Fade Out (19 page)

‘I don't think I'm able to answer that, sir. To the best of my knowledge there are no military personnel associated with this project.' Larsen gave it an absolutely straight delivery.

Connors looked over his shouder at Wedderkind, then back at Larsen. ‘You are right, of course. Perhaps I'd better rephrase the question.'

‘I think the best thing is for you to talk to the site organizer, sir. He's up on the Ridge.'

Six miles from the highway, Connors caught sight of some more cadets through the trees. They were driving in a line of marker stakes around the Ridge. There was a temporary barrier of dirt-filled oil drums where the marker stakes hit the road. It was manned by four more
of the look-alike cadets. Two of them had shotguns. All of them had the peaks of their blue hard hats pulled down over their eyes in the best drill-sergeant fashion.

‘Connors, Brecetti, Wedderkind, and Wetherby,' said Larsen.

A cadet checked the names against the list on his clipboard, and handed out four plastic name tags that included a mug shot. ‘Please put these on and wear them at all times.' He stepped back and waved up the barrier.

They drove through, rounded a curve and parked in between the pines alongside several other vehicles.

‘We have to walk from here,' said Larsen.

Ahead of them, across the dirt road, was a line of red stakes. Beyond them, Connors could see Volkert's patrol car, the tow truck and the Air Force Rescue truck, still parked where they had stalled over a week before.

Connors turned to Larsen. ‘Do the stakes mark the edge of the cutout zone?'

‘Only approximately, sir. We haven't driven up any further than our parking point back there. We put the stakes in halfway between there and the stalled vehicles to serve as a basic reference point.'

Connors felt a tingle of excitement as he followed Larsen through the line of red stakes. He looked back at Wedderkind and saw that his eyes had taken on a new shine. Brecetti was rubbing his hands together. Wetherby had stopped to take in the whole scene along with a few deep breaths of pine-laden air.

On the windshields of all three vehicles were taped notices: ‘DO NOT TAMPER WITH OR ATTEMPT TO MOVE THIS VEHICLE.' The hood of Volkert's patrol car had been left open.

Connors took a peek at the engine, then turned to Wedderkind. ‘Has anybody examined these?'

‘Yes,' said Wedderkind. ‘I went over them all when we were up here last week. Before you went to see Bodell.'

‘You were taking a risk, weren't you?'

‘He was too busy shooting at Weissmann,' said Wedderkind.

Connors turned to Larsen. ‘Has there been any word on the converted diesel trucks?'

‘Yes, sir. We anticipate receiving the first batch this evening. Would you like to move on to the plateau?'

‘Sure, let's go.' Connors exchanged an amused look with Wedderkind, and fell into step beside Larsen. The others tagged along behind. Connors looked back over his shoulder at Wedderkind. ‘Now that I think of it, how come you know so much about automobiles?'

‘This may surprise you,' said Wedderkind, ‘but twenty-five years ago I was still doing my own hot rod conversions.'

‘That was before he became ambitious,' said Brecetti.

The dirt road degenerated into the dried mud tracks of Bodell's old Dodge. Above them, they could hear the sound of another helicopter bringing in more people from Glasgow.

Connors looked back at Wedderkind. ‘We're going to have to get this road cut through to the plateau.'

‘I think the plan is to get started on that tonight, sir.' It was Larsen being helpful again. He angled off to the right of the tyre tracks. A band of white paint on the tree trunks marked the way through.

‘How old are you, Larsen?'

‘Twenty-three, sir.'

‘This must be a whole lot more fun than walking in right angles and eating at attention, right?'

‘You only do that as a freshman, sir,' explained Larsen patiently. ‘In addition to our military training, upperclass cadets are required to complete a Bachelor of Science
degree course and a program of enrichment studies. We are also called upon to perform command and staff functions within the Cadet Wing.'

And we also learn how to put down wheeler-dealers from Washington without being insubordinate, thought Connors. Full marks, Larsen.

The ground became littered with broken branches. There were more hanging in the trees. Ahead of them, they could see shattered tree trunks and the open sky.

