by Rachel Ford
“It was described as circular, very white, and big, leaving a trail of flaming red and green gas.” A murmur sounded, and Trent lifted his palms to caution them. “There’s a lot we can speculate from that, but remember: it’s just speculation. All we know for sure is what those eye witnesses told us.
“Mantell and three other fighter pilots were called in to take a look. One of the pilots turned back because he was low on fuel, but three fighters went in after it.
“Mantell radioed in describing it as ‘metallic and of tremendous size.’” He broke again to observe pointedly, “Corroborating our other witness testimony.”
“The UFO kept climbing. Once it reached 22,500 feet, the other two planes broke off. Remember, these were the old Mustangs. The pilots didn’t all have oxygen masks. But Mantell kept with it.
“Whatever he saw, it was enough to keep him in pursuit, keep him chasing that thing even when the others advised him to turn back.”
Trent shook his head. “No one knows what happened, exactly. The official story is that Thomas Mantell passed out at 25,000 feet because of lack of oxygen. All we know, for sure, is that the Mustang went down just south of Franklin, Kentucky, and Captain Mantell died in pursuit of the truth.”
He paused to let that sink in. Then, he said, “The UFO disappeared from sight within about half an hour. There were a lot of rumors. People saying Mantell’s fighter was shot down. People saying Mantell wasn’t discovered in the wreckage. There was a witness who even claimed that the Mustang exploded in mid-air, as it descended.”
Knowing murmurs met this, and Trent shrugged. “They’re rumors, folks. No one knows for sure. All we have is the official report, and that says it was an accident, the body was recovered, and there was no damage from an explosion or evidence of attack.”
A few people scoffed, but the guide didn’t acknowledge them. “Whatever the truth about Mantell’s death is,” he said soberly, “the mystery about the UFO has never been explained. The government tried to explain it away as Venus – the planet, Venus.”
Trent shook his head. “This was, frankly, a ludicrous explanation. It requires believing seasoned military men and long-term observers would mistake a planet for an inflight object. But it also contradicted the astronomical data; Venus was not in the correct position to be confused for the UFO. Eventually, they had to acknowledge these facts, and admit that it wasn’t Venus, or any other planet.
“Now, why would the government offer such a blatantly false narrative? Who knows. Was it a coverup? Were they just afraid a panic would ensue? Again…who knows?”
He pressed a button, and brought up another black and white photograph, this one of an elongated balloon. “This is a Skyhook balloon,” Trent declared. “It was developed as part of Project Skyhook in the late forties. These were high altitude research balloons.
“Once the Venus explanation was exposed as false, the government’s explanation shifted. Captain Thomas Mantell, they speculate, died chasing a Skyhook balloon.”
He stared at the picture, then turned back to his audience. “Now, does that look like the giant white orb that Captain Mantell saw to you? Do you see trailing red flames and green gas? Do you think a seasoned fighter pilot like Mantell would have given his life chasing a balloon?” He paused contemplatively. “I don’t know.
“But what I do know is, to this day, no one knows for sure how Captain Thomas Mantell died, or what he saw in those last tragic moments.”
Chapter Three
“Oh God,” Alfred groaned. “It was hell.” He was in his car, recovering from the ordeal of his tour, and video chatting with Nancy.
She laughed. “So you’re not in danger of being converted, then?”
“Converted? I’m in danger of saying something that’ll get me run out of town.”
“Don’t do that,” Nancy cautioned. “Who knows what truths you’ll miss out on?”
He pretended to scowl. “Do you know how many times he said the word ‘truth’? It must have been a hundred.”
“It sounds hilarious,” she declared.
“For the first few minutes, yes,” he acknowledged. “But by time he got to the aliens-built-the-pyramids bit-”
“Oh, he’s one of them, eh?”
“Well, not officially. He’s just ‘asking the questions.’” Alfred rolled his eyes. “The most leading questions I’ve ever heard.”
“What I really want to know about, though,” she smirked, “is the alien abduction testimonies.”
He shivered. “I couldn’t stand to watch them. These people are insane. How can anyone believe them?”
Nancy laughed again, but turned mid-retort. Alfred saw someone behind her, and squinted to make out the form.
It was Jeff Filmore. “We just got a call-” The hardware tech broke off suddenly. “Are you…on the phone?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Well, it’s no big deal,” Jeff said, in tones that indicated he felt otherwise. “I can come back later. I thought we were on the clock or something.”
Alfred could see Nancy’s jaw tighten. “This is a business call, Jeff. Not that it’s your business. Now, what’s your issue?”
The tech, somewhat chastened by this rejoinder, glowered at the phone, but spoke civilly to her. There was, apparently, an office phone periodically cutting out on callers, and he wanted her to approve his decision to pull it for a newer model. This achieved, he left; and she closed the door after him.
“Geez,” Alfred said, “what’s the deal with him?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
The taxman frowned at this evasiveness. “Nance, he was rude as heck to you. That’s not nothing.”
She sighed. “Honestly, Alfred, it’s not a big deal. Just…a few of the guys think I’m spending too much time with the number crunchers.”
