The Elicon

by Rob Roth

  “Dooley, if you think I’m hiding in a hole somewhere while you play a dangerous game of tag with the aliens and get all the glory, you are severely mistaken. Whatever risks you are taking we will take together, mate. Two heads are always better than one when it comes to dealing with a crisis situation. I plan to cover your six whether you want me too or not. You’re lucky I brought my field med kit with me. I figured you had some hairbrained plan in mind!”

  “Ok, ok,” Dooley smiled. “You are one tough cookie, you know that, Allie? A little stubborn maybe, but I can work with that. And frankly, I can’t imagine having anyone else covering my back on this one. Jace may be my best friend, but he’s not trained for these types of situations like you are, which is why I didn’t push any harder to stop you from coming.”

  “Why thank you Dooley. That is most considerate of you. I’m sure I will be delighted fighting those aliens with you,” Allie said in her best imitation of Elysia’s winsome and melodic voice.

  “Oh brother…” Dooley said shaking his head.

  After a three or four-hour flight, during which Dooley and Allie both tried to catch a little sleep, the plane landed at Halls Creek airport, a town in the outback on the northern side of the Great Sandy Desert. As the plane was landing, Dooley could see Halls Creek was a relatively small outback town, although it at least had a number of paved streets, unlike Qaanaaq. He estimated it was maybe a mile in length and a half mile wide with a number of homes and buildings located just north of the airport. Since it was the only town of any size around for 400 miles, they had decided would be their home base.

  Stepping off the plane they immediately felt the desert heat, as it was over ninety degrees Fahrenheit. After securing a rental car, Allie drove them to the visitor’s information center. Having been there about a year ago, Allie knew where it was located. Inside they found a map that covered the town and surrounding areas to help them find their way around.

  With the help of the map they found a café where they picked up some local food and took it over to Shire Park, a large round field of green grass where they could sit under some trees and eat. Allison warned Dooley it may be the last true greenery he saw for the next few hours.

  “In many ways the outback here reminds me of your Arizona desert, although not quite as dry. We might catch a bit of a glimpse of some small streams along the way,” she added.

  After a quick lunch they headed south out of town on Route 1, through the desert landscape, soon taking a left fork onto Tanami road about ten miles south of town. They drove for two hours after that, covering about a hundred miles and bringing them roughly parallel to where the Wolfe Creek Crater impact site was located. Allie took a little road that headed due east in the direction of the crater, which was located about ten miles from Tanami road. After travelling about seven of those miles, Allie headed off road and north for about half a mile to get to the more recent impact site she had visited last year. This area had some rocks and trees nearby for ground cover, which Dooley appreciated, since he was somewhat concerned about an encounter with the spacecraft.

  “Well, here we are,” said Dooley, as much to himself as to Allison.

  Allison walked Dooley over to where the small twenty-foot-wide impact crater was situated. Dooley stopped right at the edge and took out his sat phone to call Daniel.

  “Hello?” answered Captain Severs.

  “Hey Daniel. Allie and I are at the impact site, and I wanted to run a little experiment, if I could.”

  “Dammit, man. You do realize it’s in the middle of the night here, don’t you? Davis and I are staying at a hotel near the Grand Canyon, and I assume he’s asleep in his room just as I had been in mine!”

  “Sorry, Daniel, but this is really important. You don’t need Davis for this. Can you put on some clothes and step outside?”

  After grumbling a bit to himself, Severs pulled on some pants, shirt and shoes, and stepped outside onto the parking lot of the hotel. “Ok, I’m here. Now what?”

  “I’ve been wondering about that spaceship that found Jace and me at Hiawatha Crater. I am not sure how it found us, but as I recall it appeared over you first, and then shortly afterwards, over me. Can you look up? Do you see anything in the sky that could be a spaceship?”

  “I’m looking…” replied Severs. “Nope, nothing there. Can I go back to bed now?”

  “Not just yet. I have that little bag of blue dust I collected in Greenland. It seemed like they showed up after I had actually touched the stuff. I’m wondering if they have some way of knowing that. Hold on... I’m taking it out right now.”

