STAR TREK - TOS (12 page)

Truth to tell, Walter had been dreading a visit like this for close to a decade, ever since two enigmatic strangers had walked into his office one day, claiming to be visitors from Scotland, and bribed him with a revolutionary molecular formula that, after many long hours of experimentation and analysis, had allowed Walter to buy out Plexicorp from its original owners—and send the company’s stock soaring toward the stratosphere.
Ialways knew there was something fishy about that bunch,
he groaned inwardly, castigating himself for his own greed and lack of caution.[97]
Professor Scott of Edinburgh, indeed!

Who knew where those shady characters actually came from.
His stomach churned angrily, and he groped for the bottle of Tums on his desk.
What if the formula was a classified military secret? I
could be charged with espionage!

Without further explanation, Lt. Christopher led Nichols to the helipad on Plexicorp’s roof, where, nine years ago, Professor Scott’s Asian accomplice had flown away from Plexicorp with a huge sheet of six-inch-thick plastic. Now an unmarked black helicopter waited on the very same pad to spirit Walter off to God knows where. Minutes later, they were in the air, with Walter strapped into one of the rear seats, next to Lt. Christopher.

“Er, what’s this all about?” he asked with exaggerated casualness, trying (too hard) to pretend he didn’t know.

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss that, Doctor,” Lt. Christopher answered, politely but firmly.

“You’ll be fully informed when we reach our final destination.”

Which is?Walter wondered anxiously
Alcatraz? The Pentagon? CIA headquarters?
“I don’t suppose you can tell me where we’re going.”

“Not really, Doctor.” A hint of a smile appeared on Lt. Christopher’s unlined, twentyish face, as though he were enjoying a private joke. “Officially, it doesn’t even exist.”

The helicopter took them to a nearby air base, where Walter was hurried onto a waiting jet, which took off with only the hapless engineer and his official escorts as passengers. A short flight later, Walter[98]

stepped off the plane onto the tarmac of a narrow runway stretching across a desolate-looking desert valley. The windows of the jet had been blacked out, preventing Walter from viewing any part of their descent, but the arid terrain, along with the brief duration of the flight, led him to suspect that he was now somewhere in the southwest. Nevada maybe, or Arizona.

The sun beat down upon the blacktop, adding to the sticky layer of perspiration soaking through Walter’s clothes. A Jeep Cherokee was parked to one side of the runway, along with a driver wearing military fatigues and a holstered handgun. Walter clambered into the back of the Jeep, where Lt.

Christopher produced a metal clipboard with a document and ballpoint pen attached. “Please read and sign this,” he instructed.

“Um, what is it?” Walter asked, accepting the clipboard.
A written confession?
He tried to read the neatly-typed text before his eyes, but found it hard to concentrate under the circumstances.
Ihave the
right to an attorney!
he all but shrieked inside his mind.
At least I think I do. Are accused traitors
entitled to lawyers?

“Just a standard form,” Christopher told him, “stating that you understand that everything you are about to see and hear is classified top-secret by the United States of America, and that revealing any of those secrets to unauthorized individuals constitutes a major felony, punishable by up to life imprisonment.”

This explanation did not reassure Walter. “What if I don’t sign?” he asked, his mouth so dry he could barely speak.

The Air Force officer gave him a look of wry amusement. “Then we could be sitting here for a very long time, Dr. Nichols.”

[99]Since Walter didn’t want to spend the rest of his life baking in the hot Nevada (or Arizona) sun, he signed the form, his trembling hand rendering his signature even more illegible than usual.
Maybe they’ll
take my cooperation into account,
he hoped fervently,
before locking me up and throwing away the
key.

Lt. Christopher folded up the signed document and placed it securely in his jacket pocket. He nodded at the driver, and the Jeep headed toward the rugged granite face of a nearby mountain. Mounted cameras mixed with cacti and flowering yucca plants alongside the unmarked dirt roadway, which the Jeep appeared to have all to itself.

After passing through several security checkpoints, each guarded by soldiers armed with machine guns, they arrived at a large hangar door built directly into the side of the hill. Walter’s apprehension grew with each succeeding barrier. He’d never seen security like this before, not even the time he’d toured the Pentagon along with several other Defense Department contractors. “Where the heck are you taking me?” he wondered aloud. His voice sounded so hoarse and strained that he barely recognized it. “Area 51?”

