Stewart
Newman led Cassandra Chen nervously to a back booth in the bar. He put down his laptop and turned it on, put
down a tape cassette beside it.
Cassandra watched with interest.
“Stu, the tape, is this what you
want to show me?”
“This
tape, this stuff you’ve been investigating, is it really true?” Newman was sweating and trembling.
“Stu, this tape?” asked Cassandra. “I haven’t seen it yet!”
“We
got his tape at NBC yesterday-- He lit a cigarette nervously “It purports to be a tour of an alien
base, we think at Morningstar Colorado--” He plugged
in the tape, watching trembling, as she looked at it on the laptop screen. It showed Schwartzman and Virgil beginning
their decent into hell.
“Oh
my God, I know that person!” exclaimed Cassandra. “He’s a Colonel in the Special forces, the
cover-up forces! He’s the one who warned
me months ago at the airport not to investigate this--” She was suddenly afraid
for him, deathly afraid.
“So,
Cassie, you’re saying this stuff is really true?!” asked Newman.
“ Stu, haven’t seen the whole tape! All I know is that man in it is part of the
cover-up! What does it show?”
He
handed her a copy of the tape with a trembling hand.
“Horrible
things-- Cassie, horrible things --We can’t air it. But, anyway, it can’t be true. This. It can’t be true. It’s got to be some sort of government dis-information.”
“Stu, why would the government make up horrible lies about
itself?” asked Cassandra levelly.
“Its not possible.” Newman began to shake. “No, its not
true! This Government cannot keep
secrets like this!”
Cassandra
shook her head in cold determination and looked at the tape copy in her hand.
“Yes,
Stu, they can.
Its so easy to keep secrets nobody wants to know--Now I haven’t watched
this tape yet, but based on everything we know, from the abductions, from the
mutilations, human and animal, in that area, we at CNS believe the alien base
at Morningstar is a chamber of horrors for human beings. She looked at him with her almost hypnotic
eyes. “So--Stu--be
afraid--.be very, very afraid--”
***
Lyle
Talbot awoke with a start in the early morning. He pulled his cowboy hat off
his eyes. He was looking straight at Joe Nighthawk, who was dressed in
buckskins and had his face done up in red , blue and
white warpaint.
Joe had nudged Talbot’s leg with the butt of his rifle, but was looking
off to the Northof them on the crest. Lyle followed
Joe’s eyes. A dimly glowing manta ray shaped craft hovered approximately a
hundred yards away near some cattle.
Lyle swiftly rolled out of his blanket and onto his stomach and eased
the Meteor SAM-7 missile out of its canvas case. He slowly pulled it up to his
shoulder. He then popped
the rubber cap off its business end and sighted it on the craft.
It was a beautiful night with cold crisp stars behind it. He guessed it was four in the morning. He clicked the safety switch on to arm the
missile with a snap that he muffled with his fingers so it wouldn’t be loud. He
then lined up the missile on the craft carefully. Inside the missile tube he
could hear a little motor whirring, running some mechanical scanner, soon he
heard tone, the missile's seeker had locked on to the craft. Lyle Talbot heard
the tone and thought calmly for one second, he realized he was going to start
an interstellar war right there, right then. He then pulled the trigger; it
gave a satisfying solid click--
On
board the craft something strange happened, a ruby red light began to flash on
the spacecraft control panel. The aliens
seemed to freeze, then one was talking excitedly. Virgil had about one second to become afraid.
With
an enormous concussion the missile ignited and leapt from the launching
tube. The craft seemed to rise slowly in
the fraction of a second that the missile took to cross the hundred yards. However, it didn’t rise far enough or fast
enough and the missile hit it dead on and a tremendous and a deafening
explosion sounded. The explosion was
sharp, like a ten-foot tall firecracker going off. Beside Lyle Talbot, the other hands all leapt out of their
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