that could not be so rationalized—such as the mass sighting reported a week earlier by more than a dozen people in the small town of Levelland, Texas—were categorized for further investigation. The report submitted by Hugh Roberts also fell into the latter group, and was one of several new case files that had drawn Wainwright’s attention.

Beyond the trees ahead of them, the moonlight seemed somewhat brighter, and Wainwright saw that they were approaching what might be a clearing. Even from here he was able to see rock outcroppings and a dark area that suggested some kind of ditch or other depression. Ahead of him, Roberts slipped his rifle from his shoulder and cycled its bolt-action to chamber a round. Wainwright stopped and held up a hand for Marshall to do the same.

“Mister Roberts?” he prompted, resisting the urge to
place his hand on his holstered .45 pistol. When the older man turned, Wainwright saw the worry in his face.

“You’ll see,” Roberts replied, before resuming his advance toward the clearing.

Wainwright exchanged looks with Marshall, who regarded him with the same apparent confusion he was feeling. “What’s the matter with him?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“I don’t know, sir,” Marshall replied. “He looks scared.”

Yeah, but of what?

Opting for caution, Wainwright drew his pistol before again setting off after Roberts, who by now had reached the edge of the clearing and was standing in the moonlight, waiting for him and Marshall to catch up. Wainwright could see that the depression was larger than he first thought, and deeper. The moon’s illumination also revealed how the trough extended to the clearing’s far edge and into the trees, and that it was bordered by bare soil. Leaves had fallen to cover some of the dirt, but what was visible was still easy to identify as having been overturned.

“Oh, my God,” he said, his eyes locked on the furrow. “This is recent, isn’t it?”

Roberts nodded. “Yep. Three weeks to a month, I reckon.”

“Wait,” Marshall said. Crouching down, she removed her knapsack and set it on the ground. Extracting the Geiger counter, she activated the unit and aimed it toward the depression. It began ticking and the needle on its illuminated dial fluctuated, coming to rest two ticks above the zero mark.

“Are we okay?” Wainwright asked, feeling his own unease growing.

Marshall nodded. “I think so, sir. Whatever this thing’s picking up, it’s pretty faint.” Looking up at Roberts, she asked, “You know what’s causing this, don’t you?”

Instead of replying, the older man gestured with the
barrel of his rifle. “Come on. Once you see it, you’ll understand why I didn’t want to say nothing.” He led the way toward the trench and as they drew closer, Wainwright saw that a recent rain had somewhat compacted the churned dirt and grass. He traced its path across the clearing, his pace increasing with every step until he was jogging the length of the small glade. The beam of his flashlight played across the damp grass, dirt, and leaves as well as the occasional rock sticking up from the ground, but Wainwright brought himself up short when the light glinted off something metallic.

Son of a bitch
.

It was, without doubt, some kind of craft, and though he had no proof, he knew with utmost certainty that it was a ship designed for travel in space.

“You saw it crash, didn’t you?” Wainwright asked, hearing footsteps approaching from behind him and turning to see Roberts and Marshall running to catch up. He spared them only a glance before his attention was pulled back to the ship.

Clearing his throat, Roberts replied, “No, I didn’t.”

The odd reply earned him a quizzical look from Marshall, who asked, “What? Your report said you saw it on the ground.”

“I did,” the older man said. “I just never saw it flying. I came across it one night while I was hunting. Found it pretty much just like it is now. Wasn’t even sure at first what it might be. You know, maybe it’s one of them top-secret planes you folks are always working on. Then I remembered what other people had been saying about seeing something in the sky a few weeks back, and I realized this might be it.”

“Why didn’t you just say that from the beginning?” Wainwright asked.

Roberts shrugged. “Because it sounds crazy, that’s why. You folks get reports about people seeing flying saucers all
the time, and maybe sometimes you can figure out it’s just a plane or something else. How many people do you get calling to tell you they found a spaceship in the woods? Hell, my wife would throw me in the loony bin for saying something like that.” He gestured toward the craft. “I figured it best to get you out here to see for yourselves.”

Wainwright continued inspecting the ship, which lay at the forward end of the scar it had carved into the hillside, and he now saw that a significant portion of the vessel in fact was buried beneath the soil it had displaced. It was difficult to gauge its true dimensions, though Wainwright guessed it was similar in size to . . .

. . . to the ship at Roswell?

Moving his flashlight beam over the ship’s exterior, Wainwright saw that it was somewhat angular in shape, with enough curves and sweeping angles. The remnants of what might once have been stabilizer fins were positioned near the vessel’s rear section, and Wainwright let his flashlight linger over what looked to be an engine exhaust port at the stern. Enough of the ship was visible that he was able to study features like seams between hull plates as well as ports and other openings. The metal was almost rust in color, and the configuration of the individual plates was unlike anything else he had ever seen. Shining his light across the craft’s smooth surface, he noted what looked to be an access hatch. Embedded in the hull plating to one side was a small, recessed pocket with a series of backlit controls. Several small panels across the ship’s surface bore what might be labels, their markings unlike any language with which Wainwright might be familiar.

“This is incredible,” Marshall said, adding her own flashlight to aid in illuminating the ship. “Sir, do you think this could be a Ferengi ship?”

“A what?” Roberts asked.

