by Allen Steele
Meredith Cynthia Luna held up a hand; Ogilvy acknowledged her with a brief nod. “Did the pilots see any aliens within the spacecraft?”
“No, ma’am, the pilots didn’t spot any occupants. They were doing the best they could just to match the object’s course and speed.”
“Did the pilots report receiving any psychic transmissions?”
“Ma’am, the pilots attempted to contact the craft by radio, on both LF and HF bands. They received no transmissions, radio or otherwise.” Was Murphy imagining things, or was Ogilvy trying to keep a straight face?
“But it seemed as if the object had entered the atmosphere. Is that correct?”
“Given the fact that it was first spotted in the upper atmosphere and was descending at supersonic speed, that’s the impression they had, yes ma’am.” Ogilvy held up his hand. “Please let me finish the briefing, then I’ll take your questions.”
The colonel consulted his notes again. “When they failed to establish radio communication with the craft, both pilots maneuvered their aircraft so they could get a closer look at the object. By this point the craft had decelerated to sub-Mach velocity, and it appeared to be leveling off its approach as it passed an altitude of 29,000 feet. One pilot, Capt. Henry G. O’Donnell, took up position 700 feet from the craft’s starboard side, while his wingman, Capt. Lawrence H. Binder, attempted to fly closer to the object in order to inspect it. Binder was passing beneath the object’s underside when his jet apparently lost electrical power.”
“Lost power?” Murphy raised a hand; the colonel nodded in his direction. “You mean, he . . . his jet failed to respond to his controls?”
“I mean, Dr. Murphy, Capt. Binder’s aircraft lost all electrical power. Avionics, propulsion, telemetry, the works. He said it was as if someone had pulled the plug. His plane went into a flat spin, and Binder was forced to eject manually from the cockpit.”
“I’ve heard of this happening before,” Meredith Cynthia Luna murmured. “A police officer in Florida had his car lose power when he encountered a spacecraft.”
“Did he eject?” Lieutenant Crawford asked.
Murphy slapped a hand over his mouth. Oh God, don’t laugh, don’t laugh . . . then he saw Ogilvy forcing a cough into his fist as he shot a look at his aide, and realized that he wasn’t the only rational person aboard this plane.
“It’s not funny!” Luna’s face was red with righteous indignation. “The poor officer suffered a terrible ordeal! He was held captive for twelve hours!” Then she turned to the colonel. “Tell me . . . did the pilot receive any psychic impressions when this occurred?”
Murphy jotted down a note in the margins of his binder: 100% loss of F-15 elec.—EMP?
Ogilvy ignored her. “Captain O’Donnell, upon seeing his wingman lose control of his craft while in close proximity of the object, decided that hostile action had been taken by the object. Following Air Force rules of engagement, he fell back one thousand feet, then locked his AIM- 9 Sidewinder missile onto the object.”
Luna was horrified. “Oh, no! He didn’t . . .”
“Yes, ma’am. After attempting one last time to establish radio contact with the object, Captain O’Donnell launched his missile.”
Time unknown
“Hang on!” Metz shouted.
Franc barely had time to grab the armrest of the pilot’s chair before the timeship violently pitched sideways. Even so, he was hurled across the control room; his left shoulder slammed against a bulkhead, and he slid to the deck.
“Did it hit?” he yelled.
“Detonated in the negmass field.” Metz was still buckled in his seat, hauling against the stick as he fought for control. He glanced up at the ship-status screen. “No hull damage. We’re lucky. But we’re still going down.”
Ignoring his bruised shoulder, Franc struggled to his hands and knees, crawled upward along the deck toward Metz’s chair. In the last moments before the timeship plunged into Earth’s atmosphere, the pilot had managed to reactivate Oberon’s gravity screen. If he hadn’t, the missile’s shock wave would have pulverized him against the bulkhead.
A small blessing. Oberon was plummeting through Earth’s lower atmosphere, less than nine thousand meters above the ground. They didn’t know when or where they were, or even how they got there, save that the wormhole had thrown them back toward Earth so quickly that the timeship’s negmass drive had drained most of its energy in order to make a safe reentry. The AI had stabilized the ship just enough to keep the crew from being roasted alive, yet the effort had severely drained its fusion cells.
