“At least we got you home, Bill,” he says, as reverentially as he can. And just as quickly his need to be out of the tiny cabin overwhelms him, lest it suddenly bursts into flames. The need for air alone dictates panic.
Kip works to open the inner hatch, glancing at the brick building through the window. The walls of the old structure are deteriorating, the stucco un-patched and crumbling, the windows tilted crazily as if the building was melting slowly back into the desert along with the rest of what had to have been a World War II Army Air Corps field.
Intrepid’s inner door swings open easily and Kip pulls the equalization lever to make sure any remaining air pressure in the cabin is dumped before working the lock and swinging the outer door open. He’s still wearing Bill’s space suit, but now without the helmet, and the trip out through the open hatchway is quick. His feet land on a dusty slab of broken concrete, and he works to regain his balance, walking shakily to the edge of the slab and onto the sandy ground. His legs feel weak, strangers to gravity, and he sinks to his knees to scoop up some of the earth as if it will evaporate if he doesn’t touch it. He lets it run through his fingers. Incredible feelings of relief and deliverance course through his body like an electric current, but he feels removed slightly, as if it were all happening to someone else. He remains on his knees looking up in the sky and letting the unfiltered light fill his eyes as he takes a deep breath of the sweetest air he’s ever tasted. There is springtime in the flavor of it, oxygen-rich and redolent with life, even in the absence of greenery in the surrounding terrain. The stiff breeze that helped keep his relative landing speed down is still blowing out of the west and kicking up dust, but he gratefully breathes that in as well with a huge smile as he gets to his feet at last, aware of the approach of a vehicle somewhere behind.
He looks around as an old Ford pickup rumbles around the corner and squeals to a halt, its stocky occupant getting out carefully, as if approaching a suspected crime scene. Jeans and a flannel work shirt, Kip notes, wondering why he’s even aware of what the man’s wearing. The sight of another human is such a relief, it couldn’t possibly matter. The man waves as if embarrassed, a grin on his broad, squarish face as he gives the spacecraft a thorough looking over and walks close enough to offer his hand.
“Hope you don’t mind me dropping in like this,” Kip says, his voice sounding strange and unused.
The fellow is probably younger than he, Kip realizes, his face tanned and deeply creased as if he’s spent a lifetime on the open range. But there are laugh lines as well and the etched evidence of an easy smile.
“I saw you headin’ for the runway. Man, you were smokin’.”
“I know,” Kip says, shaking the man’s hand.
“What were you doing, two hundred knots on final?”
“Close. I didn’t see the runway until the last minute.”
“It’s kinda overgrown all right. Sometimes at dusk I can’t even find the damn thing. But you did good, man! Helluva landing.”
“Thanks.”
“You do know we don’t have any services here, right?”
“Sorry?”
“We don’t have any gas.”
Maybe it’s the sudden reapplication of one g to his body or a delayed reaction to the greatest stress he’s ever known, but Kip suddenly feels light-headed, as if whatever the man just said has been completely garbled on the way to his ears.
“This… runs on a different type of fuel,” Kip says, feeling idiotic.
“I’m just kidding you, Mr. Dawson.”
“You… know my name?”
“Hell, yes! Who doesn’t? I’m Jim Waters, by the way.”
Kip looks around at the ship, as if Intrepidmight have disappeared. But no, it’s still there, looming behind him with the incongruity of a pink elephant in a parlor.
“I should have landed in Mojave, California,” he says.
“Yeah, I know. But the interesting thing is, you landed your spaceship pretty damn close to Roswell,” he chuckles. “That strike you as coincidental?”
The reference soars past. “I couldn’t make Roswell,” Kip replies, knowing he missed a point somehow. “I mean, I was just trying to find a runway.”
“Well, boy, howdy, I’m really tickled you’d pick my little duster runway. Although there was a time it was a big military field.”
“Where am I, exactly?”
The smile broadens as Jim looks down momentarily, taking his time with the best straight line he’s had in ages.
“Why, this is a planet called Earth, Kip.”
“No, no… I mean, obviously it’s Earth. Dumb question. And I know this is New Mexico, but wherein New Mexico?”
“Oh, about forty-five years to the west of the tiny town of Gladiola.”
“I really need to use your phone, Jim, if you have one. You know, to let everyone know I made it down okay. They probably have no idea where I am or anything.”
Jim is shaking his head. “You can use my cell phone if you like, but I really don’t think it’s going to be necessary, Kip.”
“Why not?”
“Take a look.” Jim gestures to the northwest, toward Roswell and Albuquerque, and Kip follows his gaze to where something undulates on the horizon, the shape indistinct in the rising heat, coalescing quickly into several objects. A small air force of helicopters rises into view, racing toward them, as a fixed-wing business jet swoops in low from the north and passes over the field with a deafening roar at the same moment Jim’s cell phone starts ringing in his pocket.
Chapter 45
Somehow, Kip thinks, the reaction of everyone he’s met so far is wrong. Weird would be a better word.
There was all the excessive handshaking the moment the Air Force crew members tumbled out of their helicopter to prepare him for transport to the nearby base. It was as if some celebrity had suddenly shown up asking for their help, yet everyone seemed to be sidestepping his questions.
It was too loud in the helicopter to say much, and he’d written off their enthusiastic grins as nothing more than satisfaction that he’d made it down safely.
Even stranger, however, has been the greeting at Holloman. The wing commander and the base commander met him at the door minutes ago, fussing over him obsequiously as they ushered him into this private room where a Colonel Billingsley, the chief of the hospital, was waiting for him.
Now the doctor motions him onto an exam table and begins checking his vital signs, the craggy features and silver-gray hair suggesting a man in his late fifties.
“Doc, when did you hear I was coming down?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, when did they alert you I might end up in New Mexico?”
“Oh, not until just before you landed.”
“And… the whole base was alerted then?”
“Not at all. Just the rescue forces and the clinic. Breathe deeply for me. Now, hold it and let it out slowly.”
“Okay.”
Kip complies, waiting out the multiple stops of the stethoscope around his back before speaking again. “Everyone seems so… engaged with this, you know. Has there been something on television about me?”
There’s a knowing laugh. “Yeah, well… that’s one way to put it. I need you to turn around and sit on the side of the table now.”
Kip repositions himself, looking back up at the doctor. “But… I really would appreciate an answer.”
“To what?”
“Was there a lot on television about my coming out of orbit today? Everyone seems to be so aware of it.”
It’s the physician’s turn to look puzzled as he straightens up, the blood pressure cuff in his hands. “You mean, about the spacewalk, and your decision to try the engine?”
“My… decision?"
“You know, when you wrote that about burying your father and giving him back his operating system?”