by M C Drake
A gloved hand appeared out of nowhere and made Sergeant Moore jump as it rested on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry Sergeant, these men are with me. You have done well but please lower your weapons.”
The voice was familiar; it was the first man in the black suit, who had appeared out of thin air with an escort from the National Guard.
The state troopers lowered their weapons and the figures in the yellow space suits carried on with their work. Moore did not dare ask the question of who these people were but he stood and casually observed.
"Your job is done here Sergeant, you and your men must return to the town now and assist the National Guard with the important task of policing the civilians."
“But sir with all due respect you tasked us with guarding the object and we haven’t let you down!”
The man in black removed his hand from Moore’s shoulder and then made his way around to face the Trooper.
“You have not let us down at all Moore but now you must do as I ask.”
Sergeant Moore felt the fight leaving his body and he succumbed to the man’s request, even though he could not see the man’s eyes, he could feel his burning stare go right through him.
“Yes, Sir.” He said and he turned to his boys, “Come on men we are going to police the town’s folk, make sure they don’t come snooping around.”
“Thank you Sergeant.” The man in black said as he watched them leave.
Sergeant Moore walked passed the five figures in half dazed like state, however as he passed the last figure he could easily make out the blue circle stitched on the arm. A red horizontal ‘V' covered the top of four white letters, flanked by a comet and tail forming a circle. The four letters spelled out NASA.
Moore was not thinking straight but he was puzzled. ‘What the hell has NASA got to do with this? Did that thing really fall from space?’ The thought quickly went as he and his colleagues made their way back into the town.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
The yellow figures finished their sweep around the area and then stood at the edge of the crater for about five minutes, just watching the readouts fluctuate. Finally, the lead figure took off their gas mask and pulled the hair band that held her full shoulder length brown hair. She flicked her head and ruffled her hair.
“That feels better, ok men the readouts are clear, it is safe to remove your masks.” She ordered.
The four men under her command took off their masks.
"Ok let's get to work; I want samples from the crater, including soil samples. I want readouts taken from the object itself and if you can take a small sample from the object as well. Let's get to it."
The NASA scientists started to remove various kit from their bags.
“That won’t be necessary. I want you to take samples from the ground and electrical readings from the device but you are not to damage it in anyway. Is that clear?” The man in black said.
The four NASA scientists looked to Betty who stood her ground; she focused her eyes on the man. He wore no military insignia, no identification but he was clearly in charge.
"What's your name Sir? So I know who I'm addressing." Betty asked she had always had a strong personality.
The man in black smiled, that unnatural smile. “I am agent 001 but one is fine. Now please will you continue with the research that I have asked for.”
Betty suddenly felt strange, she found it hard to focus on anything and a feeling that something unnatural was happening drifted out of her mind, it was replaced with obedience.
Betty nodded, “Yes, Sir.” She turned to get away from the man’s terrible gaze, even though she could not see his eyes. “You heard him team, let’s get to work.”
The NASA team jumped down into the crater and began to take all sorts of readings and samples. The youngest man in the team was just over twenty-three years old and he took a hammer to the solid, burnt soil under his feet. He began to break a piece of it away for a sample. Once the soil had come away, he rolled it around in his gloved palm, it was rock solid and the jagged edges managed to slice the glove in a few tiny places.
After studying it for several more seconds he placed it into specimen container and sealed the lid.
Betty walked slowly around the car-sized object, smoke still gently rose from the egg-shaped peak of the device but the temperature in the crater had returned to a steady fourteen degrees centigrade. Betty had not seen anything like it before but it looked to be made of a metal alloy. Slowly she moved forward and placed her hand on the side; it felt cold.
The man in black appeared to no longer be on the scene yet three members of the National Guard stood over the crater, keeping an eye on the scientists.
John leaned into Betty and whispered, “You shouldn’t have touched that…you could have burnt yourself… that was reckless.” He shook his head. “Anyway what are you thinking?”
Betty stood silently for a few seconds. Her bare hand was still placed on the object, she felt strange, in a kind of dream state; it was the same feeling she had got when she was speaking with the man in black.
“Betty…Betty…” John shook her shoulder and she finally snapped out of it.
“What is up with you Betty?”
She smiled meekly, “Sorry John, I just couldn’t shake a strange feeling I got when I touched the object.”
"Strange how?" Betty's long-standing colleague asked.
"It's nothing John, probably should have just eaten before we came out here…I felt a bit light headed for a few seconds."
John let out a slight chuckle “Whatever you say, anyway what are your thoughts on the object?... And this heavy military presence?”
The two were interrupted by another of their colleagues who was busy taking pictures to document the object. The flash fired away every few seconds.
Betty moved John away to the other side of the object, she whispered. “I don’t think this is Kosmos 96, it’s just too large.”
John nodded in agreement, “We would expect more damage to the object if it was Kosmos 96, whatever this is it seems to be completely intact.”