They stepped out into the semicircular area of devastation. The ground was covered with small splinters of wood – as if someone had emptied a million matchboxes. The rim of the crater was about a hundred yards away. The ground was heaped up around it just like the sugar in Wedderkind's demonstration bowl.

Connors looked at Larsen as they walked towards the crater. ‘How big is this thing?'

‘About thirty yards across, sir.'

Connors turned to the others. ‘There were three hours between the time people reported seeing the fireball over Broken Mill and the time Volkert got up to the top of Crow Ridge and found this crater. How the hell could it have buried itself so fast?'

‘I don't know,' said Wedderkind. He stooped down and picked up a handful of wood splinters. He looked around him. ‘There's no sign of a fire.' He showed the splinters to Brecetti. ‘They're not charred. You see? It looks as if they have been shredded. Look at how the wood fibres have disintegrated. The pressure from the blast must have been tremendous. One would have expected it to devastate the whole plateau, but as you can see, the rest of the trees are still standing.'

‘The damage could have been caused by ultralow-frequency sound waves,' said Brecetti. ‘The right wavelength could set up a resonance in the timber that would
blow it apart. Remember the experiments the French carried out at Marseilles in 1964?'

‘Was that the “Jericho Trumpet?”' asked Connors. ‘They split concrete apart with a sound gun.'

‘That's right,' said Brecetti. ‘Lower frequencies are even more destructive. At 3.5 hertz the sound waves create subsonic vibrations that can literally shake humans apart.'

‘Insane,' said Connors. ‘I can never understand why you guys fool around with that kind of thing.'

‘Ultrasonic high-frequency vibrations was another possibility we discussed back in Ohio. Crusoe could have buried himself by shaking the ground loose around him – rather like the way insects burrow into sand.'

‘This fireball that people saw,' said Connors. ‘Could that have been retro-rockets firing, to slow its rate of descent before landing?'

Wedderkind shook his head. ‘Not possible. The heat would have burned or scorched this area. There's no sign of that.' He tossed the handful of wood splinters away.

‘At least we now know Crusoe isn't invisible,' said Connors.

‘Don't count on that.'

Connors stared at Wedderkind. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Bob, if Crusoe can alter the physical properties of his surface structure so that it fluoresces on a wavelength we can see, he must be able to reverse the process to get himself out of trouble.'

‘Oh, tremendous…'

‘Bob, all we're doing is tossing a few ideas around. You might as well get used to it because there're going to be a lot of sessions like this. We don't have one single reference point from which we can begin to work out what this thing is or what it does. And when we dig it up,
we
still
may not know. So if you're waiting for a set of blueprints and a service manual, forget it.'

‘I know what the problems are,' said Connors. ‘And I am not expecting any miracles.'

‘Not expecting any? You've got a miracle.' Wedderkind waved towards the crater. ‘Down there. Something conceived by intelligent life beyond Earth. Maybe even containing it. Something that's travelled across our galaxy past the billions of other stars to the one we circle every year. Why ours? As a star, our sun is way down the list. A
shmendrick.
And yet Crusoe's here – not only on our planet, but on our
part
of it! If you were to try and calculate the chances of something like this happening, they'd be – '

‘Out of this world?' suggested Connors.

‘Exactly,' said Wedderkind. ‘Forget the problems. We can find a way around them. Just be grateful. A chance like this comes once in a million – no, what am I talking about? Not even that – once in a
billion
years!'

They walked up on to the rim of the crater and looked down into it. It was twelve to fifteen feet deep, with shallow sloping sides of loose earth and scattered stones.

‘You'll probably notice a slight tingling inside the head after a few minutes,' said Larsen. ‘It occurs in the immediate vicinity of the crater.'

‘Yes, that makes senes,' said Wedderkind.

‘Some people are more affected than others,' said Larsen.

‘How?' asked Connors. He could already feel a faint prickling inside his head. Like tiny needles. Ice cool. It wasn't unpleasant.

‘Mild dizziness. Disorientation. Temporary loss of balance,' said Larsen. ‘It clears up once you leave the area of the crater.'

