William Godfrey’s approval rating as head of the GSC remained steady in the high 90s while 88% of Americans supported a “modest to moderate” tax increase to support the GSC’s goal of moving forward with DS-2 ahead of schedule. Most surprisingly — particularly given that Timo Fiore and his high-profile team had kept quiet since the accident in the name of unity — the percentage of users expressing support for public investment in Timo’s proposal to create a “starship ark” capable of making the generations-long journey to New Kerguelen had skyrocketed from a low of 19% before the disaster to an unignorable 72% just a few days later.
Looking through this ocean of statistics and trends, Clark took a measure of solace from the fact that no one was reading too deeply into Ben Gold’s suicide and no one knew that Richard Walker had genuinely disappeared. There was no percentage to indicate how many people thought aliens were real, because as far as the rest of the world was concerned there was nothing to think about; Clark had no reason to believe that any living person not currently inside his car had the slightest idea about Richard Walker’s perfect execution of Hans Kloster’s elaborate hoax.
Alone with his own thoughts, Clark didn’t really know what he feared. He knew there was no specific asteroid threat and that no aliens were planning an invasion within the next 220 years, but that was all he knew. He didn’t know what was waiting for Dan in Lolo National Forest… or who.
Every now and then over the course of the long drive so far, Clark had seen the lights of a passenger plane in the sky. He smiled the first time, remembering when they were kids and Dan would point to every single light and shout “UFO! UFO!”
When their father explained that the red and blue lights were manmade aircraft, Dan would quieten down for a few minutes until he spotted a light that wasn’t red and blue, at which point Henry would explain that the white lights were human, too.
Clark didn’t have to wonder what Henry McCarthy would have advised or done in this situation. Self-reliance had always been one of the core values Henry lived by and tried to instill in his sons, which made his recent confinement to a wheelchair all the more difficult. He also encouraged his boys to tackle their problems head-on — “before they tackle you” — and to trust their gut.
Above all, Henry McCarthy was a pragmatist. He didn’t set out to raise liars, but nor did he sit down with Dan and Clark to impress upon them the value of honesty. He would occasionally say things like “look after number one without stepping on number two’s toes,” and “don’t step into other people’s problems and don’t drag them into yours.”
Clark liked to imagine that Henry would be proud of them for following Dan’s map and trying to be strong enough to deal with whatever was going on without dragging the rest of the world into it. Dan’s reluctance to keep quiet about the hoax had completely faded since he realised that Kloster and Walker’s lie might well have come true, and Clark knew that Henry would have applauded the pragmatism in that.
Dan and Clark hadn’t talked about what they would or wouldn’t tell Henry when he finally got home from hospital on Sunday afternoon. It all depended on what they found in Lolo National Forest and what, if anything, it meant for the world’s current post-Límíng instability.
After sniffing every blade of grass on the bank at the rest stop, Rooster finally picked a spot to do his business. Clark put a bowl of fresh water on the ground beside the car.
“Last chance for another six hours,” he said.
Rooster looked up at him with an inquisitive expression.
“Six hours,” Clark repeated, nudging the bowl with his foot.
The dog lapped up a few mouthfuls of water and sat obediently beside the car. Clark opened the door to let him in.
Emma looked so peaceful that Clark couldn’t bring himself to wake her, and he felt alert enough to finish the journey.
“Shut up,” Clark whispered sharply as Rooster began whimpering and refused to settle in his spot next to Dan.
The whimpering and movement didn’t stop.
“What is it?” Clark asked, leaning in to see if anything had spilled on the seat. It hadn’t. He kept looking around and noticed that Dan, still wearing his eye-mask and still fast asleep, had the notebook open on his lap.
He had a pencil in his hand.
He was drawing.
Clark lifted Rooster back outside and closed the door gently. For the next two or three minutes, he watched through the window as Dan finished his drawing. Clark then opened the door and gently lifted Dan’s eye-mask to see whether he was asleep or in an open-eyed daze. Thankfully, his eyes were closed.
Rooster made himself comfortable beside Dan with no more complaints. Clark shone his phone’s light onto the open page of Dan’s notebook and snapped a picture. He then returned to the driver’s seat and looked at the image.
Clark saw an identical landscape to the one Dan had drawn in the cornfield. There was the same thick woodland in the foreground, the same natural clearing in the middle, and the same gentle slopes in the background; all watched over by the same unusual cloud formation.
But this time, there was something else.
It looked almost like a giant discus, lying on the ground at an unusual angle. The scale of the object was incredible: though a lack of perspective meant that Clark couldn’t accurately judge it against the hills in the background, it absolutely dwarfed the foreground trees.
If this object was truly what awaited them in Lolo National Forest, Clark knew they were on the verge of a historic discovery.
Because whatever the size, he knew what he was looking at:
Unmistakably… an alien spacecraft.
D plus 49
JSLC Launch Area 4
Dongfeng Aerospace City, China
As William Godfrey sat at a small table with a handful of his closest confidantes, his phone began to ring in his pocket.
He lifted it out expecting to see his wife’s picture — he hadn’t been able to call for more than eight hours — but instead saw just a name, only recently added to his contacts.
