Without waiting for an answer, the little Navy officer strode briskly from the room. McDermott got up and lumbered out after him.
Stoner sagged back on the sofa, icy waves of anger creeping along his veins. Turning to Thompson, he asked, “Jeff, am I crazy, or are they?”
Shrugging, the astronomer answered, “Maybe none of you. Or maybe we all are. I don’t know; insufficient data.”
“McDermott’s an asshole. He can’t ride roughshod over people like this. He’s using that kid. When the real Navy finds out what they’re doing…”
Smiling tiredly, Thompson said, “That kid is the real Navy. And Big Mac isn’t riding roughshod over anybody but you. The rest of us signed our security oaths as meek as lambs.”
“You too?”
“Sure, me too. I can’t afford to lose my job. Do you know how many openings there are for a second-rank radio astronomer? I’d have to start all over again, at the bottom.” He shook his head.
“And you’re willing to sign away your freedom to publish, just to hold on to your tenure at the university?”
“Look, Keith, I’ve got three kids to feed. And a wife. And a dog that eats as much as she does.”
Stoner said nothing, but thought, I had a wife and two kids and if I stop working they lose the alimony and child support.
Thompson slapped him playfully on the shoulder. “Don’t look so goddamned grim! This is all routine red tape. It’ll all straighten itself out. We’ll publish sooner or later.”
“But how the hell did Big Mac find out about me?” Stoner wondered. “How did he know I was going to Washington?”
“Did you ask one of the secretaries to make plane reservations for you?”
Frowning, Stoner said, “No. I deliberately steered clear of them. Figured they’d go straight to McDermott with the information. I got one of the students to make my reservations…what’s her name, the tall one with the good figure?”
“Jo Camerata?”
“Yeah. Jo. That’s the one.”
Thompson gave a low whistle. “Then she must’ve told Big Mac herself. Or at least, one of the regular secretaries.”
“But I specifically told her not to.”
Thompson shrugged. “And here I thought she was after your body.”
“What?”
“She’s had her eye on you for quite a while. Coming around the observatory, cutting classes, trying to catch your attention.”
“Don’t be silly,” Stoner said. “She’s just a kid.”
“Some kid,” Thompson grinned. “She’s got the hots for you.”
Chapter 7
What of the occupants [of the UFOs] themselves? They seem to come in two sizes, large and small, with the former predominating. The Hopkinsville humanoids and many of those recounted…are much akin in appearance to the “little folk” of legend and story—elves, brownies, etc. Large heads, spindly feet, and, generally a head that sits square on the shoulders without much evidence of neck are often described. The larger humanoids are reported to be human size or a little larger and are generally very well formed. Sometimes they have been termed beautiful. The smaller ones are generally described as about three and a half feet tall….
Therefore I must leave it to the reader’s own judgment what weight to assign to Close Encounters of the Third Kind in assessing the whole problem [of UFOs], always remembering that it may yet be discovered that the humanoid cases are the key to the whole problem.
Kirill Markov stood squinting under his fur hat as the wind gusted down the street. No matter how long he lived, he would never become accustomed to the cold. It knifed through his fine coat and iced his bones.
Maria was speaking to the driver of the car parked at the curb in front of their apartment building, while Markov stamped his feet and waited at the doorway. Neighbors were peering out of their windows, discreetly of course, but Markov could see their shadowy forms behind the curtains. Even though the automobile was unmarked, everyone sensed that it was a government car. Markov could feel the mixture of curiosity and terror that rippled through the apartment blocks like an electric current.
“It’s the professor!”
“They’re taking him away? In broad daylight?”
“Look for yourself.”
“His wife, too?”
“No, it doesn’t seem so.”
“They don’t look upset, either one of them.”
“Perhaps it’s not what we think, then.”
“Usually they come at night.”
“Pah! I know how they work. The professor may think he’s being taken to the airport or to some fancy university campus. Even his wife may think so. But take a good look at him. It’s the last you’ll ever see of him.”
“No!”
“That’s the way they took my brother, Grisha. Told him he was being transferred to a new job, in Kharkov. He went with a smile on his face. Into a cattle car that took him straight to Siberia. Eight years, they kept him there. He was a broken man when they let him back home to die.”
“But what could the professor have done…?”
“He’s a thinker. It doesn’t pay to think certain kinds of thoughts.”
Markov smiled to himself as he sensed their whispered conversations swirling through the apartments all around him.
No, my neighbors, he wanted to say. It’s not what you think. The government values me for my ability to think.
Maria finished her talk with the driver, straightened up and turned toward Markov. She was wearing only her regulation uniform, with nothing but the thin jacket to protect her blocky body. How she stood the cold was something Markov could never understand. Yet her feet were always like icebergs when she got into bed.
“Well, come on,” she called impatiently.
Markov picked up his briefcase, trotted down the steps to the curb and reached for the car door.
“In the back,” Maria said. “You sit in the back seat.”
“Oh. I see.” He pulled the rear door open and hesitated. Maria was standing next to him with her usual scowl on her face.
Markov looked into her eyes. “I…may not see you again for quite a while.”
She nodded matter-of-factly.
“Well…take good care of yourself, old girl.”
“You too,” she mumbled.
He put a hand on her shoulder and she turned her face so that he could kiss her cheek. He pecked at it, then quickly ducked into the car. She slammed the door shut and the driver started the motor with a horrible screech of the ignition.
As the car pulled away from the curb, Markov turned to wave at his wife. She had already started back inside the apartment building. For some inexplicable reason he felt a lump in his throat.
The Naval Research Laboratory lies along the Potomac River, almost directly in the glide path of the commercial jetliners coming into Washington’s National Airport.
Ramsey McDermott, squeezed into one of the Eastern shuttle’s narrow seats between the window and the hyperthyroid businessman who had spent the entire forty-minute flight shuffling papers and tapping out numbers on a pocket calculator, smiled grimly to himself as the plane flashed past NRL. Atop the central riverfront building was the venerable dish antenna of NRL’s fifty-foot radio telescope.
They can’t pick up the Jovian pulses with that piece of crap, McDermott told himself.
He had “double shuttled” in his haste to get to a personal meeting with Tuttle, taking one Eastern 727 from Boston to New York and then immediately getting on to the New York-to-Washington plane.