Government Men by Gary J. Davies
CHAPTER 20
ALIENS AMONG US!
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think that we are not. In either case, the idea is staggering.
- Arthur C. Clarke
Martha Cranson could kick herself. There she was, up on her roof-top deck scanning the sky at dusk as usual, when the strange object lifted off only a few miles from her home! Through her binoculars it looked cigar shaped, a classic UFO form. Actually, it looked more bus shaped, but that was ridiculous.
Unfortunately, she was too slow. As the object moved south it popped up into a cloud before she could trade her binoculars for a camera. After hundreds of lonely days and nights on that roof, she missed recording her only sighting! Now she sat with VISICOM in hand, and a full array of other cameras on the deck around her, ready to take photos and videos of the object should it return.
Not that a return was necessarily imminent. She had moved to this house because as near as she could figure, this was where, five years before, she had seen a real UFO land. She could still close her eyes and visualize that ship: the flashing lights, the deep, bone tingling humming sound, the darting movements, the crackling power that it exuded! But since then, over the last five years, she saw no more UFOs at all. Until today.
Five years ago she saw it while she was parked in a car and making out on a dead end street with that hunky moron, Rodney Wayne. Occupied with other things, Rod had never even looked up to see the UFO, or let Martha up to chase after the thing, like she wanted to do. Afterwards, the idiot had ascribed her sighting to his prowess as a lover! Ha! Fat furry chance!
She hadn't believed in or thought of UFOs before that night, but the sighting had been a life changing experience for her. Since then, she always carried a VISICOM or other camera with her, and spent every spare moment and every spare penny watching for the object's return from her roof. She vowed to record proof of UFOs on disc, then distribute it via disc, cube and VISICOM broadcast.
And now, after all this work, when she finally did see something, she muffed it! She sat dejected on her roof in the gathering darkness, surrounded by cameras, cursing herself while scanning the skies anxiously. Minutes went by, and she began to think that nothing else would happen.
Suddenly she felt, rather than heard, a low humming of immense power! For just a moment, she sat surprised and puzzled. The vibration was unusual, but still somehow familiar; what was it? Then she remembered. This is exactly what she had felt five years ago. A UFO! She turned on her VISICOM recorder function, determined to catch on disc everything else she was going to see this night.
But where was the UFO? She scanned the cloudy, darkening sky in vein; there was nothing to see. Still, the humming increased dramatically; it was by now very audible!
Cameras and other objects began vibrating and bumping around on her rooftop deck like living hockey pucks. Birds wintered in bushes and trees nearby for the night squawked loudly. Auto burglar alarms in the neighborhood went off. Street lights flickered and trees swayed in the still, breezeless air, while trash cans rattled and bumped. Cars stopped on the street below, powerless, and sounds of opening windows and doors, and of anxious and angry voices, could be heard.
She felt suddenly vulnerable and exposed there on the shaking roof. What if the roof were to give-way? But she convinced herself that her house was solidly built; after all, it and most of the neighborhood were only a few years old. It had been farmland and forest when the UFO visited five years ago.
She scanned the darkening sky again, up, down, all around; there was still absolutely nothing to be seen except clouds high overhead. Other whining sounds in all segments of the spectrum were added and intensified. Martha attached the VISICOM to her helmet, so that she could put her hands over her ears, though it didn't help much. Why hadn't she thought to equip herself with earplugs? More important, where the hell was the ship? It had to be super close! Was it invisible?
Suddenly she noticed glowing and pulsing light of all colors of the rainbow streaming, brighter than sunlight, out of all the windows of the house behind hers! She started to record the strange phenomenon, though she still cursed and scanned with her eyes the sky in search of the missing space ship. Loud crashing sounds filled the air, and vibration and noise increased tenfold.
Martha watched in amazement as her neighbor's house started to lift off the ground!
Only when the house-shell started falling apart and off the rising space craft did she realize that the UFO was actually inside the house! And the damn thing was too close; pieces of house were dropping all around her dangerously. Martha stepped back away from it, nearly stepping off her own roof in the process, and struggled to adjust the VISICOM's field of view to capture all of the UFO, which was becoming more and more visible as pieces of the house fell away.
There was now no doubt in her mind; it was the same one she had seen five years ago. The damn thing had been right there all along, hidden in that house only yards from hers, probably for all of the last five years!
Despite an increasing shower of debris, the possibility of serious danger to herself didn't receive much thought until a twelve foot four-by four fell practically at her feet. The thing speared through her deck, the roof, and the floor below it, leaving only a foot of its length exposed. A dropping roof shingle from the flying house caught her on the shoulder, nearly knocking her down, but she kept the VISICOM recorder rolling. She wasn't about to let a little danger put her off now. This was it! The moment she had been waiting for! A real UFO! Wait until Rodney, and her mother, and all the other doubters saw this!
When it reached perhaps a hundred meters altitude, lightning momentarily surrounded the rising spacecraft, burning off the remaining house. Instead of heavy house parts, a fine black ash now fell, obscuring Martha's view slightly. Then the saucer shaped ship accelerated away rapidly.
When it was perhaps a mile away, in the same vicinity as the cigar shaped craft she had seen earlier, it descended out of sight for less than a minute. Then it rose again. Tracking it as it rose, Martha was startled to find that suddenly she was viewing three identical ships! Two others had apparently dropped down out of the clouds to join the first one! All three accelerated in formation south towards the Capital, along the same route that the smaller, cigar shaped craft had taken earlier.