He thought he was joking.

Christopher presented his credentials to an electronic scanner, and the metallic hangar door rolled upward, revealing a paved, well-lighted tunnel leading into the heart of the mountain. Another armed soldier greeted them, and Walter was briskly marched through a confusing maze of interconnected hallways, past numerous sealed doors labeledAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. At this point, he was not surprised to see soldiers posted outside each and every door. None[100]of the grim-faced guards made eye contact with Walter. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

Walter was half-convinced they had walked all the way back to San Francisco, when Lt. Christopher paused in front of a door that bore, along with the usual warnings regarding admittance, the cryptic designation F-34. “After you,” he said, stepping past the latest guard to open the door.

With a nervous glance at the soldier’s side arm, Walter sidled past the guard. He found himself in what appeared to be an ordinary conference room, dominated by an oblong steel table, whose narrow end faced the entrance. Three unfamiliar faces regarded Walter from the far end of the table: an older man, who looked to be in his seventies, plus two younger individuals wearing civilian attire. To Walter’s slight relief, none of the three looked particularly prosecutorial.

“Ah, Dr. Nichols! How good of you to join us,” the elder man said warmly, without any apparent irony.

He was a lean, bony, old codger who peered at Walter through a pair of dusty bifocals. A frayed white lab coat was draped over his gaunt frame. “I must tell you how impressed I was by the molecular design of your ‘transparent aluminum.’ Such a unique and innovative approach to polyelastic bonding! Truly, a genuine conceptual breakthrough.”

“Um, thank you,” Walter said uncertainly. He’d been expecting hot lights and rubber hoses, not effusive praise. “It just sort of, er, came to me one day.”

“You’re being too modest,” the balding scientist insisted. He came around the table to shake Walter’s hand. Despite his age, he had a firm and enthusiastic[101]grip. “Here, let me make some introductions.

I’m Dr. Jeffrey Carlson, chief mad scientist around this place. And these,” he said, gesturing toward the younger man and woman seated across the table, “are my most invaluable hunchbacks, Jackson Roykirk and Shannon O’Donnell.”

“A privilege to meet you, Dr. Nichols,” O’Donnell said. She was an attractive, red-haired woman whose raspy voice held a hint of a clipped New England accent. Walter guessed that she was somewhere in her mid-thirties.

“Yes, what Shannon said,” Roykirk added somewhat brusquely. A short, unsmiling man with a goatee and receding hairline, he seemed impatient with social pleasantries and not all that interested in meeting Walter, who got the distinct impression that Roykirk was anxious to get back to his work, whatever that might be.

“Shannon is an engineer like yourself,” Carlson explained, “not to mention a prospective astronaut on loan from NASA, while Jackson is a positive genius when it comes to cybernetics.” Walter wasn’t too surprised to find out that Roykirk was a computer geek; he struck Walter as bright but socially challenged.

“And, of course, you’ve already met Shaun,” Carlson added. It took Walter a second to realize that the senior scientist was referring to Lt. Christopher. “Like Shannon, Shaun has a great career ahead of him as an astronaut and space pilot. I fully expect him to be the first man on Saturn someday.”

NASA? Saturn?Walter was getting more baffled by the moment.
What does any of this have to do
with me?
As much as he was afraid to find out exactly what[102]kind of hot water he was in, the suspense was rapidly becoming even worse. “Um, at the risk of compromising my constitutional right to remain silent, could somebody maybe explain what I’m doing here? And where ‘here’ is, for that matter?”

Carlson blushed and jokingly slapped himself on the side of the head. “Of course! I’m so sorry, Dr.

Nichols.” He smiled sheepishly. “Please forgive all the cloak-and-dagger theatrics. We’ve had some fairly serious security leaks over the years, and I’m afraid it’s rendered the Powers That Be understandably paranoid.” He exchanged a glance with Shannon O’Donnell that Walter didn’t understand, then grinned at Walter with the mischievous look of someone about to spring a surprise party on an unsuspecting acquaintance. “Welcome to the Groom Lake Facility,” he said dramatically, “better known to the tabloid writers as Area 51.”

