Aquifer: A Novel (26 page)

A few moments later Clayton motioned for the sheriff to join him by the riverbank. “It looks like Pearl was right about one thing,” he surmised. “Something was definitely dragged down to the water’s edge. I took pictures at every angle imaginable, but you might want to have some of your men from the crime lab come down here and examine these drag marks to see what they can determine. But I don’t think it’s rustlers.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, notice these animal tracks. Whatever was doing the dragging was a large animal and it’s missing half of its right front foot,” he said as he pointed to one of the impressions made in the soft mud. “You might want to have the lab make a casting of that print.”

Clayton took a tape measure that the Sheriff pulled from the duffle bag. He carefully extended it and measured the span of the tracks along the riverbank.

“I’ve never seen tracks quite like these before. They’re partially webbed and appear to be amphibian, but that’s impossible.” Clayton was a world-renowned expert on amphibian tracks. He could correctly identify any amphibian with just a cursory glance at its tracks. His ability to identify other animals by their tracks was almost equally proficient. “Whatever it was, it was large. The span is a little over six feet from hind foot to front foot,” Clayton remarked introspectively as his mind searched for any similarity between these tracks with those of other animals with which he was familiar. Try as he could, he could find no correlation.

“This has got to be a hoax of some type though. Amphibians just don’t get that large,” Clayton remarked as they approached the water’s edge. Clayton knelt down beside the riverbank to examine something familiar that had caught his eye. “Well, well. What have we here?”

“What have you got?”

Clayton was kneeling beside a clear viscous glob no larger than a tablespoon.

“Well, if I didn’t know better I’d say that it was a mucus deposit from some form of amphibian. But no amphibian leaves this much mucus. If you don’t mind I’d like to take a sample of this too,” said Clayton.

*

Larry and Welton were already eating supper at Opal’s Café when Clayton joined them with his heaping tray.

“Were you able to determine what happened to that hunter?” asked Welton.

“Not really. We photographed the area and collected everything we found into an evidence bag. But I did find something very interesting,” said Clayton.

“Oh?” asked Welton.

Clayton pulled the vial of mucus from his shirt pocket. “I’m pretty sure what this stuff is, but I’ve never seen it in quantities like what was there.”

“What is it?” asked Larry.

“It appears to be a mucus secretion from some type of amphibian, but I’ll have to run some tests on it to be certain,” Clayton replied.

“I’m just an astrophysicist, but wouldn’t it take a very large amphibian to leave that much slime?” inquired Welton.

“It surely would,” replied Larry.

Clayton pulled the second vial from his shirt pocket. “And this sticky stuff is not like anything I have ever seen.”

Clayton’s analytical mind begin searching for answers to the questions presented by his excursion with the Sheriff; the web-footed tracks he could not identify, the massive size of the creature leaving them, the sticky substance on the hunter’s hat and the quantity of apparent amphibian mucous secretion.

Then his mind returned to the sonic boom and the massive object flying over their heads. Then it raced forward to the brief view he had caught of the creature on the military transport truck when he and Larry had tried to investigate the meteorite crash almost three months earlier. Nothing was adding up. Yet his mind sorted through all of this information and illogically arrived at the only possible conclusion.
Could it be that . . . no, that could not be possible
, he thought. Nevertheless, all the evidence seemed to substantiate the hypothesis forming in his mind.
This is crazy. I’ve got to get more information before I share this with anyone
, he concluded.

“The Sheriff thought that the hunter may have run afoul of a band of rustlers,” said Clayton. “But I think something else happened. I’d like to have another look at that impact site again, only closer this time!” said Clayton.

“You mean the meteorite?” asked Welton.

“Exactly! You gentlemen care to join me?” Clayton invited.

“Now you’re talking my field. I can’t believe you haven’t taken me there before now,” stated Welton.

“Let’s just hope that the military is gone and that we find something of interest,” said Clayton.

=/\=

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

Crash Site

Later that night the three men drove through the woods hoping to get a closer look at the impact crater. They pulled the Hummer off the road and hid it in the trees about a mile from the crash site. Cautiously they made their way through the woods. It had been nearly three months since the supposed meteorite crash, so Clayton knew that they were not likely to encounter the military. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to take any chances.

They came equipped with flashlights, lanterns, ropes, leather gloves and backpacks filled with various other hand-tools.
Better to bring tools and not need them than to wish for a tool left behind
, Clayton had told them.

The brilliant light of the full moon allowed them to travel quite easily without the aid of artificial illumination. Arriving at the area where the MP had previously stopped them, Clayton was pleased to verify his suspicions that the military had concluded its operations and had left the area. They pressed on until they eventually arrived at the impact site.

The trio stood on the rim of the crater and were stunned at its vastness. The crater was oblong in shape, about one-half mile long and about one-hundred-fifty feet wide. At the far end, where the initial impact had occurred, the crater was about ten feet deep. Its depth progressively increased to about sixty feet at the rim where the men were standing.

“Whoa! I wasn’t prepared for anything of this enormity,” exclaimed Welton as he surveyed the crater before them. “Regardless of what the military claimed, this crater was definitely not created by a meteorite or asteroid impact.”

“How can you be so sure? We just got here,” asked Larry.

“Primarily because there is not enough damage. A meteorite carries a tremendous amount of kinetic energy. One large enough to create a crater this size would contain enough energy to equal 2,000 Hiroshima type atomic bombs,” explained Welton.

“So it would have deforested a large section of this area?” asked Clayton seeking clarification.

