Starman (9 page)

Shermin got very quiet for a long moment. Finally he said carefully, “He yelled ‘greetings’ and melted his lug wrench?”

The radioman nodded. “Hey, weird you want, weird you get. Does it mean anything?”

“I don’t know. You heard the report. You’re sure about the details?”

“Yes sir. You think I could make anything like that up?”

“No, no. Tell me something, Lemon. How do you melt somebody’s lug wrench?”

“It wasn’t exactly an in-depth report.” He handed Shermin the printout. “This is a hard copy transcribed straight from the report. I taped it too, if you want to hear it.”

“No, that’s all right.”

“You got it all, Mister Shermin. Me, I just copy ’em down. I don’t explain ’em. Isn’t that your job?”

Shermin politely ignored the question, inquired, “I don’t suppose anybody got a license number?”

“Give this Heinmuller credit; if he’s a nut, he’s an observant one.” Lemon indicated the printout. “It’s right there, down near the bottom of the page. Wisconsin plates, PXV two-three-seven. I’m checking the owner through the DMV in Madison.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Lemon.”

Again the radioman looked uncertain. “Mister Shermin, I’d sure like to know what all this is about.” He tapped the transcript. “I feel mighty peculiar treating stuff like this seriously.”

“Don’t let it get to you. We’re all feeling a little funny about this whole business just now. Maybe I’ll be able to tell you a little more about what’s going on here when I’ve been able to figure it out myself.”

He was interrupted by a loud, metallic
crack.
Both men turned to look at the meteor. Bell was peering downward. He stared for a long moment, then seemed to shake himself awake. He looked over and gestured silently for Shermin to join him.

“Excuse me,” he told Lemon.

“Yeah, right.” The radioman watched as he jogged toward the object, trying to connect it to the police report he’d just handed over and failing utterly. Well, the world was full of crazy fools, as his mother never tired of telling him. He turned and started toward the exit, anxious to return to the sanity of his chopper.

Shermin went up the scaffolding that had been erected around the meteor and stepped out onto the cool, unyielding surface. Well, not entirely unyielding. The jack had bent back the flange Bell and his men were using until the black exterior had given way. He found himself staring down at a triangular opening that measured maybe a yard across each leg. He bent over and sniffed. No odor. Kneeling, he ran his fingers around the inside edge of the opening, then reached deeper and bent his arm so he could feel of the interior lining. It was smooth to the touch. Bell and the two technicians watched silently.

He sat down and put his legs through the hole. It would be tight but he thought he could squeeze through. “I’m going down,” he told the major. “I have to, you know.”

Bell nodded somberly. Behind him, one of the techs was leaning forward, straining to see inside. “I know. Just watch yourself, okay? It might be booby-trapped or something, especially if it’s Soviet.”

“If it’s Soviet I’ll carry it all the way to Washington on my back. As for booby traps, you saw how it ‘landed,’ ” Shermin reminded him. “Not what I’d call a gentle touchdown. Whatever this thing is, it’s banged up pretty good.” He took a deep breath, put both hands on the sides of the opening, and lowered himself inside.

It wasn’t far to the bottom. Overhead he could hear Bell yelling, “Someone get some lights up here!” A moment later the dark interior of the meteor was bathed in the glare of a powerful floodlight and Shermin could see his surroundings clearly.

He leaned forward and cautiously ran his fingers over what appeared to be crystalline projections. At first sight he’d thought they were natural and growing from the inside wall. Now that he was close he could see them for what they really were, artificial attachments to the object’s interior. They varied greatly in size and shape. Patterns lying within the translucent material suggested the same kinds of inclusions that were found naturally in quartz and other minerals, save that they were far too symmetrical and complex to have formed by chance. They had been built.

Bell leaned over the opening and yelled down at him. “You okay in there, Shermin?”

“What?” He was mesmerized by the sights surrounding him. He recalled the words of archeologist Howard Carter who, when he’d first stumbled into Tutankhamun’s tomb, could only stammer to those who asked him what he was seeing, “Wonderful things.”

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“What the hell is it?”

