Burnout: the mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281 (41 page)

"Uh, listen, thanks for letting us know, Carl," Colin stammered. "I… I'll see to it that… that the others know."

"Thanks, Colin. I'll keep trying to reach Mark. I've got his cell phone number here someplace; I just have to find what the hell I've done with it. Listen… let me know if there's anything I can do." Carl's voice broke at the last.

"Will do, mate," Colin murmured, still in shock as he hung up the phone. Then he went looking for Ryan, who was doing some research in the observatory's library.

"Ryan, mate," Colin said, walking up to Ryan's desk and gesturing the other technicians over, "I've got some bad news, I'm afraid…"

* * * *

The journalist met Crash in the coffee shop. "I got your message," Crash said as the newsman sat down in the booth, across from him.

The reporter glanced suspiciously around the shop, ascertaining they would not be overheard, before answering. "Yeah. I'm still mad as hell over what happened to my story on your ‘experimental aircraft.' That wasn't even the report I put together."

"You know what I told you at the Visitor's Center," Crash pointed out.

"Yeah, but I thought you were a little over the top at the time," the reporter admitted, and Crash chuckled humorlessly.

"Sounds like it, doesn't it?" Crash agreed. "But now you know better." He glanced around; the room was nearly empty, and no one was paying them any attention. He leaned forward. "You asked for more. Here." He casually passed a CD across the table.

The journalist accepted it and secreted the disk. "What's this?"

Crash grinned mirthlessly. "Telemetry data. Very… special… data. And a jpeg image built from the data."

"Where'd you get it?"

"…A dear friend. His name was Dr. Michael C. Anders."

"The guy the mountain lion killed?"

"Do me a favor," Crash suggested.

"What?"

"Prove a cougar killed him."

The reporter's eyebrow rose in surprised understanding; he nodded, considering. "Huh. I might just try to do that. You got any more evidence?"

"Yep." Murphy nodded.

"Let's see." The reporter grinned, leaning forward eagerly.

"Nope." Crash was calm, but firm.

The journalist leaned back, dumbfounded. "Why not?"

"You haven't proved yourself to me yet," Crash explained. "All I've given you there is a dub," he nodded in the general direction of the reporter's pocket. "I'm not fool enough to give up control of my original evidence. When I start seeing unadulterated information come out, I'll consider giving you more."

The reporter paused in thought. "Fair enough," he agreed after a few moments.

Crash stood, dropping some bills on the table in payment for his now cold coffee. "I'll be in touch," he said, and strode out the door.

* * * *

An anxious, impatient Dr. Cayleigh Monteith tore open the package from America, finding an exquisite pair of sterling and turquoise earrings before extracting the handwritten letter within and opening it with shaking fingers. Her worried blue eyes scanned down over its contents; suddenly they widened, and her hand flew to her mouth in shock, as her face paled.

Dear Dr. Monteith,

My name is Emmett Murphy. Mike might've mentioned me once or twice, although he probably would have referred to me as "Crash." Mike and I worked closely together on a couple of Space Shuttle missions and became very good friends as a result, the kind of friends that last for a lifetime. I know he mentioned you to me, many times. He loved you very, very much. I'm enclosing the gift he got for you, which he never got the chance to mail, himself.

There's no good way to put this, Cayleigh. I'm afraid I have very bad news. Mike was working undercover for the Australian government and it dovetailed right into an investigation I was involved in for my government. He very courageously gave his life to save an astronaut friend and myself. Before he died, he gave me a message for you, however. He told me to tell you, "Meet me in the Great Nebula of Orion. I'll be waiting."

I do strongly suggest that you do not let anyone know that you know he was an operative. I cannot stress this enough. The situation is still very volatile, and it could put you at risk, as well. I can barely excuse the fact that I was unable to save Mike. I could never forgive myself if anything happened to you, too.

If there is anything I can do, you have only to ask. I am sorrier than I can find words to say.

