Max did not like being associated with UFOs. Didn’t look good for him or for Sundown Aviation, and he resolved to keep a low profile. But on the other hand, if there was anything to it, intense media coverage and maybe a lot of money was not out of the question.
The GeoTech team consisted of three people working out of a large sand-colored van. The crew chief was an energetic, rather precise young woman who made the company jumpsuit look pretty good. Her name was Peggy Moore, and she opened the conversation by asking Max what they were looking for. “The work order’s a little vague on that point,” she added.
“Anything unusual,” said Max.
That was not a satisfactory reply. Moore had intense eyes, a quick frown, and a schedule that kept her far too busy to cope with someone who wanted to mess around. “Try me again,” she said in a tone that bordered on hostility.
“We’re not sure what we’re looking for,” Max explained. “We think there may be some artifacts buried in the area. We’d like you to tell us what’s in the ground. If anything.”
“What, generally, are we talking about here, Mr. Collingwood? Arrowheads? Indian burial ground? Old oil cans? It makes a difference in the way we proceed.”
“They dug up a boat last month.”
“I saw that on TV. This is the place, huh?”
“Yeah. We’d like to know if there’s anything else down there.”
“All right. It saves time,” she said, “when you tell us what we need to know.”
“Okay,” said Max.
“We already found a rake. While we were calibrating.”
The van was lined with computers, printers, display screens, and communications gear. The radar unit itself was mounted on a small tractor. “The images are relayed to the van by radio link,” Moore explained. “It goes up on the main screen. We’ll be watching for shadows, unusual coloring, anything that suggests a formation that isn’t obviously natural.”
It was by then mid-November, and the day on which the GeoTech crew started was miserably cold. Snow threatened throughout the afternoon, although only a few flakes fell.
The other two technicians were Charlie Ramirez, a somber-looking man who drove the tractor and ran the radar, and Sara Winebarger, the communications specialist. Sara was stick-thin with straight blond hair.
Because of the extreme cold, Moore and Charlie rotated assignments on the tractor. Charlie did not like cold weather, and he talked a lot about Nevada. “Only reason I’m here is because they eliminated my job on the southern border. Soon as it opens up again, I’m out of here.”
Max’s fascination with the project worked on him, and he asked if he could watch from inside the van. “It’s against the rules,” said the crew chief.
“I wouldn’t create a problem.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t, Mr. Collingwood. But there are insurance implications.” Her demeanor was as cold as the weather. “You understand.”
They laid out a search pattern, and Charlie took off, headed for the top of the hill. He plunged through the windbreak, mounted the ridge and, at a range of about a hundred yards from the site of the original find, executed a sharp right turn. Eventually he completed the first of a series of overlapping rectangles.
Max went into the farmhouse and took over the Laskers’ dining room, near a window. Outside, the tractor rumbled methodically through the long afternoon.
8
During the course of the afternoon, the GeoTech team found nothing. When at last they quit for the day, Max exchanged reassurances with the Laskers, and flew home. The second day of the search, a Friday, also produced no results, and the operation shut down for the weekend.
April had encouraged Max and the Laskers to say as little as possible about the find. She had followed her own advice and revealed nothing to her colleagues at Colson. But she needed someone to talk to. Max’s enthusiasm matched her own, and so, during the succeeding days, while the radar unit searched Tom Lasker’s property without result, they found themselves meeting after hours for dinner and drinks and long intense conversations.
These conversations had the effect of fortifying their hopes and creating an informal alliance. However, they rarely produced specifics about what those hopes really were: hers, that a way might be found to master transuranic technology; his, that there had indeed been unearthly visitors, and that proof might lie nearby. But Max suspected that a more mundane explanation would eventually surface, that April had to have overlooked something. Nevertheless, she could usually, over beer and pizza, allay those doubts. For a time.
For her part, April had no one to lean on. She considered herself rock-solid, not the sort to be carried away by passion or gulled by ambition. Nevertheless, she would have liked a second opinion, some confirmation from one of the experts in the field. But the stakes were so high that she knew where premature disclosure might lead: The heavyweights would move in and Cannon would be pushed aside.
She needed someone to talk to. The Laskers, sitting on what might turn out to be the discovery of the ages, seemed to look on the entire business with a degree of complacency that irritated her. They were interested, the possibilities intrigued them, and yet they lacked fire. It was her impression that had Tom Lasker been informed there was a crashed UFO on his land, he’d go look at it, but only after feeding the horses.
Max was different. And during this difficult period, he became her sole support.
They tended to approach the more electrifying possibilities obliquely: They joked about the effects they would have on their personal lives. April conjured up an image of Max on the cover of Time, stepping down from the cockpit of the Lightning, his flying jacket rakishly open. Man of the Year.
And he speculated about a Nobel for the woman who had given the world the lifetime automobile guarantee.
Meantime, the days passed without tangible result from the ground-radar unit, and Max’s conviction returned that it was all just too good to be true. April pointed out that the search was a long shot, but even if they found nothing else, they already possessed an artifact of incalculable value. “Nothing is ever going to be the same,” she said, adding that she had written a paper revealing her findings. “Which I will not publish until we can be reasonably sure there’s nothing else out there. We don’t want to start a treasure hunt.”
“I agree,” said Max. They were sitting in a food court in the mall at the intersection of the two interstates in Fargo, splitting a pepperoni pizza. “If there really is something out there, what would you think our chances are of finding it?”
Her eyes fluttered shut. “Almost nil. There’s too much lake bottom.” She stirred a packet of artificial sweetener into her coffee. “We’re talking about substantial pieces of the U.S. and Canada. For that matter, there could be something here.” She indicated the floor. “The Fargo area was underwater, too, for a while. Who knows?”
Max looked down at the tiles. “I wonder what the yacht is worth?”
“If it is what we think it is, Max, you couldn’t put a price on it.” She watched a mother trying to balance a squalling child and an armload of packages. “I hope we can actually get some answers to the questions. Truth is, I have a bad feeling that we’re likely to be faced with a mystery no one will ever solve.”