ALIENS AMONG US!
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think that we are not. In either case, the idea is staggering.
- Arthur C. Clarke
Martha Cranson could kick herself. There she was, up on her roof-top deck scanning the sky at dusk as usual, when the strange object lifted off only a few miles from her home! Through her binoculars it looked cigar shaped, a classic UFO form. Actually, it looked more bus shaped, but that was ridiculous.
Unfortunately, she was too slow. As the object moved south it popped up into a cloud before she could trade her binoculars for a camera. After hundreds of lonely days and nights on that roof, she missed recording her only sighting! Now she sat with VISICOM in hand, and a full array of other cameras on the deck around her, ready to take photos and videos of the object should it return.
Not that a return was necessarily imminent. She had moved to this house because as near as she could figure, this was where, five years before, she had seen a real UFO land. She could still close her eyes and visualize that ship: the flashing lights, the deep, bone tingling humming sound, the darting movements, the crackling power that it exuded! But since then, over the last five years, she saw no more UFOs at all. Until today.
Five years ago she saw it while she was parked in a car and making out on a dead end street with that hunky moron, Rodney Wayne. Occupied with other things, Rod had never even looked up to see the UFO, or let Martha up to chase after the thing, like she wanted to do. Afterwards, the idiot had ascribed her sighting to his prowess as a lover! Ha! Fat furry chance!
She hadn't believed in or thought of UFOs before that night, but the sighting had been a life changing experience for her. Since then, she always carried a VISICOM or other camera with her, and spent every spare moment and every spare penny watching for the object's return from her roof. She vowed to record proof of UFOs on disc, then distribute it via disc, cube and VISICOM broadcast.
And now, after all this work, when she finally did see something, she muffed it! She sat dejected on her roof in the gathering darkness, surrounded by cameras, cursing herself while scanning the skies anxiously. Minutes went by, and she began to think that nothing else would happen.
Suddenly she felt, rather than heard, a low humming of immense power! For just a moment, she sat surprised and puzzled. The vibration was unusual, but still somehow familiar; what was it? Then she remembered. This is exactly what she had felt five years ago. A UFO! She turned on her VISICOM recorder function, determined to catch on disc everything else she was going to see this night.
But where was the UFO? She scanned the cloudy, darkening sky in vein; there was nothing to see. Still, the humming increased dramatically; it was by now very audible!
Cameras and other objects began vibrating and bumping around on her rooftop deck like living hockey pucks. Birds wintered in bushes and trees nearby for the night squawked loudly. Auto burglar alarms in the neighborhood went off. Street lights flickered and trees swayed in the still, breezeless air, while trash cans rattled and bumped. Cars stopped on the street below, powerless, and sounds of opening windows and doors, and of anxious and angry voices, could be heard.
She felt suddenly vulnerable and exposed there on the shaking roof. What if the roof were to give-way? But she convinced herself that her house was solidly built; after all, it and most of the neighborhood were only a few years old. It had been farmland and forest when the UFO visited five years ago.
She scanned the darkening sky again, up, down, all around; there was still absolutely nothing to be seen except clouds high overhead. Other whining sounds in all segments of the spectrum were added and intensified. Martha attached the VISICOM to her helmet, so that she could put her hands over her ears, though it didn't help much. Why hadn't she thought to equip herself with earplugs? More important, where the hell was the ship? It had to be super close! Was it invisible?
Suddenly she noticed glowing and pulsing light of all colors of the rainbow streaming, brighter than sunlight, out of all the windows of the house behind hers! She started to record the strange phenomenon, though she still cursed and scanned with her eyes the sky in search of the missing space ship. Loud crashing sounds filled the air, and vibration and noise increased tenfold.
Martha watched in amazement as her neighbor's house started to lift off the ground!
Only when the house-shell started falling apart and off the rising space craft did she realize that the UFO was actually inside the house! And the damn thing was too close; pieces of house were dropping all around her dangerously. Martha stepped back away from it, nearly stepping off her own roof in the process, and struggled to adjust the VISICOM's field of view to capture all of the UFO, which was becoming more and more visible as pieces of the house fell away.
There was now no doubt in her mind; it was the same one she had seen five years ago. The damn thing had been right there all along, hidden in that house only yards from hers, probably for all of the last five years!
Despite an increasing shower of debris, the possibility of serious danger to herself didn't receive much thought until a twelve foot four-by four fell practically at her feet. The thing speared through her deck, the roof, and the floor below it, leaving only a foot of its length exposed. A dropping roof shingle from the flying house caught her on the shoulder, nearly knocking her down, but she kept the VISICOM recorder rolling. She wasn't about to let a little danger put her off now. This was it! The moment she had been waiting for! A real UFO! Wait until Rodney, and her mother, and all the other doubters saw this!
When it reached perhaps a hundred meters altitude, lightning momentarily surrounded the rising spacecraft, burning off the remaining house. Instead of heavy house parts, a fine black ash now fell, obscuring Martha's view slightly. Then the saucer shaped ship accelerated away rapidly.
When it was perhaps a mile away, in the same vicinity as the cigar shaped craft she had seen earlier, it descended out of sight for less than a minute. Then it rose again. Tracking it as it rose, Martha was startled to find that suddenly she was viewing three identical ships! Two others had apparently dropped down out of the clouds to join the first one! All three accelerated in formation south towards the Capital, along the same route that the smaller, cigar shaped craft had taken earlier.