This time Shermin couldn’t answer. He was too busy. Turning away from the crystal wall—he tried to think of it as something other than a control station and could not—he bumped something on the floor with his left foot. The projection moved and a small panel of metallic glass slid silently aside, revealing the interior of a beautifully fashioned metal box. The interior showed seven small, round indentations where small egg-shaped objects might once have been stored. He picked up the container, examined the exquisite craftsmanship briefly, and then passed it up through the opening to the major. He in turn handed it over to one of the technicians, who bore it away toward the makeshift lab as if he were carrying the jewels of the moguls.

A larger, dark-colored object lay beneath a panel in the floor. Bell looked past him from above.

“What’s that thing? It looks like a gold record.” He laughed nervously. “Maybe this gadget you’re exploring belongs to some singing star somewhere.”

Shermin didn’t laugh as he bent over to study the disk of anodized metal. “It’s a record all right, Major, but you couldn’t play it back on your stereo.” He ran his fingers over the transparent facing protecting the disk. The panel slid back, allowing him to remove the pitted piece of metal. It was cold and slick and he trembled with the thought of where it must have been.

“It’s sort of an invitation,” he reminded Bell. “Do you recall the packages we sent out with the Voyager probes? Included with each was a gold anodized disk containing about a hundred pictures of typical Earth scenes encoded on the audio spectrum, along with greetings in a host of languages topped off with a nice little speech from Kurt Waldheim.”

“Kurt who?”

“He was secretary-general of the United Nations at the time. His talk was kind of along the lines of ‘ya’ll come over and see us sometime.’ ”

Bell was staring at the disk. “It could be a fake, a copy. This whole setup could be a ploy of some kind, designed to get us all worked up over nothing. I wouldn’t put it past our Soviet friends to concoct something like this just to devil us.”

“If that’s what they’d like then they’ve partly succeeded,” Shermin replied, “because I’m sure as hell all worked up. But I don’t think this thing is Soviet in origin.” He ran his fingers lovingly over the peculiar instruments, the strange glassy substance that lined the interior. “There’s stuff in here that doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before. I don’t think anyone’s ever seen stuff like this before.”

“But you can’t be positive it isn’t Soviet?”

The military mind, Shermin thought tiredly. And he liked Bell, too. “Not until the lab boys run some tests on this stuff, no.” He smiled, aware no one could see him. He was smiling for his own pleasure, and it was an odd sort of smile. “Just one thing. When they get to work in here, tell them to be sure not to use any lug wrenches.”

Up above, one of the technicians turned to whisper to Bell. “Now what the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Bell whispered back to him. “He’s from Washington.”

The technician nodded, as if that explained everything. “Oh.”

Jenny looked absently over at her passenger. He was holding two of those funny little gray spheres in his right hand, manipulating them methodically without looking at what he was doing. It reminded her of the courtroom scene from
The Caine Mutiny,
with Humphrey Bogart as the psychotic Captain Queeg endlessly tumbling the ball bearings through his fingers. It wasn’t a reassuring comparison. She nodded toward them.

“What are those for?”

“Different things,” he replied uninformatively.

“That’s nice to know.” Her sarcasm was lost on him and she was too bored to press the matter further. Her eyes drifted to the dashboard and she noticed the lagging needle on the fuel gauge.

“We’re going to need gas.”

“Gas,” he repeated.

“For the car. Gas, fuel, energy.” She eased up on the accelerator. “I step on the gas, the car goes. I take my foot off the gas pedal, the car stops. Understand?”

“No, I do not understand.” He appeared genuinely puzzled. “How can car be out of energy so soon?”

“Check with Standard Oil. I’m just telling you.” She pointed toward the dash. “That little window there is the gas gauge. When that needle drops down to ‘E,’ the big letter there, that means the tank’s empty. No more gas. The car stops. Period.” She eyed him sideways. “What do you want me to do?”

He thought a moment before replying briskly, “Get gas.”

The sign in front of the cabin said it all briefly.

FOR SALE

GILMAN REALTORS
—
ASHLAND

Shermin slowed, checked his badly crumpled map, then turned off the access road and drove toward the house. He couldn’t have gone much further anyway, not without ending up in the lake. And it was the only house at this end of the road.