Concentrating on the ship’s exterior, Wainwright said, “Hard to say. There are some similarities.” If this were a Ferengi vessel, it would be the first solid connection to the events in Roswell. Might the threat of eventual invasion conveyed ten years ago by one of the aliens finally be coming to pass?

He turned to Roberts. “Was the hatch open when you found it?”

Roberts shook his head. “It’s been this way the whole time, so far as I know.”

“So,” Marshall said, “you didn’t see anyone come out of it, or walking around it or anywhere nearby?”

“Never saw nobody anywhere near it,” Roberts replied. “I don’t know too many people who come out this way, even to hunt. It’s too far from the road, and they don’t like all the hills and gullies.” He smiled. “That’s one of the reasons I like it out here.”

Wainwright shook his head. “Hard to believe no one else has found this thing or, if they had, that they’ve kept it a secret.” He envisioned treasure hunters and glory seekers descending on the crash site. “We need to get our own people out here. Maybe even take this thing back so they can really study it.”

“I hope Professor Carlson gets to see this,” Marshall said. “The look on his face would be priceless.”

Wainwright nodded in agreement. “You mean if they let him out of whatever hole they buried him in?” As years had passed and the Air Force’s efforts to locate, verify, and study alien technology increased, the mysterious Majestic 12 committee, including Professor Jeffrey Carlson, had become ever more secretive. Its members had been scattered to various top-secret installations across the country, and a few were working abroad with American allies to track reports of alien
activity around the world. Carlson, as one of the committee’s senior and most respected members representing the project’s scientific interests, was in great demand. Wainwright had only spoken with him a handful of times in the past three years, during which the professor had spent much of his time at the Air Force’s high-security installation in the mountainous Nevada desert north of Las Vegas—it was so secret it did not even appear to have an official name. There also were rumors of Carlson’s involvement in another clandestine project, an extensive, long-term research and development effort taking place somewhere in the Pacific Northwest and employing hundreds of military and civilian science and engineering specialists. Wainwright’s discreet inquiries on that front had yielded nothing but quiet warnings for him to quell any such further curiosity.

Stepping closer to what he now presumed was some form of access hatch, Wainwright examined the recessed control pad. Tempted as he was to try opening what he hoped might be an entry into the craft, prudence won out over curiosity. Could its occupants still be in there? Aside from the dim illumination behind the keypad, the vessel emanated no sounds, lights, or other signs of power or habitation, but that did not stop Wainwright from considering the possibility of someone monitoring them from inside the ship.

Well, there’s a comforting thought.

The sound of snapping wood—a branch or twig on the ground—from behind them made Wainwright turn in that direction, swinging his flashlight so that its beam played across the trees at the edge of the clearing. The light reflected on something metallic before whatever it was vanished behind the trunk of a large oak.

“Who’s there?” he shouted, bringing up his pistol and
aiming it toward the forest, all while trying not to dwell on just how exposed they were here in the clearing. “Allison,” he prompted, gesturing with his .45 toward the tree line and stepping to his right in an attempt to get a better look at whatever it was he had seen. To his left, he saw Marshall mirroring his movements toward the other side of the tree. Though they had not faced down extraterrestrials since that night in Yuma five years earlier, Wainwright knew that she was more than capable of handling herself if the situation called for it.

Roberts was a different matter, and the first clue Wainwright had that their guide might complicate things came when the older man chose that moment to fire his rifle. The crack of the high-velocity round echoed through the surrounding trees, the flash from the rifle’s muzzle making Wainwright flinch. “Damn it!” he shouted, jerking his head in Roberts’s direction only to see the man working the rifle’s bolt to chamber another round. “Hold your fire!”

“Sir!”

Turning toward Marshall, he saw her jogging toward the trees, her pistol and flashlight held before her. “They’re running!”

“Wait for me!” Wainwright warned, already moving to where he could see someone darting between trees, using the forest for cover. It took him an extra moment to realize that their visitor was not retreating. “He’s over this way!” Despite his best efforts to catch the other person with his flashlight beam, his quarry eluded him.

But he can still see your light, idiot!

Wainwright doused the flashlight and halted his advance to the trees, looking and listening for signs of movement. The prowler likely had stopped as well and perhaps was figuring out his or her next move, but there was no way he could have
run very far in just that handful of seconds. He had to be close, Wainwright knew; very close.

“See anything?” Roberts asked from behind him, and Wainwright nearly jumped out of his skin. The man had appeared as if from the very air, the barrel of his hunting rifle aimed toward the trees. “He went this way.”

“I know,” Wainwright replied, keeping his eyes trained on the forest; to their left, Marshall was moving closer, and he saw her body go rigid as though something in front of her had caught her attention.

“Freeze!” she yelled, setting her feet and aiming her pistol at something Wainwright could not see. “Put your hands up!”

Still not seeing who she had found, Wainwright ran toward her, aiming his own weapon at the trees and with Roberts right on his heels. As he moved past a large oak, he saw a figure standing alone and bathed in the beam of Marshall’s flashlight, with both hands raised. It took Wainwright an extra moment to realize it was a woman, dressed in heavy civilian clothes similar to theirs. She appeared unarmed, but he did not discount the possibility of a weapon concealed beneath her jacket.

“Who are you?” Wainwright asked, switching on his own flashlight, and the beam caught the reflection of something in the woman’s right hand. It was silver, and far too small and thin to be a firearm, and she was not holding it as one might wield a knife.