“Agreed, it could be manmade but we have been unable to track any other unknown satellites..”
“A new type of spy satellite?”
Betty nodded, “That’s what I’m leaning towards.”
“Would explain all of this…and that odd bloke in the black suit.”
They got back to work. Betty shouted across to another of her team, “Can we get this crater measured up quickly please!”
Over the next couple of hours, Betty and her team took a variety of measurements, pictures, and readings. They took a reading that measured the electromagnetic properties of the acorn-shaped object. Betty was surprised to find the air in the area was electrically charged, as if a thunderstorm was due any minute; she looked around but the air sky was clear and the stars shone brightly.
"John, has there been a thunderstorm in the area recently?"
“No the weather has been good, thunderstorms are rare this time of year anyway.”
“Hmm…Thought as much.”
“You were thinking the same as me? Whatever this acorn is it’s giving off a high amount of electromagnetic energy!”
Betty nodded as she continued to write down notes.
The measurements from the crater came back but raised more questions than answers; the crater was just over ten-foot-wide and just over seven-foot-deep. For an object falling at such a speed for the lower atmosphere, the impact crater was far too small.
The NASA team stood together and compared all the notes they had so far.
“This thing couldn’t have created this crater, it is far too big and fell from such a height that the crater would have been at the very least, three times as big," John said.
“Unless it didn’t fall from space at all?”
“We know it did, we tracked it from the lower orbit, odd that we didn’t see it before that though?” Betty responded.
“Maybe it slowed down before it crashed in the woods.” One of the younger scientists said.
They all paused to consider this for a second. It would make sense that the object appeared undamaged and why the crater was so small.
“How though, it’s clearly unmanned?”
"There is an explanation," John said as he smiled.
"Don't say it John, there are not little green men from Mars in there," Betty said sternly.
John laughed, “Just saying it would explain a few thin…”
John was interrupted by an eerie voice from the top of the crater.
The man in the black suit had re-appeared, “Time is up team, please gather your things and get ready to depart.”
John looked to Betty and her body language worried him. Her shoulders slumped and she averted her gaze to the dirt beneath her feet.
“We are not finished yet Sir, we still have more procedures to complete before we have a chance of identifying this object for you.” Even as John was speaking, an uncomfortable feeling began to encroach on his unconscious mind; it felt as if his blood sugar level had just fallen through the floor, he shook his head trying to clear the grogginess.
“That will not be necessary, please gather your equipment as quickly as possible then follow me for debriefing.”
John could not fight it anymore “Yes Sir, what is going to happen to the object?”
The man in black’s face showed no emotion, “That is none of your concern.”
Betty had heard enough, “Team time to go.”
It took three minutes for the NASA team to pack their things and leave the impact crater. They were led away by the man in black to their vehicles and then were instructed to follow the mysterious man back into the heart of Kecksburg.
Unaccounted time
Cal woke with a start, he opened his eyes but it was pitch black in the room. Cal’s eyes were sore and he blinked rapidly to try and clear the multicolored hazy images that clouded his vision.
The reporter groaned as he rolled onto his back, his whole body seemed to throb and ache. He lay there on top of his own comfy bed and rolled his tongue around his mouth; it was bone dry and Cal open and closed it a few times.
Cal groaned as he sat up and gingerly reached out for the glass of water he always kept beside his bed, A sharp pain cut deep into his head though and he winced, knocking over the water in the process, the clear liquid slowly ran down the side of the table and patted slowly onto the carpet.
It was strange, Cal could not remember enjoying a smooth drink last night but he definitely felt hungover, much like the last time he finished a bottle of whiskey with the editor of the paper. Cal tried to think but every time that he tried to recall the night’s events his head began to hurt and the memories were not forthcoming.
The reporter moved his hand slowly out to the bedside lamp and pushed the switch on, the intense light burnt his eyes and the pain raced through his head, he pushed his hands over his eyes and curled his body into the fetal position; he rocked slowly as he tried to block out the pain but it was not working and finally he passed out.
Jerry Clark had been ordered to his bed just as the military had rolled into town and locked down the area. The excitement was too much for the young boy though and his imagination had run wild with images of the object flying in the woods, he tossed and turned for a couple of hours but just could not get any sleep. Finally, he decided to disobey his mom's orders and crept towards the curtains. He opened them a tiny bit and peered out into the normally dark woods.
The young boy could see some kind of machinery in the distance, it was around the area where the strange capsule had landed and the machines appeared to be lifting it out slowly. Jerry watched wide-eyed as the object was pulled from the crater and lowered onto the back of a truck.
Suddenly a flashlight shone onto the back of the Clarks house, it slowly moved from window to window as if it was checking for something. The soldiers on the end of it watched carefully for any movement and then when they were happy there was nobody watching they moved to another window. They finally came to rest on Jerry’s window but the boy had managed to drop to the floor out of sight, just in time.
