‘A little Picasso,’ the man said.
‘That’s what they looked like,’ Richard said.
‘Do you think they were wearing some kind of mask?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Richard said.
The bald man smiled at him, passed the drawing to his partner, and the other man studied it for some time before setting it down. He then looked directly at Richard, not smiling, and switched on his taperecorder.
‘Is that nose supposed to be metal?’
‘That’s what it looked like,’ Richard said.
‘And a mask could account for the lack of lips?’
‘That’s right,’ Richard said.
‘Did the glass, or Perspex, dome distort their features?’
‘I think so,’ Richard said. ‘I couldn’t really see past their heads – that dome blurred the interior.’
‘They stared at you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did they make any gestures?’
‘The creature in one of the disks raised his hand. It looked like a claw.’
‘A metal claw?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any skin?’
‘Gray and wrinkled. The skin around the eyes seemed wrinkled, but I can’t be too sure of that.’
‘Why?’
‘Like I said, the transparent dome distorted their features. It was transparent, in a frosted-glass kind of way. It had a rippling effect.’
‘What did you do when the creature raised its hand?’
‘That’s when I blanked out. A beam of light suddenly shot over me and I think that’s what did it.’
‘And then?’
‘I don’t think I was unconscious for very long. I think it was only a few seconds. I woke up and saw the big object coming down and blocking out my whole view. Then our car was drawn toward it. The car was dead, but it was moving. The thirty-five or forty-foot disks were at both sides of the car, shooting beams of light at the car and seeming to draw it forward.’
‘You say thirty-five or forty feet. That’s seems to me to be a fairly precise estimate.’
‘I know. I don’t know why I think that… But I always feel sure of it.’
‘Okay. Continue.’
‘That was it,’ Richard said. ‘We were pulled toward the big object. The colored lights flickered on and off, the ship seemed to split along the bottom, we were drawn all the way inside, saw a dazzling white light and silhouetted figures, and after that, I don’t remember a thing… I guess I just fainted.’
‘Not recovering until three days later.’
‘That’s right. About thirty miles away.’
‘And you’ve absolutely no idea how you got there?’
‘No. No idea.’
‘Have you ever suffered from amnesia?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘We can check on your medical records.’
‘You won’t find amnesia.’ Richard scratched at his beard, studying the two men in turn, wondering what they were thinking, feeling nervous again. ‘The police doctor,’ he said. ‘That guy examined my burnt neck. The cops said they would give you the report. What did it say?’
‘There was a burn mark all right. Unfortunately it was nearly gone by the time you were examined, so it’s impossible to say at this stage what caused it. Otherwise you’re unchanged.’
‘Unchanged?’
‘Your blood sample revealed nothing unusual.’
‘What did you expect to find?’ Richard asked.
‘Nothing,’ the man said. He switched the tape-recorder off, clasped his hands beneath his chin, tapped the fingers of both hands together and kept staring at Richard.
‘Well, what do you think?’ Richard asked.
‘What do you expect us to think?’
‘I want to know what really happened out there.’
‘I think you imagined it.’
‘Imagined it?’
‘Yes. Your story’s not credible,’ the man said. ‘I’m afraid the pieces don’t fit together. Your story doesn’t make sense.’
‘What doesn’t make sense?’
‘None of it,’ the man said. ‘Your experience can’t be real because such objects and such creatures simply don’t exist.’
‘But I saw them!’
‘You think you saw them. You possibly saw a mirage. You saw the reflection or an airplane or ship, caused by a temperature inversion.’
‘It was real!’
‘No, it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been real. No object that big can fly at thirty miles an hour and then hover without a sound above the ground. It’s scientifically impossible.’
‘What’s scientifically impossible? What the hell does that mean? All I know is that it happened, that it happened to me, and that I came here to get an explanation because that’s what I need.’
‘What can we explain?’ the man said. ‘Do you expect us to confirm it? Unidentified lights were can discuss, but what you saw is pure fantasy. It’s simply not possible. There’s no way we can accept it. Sadly, the facts speak for themselves: your whole story is nonsense.’
‘Oh, shit!’ Richard said.
‘Not shit – facts. Just one more question to ask and then we’re finished: Were you drunk when you saw it?’
‘Drunk?’
‘You heard me. I repeat the question: Were you drunk? According to the report you gave to the police, you were drinking that evening.’
‘Well, yes, but… ’
‘You were drunk.’
‘I don’t think that has relevance – ’
‘The woman herself said you drank a lot. In fact, she said you were plastered.’
Richard straightened up again, suddenly feeling disorientated, recalling the gleaming white Audi and the woman with red hair and green eyes. That woman had disappeared. She was gone when he awakened. But she had been there and had shared the experience with him… This just didn’t make sense.
‘The woman?’ Richard whispered.
‘That’s right: your driver. We located her at her home in St Nicholas and she told us her story. She remembered picking you up. She said you helped her fix her stalled car. She said that you drank a lot, that you became extremely drunk, and that she had to tip you out close to Bodmin when you became too offensive. She didn’t see any UFOs. She saw nothing unusual. She said she dropped you off near Bodmin, that you were swaying from side to side, and that you staggered back the way you had come – heading straight back to Bodmin Moor. That’s the last she saw of you. Her drive home was uneventful. In short, she experienced nothing unusual – and neither did you.’