Walter’s jaw dropped. He’d heard of Area 51, of course, mostly in conjunction with ridiculous UFO

stories and conspiracy theories, like the kind you found in bad science-fiction flicks and cheesy cable-TV

documentaries. It was supposed to be the U.S. government’s top-secret storehouse for captured alien artifacts and entities, but he had never really given the rumors much thought, being much more concerned with the day-to-day operation of his business. Area 51, and its allegedly extraterrestrial secrets, had meant about as much to his life as the Loch Ness Monster and the Abominable Snowman.

Until now, that is.

It was all too much to cope with. His knees went weak and he clutched the table for support. Seeing

[103]his distress, Lt. Christopher pulled a chair away from the table and offered Walter a seat. The shaky engineer dropped gratefully into the molded plastic chair. O’Donnell poured Walter a glass of cold water, which he downed in an instant, then asked for more.
This has got to be some kind of joke,
he thought plaintively.
I’m no UFO nut. I never even saw
E.T. ...

Carlson allowed Walter a minute or two to recover, wandering back to his own seat at the other end of the table. Then he delivered his second bombshell. “How much do you know,” he asked, in a conspiratorial tone, “about the so-called Roswell Incident of 1947?”

Walter almost choked on his water. “That’s true, too?”

Carlson nodded soberly. “I was there. An alien spacecraft crashed in the desert outside Roswell, New Mexico. Three intelligent, extraterrestrial beings, who called themselves Ferengi, were taken into custody by the United States Army, who assigned me the task of studying them.”

He slid a cardboard folder across the table toward Walter, who opened it with more than a little trepidation. Inside were black-and-white photos of three dwarfish creatures with oversize ears and rodentlike features.
This is what genuine aliens look like?
Walter thought in wonder.
Rat people from
outer space?
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing—and seeing. “Are ... are they still alive?” he asked uneasily. For all he knew, these “Ferengi” could be only a few doors away!

“I wish I knew,” Carlson said, a rueful tone to his voice. “For better or for worse, the aliens escaped

[104]within days of the crash, taking their damaged spacecraft with them.” His eyes looked inward for a moment, as though his mind were traveling back in time to his long-ago close encounter with the aliens.

“I’ve spent the last forty-six years studying the data we collected during those brief, historic days back in forty-seven, plus whatever other evidence of alien visitations that the government has located over the last few decades.”

“This is fantastic,” Walter admitted, feeling like he’d somehow been sucked into a Spielberg movie.

“But, I have to ask, what does any of this have to do with me?”

Carlson glanced at O’Donnell. “Shannon, do you want to take this one?”

“No problem,” the redheaded engineer said. She glanced quickly over her notes before launching into her spiel. “Our primary goal here at Project F is to design and build the prototype for a new generation of manned spacecraft, incorporating everything we’ve learned from the Roswell crash and similar incidents.

Basically, we’re trying to reverse-engineer an alien spaceship, working from photos and records taken in 1947, plus whatever other extraterrestrial artifacts have fallen into our hands.” She paused for a second, perhaps uncertain of how much to reveal of Area 51’s entire alien inventory. “This is a whole lot trickier than it sounds, especially since we no longer have the original Ferengi vessel to study.”

She looked Walter squarely in the eye. “That’s where you come in, Doctor. Not only is your transparent aluminum perfect for our purposes, but it actually bears a surprising resemblance to materials[105]

observed in the Ferengi spacecraft.” She shook her head in amazement, obviously still taken aback by the coincidence. “The Ferengi substance is more sophisticated, naturally, but, believe it or not, it seems to have basically the same molecular matrix.”

Walter gulped.
Those guys back in ’86,
he recalled.
Professor Scott and the others. They must have
been Ferengi in disguise!
“Er, I don’t suppose those Roswell aliens were able to take human form?”

Carlson raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Actually, there is reason to believe that at least some of the aliens possessed shape-changing abilities. Why do you ask?”

Walter hesitated before answering. This was the moment of truth: should he come clean about where he got that “molecular matrix” from, or keep on pretending that he had invented transparent aluminum all on his own?
What about my business?
he fretted.
My patents?