If that wasn’t bad enough, two contemporary aircraft had spotted the timeship during its atmospheric entry. One made the mistake of flying within the electromagnetic field cast by Oberon’s drive, causing the jet to lose power. Although its pilot had managed to escape, his partner apparently misinterpreted the accident as hostile action.
“Can you get us out of here?” The deck was tilting less sharply now as Metz began to level off the timeship. Grasping the armrest, Franc painfully clambered to his knees. “Maybe we can outrun that thing.”
“Any other time, no problem.” Clutching the stick, Metz stabbed at the console with his free hand. “But power’s down 47 percent and dropping, and the field’s getting weaker. If that jet launches another missile . . .”
“Understood.” The negmass field had effectively shielded the timeship from the missile, but they couldn’t count on the same luck again if the jet launched another one. “Hole generators?”
“Sure, I can open a hole.” Metz scowled as he punched at the flatpanels, trying to reroute more power to the drive. “If you want to blow an eighty-klick crater in the ground below us. That’ll screw up the worldline nice and proper, won’t it?”
“Forget I asked.” Stupid question; this was the very reason why timeships always departed from orbit. Franc glanced at a screen. The remaining jet had fallen back a little, but it was still dogging their every move. He tapped the mike he had snagged on his way out of the passenger compartment. “Lea? Got anything on that aircraft yet?”
Her voice came through his earpiece. “Library identifies it as a F-15C Eagle, circa late twentieth century U.S. Air Force.” She began reading data from the library pedestal.
“Single-seater . . . maximum speed Mach 2.5 . . . ceiling 18,288 meters . . . range about 5,600 kilometers . . . armament includes 20-mm cannon, air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles . . .”
“Forget that! How do we dodge the thing?”
“Dammit, Franc, how should I know?”
“Tom,” Metz snapped, “what’s going on back there?”
“I’m working on it!” The last time Franc had seen Hoffman, the mission spec was on his hands and knees in the passenger compartment, his arms thrust deep into a service bay beneath the deck plates. “I’ve rerouted the gravity subsystem to the negmass, but I can’t access the main bus without . . . shit!”
The deck buffeted violently as the timeship hit heavy turbulence. Through the headset, Franc heard Hoffman curse as he pitched sideways once more; true to his word, he had cut off the gravity screen. Hanging on to the armrest, Franc glanced again at the porthole. The last skeins of cirrus clouds dissipated like smoke, revealing a countryside of rolling hills shadowed by the early-morning sun. High country, dotted here and there by white spots and tiny irregular grids, sprawled below them: houses, small towns, farm fields. According to Lea, they were somewhere over Tennessee. . . .
Franc glimpsed something that looked like two parallel black ribbons running through the hills—a highway, perhaps—then an irregular silver-blue surface swam into view. A large lake, its channels meandering past miles of sharp ridgetops . . .
“We can’t do this much longer,” Metz murmured. “I’m trying to lose that thing, but it’s . . .”
“Put it down,” he said softly.
“What?” Metz glanced over his shoulder at him, then followed his gaze to the porthole. “Down there?”
“Yeah, down there. Is the chameleon still operational?”
Metz glanced at his board. “If I divert ten percent power, sure, but it won’t work unless we’re hugging the ground.”
“Not the ground. The lake.” Franc reached forward, punched up a close-up shot of the lake below them; two more taps on the panel projected a thermographic false-image. “There’s the deep end,” he said, pointing at a dark blue splotch within the lake’s widest area. “If you can get down there, do a water landing, maybe we can submerge, lose that thing once and for all.”
The pilot’s eyes widened. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Probably, but you got a better idea? Maybe you can find a nice little airport. We can always tell the locals we’re from Mars.” He nodded toward the flatscreen; the jet continued to follow them like an angry terrier. “Or we can let our friend lob another missile at us. Maybe he’ll get lucky this time.”
Metz’s eyes raced from the porthole to the flatscreen to his status board: the lake, the jet, the uncertain status of his craft. Any way you added it up, it was a losing equation.