‘She’s lying!’ Richard shouted.
‘I don’t think so,’ the man said. ‘Why would she do that? I think you became extremely drunk, that you hitchhiked back to Dartmoor, that there you saw Venus or ball lightning or a mirage caused by a temperature inversion; and that in your drunken state you thought it was real and then you imagined the rest. It’s not that uncommon. People see things all the time. In a drunken condition a natural occurrence can shock you and make you see what’s not there. It was all in your head, lad.’
‘You don’t believe that,’ Richard said.
‘Yes, I do,’ the man replied.
‘Christ, mister, I’m telling you the truth!’
‘Or what you
think is the truth.’
Richard inwardly collapsed, feeling crushed and defeated, the fear rushing back to swallow him whole, leaving him senseless. The two men cleared the desk, snapping the locks on their briefcases, then they walked around Richard without a word and opened the door of the room. Richard jerked his head around and stared up at both the men. The black-haired man was leaving the room, but the bald man still stood there. Richard didn’t know what to say. The walls were closing in on him. The bald man was just standing there, smiling, as Richard stared up beseechingly.
‘Sonny,’ the bald man said with a smile, ‘you’d better see your psychiatrist.’
Chapter Eleven
&
nbsp; Professor Vale was paralyzed. He knew this almost immediately. Opening his eyes, he flicked them left and right because his head wouldn’t move. The room was all white, shaped like a geodesic dome, its triangular plates made of aluminium, joined by thin, steel-gray tubing. The professor licked his dry lips. The paralysis didn’t bother him much. He felt dreamy and unreal, removed from himself, content just to lie there on the bed and let events take their course.
His eyes flicked left and right. The circular wall was white and featureless. The sole door was molded into the wall as if it couldn’t be opened. The professor was impressed. He had never seen a room like it. He gazed up at the bright, dome-shaped ceiling and saw two porthole windows. What they revealed was beautiful. Exotic fish were gliding past. The professor realized that he was deep in the ocean, probably down on the sea bed.
None of this bothered him. In fact, he found it interesting. He heard the breathing of someone nearby, but he couldn’t quite see them. This didn’t concern him: he would see them soon enough. He tried to move, but the paralysis was total, so he just lay there quietly. The whole room was quiet. There was a distant humming sound. He heard the breathing of the person nearby and tried turning his head. This time he could move it.
There was another bed in the room, about twelve feet away, made from shiny white plastic, its solid sides sweeping down to meet the floor, the rest of it seemingly molded to fit the body of the man sleeping upon it. This man was covered in a surgical gown and had a metallic skullcap on his head, with electrodes joining the skullcap to the various colored wires that ran back into a console behind the bed. The professor studied the man at length. The man appeared to be in a coma. There were straps around his ankles and wrists, with more wires dangling from them.
The room was shaped like a gigantic eggshell. The professor looked up at the ceiling. He saw exotic fish staring down through the portholes before disappearing in green murk. It was eerily beautiful. The silence was serene. The room’s antiseptic whiteness, its seamless circular wall, gave it the appearance of an enormous sheltering womb and made him feel almost childlike.
The professor raised a hand to touch the hair on his head and felt his fingers scratching his scalp. He wasn’t wearing a skullcap. The paralysis was fading. He wriggled his toes and felt the muscles in his legs and then he slowly sat upright. He felt dizzy and weak, his stomach nauseous and rumbling, but he took a deep breath and glanced about him and soon felt much better.
The other man was still unconscious, hardly moving, breathing evenly, his face lean and pasty, almost deathly, his chin in need of a shave. The professor studied the strange bed. It was molded out of the floor. Thrusting out from the wall behind it, looming over the bed itself, was a until containing lamps and plasma jars and an X-ray camera, this whole unit also molded with sensual grace from the shiny white plastic.
The professor gazed around the room. The shining whiteness stung his eyes. He glanced up and saw the fish at the portholes and then remembered the boat… The sea had turned to green steam. The metal jaws had closed above him. The metal jaws had become a giant version of the room now surrounding him… The professor was fascinated. He understood that he was drugged. He swung his legs off the bed, placed his bare feet on the floor, then stood upright, swaying slightly from side to side, making sure he was strong enough.
The floor wasn’t moving. It didn’t sway or vibrate. It appeared to be made of fibre-glass and was comfortably warm. The professor wondered where he was, wondered what was expected of him; he no longer felt in charge of himself and wanted someone to guide him.
The humming sound came from a distance. He thought it came from beyond the door. The door had no visible handle, no keyhole or lock, but when the professor approached it and touched it, it slid open silently, sliding into the wall. The professor just stood there. He kept rubbing his eyes. He tried to tear himself from what he was looking at, but he couldn’t escape from it.