With nowhere else to go in the increasingly claustrophobic visitor’s compound, Godfrey excused himself to the corner of the room and spoke quietly into his phone: “What’s happened?”
“I’ve got the results,” Jack Neal replied.
Godfrey’s eyes darted around the room. The only people in it were his people, but he wanted to make sure none were eavesdropping on what could be big news. “How?” he asked.
“Leave the how to me,” Jack said.
“No. How can you know what caused the explosion before I do? Did Ding tell Slater?”
“He doesn’t know yet.”
“Does she?”
“She’s my boss,” Jack said flatly. “I can’t go behind her back and tell someone else first. Not even you.”
“Let’s just get back to how you know,” Godfrey said; he saw through Jack’s “not even you” flattery but couldn’t justly argue with his loyalty to President Slater.
“Let’s just say I have a source on the inside.”
“Inside the Chinese space agency?” Godfrey asked incredulously. “I don’t even have someone on the inside.”
“Mr Godfrey, I don’t mean any disrespect, sir, but I have to get back to Valerie. Do you want the news?”
Godfrey closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Just tell me it was a design flaw.”
“Well,” Jack said, elongating the word, “not exactly…”
D plus 50
Lolo National Forest
Montana
Clark’s phone beeped and vibrated in its holder, the GPS app announcing that their car had entered the target area. After a traffic-hit final leg, it was 14:21 in Lolo National Forest and Clark McCarthy was ready.
Emma held Dan’s second drawing and looked out of her window in search of a matching landscape. She couldn’t believe that a massive UFO — if that was the best word for it — would actually be visible in the middle of the day; but, like C
lark, she thought that Dan might be attracted to the area as he had been to the cornfield at Richard Walker’s house.
“Those are the right kind of trees,” she said. “And the clouds are weird, like in the picture.”
“Do you think the clearing is behind those trees or further along?” Clark asked, still driving.
Emma shrugged then turned towards Dan and tapped his leg. “We’re here.”
He shuffled in his seat, covered his ears with a slight wince, and settled again. His sleep had been as restless as it had been long, with the last few hours much deeper than those overnight.
“We’re close,” Clark said before pulling the car over at the first opportunity.
“How do you know?” Emma asked.
Clark looked in the rearview mirror at Dan. “He can hear them. Look on your phone to see if there’s a safer place than this to leave the car. I’m going to get him some earplugs.”
“Okay.”
Rooster lay comfortably next to Dan, not at all perturbed by any noises.
While Emma searched for a place to park, Clark stepped outside and walked round to the back of the car. He pulled some earplugs out of his emergency overnight bag, shook Dan to life, and handed him the earplugs. “We’re here,” he said.
“I know,” Dan replied loudly, speaking over a sound only he could hear. “So are they.”
* * *
A few minutes later, with the car safely parked in a designated but quiet area, Clark belatedly spotted a flaw in the plan: “We can’t leave the box in the car. If someone found it…”
“Emma has to come,” Dan said. Both Emma and Clark were used to his erratic volume by now. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know it won’t work without her.”
Clark scratched his forehead and turned to Emma. “He’s obviously not going anywhere without me.”
“It’s just a stupid box,” Emma said. “Why not take the stuff out and put it in my bag? You don’t even have to pack the big Nazi book; just the notes and the photos.”
“That’ll work.”
Emma emptied the spare clothes and assorted I-might-need-them objects from her bag while Clark emptied the incriminating evidence from the blue box. Dan already had the plaques in a bag of his own, along with his notebook and pencils and the dash-cam from the car. He didn’t expect to need the notebook or the plaques but opted to bring them along since both had factored in his previous… experiences.
With the most explosive documents in the world in a bag slung casually over his shoulder, Clark McCarthy led the way down an unmarked trail. Dan gave him a thumbs up to indicate that the sound making it through his earplugs was at least staying steady.
“Holy shit,” Clark said suddenly. “There’s a clearing up ahead.”
“The clearing?” Emma asked, hurrying to catch up.
Clark held Dan’s first drawing of the landscape out and compared it to the clearing in front of him. Dan put his hand on the back of Clark’s head and turned it slightly to the right.
“Look! If we keep walking, the angle will make it all match,” Dan yelled, even more loudly than before. “Come on.”
“You think we should go straight down?” Clark asked.
“What?”
Clark mimed removing an earplug.
Dan took out the one in his right ear and immediately put it back in. He winced. “It’s really loud! We’re close.”
Clark asked Emma for Dan’s drawing of the craft, which she was keeping safe, then held it in front of Dan’s eyes.
Dan looked at the image in awe. “When did I do that?”
“Last night,” Clark said, putting a finger to his lips to encourage Dan to keep the noise down. They hadn’t passed any other people in the ten minutes or so they’d been out the car, but Dan’s shouting risked attracting attention they could really do without.
“It’s down there,” Dan mouthed almost silently, going straight from one extreme to the other.
Clark raised his thumb then held out an open palm in invitation for Dan to lead the way. The gentle descent into the clearing was very gradual and took a lot longer than anyone expected. Rooster walked happily beside Emma, showing no fear of whatever lay ahead.