“Okay, all right. I’ll take us down.” The deck canted again as Metz pulled the stick to one side; this time, Franc hung on for dear life. “Now get back to your seat and buckle in. Whatever happens, it’s going to be rough.”
“Good luck.” Franc slapped the pilot’s shoulder, then let go of the armrest and flung himself toward the hatch behind him.
He nearly collided with Lea in the passageway; she opened her mouth to speak, but he shoved her into the passenger compartment before him. Hoffman was struggling back onto his knees; the tools from the fixit kit were skittering every which way across the deck, and he had only barely managed to shove the access panel shut.
“What’s going on?” he shouted. “What are we doing?”
“Landing in a lake! Hang on, going to be rough!”
Another violent swerve, and Franc fell headfirst into a couch. He managed to wrench its belly strap around himself just as the craft yawed once more.
“Going evasive!” Metz’s voice yelled in his headset.
Lea grabbed his thigh and clung to him as he grabbed her by the shoulders, but Tom was flung backward against a bulkhead. He slid down the wall, his arms limp at his sides.
“Tom!” Lea started to crawl toward the unconscious man.
“Strap down!” Franc yelled at her, then he flung her toward the adjacent couch. Lea hit the seat hard, but somehow she managed to land in it, not next to it. Dazed, she started pulling the straps around herself.
Franc glanced at Tom; there was nothing he could do for him. The timeship was probably working on 50 percent power or less; Metz was trying to dredge what little energy remained in Oberon’s cells for a controlled crash landing. Safely strapped down, Lea was shouting at Hoffman again, but he couldn’t answer; the mission specialist was out cold.
His throat gnarled with fear, his fingers digging into the armrests, Franc stared at the wallscreen. A rippling blue-green surface scudded past them only a hundred meters below, its edges marked by tall limestone bluffs. A trestle bridge shot beneath them with less than ten meters to spare, then it vanished, and they were going down, down, down . . .
“Tom, get up!” Lea was screaming at the top of her lungs. “Tom, wake up, wake up, oh God, we’re going to. . .!”
And then they hit the water.
11:57 A. M.
From the Air Force chopper, Center Hill Lake looked cold and gray. High clouds reflected dully off its meandering channels and tributaries, where the Caney Fork River flowed into deep valleys inundated long ago by a flood-control dam. At midwinter, the waterline was at its lowest level; when the UH-60 Blackhawk dropped to about two hundred feet, the noisy clatter of its rotors reverberated off high bluffs as the chopper flew past densely wooded ridges and hilltops.
From his seat behind the cockpit, Murphy studied Center Hill Lake with curiosity. Although most of the surrounding hills were filled were summer homes, a few of them almost mansions, none were on the shoreline itself; most of them looked closed for the winter. Colonel Ogilvy, who turned out to be a native Tennessean, told him on the flight out from Sewert AFB that the Army Corps of Engineers, which had erected the dam in the early fifties and maintained it today, had strict regulations against anyone building within five hundred feet of the shore. The few boathouses were ones protected by a grandfather clause in the regulations; most of the summer residents docked their boats at commercial marinas scattered along the lake. The regulations probably seemed draconian to the wealthy Nashville doctors, lawyers, and country musicians who kept summer getaways out here, but the trade-off was one of the most underdeveloped lakes Murphy had ever seen. He gazed down at the bare-branched woods and wondered how many deer he might bag during hunting season.
Then the Blackhawk swept around a bend, and the main channel opened before them: a vast expanse of water stretching several miles from shore to shore, with a tall road bridge towering above a bottleneck at the eastern end of the channel. The pilot brought the helicopter down lower as he banked to the left, and Murphy saw a sandy beach within a shallow lagoon on the opposite side of the channel. The beach belonged to a picnic area; as the chopper came closer, he saw that it had been invaded by the U.S. Army. A large tent had already been erected in the nearby picnic area; a couple of dozen figures, most wearing military fatigues, moved around the tent and the olive trucks parked nearby.
