Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The

by Molstad, Stephen

  “Let’s hurry up and get inside before dark.”

  Okun helped Lenel, unsteady, climb the narrow trail. They came out onto the great stone shelf outside of the hidden cave. Lenel sat down and watched the sun sink toward the horizon as Okun used the tire iron and his bare hands to cut a doorway into the cave.

  13

  THE MOGOLLON CAVE

  Radecker had been so busy setting up his dragnet And feeling sorry for himself, he didn’t get around to questioning the chauffeur until the next morning. The man had spent the night sleeping on a bench at the police station. He repeated everything that had been said in the car, including a verbatim account of Freiling’s infernal jabbering.

  “In my opinion, it’s something the young guy saw in the newspaper.” He described how Okun had snatched the paper but of his hands and was still holding it as they began the drive toward the cemetery. “If these guys were dangerous criminals, why wasn’t I warned? And who’s gonna pay for fixing up the hearse?”

  When one of the cops handed Radecker a copy of Saturday’s paper, it didn’t take him long to figure out which story had caught Okun’s eye. Now it was his turn to nod. By he time he was finished reading the story, he knew exactly where they were headed. He grinned at the chauffeur and wrote a phone number on the back of his business card. “You’ve been very helpful. Call this number. They’ll fix your car.” Then he turned, to one of the cops. “I need to use a phone for a private call.”

  He was shown into a small office and dialed Spelman’s direct line. “I think I’ve figured out where they’re headed.”

  Spelman told him to hold the line, then passed the receiver to someone else. “Is this Radecker?”

  “Yes, sir. Who’s this?”

  The man ignored him. “We found out your boys rented a car at Ontario Airport yesterday. The vehicle is a gold Ford LTD station wagon with wood-trim panels, California plates CYS 385. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You say you know where they’re headed?”

  “I believe so, sir. But before I say anything, I’ll need to know who I’m talking to and if you have proper clearance.”

  “This is Deputy Director Nimziki. Now where are they?”

  “Mexico, sir. Somewhere in the State of Chihuahua, probably in the town of Guerrero.” He went on to explain Okun’s sudden interest in the newspaper and the likely connection to a paragraph in the Majestic 12 documents he had personally inked out before handing the document over to Okun. “He must have learned about it from Wells.”

  “You think they’re down there looking for an alien vehicle?”

  “Yes, sir,” Radecker said almost apologetically. He’d been given very few specific instructions on how to do his job, but one thing had been made crystal clear: deny Okun access to information concerning other spacecraft. It seemed simple enough, but he had failed miserably. Okun had learned everything, despite his efforts. “With your permission, Mr. Nimziki, I’ll fly down there immediately and round them up.”

  There was a pause while the man on the other end thought it over. “No, that won’t be necessary. You’ve served your purpose. Collect your things and report back to Company Headquarters for reassignment.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” He hung up the phone, confused. Until that moment he had no idea who’d been pulling the strings on the project, and he was surprised it went right to the top, Nimziki’s office. Everyone in the company knew the presidential appointee wasn’t the real power at the CIA. Day-to-day operations and who-knew-how-many covert operations were increasingly run out of the Deputy Director’s Office. It was only a matter of time until he was named to head the Agency. But what had he meant by You’ve served your purpose? That sounded ominous. At least he’d mentioned reassignment. Radecker allowed himself to be optimistic in spite of the mess he’d allowed to happen. Perhaps he was going to be promoted after all. At least he knew that wherever they sent him, it couldn’t be any worse than being trapped in Area 51.

  *

  The front wall of the cave was an ingenious construction of meticulously stacked stone, woven grass, and mud. After baking in the desert sun for twenty-five years, it was almost as hard as solid stone. When Okun hesitantly stepped through the opening, he noticed another curious piece of construction material: a large section of shell armor. He recognized it as the circular door of the alien ship. The last light of day was coming through the squarish hole Okun had found earlier. When he lit one of the candles and approached the hole, he made a rather gruesome discovery. Something was lying in front of it. The thing looked like a degraded plastic bag with hands and feet. He moved closer and discovered it was the decomposed body of an alien. The hands and feet, made of a thicker, tougher material than the rest of the body, were decaying more slowly. Lenel came up behind him, holding a candle of his own.