There was a mailbox stuck on a rough-hewn post between the carport and the house proper. The name on the side confirmed his location:
HAYDEN
.

Another car squatted in the driveway. He pulled up and parked next to it. He admired the way the cabin fronted on the little bay and the lake beyond. There was a small dock and lots of trees and quiet. A long way from D.C.

There was also no sign of a good deli, bookstore, newsstand, or computer terminal. Everything in its place, he told himself, and this wasn’t his. Pretty, though, A sound made him turn back toward the house.

A pleasant-looking middle-aged woman was standing on the porch, holding a broom in one hand and staring back at him. She smiled pleasantly—something else different from back east—and gestured for him to approach.

“Hi there. I’m Mrs. Gilman. Come right on in.”

“Thanks.” He climbed the couple of steps, noted that the wood was uncured but nicely finished. Love had been substituted for money in the course of the cabin’s construction.

She followed him inside, closed the door behind them. There was a bucket and mop lying in one corner, and rolls of paper towels atop the breakfast bar.

“Excuse the mess, Jenny promised me that she’d clean it up, the poor thing, but I guess she couldn’t handle it as well as she thought she could. I told her I didn’t think her coming out here to pack up all by herself was a good idea, but she insisted, and she’s hard to argue with. Stubborn, that girl. Anyways, I came out to check on her and when I saw the car gone and how things were going, well,” she smiled a motherly smile, “I thought I’d pitch in and help a little. You know, surprise her.” She gazed at the jumble filling the living room.

“Try to see it without all the boxes and things. It would make a lovely hideaway for a bachelor. The nearest other cabin is quite a ways back off the road you came in on. You have your own pier here and there’s plenty of room in the carport for a boat as well as a car. Do you like to fish, mister, ah . . .?”

Shermin was taking the room apart with his eyes, hunting for revealing details likely to escape the notice of a middle-aged real-estate lady. “You said, ‘Jenny promised.’ That’s Jennifer Hayden?”

“That’s right. Poor thing. She’s quite anxious to get rid of the place, you know. I told her that I thought she ought to be a little more patient, hang onto it a while longer, but I understand how she feels. So I told her that I’d do my best to get rid of it as quickly as possible, since that’s what she wants. Two thousand down and she’d be willing to carry back a good-sized second.”

She didn’t add anything further, aware that her visitor wasn’t as interested in listening to her as he was in examining the cabin. He certainly was doing a thorough job of it, too, she mused. City fella by the looks and manner of him, badly in need of a place to get-away-from-it-all. It looked like she might have a sale despite the cabin’s condition.

Her appraisal of Shermin was right on the mark, but he wasn’t a potential customer.

He’d crossed the room to pick up a color eight-by-ten that had been resting atop a box of clothing. It showed a young man and woman standing in the snow. He showed the real-estate woman the picture,

“This is her? Jennifer Hayden?”

“Yes, it is.” Mrs. Gilman frowned. An odd customer indeed. “Why, is something . . .?” A sudden thought made her switch in midsentence. “You
are
here about the house, aren’t you?”

Both of them turned toward the front door at the sound of another car pulling up outside. It came in fast and they could hear the gravel thrown as it skidded to a halt. It didn’t go into the driveway but instead parked right out front. Doors opened and slammed shut in quick succession. Footsteps sounded on the steps leading up to the porch.

She moved to look out one window, glanced askance back at her silent, apparently unsurprised visitor. “Something’s wrong. Who are you? You’re not here about the house, are you? What’s going on here?”

The door burst open to admit a tall, husky blond man in a blue uniform. Insignia on his shirt identified him as a member of the Ashland police department. A chief’s star decorated his hat.

“Howdy, Gretch,” he said to the woman. Then he caught sight of the quiet individual standing in the center of the room. “You’re the government fella they talked about? Shermin, wasn’t it?”

“Right. Mark Shermin.” He put the picture back atop the box of clothing. “And you’re Chief Svarland, from Ashland?” The man nodded once. “Thanks for coming out here.”

A bewildered Mrs. Gilman looked from one to the other. “What’s going on? Has something happened to Jenny?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out, Gretchen.” The chief jerked a thumb toward the door. “C’mon in, Brad.”