Even then, the helicopter didn’t immediately head for the beach. Instead, it veered toward the middle of the channel. From his seat next to him, Colonel Ogilvy unlatched his seat belt and leaned across Murphy to point at something through the window.
“Down there!” he yelled. “Can you see it?”
Murphy pushed aside the right cup of his ear protector as he looked where the colonel was pointing. At first, he couldn’t see anything; then he spotted a tiny island, not much larger than one of the summer houses surrounding the lake. Not an island, really, but rather a large sandbar; a couple of hardy oak trees had managed to survive the lake’s seasonal rise and fall, but he doubted that anything more than a few wood ducks lived out there.
Yet he didn’t see anything peculiar, save for several small plastic buoys forming a half circle around one side of the island. “See what?” he shouted back, shouting against the prop noise. “I don’t see anything!”
Across the narrow cabin, Meredith Cynthia Luna had her eyes tightly closed; she took deep breaths as her hands fondled a pair of animal energy stones: an armadillo for protection and safety, a butterfly for balance and grace. She had been airsick once already, shortly after the Blackhawk lifted off from Sewert AFB; apparently her painted pebbles didn’t work for nausea. Lieutenant Crawford sat next to her, relief bag in hand just in case she needed it. Her hair remained perfect.
“I can’t see anything either!” Agent Sanchez had taken another window and was staring downward. “Where are you looking?”
“Gotta look close!” Ogilvy jabbed a finger at the sandbar. “See that distortion? Like a warped mirror or something?”
Murphy peered out the window . . . and yes, now that the colonel mentioned it, he could detect an odd, semicircular object shimmering in the shallow water within the buoys. At first glance, it was undetectable, melding almost perfectly with the tiny island and the lake surrounding it. Then the helicopter passed over the object, and he was startled to see its shadow bulge outward slightly, as if reflected by an invisible convex surface.
“That’s it!” the colonel shouted. “That’s the yew-foh!”
“What’s making it do that?”
“Damn if I know! That’s why we called you!” Ogilvy reached forward to prod the pilot’s shoulder. “Okay, Captain, put us on the ground! We’ve got work to do!”
White sand kicked up as the copter settled down on a concrete boat ramp within the lagoon; the pilot waited just long enough for his passengers to get clear of his aircraft, then he took it back up into the sky. Now that
he was closer, Murphy noticed that the soldiers wore black tabs over the division patches on the shoulders of their parkas: Rangers from the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. All wore helmets and sidearms; a few carried M-16s on shoulder straps. Murphy noticed several soldiers using entrenchment tools to fill burlap bags with sand, while others lugged them to shallow foxholes scattered along the beach. One contained a canvas-covered machine gun. The military wasn’t taking any chances.
A lieutenant hurried over to Ogilvy, saluted, and began to speak to him in a low voice. Sanchez headed straight for a concrete picnic table, where two other civilians had spread out topographic maps; the FBI had already gotten the state police to seal off all roads and highways leading to the lake, under the veiled pretense that a top-secret experimental jet had crashed here. Meredith Cynthia Luna walked on stiff legs to a picnic table, where she sat and tucked her head between her knees.
That left Murphy alone, at least for the moment. Unnoticed by anyone, his hiking boots scuffing against the frozen sand, he sauntered past the soldiers, the sandbag emplacements, the trucks, and the FBI men until he reached the water’s edge. Now there was nothing between him and the tiny island; it lay about half a mile across the channel, clearly visible by its lonely stand of oak trees. Yet the crashed UFO was invisible; only the buoys gently bobbing in the water marked its whereabouts.
What allowed it to camouflage itself like that? An energy field of some sort? That was his first guess, considering what happened to the jet that had flown too close to it. The pilot of the second F-15 claimed that his missile exploded before it reached its target, yet he also said that the object nearly disappeared when it got close to the lake; he had been able to follow it only by the shadow it cast against the lake, and he didn’t see clearly it again until it skipped across the lake’s surface like a flat rock before running aground on the sandbar. So if it was a field, perhaps it wasn’t completely impenetrable. It might be able to ward off kinetic-energy sources, like an incoming missile, but was useless against inert matter like . . .