"I
see your problem," Okun said, stroking his beardless chin. "That's a
toughie, a definite toughie."
Everyone
fell silent for a moment. The tour had led Okun through the labyrinth
of what
was known only to drop him off here at this dead end.
"Another
question." Okun's hand was up in the air again. "Aren't we missing
something here? Something more important than whether we can get this
ship to
work. The so-called
bigger picture?"
"What
question are you thinking of?"
"Are
there more aliens out there, and are they going to come back?"
The
elaborate dinner the scientists had cooked up
was reheated, but by the time the food was actually ready to be served,
no one
felt like eating after Radecker had gone off like a hand grenade for a
second
time.
He'd
gone
down to the director's office to nose around in his new digs and found
something that made him very, very unhappy. In fact, after a few
minutes of
examining the lab's accounting ledgers, he was furious. Everyone in the
kitchen
stopped what they were doing and listened to the shouts bouncing off
the walls.
He came storming down the hallway and stopped in the doorway. In his
hand he
had a stack of receipts. On his face he had an indignant expression,
which he
focused on Dworkin. "Were you guys thinking I wouldn't turn you in when
I
found out about this? Have you all gone crazy from living down here so
long?"
I can't really believe Spelman has
given this barbarous hothead any real power,
Dworkin thought, knowing he would
have to defend
himself against this uppity technocrat.
It
hadn't
taken Radecker very long to discover some of the creative bookkeeping
procedures the scientists had developed to help them through the lean
years of
underfunding. Among other things, he'd checked the active personnel
roster.
According to this document, there were supposedly nine old men working
at the
below-ground facility—one of them 103 years old. Every month, a
government
paycheck came in for every name on that list, Radecker wanted an
explanation.
"What happens to the extra paychecks?" he demanded. Cibatutto suddenly
remembered an urgent errand over near the oven, so the task of
explaining fell
to Dworkin.
"We
cash them," he explained.
The scheme had been
in operation for several years. When it became clear that the flow of
money for
the project was slowly being choked down to a trickle, the staff had
either
resigned in protest or received transfers to other places. A hard-core
group of
twelve refused to leave. They all felt the questions surrounding these
visitors
were too urgent, too important, to let the lab die. So they dedicated
not only
their energy, but very often their personal savings as well to the
effort. They
had pooled their money to pay for new equipment and services such as
the
chemical tests they'd had done on several alien materials. When the
members of
this fraternity began to die off, their purchasing power declined as
well. They
couldn't get at the money in their retirement accounts, so they created
a new one.
They'd found a small bank in Las Vegas, Parducci Savings, that was
known for
asking very few questions, and they opened a joint account. Every month
the
checks were endorsed and deposited.
"I
knew something was wrong when I saw all that new equipment in the other
room."
"Sam,"
Freiling whispered loudly across the table, "this young man is angry
with
us. Who is he?"
"And
this is ridiculous!" Radecker blew up again, pointing at Freiling.
"The man is senile, totally unfit to be working here. The only reason
you're keeping him down here is so you can collect his money. He's
leaving on
the next cargo plane."
"Mr.
Radecker, please. We have maintained very detailed records, which I
would be
glad to have you examine. They show how every penny of the money was
used to
further our research efforts. Take a look around the labs, and you'll
see we
haven't used these funds on any extravagances for ourselves. We have
dedicated
our entire lives to the task of repairing and studying this vehicle.
Area 51 is
our home. It's been Dr. Freiling's home since 1951. He has nowhere else
to go.
We are his family now."
Radecker stood in
the doorway, shaking his head at the ceiling. Dworkin's speech seemed
to soften
his stance, but only slightly. "Do you understand how much trouble you
could get into for this? How am I going to explain this to Spelman? I
suppose you
want me to hide it from him and hang my own ass out on the line." He
waved
the papers in the air once more. "This is corruption, gentlemen. This
is theft,
this is tax fraud, this is…" An idea suddenly occurred to him. With a
sickened
expression on his face, he gazed at Dworkin. "Tell me these dead guys
aren't buried down here."