Ever your friend,

Crash

"Oh… oh, no," she whispered in horror, collapsing onto the nearest seat as grief-stricken tears flooded her eyes and spilled over. "Oh, Mike…"

She curled up on the settee, buried her face in the pillows, and wept her broken heart out.

* * * *

An eager George Phillips sat down at the dining table in his somewhat battered RV hidden in the Nevada desert, the RV whose interior had been remodeled in aluminum foil so that it now resembled some sort of giant roasting pan, and opened the package. The return address on the package read, "E. R. Murphy, P.O. Box 119, Clear Lake, Texas." The RV's tiny dining room was packed with friends, the same friends who had so recently joined him on a nearby mountainside in Nevada. "What's in it, George?" one asked, excited.

"Gimme a minute, Paul," Phillips replied, emptying out styrofoam packing peanuts. "I gotta get down to it, first… woops…"

Phillips paused, as his fingers contacted something hard and sharp. Pulling it out so as not to cut himself, he found himself staring at a small, broken sliver of ceramic, only about an inch and a half long, with a strange metallic luster.

"Ooo," Paul murmured in awe, impressed. "George, do you know what that is?"

"Yeah," George nodded, stunned, staring at the tiny treasure trove he held in his hands. "I sure do. And I know what it means, too. They did it. The guys really did it. They sent me a piece of an Aurora. An honest to God piece of an Aurora, right here in my hands. Hard proof."

"Hey, there's something else in here," a petite brunette known as Peggy, remarked, rummaging around in the remaining packing peanuts inside the box.

"What is it?" her friend Caren questioned, leaning over.

Peggy fished out the object. "It's a CD," she noted, bemused. "It's labeled, ‘Telemetry Data and Images.'"

"Oh man," Paul exclaimed eagerly. "George, where's your comp? Get it out! Get it out!"

"Right over here," Phillips noted, hauling his personal laptop up from its storage bin beneath the dining bench. "Calm down just a dad-gum minute." He hooked up the laptop and booted it. The group clustered in the RV struggled to remain patient while the computer powered up and loaded. Finally it gave a loud beep, indicating that it was ready and waiting for whatever Phillips would ask of it.

"Give me that," Phillips murmured, reaching for the CD. Peggy handed it over, and Phillips popped open the case and extracted the disc, then ejected the CD holder on his laptop, seating the precious CD inside, before closing the slide. There was a hum that increased in frequency as the drive spun up, then a directory window popped up on screen.

Everyone clustered behind Phillips, peering over his shoulders, as he scrolled down through the directory, exploring the CD's contents.

"Oh! Oh!" Caren exclaimed, pointing in excitement. "Look at that one! Look at that one!" She tapped the screen beside the filename, "bogey.htm" and stared at Phillips expectantly.

"Okay," Phillips grinned up at her. "That does look intriguing. Let's see what we got here." He double clicked on the file, and the screen sprang to life.

Moments later, the screen was filled with a mottled, low-resolution image of Earth, the same image that Murphy and Anders had so painstakingly reconstructed from the telemetry data. Near one corner, a red rectangle stood out, added to the image to draw attention to what was inside it.

"Hm," Phillips murmured curiously, running the cursor over the rectangle. The red color flashed a bright green.

"Huh," Caren noted. "It's got a link."

"Yeah," Phillips agreed. "Let's see…"

He clicked on the outline, and forthwith, what was inside it expanded outward, opening a new window, whose image boundary was the red rectangle.

Inside that rectangle was an oblong cigar-shaped object, jet black, with short, wing-like protuberances.

"Bingo," Peggy said, grinning from ear to ear, as the group inside the RV burst into soft, joyful cheering. "Meet the Aurora, face to face! We got it, George! The jackpot of all UFO studies!"

"Yeah, we do," Phillips said, matching Peggy's grin. "I can't wait to see Mike and Crash and tell ‘em thanks."

Paul blinked, sobering. "You ain't talkin' about Dr. Mike Anders, are ya, George?" he asked, worried.