  Dooley opened the bag and stuck his hand in it, squeezing the dust in his fist. Then he closed the bag back up. “Ok, I got my hands on the dust, let’s see what happens.”

  Allison turned to Dooley and said, “Just in case you’re right Dooley, I think we best leave the bag here at the edge, and head over to the rocks and trees so we can hide in their shadows. At least maybe that will give us some level of protection.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Dooley said as he dropped the bag and they headed toward one of the larger rocks a short distance away.

  “I still don’t see anything. Any idea how long this will take?” Daniel asked impatiently.

  “No, not really. But it shouldn’t take too long. Maybe a half hour,” Dooley said.

  “Oh great,” replied Severs, who walked over to the center of the lot and decided to look up and do some star gazing to kill time. “I will say this — it’s a clear night, and the moon is shining to the west, so there is plenty of light. I think if the ship appears I should be able to see it.”

  “Are you still with us, Daniel?” Dooley asked after another ten minutes.

  “Sadly, yes. Although the sky is pretty amazing out here… wait a sec…. Oh, WOW! I see the spaceship! At least, I assume it is… it looks like a shiny metal blob. YES!, it’s directly overhead… maybe a thousand feet up! Damn! I should have thought about ground cover. Here I am standing out in the open! Oh... ok, it just took off at a speed so fast it was like a blur. I think it’s headed southwest, likely in your direction. Be careful."

  “Ok, thanks, Daniel. You can go back to bed now,” said Dooley.

  “Not on your life! I want you to tell me what happens!”

  A few minutes later, Dooley said, “Yep, it just popped into our space! It’s about a thousand feet up right over the edge of the crater. It’s shooting down that beam and collecting the blue dust I left there. I knew they had to be tracking us. Looks like it’s tracking both of us, Daniel. But at least it seems to only show up when we find blue dust. Oh, oh, it’s shining a wider beam in our direction looking for us. Going quiet…”

  The beam locked in on where Allison and Dooley were hiding behind the boulders, and quickly switched to the narrow beam. Dooley knew what that meant.

  “Get out of here, Allie! Run to the next boulder!” Dooley shouted as he half-pulled and half-dragged Allison just as the beam shot out at them and demolished the boulder they had been hiding behind. They dived behind the next set of boulders.

  With his back toward Allison to protect her and facing the craft, Dooley said, “Allie, whatever happens, I want you to know…”

  But before he could finish, Allison interrupted him and said, “Sorry mate, I hope you get a chance to forgive me,” she said as she plunged a needle into Dooley’s arm, and injected him with the rapid acting drug.

  As he was blacking out, he managed to say, “Allie... what the h...?” before he fell unconscious.

  Severs listened for another five minutes without hearing any transmission and began to get worried. They should have responded by now, he thought, unless something serious happened. He was quite relieved when a minute later he heard Allison’s voice.

  “Sorry for the delay, Daniel. Those buggers were firing on us, and I was afraid they wouldn’t stop until they eliminated the both of us. After they were done shooting a couple times, they turned on the wider scanning beam, and then d
ecided to leave.”

  “That’s weird,” said Daniel. “Why would they leave without finishing the job? I mean, I’m glad they did, but why would they?”

  “Well... I remembered they had done the same thing in Greenland, after Dooley and Aput were knocked unconscious. The spaceship scanned, and then it left. It occurred to me that maybe their scanning was somehow tied to Dooley being conscious, so I… well, I made sure Dooley was not conscious.”

  “But what if you had been wrong? You would have put Dooley and yourself both at their mercy!”

  “We were about to be fried regardless, mate. I figured if it didn’t work, Dooley at least wouldn’t suffer. It was a calculated risk.”

  “So how is Dooley now?” Asked Severs

  “Oh, he’ll be fine when he wakes up in about thirty minutes,” she said as she smiled, even though no one was there to see it.

  Daniel sighed in relief, and then replied, “Ok then. Now I am heading to bed. Of course, I won’t be able to sleep thanks to you guys. But that was quick thinking, Allie. Dooley should be proud of you. That is, once he forgives you,” he said with a little humor and a lot of truth in his voice.