He was looking along a corridor that curved gently out of view, its walls shaped like a tunnel, gleaming brightly, broken up with large windows. These windows were rectangular, revealing the ocean bed, beams of light boring through the murky depths, illuminating an aquatic wonderland.
The professor advanced into the corridor, gazed through the nearest window, saw smooth rocks and multicolored plants and bizarre, swimming creatures. It was awesome, incredible, the flooded landscape of a dream: the fish monstrous and minute, stunningly beautiful and grotesque – pulsing gills, flapping fins, eyes like prisms and stars, their colors changing as they merged with one another and formed wavering rainbows. The ocean bed was stone and sand and had a fathomless mystery; the sand swept out and drifted around the rocks which were alive with primordial life. The professor almost stopped breathing. He was stunned by what was out there. He saw a huge uncoiling eel, a web of glistening, writhing tentacles, a gelatinous mass of gold, green and violet sniffing at shrinking, possibly carnivorous plants. He saw it all in the beams of light. The lamps were fixed outside the windows. The beams of light were the only illumination in those dark, vitreous depths.
The professor advanced along the corridor. The floor warmed his bare feet. He was still wearing his flowered shirt and shorts, and that worried him slightly. How long had he been down here? Had he slept for hours or days? The questions flickered through his mind and then departed without having quite touched him. He felt only curiosity, an overwhelming sense of awe, obsessed with the need to go farther and make contact with someone. He didn’t question this desire: the need itself was enough. He kept walking, passing more windows and the ocean’s teeming life, and the corridor kept curving away from him in what seemed like a circle.
The humming sound grew louder. There was a rhythmic vibration. The professor arrived at an open door on the inside of the corridor, and stopped there, momentarily transfixed, before stepping up to it. The noise here was much louder and had a hollow, echoing tone. He looked through to an immense geodesic dome filled with catwalks and ladders.
The professor stood there for a long time. He remembered seeing all this before. He glanced up at the silvery-gray dome and remembered it closing. Then he looked down again, saw the catwalks and ladders. There were glittering floors and platforms, modules made from steel and glass, mazes of shining pipes and generators, arc lights blazing from white walls. There were people down there, faraway, looking tiny, all dressed in coveralls, climbing ladders, crossing catwalks, moving up and down those dizzying depths in elevators like cages. The professor stepped up to the door. It hissed angrily and slammed shut. He touched it, but it didn’t open again, so he shrugged and walked on.
He was amazed but not frightened. He understood that he was drugged. This knowledge filled him with a distant, dry amusement that didn’t quite come to life. The corridor stretched out before him, kept curving away from him. He passed more windows looking out on the murky depths and then he came to another open door. He tried to step through it, but it slammed shut in his face. Shrugging again, he turned away, feeling calm, unperturbed, understanding that he had to keep walking and that the closed doors were guiding him.
Eventually he reached the end of the corridor and found himself outside a large, white-painted room. Stepping into the room, he surveyed it with almost clinical detachment. The room was circular and dim, without windows, quite cold, lots of beds placed equidistant from each other, positioned all the way around the room and melting into the floor. All the beds were occupied, filled with men, women and children; they were all lying quietly, wrapped in surgical gowns, wires running from electrodes in their heads, hands and legs, coiling up to the ECG monitors that were fixed to the wall. The regular breathing of the people on the beds was surprisingly loud in the silence.
The professor shivered briefly. He wasn’t frightened, but he felt peculiar. He walked across to the far side of the room and passed through to another room.
This room was also circular, but much bigger and brighter, its walls lined with glass cabinets and
winking digital control panels, with two prop-up surgical beds, surrounded by tall equipment units, positioned in the center of the floor, their headrests raised slightly. There was a dwarf at one of the beds, his spine bent, his legs twisted; he was wearing a white gown, working swiftly and silently, his unusually pale and delicate hands flipping back a white sheet.
‘Where am I?’ Professor Vale asked. ‘Who are you? Where’s Mr McKinley?’
The dwarf finished his job, unconcerned, working lovingly, then he turned and stared up at Vale with large, slightly glazed eyes. He then sniffed and scratched his ear, shuffled forward laboriously, his head rolling loosely from side to side, buried between his raised shoulders.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you’re awake!’
‘Where am I?’ Vale asked.
‘We were expecting you,’ the dwarf said.
‘Who are you?’
‘I stayed here. I was waiting.’
‘Where’s Mr McKinley?’
The dwarf nodded agreeably, his head rolling from side to side, then he went to what looked like a dentist’s chair and raised the headrest. Vale studied the glass cabinets, which were about six feet long, all of them containing a naked human, either unconscious or dead. The glass was lightly frosted. The control monitors were flickering. Vale realized that they were cardiograph and ECG readouts, and that the people in the cabinets were still alive. He returned his gaze to the crippled dwarf, who was grinning inanely, waving him forward. Vale stepped over to the chair and sat in it without asking himself why he had done so.
‘You are comfortable?’ the dwarf enquired.
‘Yes,’ Vale said.
‘No fear,’ the dwarf said. ‘Fear is foolish.’
‘Where’s Mr McKinley?’
GENESIS (Projekt Saucer) Page 18