“I swear I saw movement up there!”
“Boredoms getting to you my friend, these hicks have all gone to bed.”
"Yeh, you're probably right." The soldier nudged his friend on the shoulder, "Looks like the jobs nearly finished here."
They both smiled in the darkness.
Cal was finally woken by a loud rumble that sounded like it was coming from the main street that ran along his bedroom window. He managed to pull himself to his feet and shuffle across the room to the slightly open blinds; Cal still had to look away from the light but the intense pain in his head was gone.
Down on the street the curb was lined with men in military uniform, they were stationed at the end of every drive. In the road a convoy of open-top jeeps was driving through the small town. In the center of this convoy was a single, large flatbed truck. Cal strained to see what was on the back of the truck but a large tarp covered its contents. The reporter could make out a large bulge in the fabric but it was covered well and he could not see what they were hiding.
Cal was starting to regain his composure now, things were not making sense here and he needed to get to the bottom of it. As he continued to observe out of the window he took everything in. He noted that other residents were watching from their windows but nobody except the military was out on the streets.
‘They must have imposed a curfew’ Cal thought ‘but why can’t I remember this?’
Cal subconsciously ran his right hand over his wrist, a gesture he often did when he was thinking. This time something was not right, there was a band-aid on the underside of his wrist that he could not remember putting there.
“What the hell?” He said out loud as he peeled it off quickly. A small speck of blood coated the back, just a speck though. Cal looked at the tiny bump that was on his wrist, it looked like a mosquito bite but all of the annoying insects had died out by this time of year.
Cal scratched it a little and was immediately struck with a flashback pulsing through his mind; he was talking to two of the volunteer fireman in a clearing in the woods just behind the town. They were at the edge of a crater and they all peered in but just as Cal was about to catch a glimpse of what lay in the crater his flashback faded.
Another one appeared just as quickly and Cal could see State Police officers struggling with the big farmer Don and the two fire lads. That image came and went in a flash and was replaced with another one. Cal, Don, Michael and Ray were being led away from the crash site by the National Guard at gunpoint; Cal noticed the figures in the yellow spacesuits with the NASA insignia on their arms making their way towards the crash site.
That memory disappeared and was replaced by a final one of a man in a black suit putting a needle into the reports wrist but for some reason, Cal just sat there and did not struggle. Cal tried desperately to focus on the hostile man's face but he just could not make it; then the image was gone.
Cal rushed to his table, put a sheet of paper into the typewriter and started striking the keys as quickly as possible, something had crashed in the woods last night, he had not been out drinking but had been drugged and the military was involved; he needed to get the story down for the paper while it was still fresh in his mind. Cal just wished he could picture the object and the strange man's face but his mind still blocked it from him.
The sun rose over the sleepy backwater town and glinted sharply through the damp morning dew. Rays of light crept through the slightly open blinds and reached out towards Cal. The sun hit his face and he grunted as he turned his head away from the light. He opened his eyes gingerly, he blinked rapidly to clear the blurriness and sleep from his vision. Finally, he lifted his head so he could rub his eyes.
A shooting pain ran through his neck, he winced as he sat up straight. The reporter had fallen a
sleep at his desk last night. He groaned as he looked around the room for a glass of water. That’s when he remembered he had knocked it over the night before.
Cal went to get up to fetch another drink when the paper on his desk caught his attention. Cal picked it up and began to read, his eyes widened with excitement, it was about the events of last night which he had clearly forgotten about. Cal raced to the window and peered out into the streets; they were empty, not a soul to be seen.
‘That means the military has gone.' Cal thought and he smiled ‘I've got to get this over to the tribune; if I'm quick they might just get it into print today.'
Cal rushed to get dressed, grabbed a quick drink then ran out to his car. As soon as the car fired into life he was away. As he got to the road out of town his heart sank, at the very end was a roadblock manned by three State Troopers.
The troopers signaled for him to stop which he did immediately.
“Morning officers, is there a problem?”
The officer lent into his window, “That depends, the woods are closed today.”
Cal raised his eyebrows, “Can I carry on down to Greensburg, I don’t want to be late to work?”
The officer looked towards his superior, who smiled then signaled for them to move the barriers and let him through. Cal felt his heart rate return to normal as he watched the roadblock fade into the distance.
The Tribune-Review
The man took in a deep inhalation from his cigar as he scanned the page in front of him. Finally, he looked up and locked his predatory gray eyes onto Cal’s.
“Why didn’t you ring me straight away, this is a hell of a story!”
Cal sighed; he did not want to tell Daniel that he was more than likely drugged by a man wearing a black suit and that he could not remember most of the evening.
“The phones were out.” He shrugged.
“And the blockade wasn’t relaxed until the morning?” The editor asked, raising an eyebrow.