  “He must have been looking out his little window waiting to be rescued when he died. The electromagnetic field generated by the power lines must have created a ceiling which allowed the signal to travel laterally, but not upward. That must be why the aliens never located the distress signal.”

  Okun lowered himself toward the body until his face was only inches above the decomposed corpse and looked through the opening. “Guess what the last thing he was looking at when he died?”

  “A large Y standing in a desolate landscape?”

  “Bingo.”

  “It looks like this one has been dead for years. But we picked up his visual signal less than two years ago. Does it mean there’s a telepathic interface between the creatures and their ship?”

  “Makes sense. And this little guy must have programmed the ship’s sending unit to repeat the message endlessly.” He looked over his shoulder at Lenel. “Now I know why the image felt so lonely. This would be a crummy way to die, marooned in a cave on some foreign planet.”

  Lenel grunted. He wasn’t about to start feeling sorry for the extraterrestrials. He walked deeper into the darkness to take a look at the ship. They lit a dozen candles, which cast an eerie, dancing glow around the ceiling. Like the first cave they’d explored, this one had mud-brick apartments standing side by side around the perimeter of the space. Staying close to one another, the two men began walking around the ship. “This one didn’t crash,” Lenel observed. “There’s no sign of damage anywhere. The shell armor seems to be in perfect condition. I don’t even see scrape marks.”

  Okun squatted down. “One problem. Where are the thrusters? This baby’s lying flat on its belly. Shouldn’t it be raised up off the floor?”

  Lenel shrugged and moved on. They walked all the way around the exterior of the ship, pausing to make an investigation of the small rooms farthest from the mouth of the cave. They found several Mogollon artifacts, including what seemed to be a grinding stone, but no evidence at all that the alien had used the rooms. As they returned to the ship and came around toward its nose, Okun’s attention was drawn to something happening behind the windows. He was about to say something when he took another step and fell into a hole. The sudden scream and downward flicker of candlelight scared Lenel half to death. “Okun? What happened?”

  “I’m OK,” he said, “but be careful. There’s a hole over here.” When he struck a match and relit his candle, Lenel came to the edge of the three-foot-deep pit. He reached a hand down to help Okun climb out, but Okun didn’t take it. He was sniffing. “The ammonia smell is stronger down here.” He turned around and noticed he was in a trench that led in he direction of the ship’s door. “It looks like this tunnel leads inside the ship. Should we go in?”

  “What if I said no, that we should wait for the help to get here?”

  Okun admitted, “I’d probably go in anyway.”

  “So why are you even asking?” the habitual sourpuss mapped. “Help me down into this hole.”

  They crawled the thirty feet to the center of the ship on heir hands and knees, the ammonia smell growing stronger. When they were under the open hatch, Okun saw the ligh
t of his candle flickering across the dark interior of the ship. Something suddenly struck him as terribly wrong. As Lenel caught up with him, muttering something under his breath, Okun reached out and arrested the old man’s progress with a hand clamped onto his shoulder. He was looking up into the ship in a way that made Lenel very uneasy.

  “Now what?” he whispered.

  “Listen. You hear that?” Okun was moving his index finger around in a very slow loop to show how the sound was repeating itself. After watching him do this for a minute and not hearing anything, Lenel spoke a few decibels louder than he needed to.

  “My ears are shot. I can’t hear anything.”