  When Dooley did wake up, he was not happy with Allison. “What the hell were you thinking?” he shouted.

  “I was thinking how much I'm beginning to care for you, and that I would do anything I could to save you or keep you from suffering,” she stated directly to him. "Don't make me reconsider that!"

  “Oh... well... dammit girl, you are supposed to let me be the hero! I’m supposed to be the one saving you!”

  “Ugh!” she growled at him as she turned and stomped away. Then she turned halfway around and said, “A nice ‘thank you for saving my ass’ would have been a much better answer!” she fumed as she climbed back into their rental car and slammed the door.

  Davis woke up in the hotel where he and Severs were staying in Grand Canyon Village, blissfully unaware of the events that occurred during the night. After showering and dressing, he went down to the lobby where he was supposed to meet Daniel at 8 am. However, Severs was a good twenty minutes late.

  “Sorry, Davis,” Severs apologized when he arrived and saw Davis sitting in a chair in the lobby, waiting. “I had a crazy night last night and didn’t sleep well. I’ll fill you in at breakfast.”

  They found a fast food chain restaurant out on 64 as they were heading south toward Flagstaff, so they stopped there to eat, and Daniel filled Davis in on all that had transpired.

  “Wow, that’s crazy!” said Davis. “So, the spaceship was right over our hotel last night before it headed South? And it didn’t take them but a few minutes to get to Australia? Man, that ship is fast!”

  “Yes it is. But it makes me wonder why they came to me first. How did they even find me? And how did they find Marz after they found me?”

  “I’ve been thinking about the riddle that Dr. Larkin heard in his vision,” Davis replied. “You know, the one where I said, "The link that binds the two together…". Then you said, “The hand of man reaches out…". Then Mr. Marz said, "To firmly grasp the one seeking... ". And Miss Trask said, “And to recover the lost.”

  “Well,” he continued, “I was the first one to see the artifact. What if that artifact is the link that binds the two together.”

  “Hmm,” Severs said aloud as he thought. “And I’m the one who put my hand on the artifact. I certainly recall feeling electricity flowing through my arms. Was that the hand of man reaching out? What if they planted some sort of tracking device on me?”

  “Mr. Marz said, ‘to firmly grasp the one seeking’, Davis recited again. “I think that indicates Dooley is linked somehow as well. But how? And why? I know he and Dr. Larkin have certainly been seeking the blue dust.”

  “The only time I came into contact with Dooley before Greenland was when I met him and Allie and Jace in the alley behind the auditorium at the conference in Flagstaff. But there wasn’t anything memorable that occurred, or anything unique involving Dooley.”

  “Didn’t you shake his hand when you met him? Could that be the ‘grasp’ the verse mentions?” Davis asked.

  “Well, yes, maybe… but I think I shook Jace’s hand as well, and maybe even Miss Trask’s. Hell, I’ve shaken a lot of hands before them and after them. Why would Mr. Marz be unique?”

  “I think it must have something to do with the blue dust,” Davis said. “Didn’t you say the ship didn’t appear until he grabbed some of the blue dust in his hand? Maybe that is the trigger somehow.”

  “You mean, maybe because he had previously come into contact with the blue dust? But no, I don’t think he did. That egg didn’t turn into blue dust until we had possession of it, which was after I shook his hand,” said Severs. “Maybe Dooley handled the egg, but we know Jace was the one that first retrieved it, and he ran a lot of tests on it. We don’t know for sure if Dooley touched it. But if he did, certainly Jace did too.”

  Davis thought for a bit and then said, “Captain, I don’t think we can figure this out until we talk to the others, and maybe then we can put the pieces together. But I do think somehow you and Dooley are being tracked through contact with that artifact. And it seems like it is triggered by the blue dust. So, unless you want to be targeted by an alien death ray or something worse, I suggest not grabbing ahold of any blue dust in the near future.”

