“If I knew what I was worried about, I’d be even more worried,” Von Seeckt answered. “We don’t understand at all how this ship works.” He stopped to catch his breath and the other members of the party paused also, over three quarters of the way to the nose.
Von Seeckt continued. “I believe part of the propulsion system of this craft works using gravity. In this case it would be the gravity of our planet. Who knows what it would do if it got turned on? Do you want to be responsible for affecting our gravity?”
“I feel so much better,” Von Seeckt snapped back.
A voice on a sound system echoed through the cavern:
“TEN MINUTES UNTIL INITIATION. ALL PERSONNEL ARE TO BE INSIDE PROTECTION. TEN MINUTES.”
“Gentlemen, enough,” Underhill ordered. They were at the base of the scaffolding. “We can see the inside later, but for now, let’s go over here.” He led the way toward a small doorway in a concrete wall. A metal hatch closed behind them and they were inside a blast bunker. “We have two men on board in the control room. They are simply going to turn on the engine, leave it on for ten seconds, and turn it off. They are not going to engage the drive. It’s sort of like starting a car engine but leaving the transmission in neutral.”
“We hope,” Von Seeckt muttered.
“FIVE MINUTES.”
“You are witnessing history,” Underhill said to Duncan. “We have every possible monitoring device set up here,” Ferrel added. “This should give us what we need to understand the engine.”
Duncan glanced over at Von Seeckt, who was sitting in one of the folding chairs along the back wall of the bunker. He seemed uninterested in what was going on.
“ONE MINUTE.”
The countdown now started by the second, reminding Duncan of the space shots she had watched as a youngster.
“TEN.”
“NINE.”
“EIGHT.”
“SEVEN.”
“SIX.”
“FIVE.”
“FOUR.”
“THREE.”
“TWO.”
“ONE.”
“INITIATION.”
Duncan felt a wave of nausea sweep through her. She staggered, then leaned over, feeling the contents of her breakfast in Las Vegas come up. She fell to her knees and vomited on the concrete floor. Then, just as quickly, it was over.
“ALL CLEAR. ALL CLEAR. PERSONNEL MAY LEAVE PROTECTION.”
Duncan stood, feeling the taste of acid in the back of her mouth. The men all looked pale and shaken also, but none of them had thrown up.
“What happened?” Duncan asked.
“Nothing happened,” Ferrel replied.
“Goddammit,” Duncan snapped. “I felt it. Something happened.”
“The engine was turned on and then off,” Ferrel said.
“As far as what the effect we felt was, we’ll have to analyze our data.” He pointed at a television screen. “You can see from the replay that nothing happened.” And indeed, on the screen, the mothership sat completely still as the digital readout in the lower right hand corner went through the countdown.
Duncan wiped a hand across her mouth and looked back at Von Seeckt, who was still in his seat. She felt embarrassed to have thrown up, but Ferrel’s response to her brief illness seemed a bit nonchalant. For the first time she wondered if the old man might not be as crazy as he sounded.
In the conference room Gullick and the inner circle of Majic-12 had watched the test on video, although there had been nothing to really see. The mothership had simply sat there, but the data links indicated that the power had indeed been turned on and the ship seemed to function properly.
Gullick smiled, momentarily erasing all the stress lines on his face and scalp. “Gentlemen, the countdown continues as planned.”
CHAPTER 6
The data was being read before it was fully cognizant. The signal came from the northeast. The power reading was not accurate enough to give distance to the disturbance. A quick time check showed that it had not been long since the last time it had been awakened.
This time, though, it knew what had caused the disturbance. The data from the sensors matched information in its memory. The nature of the signal was clear and it knew the source.
Action had to be taken. Valuable energy would have to be expended. As quickly as the decision had been made, execution was begun. The order was given. The next time this occurred, it would be ready and have forces in place.
CHAPTER 7
“Steve Jarvis?”
The bartender grimaced and pointed toward a booth at the rear. As Kelly walked toward it, she studied the man sitting there. She hated to admit it, but he didn’t look like the flake she had expected. Jarvis had straight black hair and wore wire-rim glasses. He was well dressed in a sport coat and tie. Not at all what she had expected from both the subject matter and the discussion on the phone. He was eyeing her as she approached and she could see his disappointment. He must have had hopes for someone taller and with more curves, she assumed.
He stood. “You have the money?”
So much for second impressions, Kelly thought. She pulled out an envelope and handed it to him. Johnny really owed her now, she thought. Jarvis looked in the envelope, thumbed through the bills, and then sat back down, signaling for the waitress. “Would you like a drink?”
“My tab or yours?” Kelly responded. Jarvis laughed. “Yours, of course.” “I’ll have a Coke,” she told the waitress while Jarvis ordered his “usual.”
“What do you want to know?” Jarvis asked as he finished off the drink he had in front of him in one gulp.
“Area 51,” Kelly said.
Jarvis laughed again. “And? There’s a whole lot going on out there. Anything in specific?”
“Why don’t you just start and I’ll get specific as you go along,” Kelly replied.
Jarvis nodded. “Okay. The usual, then. First, of course, you want to know how I know anything about Area 51, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I worked there from May 1991 to March 1992. I was a contract employee hired by the NRO, the National Reconnaissance Office. I worked on propulsion systems, trying to reverse-engineer…” He paused. “Well, let me back up slightly. You know what they have out at Groom Lake, right?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Nine alien spacecraft,” Jarvis said. “They’re in a hangar cut into the side of the mountain. The government can fly some of them, but they don’t know how the engines work. Thus they can’t replicate them. That’s why I was called in.”
“Where’d the government get these craft?” Kelly asked.
Jarvis shrugged. “Got me. I don’t know. Some say we traded for them, kind of like an interstellar used-car lot, but I don’t believe that. Maybe we just found them. Maybe they crashed, but the ones I saw seemed intact and showed no sign of having crashed.”
“Why’d they bring you in?”
“To figure out the engines. I did my dissertation at MIT on the possibility of magnetic propulsion. We already use magnets on things such as high-speed trains, and the military has been working on a magnetic gun for a long time. But all those systems generate a magnetic field of their own, which requires a lot of energy. My theory was that since the planet already has a magnetic field, if there was some way we could manipulate and control that field with an engine we would have an unlimited source of energy for an atmospheric craft.”
“So the government just hired you out of the blue and took you to a top-secret installation?”
“No, they didn’t hire me out of the blue. I had worked for the government before down at White Sands. A joint contract with JPL working on the possibility of using a long, sloping magnetic track on a mountainside to launch satellites into orbit.”