Dan did a good job of hiding his own concerns. He didn’t fear physical harm; even more so than anything else, that wouldn’t make sense. But still, a large part of him felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of what might be about to happen. The recurrently inexplicable events of the last few days had left little time for Dan or anyone else to analyse them deeply. All he knew was that something called him to carry the plaques to the cornfield and that the same something had since called him here, to this quiet spot a thousand miles from home.
“Come on,” Emma said to Rooster as he began to resist. “It’s not much further.”
She was more correct than she knew.
Without warning, Clark desperately threw his hands against his ears and screamed. “Aaaah!” He pressed as hard as he could. He then fell forward, lost control of his hands, and began to convulse.
“Clark!”
“Help me pull him back!” Emma shouted, letting go of Rooster and grabbing hold of Clark’s right foot. “He hit something!”
Dan grabbed the other foot and pulled as hard as he could. His strength, combined with Emma’s, managed to get Clark back on the right side of whatever kind of threshold he had inadvertently crossed. Clark’s body stopped convulsing and his breathing slowly steadied, but some damage had been done: blood dripped from his ears and nose.
“Clark,” Dan said, shaking him by the shoulders. “Clark!”
“The fuck was that?” Clark groaned as his eyes reopened. He winced sharply and reached for his thigh. “I think my phone blew up.”
“Your ears are bleeding,” Emma told him as calmly as she could.
“My ears are fine, just get my phone out of my pocket.”
Dan kneeled down to do it. The pockets on Clark’s jeans were pretty tight, especially when he was lying down. “It’s hot,” Dan said. He pulled the phone and dropped it on the grass, blowing on his hand as though he’d touched a metal baking tray.
“It’s fried,” Emma said.
Clark mustered the strength to sit up and look back towards the spot where he’d fallen. “Did I walk into a forcefield?”
Emma helped him to his feet. “I don’t think so. You got through it and we were able to pull you out, so it’s not a forcefield. It could be a sound barrier or something? I don’t know.”
“Someone find me a decent sized stick,” Clark said, slowly rising to his feet with a grimace.
Dan ran towards the nearest tree to find the stick Clark wanted.
“We should probably look at the skin on your thigh,” Emma suggested. “It could be badly burnt.”
“Sure it could. But here’s something I’ve learned about wounds over the years: if you can’t treat it, don’t look.” Clark looked around for Dan, worried to have lost sight of him. “Dan! Where the hell are you?”
“Got one,” Dan replied, returning to view with a stick in his hand. It came up to his waist. “Big enough?”
“Perfect.” Clark accepted the stick and then surprised the others by removing his left shoe and sock. He then proceeded to put his frazzled phone inside the sock before tying the sock around the end of the stick in a looped knot.
“Are you going to try to trace the edge?” Emma asked, getting hold of Rooster again.
“Yeah. Hopefully the phone buzzes or something.”
“I’ll do it,” Dan said. “You shouldn’t walk unless you have to.”
Clark handed the stick to Dan without complaint. “Be careful.”
Dan slowly walked towards the spot where Clark had fallen, which was clearly marked by the indentations of his elbows. Right on cue, the broken phone began to crackle. Dan pulled the stick back. The crackling stopped. “It works,” he announced.
“Good. Trace the circle as quickly as you can.”
“Why?�
�� Emma interjected. “Isn’t this like not looking at your wound? Because if we can’t get past the barrier, why look for what shape it is?”
Clark turned towards her. “It’s different.”
“How?”
“Because. There might be a—”
“Guys,” Dan called. “I got past.”
They both turned to see him standing several steps beyond Clark’s elbow marks. Clark was furious with Dan for taking the risk but relieved that he’d at least had the good sense to leave his own phone and the bag containing the dash-cam on the safe side of the invisible barrier. Clark’s barrier-testing phone crackled loudly until Dan tossed the whole stick back across the threshold.
“Can you see the craft?” Clark asked, more in hope than expectation.
Dan shook his head. “I can hear the sound, though. It’s quieter, but it’s… fuller.”
Emma let go of Rooster once more, placed her bag on the ground — phone safely inside — and looked at Clark. “Will you be able to save me if I fall in like you did?”
“Obviously; it’s just my thigh. But what makes you think you’ll get in? You couldn’t hear the noise when he could, so you won’t—”
Before Clark could finish, Emma was standing beside Dan. Rooster ran in after her. Neither showed any ill effects.
“I told you she had to come,” Dan said. “They needed us both.”
Emma looked all around. “Now what?”
“Stay where you are,” Clark said. “I’ll trace the barrier to see if there’s a gap somewhere.”
Emma and Dan stood like statues while Clark used his phone-in-a-sock-on-a-stick contraption to trace the circle. The phone’s electronic components crackled and hissed whenever Clark moved it across the barrier. He marked the ground by dragging his heel. Before long, the outline of the barrier was plainly visible.
“How big is that?” Clark asked.
“Maybe a hundred yards across,” Dan estimated. He stood near the edge with Emma and Rooster, only a few feet from Clark. They could see and hear each other perfectly.
Not Alone Page 67