they get into thinking about saving a select few, and
the few always includes them, of course. They’ve built
bunkers, you can be sure, and stocked them well, and
the heck with the taxpayer. This is why that story
gets resisted. You can believe they’ve got their
guards at the newspapers watching for it. Gets shot
down every time.
The light goes on for Danny, who realizes Maya’s reaction is not
the first.
You mean, you’ve tried this before?
Isaac says,
I was asked to contact your paper, give it another
shot. A group of us have been trying to find an
17
outlet. So far, no one’s gotten past the guard. They
tell these editors that it’s national security or
something, can’t have panic. God knows what they tell
them, but one thing is clear, this is a story that the
public is not allowed to hear.
Danny is new to the cover-up, and is searching for a route around
it.
Someone could go to an observatory. I mean, our
observatory has a public night, you can go there,
point the scope anywhere you want, they help you ..
Isaac, older and wiser, knows what encountering a serious cover-up means.
You can try it. We did, when it was still able to be
seen in the night sky. Got the runaround. It’s not
just the editors, it’s the observatories, the
astronomers you can’t believe. You think the American
people didn’t want to know about what happened to JFK?
They didn’t get the story then, and they don’t have it
now. When the hammer comes down to protect the people
in charge, in Washington, it comes down hard.
Youth perseveres. Danny says,
Yeah, but I bet I could. I mean, I can be pretty
persuasive.
Too late, in any case, says Isaac.
Observatories don’t cut it anymore, it’s too close to
the Sun now. They can’t look at light, they need the
night sky. It’s arrived, Danny, we’re not doing the
waltz anymore, we’re setting up for rock and roll!
Danny has fallen silent, but finally takes a big breath.
So what do we do?
Isaac explains that bottom line, one should be personally
prepared.
I know what I'm going to do. I'm not waiting for
anyone to tell me to do it, either. I've got a place
up in the hills, and as soon as things get funny,
that's where I'm headed.
_______________________________
Big Tom and Red are replacing wooden fence posts out in a field. They have a
stock of posts in the back of the truck, are pulling a broken post, snipping
the wire, hammering a new post in its place, and finally patching the wire
with a new piece of wire. Meanwhile, they converse. Big Tom says,
18
Heard that some rich folks come in from the coast
wanting to stock a bunker in big-top mountain. Wanted
this quiet, I guess, but you know Fred Harvey.
Big Tom and Red glance up and grin briefly at each other through their sweat.
Fred Harvey is apparently a known big mouth. Big Tom continues,
Fred says they had him take enough bottled water and
canned good to feed an army for a year up there, one
truckload after another. Says the big shock was the
hole in the mountain.
Big Tom stands straight, hand to his back, stretching. He continues while
standing, gesturing, his two hands together punching forward to indicate the
tunnel hammered in the rock.
They’d had someone hammer a tunnel, then a room.
Lights everywhere. Furniture too.
Red glances up from where he is crouched, mending the wire. He is not
interrupting as he wants to hear the story. Big Tom continues,
Now what were they expecting? An invasion?
Big Tom shakes his head and puts the sledge hammer back into the truck.
Muttering to himself and Red.
Crazy rich people. Got more money than they know what
to do with.
19
-Signs-
Danny and Daisy are driving to their campsite, a week into their camping trip,
somewhere out west in Utah. Danny glances sideways to drink in the lanky body
of Daisy in her shorts and halter top. Taking off for a camping trip, where
he can have her near him around the clock, should make him forget the unease
he has felt since that day talking to Professor Isaac, and the anger he still
feels at having his story cut. Daisy, for her part, is also looking forward to
two weeks alone with Danny. No phone. No editor. No assignments. Most of
their friends are married, and many with small children in arms or on the way,
and she rarely has opportunity to pry him away from his enthusiasms.
Danny is still upset in part as he is still angry about his story being
canned, being silenced and feeling there is something to it. It is pouring
rain, the windshield wipers flapping furiously and the car steamy. Daisy says,
Honey, you’ve got to let that go. It’s all just theory
anyway. This is your vacation, and all you’ve done is
fume about it. We’ve been on the road almost a week
already, and between you moaning about that damn
planet and Maya quashing your article and this damn
rain, it feels more like Hell than a vacation. How can
it be raining so much! Dry as a bone in New Jersey and
washing away in the rest of the country.
But Danny is still seething.
It’s just that all those things Professor Isaac was
relaying, that stuff really happened. No one can
explain it, there’s nothing that fits except the
passage of this rogue planet. Even a friend of
Einstein’s, guy named Hapgood, figured this out. Said
the sliding crust theory is the only explanation, and
Einstein agreed! And then they stop it at the gate,
block the story from getting past editors. And that
observatory guy!
Danny is almost gritting his teeth in his rage, his anger at being blocked at