We have slowed considerably. The swing-wings have been deployed, and we now pass at a comparatively leisured pace over Evanston, north of Chicago. Not a sign of humanity wherever we look. We are all… er… quite nervous now, I believe even the U.S. Air Force officers and crew, for if anything were to go wrong, we would be deposited directly in the middle of… Yes, well we won’t think about that. Lower and slower.
We have decided to pass over Chicago because of satellite and high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft photographs showing a concentration of biological activity around this once-great city. As Chicago was once the capitol of the American heartland, now apparently it is serving as some kind of focus, a clearing house perhaps, for activity all around the country, from Canada to Mexico. Great pipeline-like structures can be seen flowing into Chicago from all directions. In some areas the pipelines open up into broad canals and we can actually see the rapid flow of a viscous green fluid… Yes. There. Can we…? Well, later in the broadcast. The canals must be a half-kilometer wide. Amazing, awesome.
Rumors from major centers of military intelligence in Wiesbaden and in London and Scotland point to another and very different center of activity on the West Coast of the United States. Details are not available, but apparently Chicago shares with Southwestern California the distinction of being prime points of interest for investigators and researchers. We will not be flying to the West Coast, however; our aircraft does not have the range without refueling, and there are no refueling points that far across the continent.
We are now experiencing some acceleration as we make several sharp turns. Passing over the suburb of Oak Park, where according to a map spread before us, not a single street or roadway can be identified. And now over Chicago itself, if I may judge by proportion perhaps just over Cicero Avenue, now out to the lake again, yes, that’s Montrose Harbor and Lake Shore Drive and Lincoln park, identifiable only by outline against the lake. More acceleration, a wide circle, over the area of the Museum of Science and Industry perhaps– we are all guessing here. And now I can see waterways, perhaps the original branches of the Ship Canal, and now we are down to approximately a thousand meters, a very perilous altitude, for we have no idea how high these biologicals may extend. Lord, I am frightened. We all are. We are now passing over… yes…
Jesus. Pardon me. We have just barely seen them, but the pilot has started us into a steep climb and we are now swinging due south. What we have seen , ..
Pardon me.
I am wiping my eyes, out of terror, awe, for I have seen nothing like this in all the hours we have been wandering over this nightmare land. The largest moving creatures I have seen have been whales, and these exceeded in size the largest whale by I know not precisely how much. Great brown and white eggs, could they have been hovering? Perhaps just on the ground. Greater than dinosaurs, yet with no discernible legs, head, tail. Not without features, however, extensions and elongations, tended or surrounded by polyhedrons, that is, icosahedrons or dodecahedrons—with insect-like legs, straight not jointed, legs that had to be two or three meters thick. The ovoid creatures or whatever they were could have easily spread across a rugby field.
Yes, yes—we have been told… we have just been informed there are airborne life forms, living things and that we have narrowly missed a couple of them, resembling gigantic manta rays stretched out, gliders or bats, also white and brown. Flowing in a stream southwest, as if forming a squadron or flock. Excuse me. Excuse me.
Cut the sound. Cut the sound, dammit. And turn that camera off me.
(Pause of five minutes.)
We’re back, and apologies for the delay. I am human and… well, at times liable to a touch of panic. I hope this will be understood. And I myself stand in amazement before the calm and expertise of the… uh… the officers and crew of this aircraft, professionals all, damned good men. We have just passed over Danville, Illinois and will shortly… a few seconds from now be over Indianapolis. We have seen changes in the character of the landscape, or if I may call it a bioscape, below us, changes in color and shape, but we are at a loss to interpret what we see. It is as if we have passed over in entirely new planet, and while our two scientists have been taking readings and scribbling notes furiously, they are much too busy to pass on whatever theories or hypotheses they may have.
Indianapolis is below us, and as indecipherable, as mysterious and… beautiful and alien as the other megaplexes. Some of the structures here appear to be as tall as the buildings they replaced, some perhaps a hundred to two hundred meters tall, casting shadows now in the afternoon light. Soon time will reverse for us, as it were, as we head east, southeast, and the sun will set. The shadows lengthen on the bioscape, the atmosphere is remarkably clear—no industry, no automobiles… yet who can say what sort of pollution a living landscape might cause? Whatever pollution there is is not passed on to the atmosphere.
Yes.
Yes, that is confirmed by our scientists. When we passed low over Chicago, the readings indicated virtually pure air, smoke-free, pollution-free, and that is reflected in the pure colors of the horizon. The air is also moist and, for this time of year, unseasonably warm. Winter may not come to North America this year, for by now Chicago and the cities we have passed over should be blanketed by at least light snowfalls. No snow. There is rain, warm and in large drops—we have passed over areas of dense overcast; but no snow, no ice.
Yes. Yes, I saw it too. What looked like a fireball, a meteor of some sort perhaps, remarkable—And several more, apparently—
(Voices in the background, quite loud, sound of alarms)
My God. That was apparently a re-entry vehicle or vehicles in the upper atmosphere, just dozens of kilometers away. Detectors aboard the aircraft are screaming warnings about radiation. The pilots and officers have activated all emergency systems and we are now in a steep climb away from the area, with… yes, with yes… no, we are in a dive, presenting I believe a posterior profile to whatever the object was—
There is talk here that the fireball was a matches the profile of a re-entry vehicle a nuclear missile an ICBM perhaps and that it did not repeat did not of course how would we be here? did not go off and now—
(More voices, sounding puzzled; more alarms)
I believe we cannot pull out of the dive now. We have lost most instrumentation. The engines have quit and we are in a powerless dive. We still have radio communications but—
(End transmission RB-1H. End direct feed Lloyd Upton EBN. End scientific telemetry.)
34
Bernard lay on the cot, one leg off the side and the other crooked with his foot propped against a fold in the mattress. He hadn’t shaved in a week, nor bathed. His skin was heavily marked with white ridges and his lower legs had grown prominences from his upper shins to the base of his toes. Even naked he looked like he was wearing bell-bottom trousers.
He didn’t care. Except for his hour-long session with Paulsen-Fuchs and his ten minute physical each day, he spent much of his time on the cot, eyes closed, communing with the noocytes. The rest of the time he spent trying to crack the chemical language. He had received little help from the noocytes. The last conversation on the subject had been three days before.
Your conception is not complete, not correct.