"Yeah," Phillips beamed. "Him and Crash Murphy. They're the ones that did this," he gestured at the image on screen. "The ones we helped get in. I'm damn proud to call ‘em pals of mine. Why?"

Paul glanced at Peggy and Caren, meeting their eyes, and the two women looked away, upset. "I… George, I thought you'd heard, buddy," he said softly.

"Heard what?" Phillips asked, looking from one to the other of his assembled friends, seeing their disturbed expressions, something cold clenching in his gut.

"Dr. Mike Anders is dead," Paul said, subdued. "They killed him. The story is supposed to be that he was out for a walk through all those radio telescopes over in New Mexico, and a cougar attacked and killed him. Of course, we know he wasn't anywhere near New Mexico…"

George Phillips paled, shocked. "Mike… is dead?" He stared at the others, willing them to confess. "This is some sort of a joke, right?"

"No, George," Caren said quietly, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. "I saw it on the news too."

"That means we gotta be careful," Paul noted, glancing about in suspicion at the windows and door. "If they killed him, they wouldn't think twice about coming after us, too. We could be dead men, all of us."

"I…" Phillips began, then put his face in his hands, fighting back tears. "Damn."

Peggy gave him a sympathetic look, then glared at Paul. "Mike gave his life to get us this stuff," she declared. "We need to make sure it gets out there, so people know the truth."

Phillips sat staring at the laptop screen. "Mike's… dead…" he whispered. "It… it can't be… I didn't think they'd… kill anybody…"

Paul shook his head, still uncomfortable. "From what you told me, I thought they tried to kill Crash. Sure as hell sounded like it to me, anyway."

"Well," Phillips began, raising his head, then stopped, realizing he didn't have a good answer. "I…" He shook his head, unconvinced. "Had to be the greys. It had to be. The reptiles would never do something like that," he declared, then slumped again. "Dear God…"

"Put it on the book website, George, like Peggy said," Caren urged. "Get it out there, so people can see. That's why Crash sent it to you. You know that."

"Yeah," Phillips agreed, jaw growing firm. "Yeah, I'll do that. For Mike."

"For Mike," the others said in unison, with quiet respect, as if pronouncing a benediction.

Paul glanced at his watch, then thought for a long moment. He worked up his courage, seeing the respect Phillips had had for Anders, and decided to try to use the fallen scientist as a kind of personal role model. "If you want, I'll work on that," he offered bravely. "We gotta get rolling, though. We need to be going through Inyokern by dinnertime, if we're going to make it to the meeting site tonight. And we have to go around that," he jerked a disgusted thumb toward the window, where Area 51 lurked like some dark, hulking beast, only a few mountain ridges to the west.

"Yeah," Phillips said in a low-key tone, still in a kind of mild shock. "Yeah, okay, Paul. Take some digital pics of the ceramic, too," he murmured, scrabbling in the computer storage bin and producing a digital camera. "Get it all up on the web site as soon as you can. I'll get this thing going, and start us heading toward Death Valley."

"Good man," Caren encouraged. "We'll make Mike Anders proud."

"Yes," Phillips averred, head snapping up, eyes hardening in determination, as he rose and moved to the driver's seat. "Yes, we will."

* * * *

Blake took his time, getting well out of town in the loaner Humvee, while still within cell phone tower range. It was late at night, and the stars were out. He climbed out of the cab, and eased himself into the open bed in the back of the vehicle. He settled back comfortably, leaning against the wheel well in the side of the vehicle bed. Then the scientist looked up, deep into the inky black velvet sky spangled with iridescent diamond chips, for long moments, permitting himself a brief time to lose himself in the depths of space and blot out recent memories. He sighed happily, his eyes picking out familiar constellations, galaxies, gas clouds, and other Messier objects.

Finally he pulled out his cell phone, along with a small slip of paper with a hand-written sequence of keystrokes on it, as well as a few small bloodstains. Following the instructions on the paper, he dialed a specific number in a specific sequence, then waited to see what happened on the other end.