Number crunchers was what residents of the nerd bunker called analysts. His frown deepened. “Well, we’re all one team, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, but you know how it is. It’s like I joined the Dark Side.”
He had no idea what that meant, and told her as much.
“Just…they can’t complain as freely around me and stuff anymore, because we’re friends now. I think it bugs them.”
“Complain? Complain about who?”
She shrugged, her tone growing evasive again. “Whoever.”
“You mean, you used to complain about me? With Jeff Filmore?”
She smiled sheepishly. “Maybe. But, hey, at least I didn’t complain about you to HR.”
His frown was back. “I already apologized for that.” During the earlier season of their acquaintance, Alfred had reported Nancy’s collection of science fiction poster art as a fire hazard. Human Resources had sided with her, ruling that paper on the walls didn’t violate fire code, but it had been the cause of some bad blood between them for a time.
“Yeah, and I haven’t brought it up since. You’re the one digging up the past.”
“Oh. Well, let’s forget that,” he decided.
“Good idea.”
“But, speaking of reporting people…”
She groaned. “Oh no.”
“Did you see the coffee maker Caspersen has in her office? That’s definitely against office guidelines. ‘No small appliances permitted on premises outside designated breakroom spaces.’”
“Jesus, Alfred. You’re not going to report the branch director, are you? Are you trying to sabotage your own career?”
“I’m not going to report her,” he said. “I’ve learned my lesson.”
“Good,” she sighed, the exasperation going out of her expression.
“People take it personally.”
“It is personal.”
He sighed. “It isn’t. And I don’t understand why we even have office guidelines, if we’re not going to enforce them.” Staring at Nancy’s annoyed expression on his phone screen, though, it seemed less important to him than it might have in the past. “Still, if chaos it’s
to be, chaos it shall be. I wash my hands of the whole thing.”
Nancy, eventually, had to go, and Alfred decided to return to his investigation. His steps took him to the gift shop. He was drawn by a morbid sense of curiosity as much as anything else; but this would be the central hub of commerce in Landing Site Earth. If he was going to get a good idea of the traffic on a given day, it was a must-stop location.
Plus, he decided, he’d pick up something for Nancy. So he headed in in search of – well, he wasn’t sure what, yet. It would have to be something that really summed up the absurdity of the place. He figured he’d know it when he found it.
The attendants behind the counter greeted him cordially. “Anything you’re looking for in particular?” the man asked.
“Just looking.”
“Let us know if you need any help.”
He began to peruse the aisles, and the range of merchandise was a bit staggering. There were replica alien artifacts and ships, brightly colored books with covers that looked like they’d been designed twenty years ago, DVD’s that seemed to have been burned in a basement – and all of them promising to reveal truths the government didn’t want Alfred to know.
Nothing jumped out as being right for Nancy, though. He moved on to the clothing aisle. T-shirts declaring, “I believe” and “We’re not alone” hung from the racks. But then he saw it: a t-shirt with a cartoon illustration of two aliens conversing, the first saying to the second, “Come on, life on Earth? I don’t believe it.”
Alfred positively grinned at the sight. It was perfect. So he rifled through the rack to find one that looked like it would fit her.
“Is she a believer?” a voice behind him asked.
The taxman almost started. “What?” He turned to see the speaker; he was a man of middle age, and he was watching Alfred curiously.
“Your girlfriend. I assume that’s who the shirt’s for?”
“Oh.” Alfred laughed, a little nervously at the question.
“She a believer?”
“A believer?”
“You know, that there’s life out there?” He gestured to the sky.
“Not really,” he answered. It surprised him, in a sense. Nancy was an aficionado of so many science fiction shows, this kind of silliness would have seemed a perfect fit.
“Unequally yoked, eh?” he shook his head. “Not sure I could do it. Spent too much of my life around closed-minded people as it is.”
Alfred wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he said only, “Oh.”
“She must be pretty special, I guess.”
“She is,” the taxman answered honestly.
“Hmm.” The newcomer nodded thoughtfully. “I’m Phil, by the way. Phil Fletcher. You were at the museum, right, for the tour? The one thirty?”
Alfred replied that he had been.
“Me too. You must be a ufologist?”
“Kind of,” the taxman said evasively.
Phil accepted this with a smile. “I could tell. I can always tell. You all have a kind of professional look to you.” He nodded briskly. “I like it. It brings respectability to the movement.”
Chapter Four
Alfred had assumed leaving the gift shop would shake Mr. Fletcher. He’d been wrong. Phil followed him outside. “So what’s your area of expertise, Alfred?”
“I’m researching sightings,” the taxman lied. It wasn’t the first time in the afternoon he’d been asked, and this was the story he’d settled on.
“Are you writing a book?”
There was so much excitement in the other man’s tone that he felt it wiser to play along. “Maybe. I’m in the research phase right now.”
“Awesome,” Phil nodded. He paused. “Hey, where you headed?”
“Umm…”
“You want to get some food? There’s a great place down the road.”
“You know the area?”
“Oh yeah. I know most of the towns along the Extraterrestrial Highway.”
Somehow, Alfred wasn’t surprised. Still, he thought, maybe this meeting would prove more fortuitous than he’d initially assumed. “Okay,” he said.