  “Copy that, Davis,” Severs said with a slight smile. “Now, let’s get back on the road to Flagstaff. And we need to think about how we are going to reach out to Steinmacher without getting ourselves thrown into prison, or worse, handed over to Heissman.”

  The Grand Canyon Village was only a couple hours from Flagstaff. Making good time, they arrived before noon and were able to find a nice hotel with availability. However, since they could not check-in before three, they decided to sit in the lobby and formulate their plans. They were hoping to find an opportunity to be alone with Steinmacher, face-to-face, within a few days, and understand why he said he was to blame for what was happening. But they weren’t sure how to get to him.

  "I don't think we can risk going to TUFO," Captain Severs started. "With Heissman looking for us now that we went AWOL I'm sure everyone out there will have eyes out for us. And even if Steinmacher wouldn't turn us in, he likely couldn't provide us cover from others who might see and report us. For that matter, I'm not sure he even wants to talk to us, and meeting on his turf would give him all the power."

  "That makes sense, Captain. So, that means we need to catch him off the base. As far as I know, Steinmacher stays right at TUFO during the week, and even on Sundays. However, in the two years I was there, I would often see him take off in his car on Saturday. Usually it was when I was finishing my morning jog around, say nine o'clock. It was pretty regular as I recall.”

  “Ok, that's good. I vaguely remember seeing him leave once or twice myself, although I only know it was morning sometime. He could have been going in the direction of Flagstaff, or possibly Winslow. Any thoughts on that?"

  “I’m not sure how we would know that… well now, come to think of it, a couple times I recall seeing him taking an umbrella with him, when the weather at TUFO was sunny. I thought that was odd. But it makes sense if he was heading to Flagstaff where it’s a higher elevation and has more rainfall.”

  “That seems like a reasonable assumption, Davis. Now we just need to confirm it. The Colonel drove a red Durango. He would probably come into Flagstaff on 89 or 40. It’s about fifty minutes from TUFO to Flagstaff, so if he left at 9 am we should see him at roughly 9:50 am. We can each take a position on one of those two roads where we can see the cars coming into town.”

  “But Captain, that’s still a lot of cars to check out, even if we just add a ten-minute window on either side. There could be a fair number of red Durango’s coming in during that twenty-minute window.”

  “We should purchase two good binoculars, Davis. I don’t think it will be as difficult as you think, because I just remembered Steinmacher’s
license plate. Fortunately, it was a vanity plate and it stuck in my mind — Einstein..”

  That Saturday Davis took a position on route 89 and Severs took I-40. They picked spots to park on the shoulder coming into town so that once they spotted the vehicle they could follow it. Like clockwork Severs spotted the red Durango with license plate ‘Einstein’ and called Davis to tell him he was in pursuit.

  He followed the car to one of the less prominent areas of town and watched as the car pulled up to a Victorian brothel. Steinmacher got out and went inside. Severs gave Davis the location, and after Davis arrived, the two of them waited there for about an hour. Eventually Steinmacher came out, got back into his car, and drove off.

  “Well, I didn’t figure the Colonel for one to go for that sort of thing,” said Davis. “But hey, I’m not one to judge. I guess whatever turns you on.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions, Davis. I think we need to know who he is meeting with, and for what purpose,” said Severs. “It could be very straight forward and exactly what it appears to be. Or it could be something entirely different. I would like to talk to the person he met with, just so we know for sure what we are dealing with.”

  “No doubt there are a number of girls who work there. How do you figure we will be able to determine who he saw?” asked Davis.

  “I have an idea,” said Severs.

  A couple hours later, Severs and Davis showed up in their dress uniforms, and came into the brothel. They asked to see the manager of the establishment.

  “Ma’am, we are not here to cause you any trouble, but we are investigating a possible breach of security that has occurred on base. I promise nothing we discuss will come back to you or your establishment. But we need to talk to the person who met with Colonel Steinmacher a couple hours ago.”

  It took a little more persuasion, plus an exchange of money for the inconvenience and impact their presence was having on their business, but eventually Severs got the name of the girl. Or at least he got the name she went by — Kandy Hartwell.