"No,
no. We own a group plot at a cemetery outside of Las Vegas."
Disgusted,
Radecker marched away back to his office.
"Sam"—Freiling
looked up at Dworkin—"don't let him send me away."
Brackish's
room was a former office suite on the same corridor with the other
scientists.
It came with its own bathroom and a plain steel bed with a lumpy
mattress. He
stretched out in bed that night and told himself he should think about
everything that had happened on this, the most extraordinary day of his
life.
But he found he couldn't stop thinking about the generator on the ship.
He
hadn't gotten a chance to ask them why they called it the aqua-box
despite its
decidedly non-aqua color.
On
the one
hand, it seemed so simple: the ship's power system wasn't holding a
charge.
There must be a rupture in the circuitry. In that case, it was merely a
matter
of locating the broken line and stitching it together as Cibatutto had
shown him.
On the other hand, it could be some other problem, something totally
unrelated
to the circuitry, something so exotic no human being could even
conceive of its
existence. The first possibility was, as Dworkin said, like looking for
a
needle in a haystack. The second offered even lower chances of success.
Nevertheless, he
decided to center on the second possibility. His instincts told him to
trust
the work the scientists had done over the past twenty-odd years. Not
only that.
He didn't want to be down there for twenty years himself duplicating
their
efforts. He decided to assume that the scientists had reassembled every
piece
of the ship correctly and that it was "good as new." He found himself
thinking about the little balsa-wood-and-magnet saucer he'd caused to
fly over
Caltech. If someone had come along and found that saucer on the ground
and
started looking for its power source, they could put it together ten
million
ways and never figure it out. The power wasn't inside the ship. It was
in the
electromagnetic cannons strapped to the walls. Could the aliens have
space-based generators? Of course, they wouldn't be EMFs, or we'd have
picked
that up as radio and television distortion. He smiled at the ludicrous
picture
in his head of megamonster power stations circling the earth and
beaming power
down to the UFOs. But if the power wasn't inside the ship and wasn't
being
"beamed in" from the outside, there wasn't any place left except for...
That was it! In a flash, Okun hit upon an idea that would obsess him
for years
to come. The power must somehow exist
between
the
ships. Maybe the
reason the system wouldn't hold a charge was that it had been designed
not
to. Hadn't Dworkin said something about the energy being drained out of
the
ship? "Purged" was the word he had used. If the power was being
intentionally drained from the system, where did the energy go once the
ship
spit it out? It had to go to another ship, which would spit it right
back. He
had a vision of the stingray ships flying in groups, most likely
arranged in
rigid geometrical patterns. If this was a warship of some kind, it
would make
perfect sense from a tactical point of view. If every ship were
continuously
powering all the others, a squadron could maintain the power of its
ships even
if some of them were lost. There was only one problem: the idea
contradicted
something Radecker had told him about the so-called bigger picture.
Out
in the
hall he heard whispering. He got up and went to the door. Three of the
scientists were out there holding a conference. As soon as they saw
Okun
standing in the doorway, they quickly said good night and broke their
huddle.
"Pssst,
hey, you guys. I think I figured out the power problem."
The
men
didn't seem to be at all interested and retreated toward their rooms.
As
Dworkin moved past him, Okun stepped out into the hall. "Sam, I was
thinking about the power supply. What if—"
"Young man,
I've had a very difficult evening, and I need some time alone with my
thoughts." Not only was Dworkin upset about his confrontation with his
new
boss, he knew from long experience that newly arrived visitors to Area
51
invariably had a middle-of-the-night epiphany that would miraculously
answer,
once and for all, all the mysteries surrounding the ship. Right now he
was in
no mood to listen to the uneducated guesses of this enthusiastic
post-adolescent. It didn't help that Okun was standing there in nothing
more
than his Jockey shorts and a pair of mismatched socks when the
long-established
decorum of the labs called for robes to be worn when using the common
areas at
bedtime. "We can talk tomorrow."