“Great. It’s this way.” He pointed toward the center of town, and the two men set their steps in that direction. “I’d love to talk to you about your research.”
Sugar cookies. His lies, it seemed, were about to find him out. “Well, uhh, I can’t say too much at this point.”
Phil considered this, then nodded his understanding. “Gotcha. You never can be too careful.” He glanced around the sidewalk. It was bustling, at least as much as a town as small as Sand Plains could bustle, with foot traffic, so he lowered his voice. “You ever worry that, if you get too close to the truth, they’ll come for you?”
Good God. With every new thought that escaped the other man’s lips, Alfred was reconsidering the wisdom of his plan. What kind of intel, after all, would he get from such a person? How reliable would anything Phil Fletcher had to say be, anyway? “I, uh, try not to let that get in my way.”
“Ballsy. Very ballsy,” Fletcher nodded briskly. “I like it.”
The taxman decided to steer the conversation in a different direction. “What about you? What’s your expertise?”
“Oh,” Phil laughed, “I’m not a professional. I’m just an amateur. A truth seeker, like yourself. But – well, what I’m really fascinated by are the close encounters.”
This was another revelation that didn’t surprise Alfred. “Really?”
“Oh yeah. There’s just too much evidence. There’s no way this stuff’s made up.”
The taxman forced himself to nod. “Definitely.”
Phil studied him, lowered his voice again, and then whispered conspiratorially, “What about you? You ever had one?”
“Me?” Despite the downhill trajectory of the conversation, he hadn’t expected the question. “Uh, no.” His companion seemed disappointed, and he added, “Sorry.”
“Me either. Not yet, anyway. But I think I will.”
A battle raged in the taxman now, curiosity arguing that he must know the reasons behind this certainty, and discretion asserting that it was the better part of valor. In the end, curiosity won. “Why’s that?”
The question pleased Phil. He grinned broadly. “I know too much. About them.” The UFO enthusiast broke from his train of thought suddenly, pointing to a parked RV. “That’s me, by the way.”
“You?”
“My home away from home.”
“Oh.” It was an older motorhome, of moderate size, and plastered in bumper stickers. It looked like a billboard on wheels, sporting pearls of wisdom like, “Embrace the truth,” “Ridicule: mind control for the masses,” “Think for yourself. Sheep end up at the slaughterhouse,” and “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they disappear you to a government Black Site.” Among the vague motivational sayings and dire warnings, there were comedic references too: “Extraterrestrials welcome. Humans knock first” and “Avoid close encounters. Use your blinker.”
“So you spend a lot of time on the road?” he surmised.
“As of last March, I’m officially one hundred percent on the road.”
“Oh. That’s…nice.”
Phil nodded proudly. “Yeah. I’d been thinking about it for a while, but I finally took the plunge. We only live one life, you know what I mean? I couldn’t see being tied to some ball and chain job for the rest of mine, while the truth was out there. So I sold my place and bought Carly.”
“Carly?”
He grinned and jutted a thumb at the RV.
“Oh.”
“We’ve been living the life ever since.” Phil shook his head. “I used to just read about this stuff, and watch videos online. But seeing it in real life, you know? It’s mind blowing. To think that I’m standing inches away from something an extraterrestrial intelligent life form created. You wonder, what was he thinking when he made this? You gotta wonder. I love it. I love this life.”
Alfred nodde
d. “You’ve been to Sand Plains before, though?”
“Practically a local. I spent two weeks last year. The Landing Site museum had a different exhibit then. More of an emphasis on close encounters. And I’ve passed through a handful of times for day stops.”
“They were pretty busy,” the taxman observed as nonchalantly as he could. “Are they always that packed?”
“Oh yeah. Today was a good day. They’re probably the foremost establishment in Sand Plains. The gift shop is non-stop activity. The museum is always packed, so is the café.” He shrugged. “That one surprises me, to be honest. The food’s not that great.”
Here, at least, Alfred could agree in earnest. “No,” he said. “My stomach’s still trying to figure out what to do with breakfast.”
Phil laughed. “Well, you’ll like Planet Delicious.”
“Planet Delicious?” Alfred knew the adage about judging books by covers, but some covers were just too ridiculous to avoid judgement.
The UFO enthusiast seemed not to notice the disdain in his tone, though. In a few minutes, they reached a little hole-in-the-wall café. “Sand Plains’ best kept secret,” Phil declared confidently, ushering him in.
Alfred groaned internally, confident the day’s flirtation with food poisoning was going to land him in the hospital.
They were seated and ordered. The taxman got a small meal, as his stomach truly was still recovering from whatever the café at Landing Site Earth had passed off as food. “So how’d they get their hands on so many artifacts?” he said.
“Who?”
“The museum. That was a pretty good collection.” He was hoping that steering the conversation back to Landing Site Earth would lead to something useful; or, at the very least, away from a discussions of close encounters.
Phil shrugged vaguely, though. “Don’t know. It is impressive though. One of the better exhibits I’ve seen.” He paused thoughtfully, then started as suddenly, “You know, I know I’m no ufologist, but I’ve got kind of a theory of my own.”