‘What causes it, Arnold? Crusoe's magnetic field?'

‘Yes. You have minute but measurable chemically-created electric currents flow through the brain, triggering off signals that are translated into thoughts, speech, body functions, or movement. Once you step inside Crusoe's cutout zone, a surge starts to build up in those currents – just like any other electrical circuit.'

‘Does that mean my brain is going to blow a fuse?' asked Connors.

‘No,' said Wedderkind. ‘But it might stall.' He walked down the slope towards the centre of the crater with Brecetti.

Connors followed with Wetherby and Larsen. He still found it hard to believe that Crusoe was buried somewhere underneath them. ‘What do you think he's going to do?'

Wedderkind looked at him. ‘Do? The big question isn't what, but
when.
You have to remember that he could be operating on an entirely different time scale to us. He may have taken a thousand, ten thousand or ten
million
years to reach us. He may not be in a hurry to
do
anything.'

‘You mean there might not be any activity in our lifetime?'

‘It's possible. We can either wait and see, or we can let him know that
we
know he's down there.'

Connors felt as if he was about to float. ‘I'm getting some real vibrations, Arnold. Do you feel anything?'

‘A slight dizziness,' said Wedderkind. ‘How about you, Phil?'

‘I'm getting a sensation of imbalance,' said Brecetti.

Connors nodded. ‘Yes, me too.'

They all looked at Wetherby.

‘I feel as if I'm going to be sick.'

‘Sir?'

Connors looked around. Beyond Larsen, on the rim of
the crater, was General Allbright. He was dressed in spotless olive-drab fatigues, with a bright blue scarf tucked in the open neck, and one of those curvy-brimmed stetsons that the Guam and Thailand-based B-52 crews had made fashionable during the Vietnam War. And he was sitting on a horse – a magnificent, long-maned palomino.

Behind him, wearing blue hard hats, were two young aides, also mounted, but on lesser breeds.

Allbright looked down at Connors and the others with deepset prairie farmer's eyes two shades lighter than his scarf.

‘Gentlemen,' he said, in a way that somehow robbed the word of all respect.' Welcome to Crow Ridge.'

Given the fact that no motor vehicles could operate on the Ridge, Allbright's choice of personal transportation was immensely practical. Nevertheless, it still took Connors by surprise.

Connors decided it was the horse that had thrown him. The palomino was too good-looking, too photogenic. It wasn't a solid, US Fifth Cavalry type of horse, it was the type Gene Autry and Ronald Reagan used to ride. It threw an interesting sidelight on Allbright's character.

Allbright dropped easily out of the saddle as Connors led the others out of the crater to meet him. Although he topped six feet, once they were face to face, Connors found Allbright less overpowering than he had expected. Like so many heroic figures, he looked a lot taller in the saddle than he did on the ground.

Connors shook his firm right hand, then introduced the others. If he was expecting sparks to fly, he was disappointed. Allbright was attentive, courteous and briskly efficient. He also possessed the easy amiability of a bridge player with a handful of trump cards.

He led the way to a vantage point on the peak of the ridge and pointed out the proposed locations for the housing, workshop and research facilities. ‘The boundaries of Bodell's land are being staked out now. They'll be patrolled day and night until the high wire and chain link fence go up. We have a civilian contractor starting in on that tomorrow. They'll be working three shifts from a base camp down by Highway 22.' As if reading Connors' mind, he added, ‘Don't worry. None of them will get any further than the fence.'

‘I'm counting on that,' said Connors. ‘But while they're around, I think it would be a good idea if your people could keep the hardware out of sight. The two I saw riding shotgun on the gate looked as if they were guarding the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I know we can't afford to take any chances on the security of this project, but we don't want to create a situation where people on the outside start asking the wrong kind of questions.'

Allbright nodded politely. ‘I think I get the idea.' He signalled to his aide to bring up the palomino.

‘If you gentlemen will excuse me, I'd like to check the progress of the work in hand. Some temporary tented accommodation has been set aside for your use over on the south flank of the ridge.' Allbright pointed over their heads. ‘You'll find your luggage there.'