  Cautiously, Okun stood up, not sure he was going to like what he saw inside. Was it possible there were survivors after all these years? He thought of Trina Gluck’s story, and how she’d been nose to nose with the Tall One. Although there was no one moving inside the ship, he was amazed when he located the source of the repetitive noise: the instrument panel at the front of the ship was surging to glowing life every few seconds. He climbed inside and walked to the front of the ship. He knelt and timed the surges against his wristwatch. To find part of the ship working didn’t amaze him. He’d expected to discover the signaling system still carrying the message with the Y. But what he saw happening around him made no sense. All the systems were pulsing to a very slow heartbeat. “This is impossible,” he yelled. “This thing is using way way way too much energy. Why does it have so much juice left?” He turned and went to confront Lenel with these questions but suddenly leaped backwards, sprawling against the dashboard, his heart suddenly pounding like a fire bell.

  “What’s the matter with you now?” Lenel demanded, crawling into the cabin.

  A speechless Brackish could only point to something on the floor. Lenel walked over and found three more decomposed bodies in the corner. They had been left in sitting positions, but, over the years, the heads and chests had collapsed in on themselves, sinking to the floor. Three sets of legs pointed toward the front of the ship. Okun had been so intent on checking the instrument panel, he’d literally walked right over them without noticing. The papery remains of a leg had been packed down under his shoe.

  “Don’t worry. They’re just as dead as the one outside, and you didn’t seem scared of him.”

  Okun looked at the cadavers like he’d just swallowed a mouthful of chunky milk. “But the way they’re sitting there. Creep-o-rama extraordinaire.”

  “What’s this power issue you were hollering about?”

  Brackish got back to business. “Look at these instruments!” The two of them watched the instruments run through their four-second cycles. The yellow shell glowed dimly, the bony arms of the steering mechanism twitched, the set of tubes under the pod chairs expanded. “Where is all this energy coming from?”

  “Beats me.” The old man shrugged. He started to say something else, then stopped.

  “What? What were you going to say?”

  “Based on what we know about these ships, what’s the most logical energizing source?”

  Okun’s mind toiled in darkness for a few moments until a lightbulb popped on. “You’re suggesting these power surges are coming from another ship? Which must mean there’s another alien vehicle within transmission range. Which means…”

  “Exactly. They could be on their way down here right now.”

  This theory did not brighten the mood of any of the life-forms inside the cabin, living or dead.

  “Wait a sec,” Okun complained. “We worked out the Van Allen connection a couple of times. We’re supposed to have until tomorrow!”

  “Don’t get your knickers all twisted up, son. It’s only an idea. Who knows where this power is coming from. Maybe this ship is using the earth’s natural electromagnetism as a battery, or maybe this is what happens every time the belts show increased radioactivity.”

  But half an hour later, the instruments were pulsing in three-second cycles. Both Okun and Lenel were convinced an alien ship, perhaps even a small armada of them, was approaching Chihuahua.

  “I figure we’ve got an hour, maybe two if we’re lucky,” Lenel said. “This ship is in perfect shape. We’ve got to learn as much as we can before they get here. I’ll go below and try to get a look at the aqua-box. You stay here and learn what you can about the control mechanisms.” Okun, mind racing in a thousand directions at once, vaguely agreed. “And because this is an emergency, I’m going to lend you my secret weapon.” Lenel reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a three-inch-long screwdriver. “Pull that panel apart and make us some schematics drawings we can use on the ship back home.”

  As Lenel trudged off, Okun absentmindedly set to work prying the control system components out of their fittings. When he began to sketch, his mind began to wander. He’d poured his heart into finding this ship, and now it looked like he was going to lose it again. He wondered how tough the aliens really were. Could he and Lenel, like the ancient Mogollon Indians, defend their cave? He imagined pelting the unwelcome visitors with rocks as they tried to climb the hillside. If that failed, there was always the tire iron.

  When they saw Mad Dog Okun at the top of the slope wearing a menacing sneer, would they turn and run? Would they fight? Or would he feel his body go numb and the weapon drop from his hands like Trina Gluck’s toothbrush had dropped into the sink?

