“Colonel Phan sends us a message,” he said. “The Guest died at eighteen hundred hours this evening. Phan is conducting an autopsy at midnight. Mr. Feinman and Mr. Gordon are requested to attend.”
Silence around the table.
“Mr. Gordon, you are free to do so, and then please come to Washington as soon as you can,” Crockerman said. He put his napkin next to his plate, backed his chair • away from the head of the table, and stood. He appeared very old in the dining room’s subdued light. “I’m retiring early tonight. This day has been exhausting, and there is much to think about. David, Carl, please make sure Mr. Hicks is comfortable.”
“Yes, sir,” McClennan said.
“And Carl, make sure the staff here realizes how much we appreciate their service and the hardship.”
“Yes, sir.”
AAP/UKNet, Octobers, 1996; Woomera, Local Church of New Australia:
The Reverend Brian Caldecott has proclaimed the Australian extraterrestrials to be “patent frauds.” Caldecott, long known for his fiery harangues against all forms of government, and for leading his disciples in a return to “the Garden of Eden,” which he claims was once located near Alice Springs, came to Woomera in a caravan of thirty white Mercedes-Benzes to hold a tent rally this evening. “These ‘aliens’ are the Country Party’s attempt to mislead the citizens of the world, and to make the Australian Government, under Prime Minister Stanley Miller, the center of a world government, which I of course deplore.” Caldecott’s crusade suffered a public relations setback last year when it was discovered he was married to three women. The Church of New Australia promptly declared bigamy to be a religious principle, stirring a legal stew as yet unsettled.
AGNUS
16
Colonel Tuan Anh Phan, wearing a white helmeted suit with self-contained breathing apparatus, stood beside two assistants in similar garb in the isolation chamber once occupied by the Guest, and now by its corpse. Harry Feinman entered the chamber in his own suit, stepping with some awkwardness around the others. With four in the chamber, and equipment brought in for the autopsy, there was little room for maneuvering. Arthur sat in the laboratory beyond the glass and observed.
The Guest lay on its back on the central table, now elevated a meter above the floor. Its long head extended full length with “chin” paralleling the tabletop. The four limbs were splayed outward, held against a natural resilience by plastic straps.
Phan indicated with a sweep of one plastic-gloved hand the three video cameras behind their protective plastic plates. “Beginning twelve-seventeen a.m., October eighth, 1996. I am Colonel Tuan Anh Phan, and I am beginning an autopsy of the extraterrestrial biological specimen found near Death Valley, California. The specimen, also called the Guest, died at five fifty-eight p.m., October seventh, in isolation room three of the Vandenberg Emergency Retrieval Laboratory, Shuttle Launch Center Six, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
“There is no evidence of physical injury or any apparent sign of internal trauma.” Phan removed a scalpel from a tray proffered by an assistant. “I’ve already collected external culture samples from the Guest when it was alive. I will now take samples from sites along its limbs and on its body and head to see if terrestrial microorganisms have begun to multiply on its external tissues.” Using the scalpel to abrade the skin, and swabs to pick up the samples, he carried out this task. Each swab was dropped into a tube which was then stoppered. “As you can see, the body exhibits no signs of lividity, or indeed of any decay or change, external or internal.” Phan lifted a forward limb. “There is resilience, but no stiffness. Indeed, the only visible evidence of death is a lack of movement and no reaction to stimuli.
“There is no sign of electrical activity within the Guest’s cranium, or anywhere else in the body. As such activity existed before, we can only assume that this is another indicator of death. The Guest has not moved in ten hours and thirty-one minutes. Dr. Feinman, do you concur that the Guest is now dead, by any measurements we can make?”
“I concur,” Harry said. “There are no reflexes. The Guest’s body previously exhibited a living tension when touched. In its present state, there is no living tension in evidence.”
“Obviously, this is more in the nature of an exploratory dissection than a true autopsy,” Phan continued, his voice weary. “We have already conducted a thorough examination of the Guest through external means, including X ray, ultrasound exploratory, and NMR imaging. We have located several shapes which might be organs, a few small cavities, some fluid-filled and some apparently empty, within the Guest, and using these printouts as maps” — he pointed a scalpel at several sheets of paper hung on the outside of the viewing windows — “I will investigate the Guest’s interior more directly.
“The Guest’s thoracic skeletal structure differs substantially from our own. It appears to be made of a series of spines — in the porcupine sense of the word — connected by collagenous flexible joints, all wrapped around the internal cavity. There are no hollow lungs. In fact, there are few hollows of any kind.” Phan drew the scalpel along a pronounced ridge running the length of the “breast” and revealed a clean gray-green surface with the sheen of bathroom tile. The sliced edges of skin were coppery blue-green in color.
“Here is the central breast ‘bone’ or ‘process’ we first saw in our X rays.” He peeled back the skin, cutting delicately at adhering tissue, until one side of the thorax was exposed. “These joined processes provide a flexible but efficient cage around the thoracic organs. As you can see, the cage is fairly rigid in one direction” — he pushed with his finger toward the Guest’s head, producing no movement — “but flexible in another.” He pressed down and the cage sank slightly. “There is an obvious similarity between the Guest and ourselves at this point, with a protective cage around the thorax, but the similarity ends there.”
Phan took a small electric circular saw and cut through the processes on the Guest’s left side, facing the window. Working the saw twenty centimeters across the top, then down on two sides another twenty centimeters, then across the bottom, he was able to lift free a glutinous section of the thoracic cage. Below lay a pearly membrane.
Arthur sat rooted in his chair, fully focused on the opening to the Guest’s thorax. Phan maneuvered past Feinman and the assistants around the table, pausing for a moment to glance at the printouts. He then reached for a syringe and inserted it into the pearly membrane, withdrawing a sample of fluids. Harry pushed a slender biopsy core sampler through the membrane a little lower and removed a long, slender tube of tissue.
This he passed to an assistant, who sealed it in a glass phial and passed it with the other samples to the outside through a stainless-steel drawer.
“The temperature is now twelve degrees centigrade. We are reducing that to several degrees above zero, to inhibit terrestrial bacterial growth. The core and fluid samples will be analyzed and the autopsy will continue at a later hour. Gentlemen, it is time I rested. My assistants are going to make further measurements and take core samples from the limbs. Later this morning we will begin on the head.”
Hicks sat at the table across from the President, smiling at the waitress as she poured him a cup of coffee. They were alone in the dining hall; it was early, just past seven in the morning. The President had called him at midnight and requested his presence at breakfast for a private discussion. “What’s your pleasure, Mr. Hicks?” Crocker-man asked him.