Intrigued, Owen was about to question them further when Howard suddenly opened the door. “Excuse me for interrupting, sir,” he said. “But there’s a rancher with something I think you ought to take a look at.”
Owen nodded at Howard, then turned back to the nuns. “We’ll send some people out to this crash site you mentioned,” he told them. He rose and escorted the women from his office and out into the waiting room where, to his surprise, Sue sat stiffly, holding a paper bag.
“I really need to see you,” she said as she quickly got to her feet.
She looked tense and drawn and Owen knew he had to do something. An irate woman could make quite a scene, and this was one who needed to be defused immediately. He tried for a bright smile. “And I really need to see you,” he said in a faintly suggestive tone. “I’ll call you later.” He turned and followed Howard out the door without giving her time to answer or argue.
On the way to the ranch, Howard filled him in on what a rancher named Mac Brazel had found scattered across a rugged area of his land. “It looks like some kind of debris,” Howard said. “Like pieces of tinfoil scattered all around.”
At the site, Owen picked up a piece of the debris. It did indeed look like tinfoil, but it didn’t have the feel of any material he’d ever handled. When bent or twisted, it returned to its original shape. The site was strewn with a second material as well, a kind of dark balsa wood, very soft to the touch. Whatever it was that had crashed on Mac Brazel’s land, Owen thought, it was not the remains of a fallen angel.
He was pondering exactly what the debris might be when Colonel Campbell roared up in his jeep. The colonel quickly leaped from the jeep, walked briskly past Marty and Howard, oblivious to their smart salutes, and strode over to Owen.
“I want every bit of debris out of this pasture and back to the base,” he commanded. “All of your men are confined to the base, pending debriefing.” He turned to Marty and Howard. “That means the two of you.”
Owen noted the colonel’s odd behavior, his frantic arrival and brusque commands. It struck him that something had happened in this field that was far more important than he’d previously suspected. The colonel was obviously unnerved by something, and since old war horses weren’t easily rattled, the “something” that was bothering the colonel had to be important. He looked at the debris scattered across the desert floor, then up into the empty sky. All his life he’d heard fantastic tales of flying saucers, but never until that moment had he entertained the notion that those who told such stories were anything but kooks.
By now the colonel had turned his attention to Mac Brazel. “We’d appreciate if you didn’t speak to anyone about this,” he told him. “It’s a matter of national security.”
“It’s from outer space, isn’t it?” Brazel asked.
Outer space.
Owen considered the words, their life-transforming import. What if it were true, he wondered. What if this debris actually were from a craft from outer space? It would be the single greatest threat the world had ever faced. It would hold up the horrific specter of an alien invasion. It would change the life of man forever. If they were out there, then the whole world would have to prepare to defend itself against them. The man who could prove that they were out there, watching us, probing us, testing our defenses, that man would be the savior of the world.
Owen was still considering the grandeur of such a prospect later that day as he stood in Colonel Campbell’s office, watching silently while an Air Force major examined a large blueprint along with pieces of the debris.
“This is a design for a constant level balloon train,” Colonel Campbell said. He indicated the pieces of debris that resembled bits of tinfoil. “The balloon’s radar reflectors are made of this material,” he added. He picked up a piece of the foil, bent it, then returned it to the desk where it instantly regained its original shape. “Amazing stuff, isn’t it?” He looked at Owen. “If the Russians have figured out how to make the bomb, we need to know it. These sensors can pick up a bomb test, a ballistic missile launch.” He laughed edgily. “If they sneeze, we’ll hear it.” He smiled, but his eyes remained curiously somber. “This monitoring project is called ‘Mogul,’ and it has a security classification of A-l.”
Owen nodded. “A-l.” The military’s highest security classification, and he’d just been let in on it.
Or had he?
The problem with the “Mogul” story was that the material didn’t really look like anything that could be found on earth.
Outer space, Owen thought again, the idea building steadily in his head, a spacecraft that had crashed to earth, or perhaps merely jettisoned its cosmic trash, used the earth as its own private dumping ground. What if it were true, he asked himself again. What if it were true that an alien craft had actually penetrated the earth’s atmosphere, and the colonel along with the rest of the old guard knew it, but were determined to keep it to themselves.
“We’ll need to give reporters something on this, of course,” Owen said, cautiously playing along, testing the waters, bent now on finding out if the colonel and his men were covering up a momentous event.
“Somebody already has,” the major said. He flipped the wire recorder to a local radio station. Mac Brazel was blithely talking his head off, telling the world about the crash, how the debris was like nothing he’d ever seen before, like something from “another world.”
“People eat this stuff up,” the major said contemptuously. “I figure we should go along with it. As long as people are thinking about flying saucers, they’re not thinking about ‘Mogul.’”
“But they may be thinking something worse,” Owen said. “That we don’t control the skies.”
The major paid no attention. “So what’ll it be,” he asked Colonel Campbell, “Flying disc or flying saucer?”
Owen felt his whole body stiffen. He was being ignored and he didn’t like it. Still there was nothing he could do but play the ever-obedient soldier.
Twenty-four hours later a newspaper was already carrying the major’s story. Owen smiled as he read the headline in the local paper, “raaf captures flying saucer on RANCH IN ROSWELL AREA.”
“Is that for real, Captain?” Marty asked. He glanced at Howard, then back at Owen. “That stuff was from a spaceship?”
Owen folded the paper. “Can I trust you?”
“Yes, sir,” Marty said.
“Absolutely, sir,” Howard said.
“All right, here it is,” Owen said. “It was a spy balloon. Super classified. A-l. It hit something and fell back to earth.” He felt a shiver run through his bones at the realization that he may well have found his mission. The question was, what did the balloon hit, and why didn’t this “other craft” crash too?
Chapter Three
Russell Keys tossed the burger and listened to it sizzle on the grill. The day was bright, and very warm. He felt a trickle of sweat run down the side of his face. Across the yard, various friends and neighbors huddled in small groups. Kate stood among them, their son Jesse in the grass at her feet. Everything appeared entirely normal, but nothing felt that way. At least not to him. He didn’t know why. He knew only that all the things that should have brought him joy left him feeling curiously bereft instead, left him moody and withdrawn like a man held by some distant grief, mourning a loss he could not name or find a way to get beyond. Lately he’d turned to alcohol to dull that pain. He knew his drinking had cost him one job, then another, that his life was spiraling downward, as if he were trapped in a crashing plane.