  Then there was another possibility. When the approaching aliens were close enough, the craft he was sitting in would most likely be able to fly. He pictured himself glued into the pilot’s pod chair. When the first eebie showed itself in the freshly cut doorway, he would slam the ship in gear, blast through the wall, and fly north to Groom Lake before the aliens knew what hit them. Two drawbacks of this plan were that Okun had never flown any type of aircraft in his life, and he didn’t have the foggiest notion of how the ship’s controls worked. He went back to the tire-iron scenario.

  He had finished sketching the major components of the control systems into his notebook when he heard Lenel cursing and grumbling below the hatchway. He checked he cycles again. The power throbs were coming every second and a half now and appeared to be growing stronger. Very soon, the ship would be receiving a continuous flow of energy. Staying as far as possible from the straight-legged remains of the three bodies, he went to see what all he noise was about.

  “I can’t dig this out. I’m too damn old.” Okun stepped down into the tunnel and checked Lenel’s progress. He’d managed to dig about a foot and a half back toward the aqua-box. That left three and a half feet to go. Okun took the tire iron and began working furiously, driving it into the earth walls and breaking off handfuls of dirt with each thrust. He should have been doing this job all along. None of the schematics he’d made would be worth anything if they couldn’t figure out the power-generating system. But the floor of the cave was packed hard, and it quickly became clear he wouldn’t reach the door to the aqua-box in time.

  He and Lenel both froze when they heard an unfamiliar sound. It was coming from inside the ship. When they looked inside, they saw that the lights on the instrument panel were no longer strobing. The ship was up and running.

  “It’s time to get out of here.”

  “Not yet,” Okun said. “We’ve got to get a look at the power system.” He proposed the idea of defending the cave to Lenel, who looked at him like he was crazy, then got down on all fours and started crawling out from under the ship.

  “You stay here if you want to. That’s not the way I want to die.”

  Out of frustration, Okun stabbed the earth several more times with his tire iron. But then, realizing it was too late, he collapsed against one of the walls, sweating profusely. As he was considering his next move the whole ship seemed to let out a shuddering moan. There was a loud cracking noise as it began to lift off the ground. It rose slowly, an inch at a time.

  Lenel, candle near his face, seemed to rise with it. Standing on his knees, he straightened up as far as the rising ship would allo
w. He had a wide-open expression of wonder on his face, like a kid watching a magic show. He let out a giddy laugh, looking back toward Okun. “Will ya look at that! It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” The ship continued lifting until it cracked hard against the stone ceiling, sending a few chips of rock skittering down its sloped sides.

  “The thruster rockets seem to be in good shape. Looks like they dug holes for them to sit in.”

  The black alien ship, a perfect twin of the one at Area 51, floated three feet above the ground, as mute and mysterious as a sphinx. Okun, oedipal, wanted to solve one more of its riddles before he left the cave. Ignoring Lenel’s protests, he wriggled himself into the freshly created gap between the hull of the ship and the floor of the cave. He began pulling at the cover door of the aqua-box.

  “Uh-oh,” Lenel said. “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” Okun grunted between tugs.

  Lenel shuffled toward the door to the cave, leaned outside, and searched the sky. Many miles from the nearest city lights, the stars shone down unobstructed and seemed to form a plush and twinkling blanket in the sky. While he was watching, one of these stars seemed to split in two. Part of it remained high in the atmosphere while another one moved closer.

  “We’ve got company! They’re here.” Lenel turned around and shouted. “It’s time to go.”

  “Almost. I’ve almost got it.” With a final yank, Okun liberated the door from its slot. It came free of the ship and landed heavily on top of him. When Lenel heard the ooof! sound, he repeated his warning that it was time to leave.

  “Start without me,” Okun called from beneath the door. “I’ll catch up.”

  Lenel poked his head out the door indecisively and looked at the stone shelf leading to the trail. “All right. I’ll take the same path we came up on. Meet me at the bottom of the hill. How much longer are, you going to be?”

  If Okun couldn’t find a way to get his head and chest out from under the heavy section of shell armor, he was going to be there permanently. “A minute or two,” his muffled voice answered.