“Precisely. An asteroid considerably smaller than this struck Siberia on June 30, 1908 and deforested over 4,000 square miles. And this crater is entirely too shallow. A meteorite with a diameter this large would have punched a hole in the ground much deeper than this crater,” continued Welton.

“I didn’t realize that meteorites contained so much energy,” said Larry.

“Well, most meteorites are so small that they never reach the surface of the earth. They’re usually about the size of a grain of sand and they burn up upon entering our atmosphere. But their energy level, like all moving objects, is a function of their mass and speed. One this large, and traveling at the speeds they travel, would have probably destroyed half the state of Missouri; not to mention the seismic waves, ash fallout and other complications that would have directly affected a half-dozen other states, and indirectly, the entire planet,” explained Welton.

He pointed to the trees at the far end of the crater, about one half mile to their right. “See how those trees have been topped? This crater is very shallow over by the trees and then gets progressively deeper as it approaches this way,” he gestured as he drew his hand toward them. “Something clipped those trees and then scooped out this oblong crater. Meteorites hit the earth almost perpendicularly, forming a crater that is almost round since they’re sucked in by earth’s gravitational pull and have no aerodynamic properties. Whatever made this one had a fairly low angle of trajectory, indicating a glide path or some form of aerodynamic lift.”

“That certainly fits with what we experienced that night,” observed Clayton.

“So you think this was created by a plane crash?” asked Larry.

“Probably not. I don’t know of any plane large enough to create a hole this big. And even then, when a plane crashes, the wings generally get ripped off, or the tail section separates from the fuselage. They’re all sent hurtling in different directions, creating multiple, smaller, but adjacent impact craters, and dissipating the debris over a larger area than what this exhibits,” explained Welton. “Whatever hit here remained largely intact.”

“Then what do you suppose crashed here?” Clayton inquired.

“I don’t know yet,” responded Welton, obviously suspecting more than he was revealing. “But from the general look of things the military did a fine job of trying to cover up whatever actually did happen. It’s not a bad looking sinkhole. And that cover story they promulgated was nothing but pure poppycock. Let’s climb down inside the crater and see what kind of evidence we can find.”

The men entered the crater and began their descent down the steep sidewall, carefully picking their way as they went. Throughout their descent, Welton periodically stopped to examine the rocks and soil with a magnifying glass. At erratic intervals he also dug little test holes with a garden trowel to determine how deep a particular soil characteristic might penetrate. About two-thirds of the way to the bottom of the crater he stopped for a short rest.

“Notice that there is an almost total lack of glazation?” Welton quizzed.

“Glazation?” asked Larry.

“There is so much heat generated in a meteorite impact that it melts the surrounding rocks. The melted quartz, silica, mica and other similar minerals then cool, forming a thin glass-like coating on everything.”

Welton picked up a small chunk of limestone which had a tiny patch of glazed material and handed it to Larry. “But as you can see,” he continued, “there isn’t much evidence of that here. And a large airplane would have been carrying a lot of aviation fuel, but there is no fuel residue anywhere – so I think we can conclusively rule out both a meteorite and a plane crash as the cause of this crater. Nor was it created by a rocket or satellite because they aren’t this wide,” he explained as he gestured with his hands to the far wall.

“Then what other options are there?” asked Larry.

“I have an idea but I’d rather not say unless we can find some supportive evidence,” Welton answered. In his field of study it was usually best to use caution before offering conjecture. “But one thing’s for certain; the military went to a lot of trouble to clean up this area. Something definitely happened here that they don’t want us to know about.”

Clayton gestured to the hole at the bottom of the crater where the cave roof had been broken through. “Let’s see what we can learn from down there.”

They completed their descent to the crater’s floor and approached the edge of the breach in the cave roof. Searching around until they found a suitable boulder, they attached a knotted rope to it and descended the fifteen feet to the cave floor. By the light of their flashlights and Coleman lanterns they began inspecting the interior of the cave. The tunnel was about seventy-five feet wide with a river running through it. The men fanned out and began searching for anything unusual.

The riverbank was relatively flat, about forty feet wide and composed of damp clay. The tunnel was devoid of stalactites and stalagmites and had the appearance of experiencing frequent total flooding. There were numerous military boot prints in the soft clay which Welton pointed out as an oversight by the military, especially since they had taken such great precautions to eradicate any sign of boot prints or other indications of their presence in the impact crater’s bowl above the cave.

The trio had worked its way about one hundred feet upstream from the roof opening and were spread about thirty feet apart. They were extremely meticulous about examining every inch of the cave floor and walls.

Suddenly Larry yelled to the others, “Hey! I’ve found something.”

Welton joined Larry while Clayton continued his search. Larry used his pocket knife to dig a thin piece of jagged metal sheeting, about two feet long and a foot wide, from the cave floor. When he had it dug up he handed it to Welton who was as excited as a toddler on Christmas morning.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s as thick as common sheet metal,” said Welton as he hefted the metal in one hand, “. . . but weighs no more than aluminum foil.” He grabbed each end of the object with his hands, placed his knee in the center of it and unsuccessfully tried to bend it. “But it’s as strong as a steel plate ten times as thick.” He then borrowed Larry’s pocket knife and tried to scratch the metal. This too proved to be unsuccessful. “I’m no metallurgist but I’d lay odds on this not being any metal known on this planet,” observed Welton as he turned the piece of metal over to examine the other side. “And look at these markings,” he said as he brushed off the loose clay with the palm of his hand. “It appears to be writing of some type, but none that I am familiar with.”