Close Encounters of the Third Kind

CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF
THE FIRST KIND:

Sighting of an unidentified flying object.

CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF
THE SECOND KIND:

Physical evidence after a sighting.

CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF
THE THIRD KIND:

Contact between human and alien beings.

For Roy Neary, a young engineer who long ago felt the magic of wishing upon a star, it all starts the night of a strange local blackout—a blackout in which the power fails but the most vivid of colors emerge. It is a night that begins in doubt and wonder but leaves an impression strong enough to change the rest of his life.

Here is a novel that makes that third kind of encounter an event so colorful, so full of sound and wonder that it dazzles the senses and enriches the imagination. For the dream behind the encounter is as old as man; its fruition as modern and intricate as today’s world can make it.

In addition to writing the novel, S
TEVEN
S
PIELBERG
wrote and directed the record-breaking movie of the same title. He also directed one of the most commercially successful movies ever made,
Jaws,
and the highly acclaimed
The Sugarland Express.

Lyrics from “When You Wish Upon a Star”
by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington © Copyright 1940
Bourne Co. Copyright renewed. Used by permission.

Copyright © 1977 by Columbia Pictures,
a division of Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in connection with reviews written specifically for inclusion in a magazine or newspaper.

ISBN: 0-440-01373-9

Manufactured in the United States of America

C L O S E
E N C O U N T E R S
O F   T H E
T H I R D   K I N D

1  

S
even misshapen figures emerged from a blinding swirl of desert sand and sage. Their images hazing in and out of tons of gushing earth. Three somewhat stupefied Federates were waiting just outside the one-horse town of Sonoyita in Northern Mexico. Honking and tugging hysterically at their hitching place, the burros sensed another intrusion and kicked at everything in sight. The figures were almost upon them now and from shared views the first building in this haunted desert junction loomed ominously. Straight up, the sun said noon, but its color was blood, matching an antique neon Coca-Cola sign within the adobe frame of some Cantina oasis. The first figure out of the wind was just over six feet and greeted the three Mexican police with a curt nod and a barrage of Spanish. “Are we the first to arrive?” the khaki-clad man shouted in high school Spanish, his Rommel goggles and leather bandana hiding his nationality. “Are we first here?” he demanded.

The stunned policeman answered him by nodding southward, where another group of explorers was materializing from thin air. And at the fringes of Sonoyita in a desert storm in 1973 the two teams came together, fourteen total, handshakes brief and voices discreet.

“Is the French interpreter with you?” The hidden face had an American voice, slightly bucolic, maybe Ohio-Tennessee. “Yes, sir. I speak French but I’m not an interpreter by profession.” The voice belonged to the shortest member of the second-arriving group, and in it was the slightest suggestion of fear. Beefing up to compete with the wind howl, David Laughlin began to sound more important. “My occupation is cartography, topographies. I’m a map maker. A map maker.”

“Can you speak French, sir? Can you translate English into French, French into English?”

“If you go slow and understand this is not what they pay me for.” Interrupting, another figure came forward and extended a hand to the cartographer and spoke broken English with an accent that was native French.

“You are Monsieur . . . uh . . . Loog-oh-line?”

“Uh . . . Laughlin,” Laughlin gently corrected, and shook the hand. There was something about the Frenchman’s voice that invited soft, careful responses.

“Ah,
oui,”
the Frenchman chuckled almost apologetically.
“Oui, oui
,
pardon.”
And then in French this time. “And, Mr. Laughlin, how long have you been a project member with us?”

Laughlin was proud to answer that question and he chose his words carefully.

“From the time of my country’s merger with the French in ’69 I attended the Montsoreau talks the week the French broke through, my congratulations, Mr. Lacombe.” Lacombe smiled, but the team was itching to move on in anticipation of what they had come all this way to see. Sensing this, Mr. Lacombe led the way and began to converse with Laughlin as quickly as he went. He waved to another team member and in several seconds Robert Watts, Lacombe’s personal bodyguard, was in sandy step.