Dworkin
disappeared into his room. When Okun turned around, both Lenel and
Cibatutto
were shutting their doors as well. He considered going to see Radecker,
but
thought better of it. If there was going to be a conflict between the
misfit
employees and the tight-ass management, Okun knew which side he wanted
to be
on. It looked like his theories would have to wait for the morning.
He
had
just resigned himself to going back to bed when old Dr. Freiling came
shuffling
around the corner. It took Okun about five minutes to explain the idea
he'd hit
on. When he was done, the old man looked up at him and asked him to say
the
whole thing again. Even though he thought it was hopeless, Okun knew he
wouldn't be able to sleep anyway, so he went through the idea once
more. When
he was almost finished, Freiling surprised him by saying, "That's a
pretty
darn good idea. If it were true, it'd explain a lot. But there's a
problem."
"I
know," Okun said, beating him to the punch. "This ship came alone on
a one-time exploration mission."
"That's
a bunch of nonsense. Who told you that?" the old man demanded, even
though
he'd been standing right there when Radecker had explained this to
Okun.
"Don't start making things up, young man. It's tempting, I know. There
are
so many questions and so few answers, but you can't start assuming
things you
have no proof for. We don't know whether this ship came alone or was
part of a
group."
"But Mr.
Dworkin gave me the idea that—"
"Bah!
Don't trust everything Sam tells you." The old man leaned forward and
looked over the top of his bifocals. "Like the rest of us, he's not
getting any younger and, just between you and me, I think some of his
screws
are coming loose. No, the problem with your idea is proving it. If you
think
the ships work in groups, you'll have to get another ship down here to
see if
you're right."
"Oh,
yeah."
"Unless..."
"Unless
what?" Okun asked. Freiling had gone into a long blank stare. It was
hard
to tell if he was thinking something through or had fallen asleep with
his eyes
open. But suddenly, the old-timer snapped out of his trance and began
explaining a complicated set of procedures for testing the multi-ship
theory.
Once he had explained the whole idea, Okun glanced at him sideways, and
said,
"Can you say that whole thing again?"
Half
an
hour later, Freiling had rustled up the other scientists and herded
them into
his room. They listened first to Okun explain his ideas, then Freiling
told
them the experiment he'd come up with. The others were not as convinced
as
Freiling, but liked it nonetheless. Besides, they were desperate to
show
Radecker some progress before he had a chance to start shipping them
out. Once
they had all signed on, they shuffled down the hall to see the boss.
They found Radecker
still awake, and, once the ideas were explained to him, surprisingly
cooperative. So
cooperative, in fact,
that he didn't even bother to think through the implications of what
his
science team was telling him. It was all mumbo jumbo to him. It didn't
seem to
bother him that the whole idea contradicted the one-ship-one-time
theory he'd
been so insistent about earlier that evening.
It
was near
midnight when Radecker picked up the phone and got through to a supply
depot
officer in Colorado Springs. It was a chance for him to flex his
muscles and
feel like he could actually get something done. By the time he'd
finished the
conversation, the supply sergeant on the other end had been
sufficiently
intimidated to promise the equipment would be flown to Nevada the very
next
morning.
Temporarily
a functioning and coherent team, the men of Area 51 said good night and
went to
bed.
It
took
two days to set the experiment up. The electromagnetic cannon was
brought out
of storage and given an overhaul while Okun, using mountain-climbing
gear lent
to him by Lieutenant Ellsworth, dangled from the sheer concrete cliffs
of the
bunker affixing dozens of sensors to the walls with duct tape. If his
theory
was correct, these sensors would give him valuable information about
how the
ships flew together—their positioning and distance. When everything was
ready
to go, the alien airship was hooked up to more machines than a patient
about to
undergo brain surgery.