Dulce Truths

He pulls the controls and the craft goes into a snap roll, allowing the fighter ahead of Mark to move ahead further. Still moving nearly parallel to each other in their barrel rolls, the alien ship is now slightly ahead. Mark continues in the rolls.

“Wait for it… wait for it… wait for…” he says to himself, then fires.

ZAP! ZAP! ZAP! ZAP! ZAP! BOOM!

It takes several shots but finally one connects and the fighter craft begins to lose altitude. Mark doesn’t wait to watch it but immediately pulls back on the controls, entering into a loop. The warning controls begin chirping violently, for a collision is imminent. Mark knows this, knows the alien fighter on his tail will hit him if it doesn’t disengage and break off. And it does, pulling away while Mark continues his loop. Then when he comes out of it, the fighter is right there in front of him, now desperately trying to dodge out of the way. Mark fires.

ZAP! ZAP! ZAP! BOOM!

The fighter is hit on the third shot, though it’s just a grazing shot. Still, it’s enough to send the craft hurtling, and at a very high rate of speed. It flies forward right at the other alien fighter, the one that Mark just hit in his scissors move. Then it hits, bounces off, and both craft begin hurtling, one rolling and pitching in a very unnatural way. Judging by its speed, Mark figures any Grays inside of it have been smashed apart against the craft’s inside walls. He watches both ships hurtle away, knowing that if they were on Earth the ships would be falling toward the ground to crash. There was no ground out here in space, but there was still gravity. It was caused by the pull of Venus, and both craft got locked into it. They slowly pull toward the planet, and Mark and the others watch for a minute as they increase in speed as the atmosphere takes them. Then they begin to change color, going from the silver-metallic-black to a reddish-orange-yellow as the heat of the atmosphere takes them. The glowing increases in intensity and then — poof! — the craft are on fire, then disintegrating.

“Good riddance,” Walter says from the back, and the others nod to that.

“Now, how ‘bout gettin’ us home!” Bennewitz calls up.

Mark smiles. “You got it.”

23 — Safe Harbor

Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean

Friday, May 25, 1979

3:00 PM

After hours of flying through space, Mark finally steers the skimmer into Earth’s orbit. After heating up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit it reenters the Earth’s atmosphere and a few moments later the four of them are cruising through the clouds.

“Where are we?” Walter calls up from the back.

“Right now? About 2,000 miles west of the Oregon Coast.” Mark looks at some of the console readouts as he speaks. “Should be coming up on dry land again in fifteen minutes or so.”

“And where to then?” Turn asks next.

“A safe place,” Mark replies.

“Oh?” Bennewitz says next. “Mind filling us in on what that might be?

“It’s an old port in Montana,” Mark replies.”

“Montana again,” Turn says, “what the hell?

“Uh… yeah, Mark,” Walter says, “what’s with that place? It’s up in the middle of nowhere… probably got more cows than people.”

“You’re right on both fronts,” Mark says, “and that’s exactly why the government likes to put secret stuff there… stuff they don’t want anyone else to know about.” He shrugs. “Montana’s a good spot — mostly mountains and forests to block and cover things, hardly anyone around to go prying about.”

“So it’s back to that place around Hopland, then?” Walter asks.

“God, no,” Mark says, his face screwing up. “We go back there and the traitors at Blue Lake’ll know it in a heartbeat.”

“But… that was a place full of Grays,” Turn says.

Bennewitz chuckles. “But remember, the Grays are still working with the highest levels of our government, just as they have been since Eisenhower signed the treaty.”

“And even before,” Mark adds.

“So if not Hopland then where?”

“Place north of the capital city a ways, right beside a lake,” Mark says as he turns the craft more to the west, “an old UFO crashed there back in the 1860s, even got some press as far south as St. Louis.”

“Damn, the 1860s?” Walter says. “I’m surprised anyone was around back then to know about it.”

“Fur trapper saw her come down,” Mark says. “He went in to investigate and figured it was a big space rock or something. Remember, there were no airplanes back then.”

“So what happened?” Turn asks.

“Nothing… at least at first. The trapper headed off to wherever, the locals in the area didn’t much care — Montana wasn’t a state yet — and no one 2,000 miles south in St. Louis gave a damn, either. So the crashed UFO sat there.”

“How long?”