“Robert,
écoute
Monsieur Laugh-o-line.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Say to Robert in English, Mr. Laugh-o-line, this what I say to you now,
en français. Alors.”
Lacombe rattled off a statement in French and Laughlin said it in English to Robert only a beat or so behind the spoken word.

“You are going to translate not only what I will say,” Laughlin enunciated, “but also my feelings and my emotions. I must be understood perfectly.”

Up ahead the Mexican Federales were shouting and pointing at things in an area being pummeled now by forty-five-mile-an-hour winds. So much dirt blew across everyone’s eyes that the first object intermittently resembled a dragonfly with a fifty-foot wingspan. The men approached cautiously, and the phantom shape began to tell them what had only been hearsay twenty-four hours earlier.

Something was sitting in the road, on what looked like wheels with wings, tail and propeller. There were markings on the sides and numbers on the wing. Behind it when the red wind gave pause were six others just like it. They were navy Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers circa World War II.

The expedition came to a halt. Lacombe took several steps and lifted his smudged bubble goggles. There was a curious peace about him now. He seemed neither anxious nor passive as he gathered in the view. The Frenchman’s face was incongruously youthful despite his gray weedy hair. Deep-cut lines started at his nostrils and ended to each side of his mouth. And as he made up his mind about what was to be done, the lines seemed to deepen. Lacombe took a breath, wiped dust from his tongue with the back of his hand, put on a sterile polyethylene glove and gave Laughlin his first order to relay. Laughlin nodded quickly after the spurt of words and shouted to everyone standing there.

“I want the numbers off the engine blocks.” Laughlin wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake by not editorially attributing the command with the understood “he.” No one seemed to care. In seconds fourteen project personnel were crawling across the wings and tail opening hatches and unscrewing caps. Everyone wore Playtex Living Gloves. One technician rolled back the canopy. It slid open without a hitch. The grooves and ball bearings good as new. With his polyethylene glove, one of the technicians used surgical tweezers to extract a calendar stuck under the instrument panel. The calendar was a promotional item: “Trade Winds Bar, Pensacola, Florida.” But the date was the best part.

“Mr. Lacombe,” the gloved technician shouted breathlessly on the brink of discovery. “It’s dated May!”

“Quoi?”
Lacombe went right to Laughlin for the translation, but the technician was quicker. “May through December 1945.”

Lacombe understood this only too well. He beamed and raised his voice to Laughlin. Laughlin blanched and hollered to everyone in English.

“See if there is petrol . . . gasoline, in the tanks. See if the gasoline will support combustion.”

Standing next to Laughlin was the bodyguard, his arms sagging in wonderment.

“Jesus. These babies are in perfect shape.” A voice ripped the day apart in triumph. The voice sounded Southern.

“AE 3034567. Goddamn! AE 29930404. Christ! AE 335444536. Holy shit!” Laughlin left out the expletives and someone else checked the numbers against a sheet of paper.

“Numbers on the engine blocks match. So do the wing numerals.” The bandana that kept the sand from Lacombe’s nostrils and throat rose high around his face, his eyes were on fire as someone tested one of the Grumman’s landing lights. They cut a twin pattern in the thick air.

“C’est possible?”
Lacombe was slapping his sides, and Laughlin, befuddled now beyond reason, nudged Robert, the bodyguard.

“Would you bring me up to date?” Robert bent forward confidentially. “It’s Flight 19.”

Go on.

“Flight 19. Don’t you know? This was the squadron of aircraft departed Pensacola on training maneuvers in May ’45. That was the last anyone ever saw of them. Until today. You figure it out.”

“But where are the pilots? Where’s the crew?” Robert didn’t have the answer, he just shrugged when unintelligible hollering commenced a few feet beyond this activity. Lacombe rushed over, Laughlin on his heels. The three Federales had a collar. A tiny form huddled in the threshold of the Cantina. The Mexican police wouldn’t shut up, and all of their noise sounded like panic. Lacombe looked in Laughlin’s direction for a little help and David had to smile.