The Mission of Mooney Rooney

Chapter 1

The Black Sphere

It was another unquiet night in March 2003, when neon signs melted the city of Las Vegas, and gamblers threw themselves heedlessly into the frenzy of chances. Idle, yet ungentle, something paid a visit to the countryside of the city. This thing was, strange indeed, a tornado.

It was hanging ten feet above the bare plain beyond the woods. Instead of a funnel, it was shaped like a ten-yard wide round pillar reaching down from the sky. Although the air inside the tornado was visibly twirling upwards at a great speed, the earth around its base didn’t seem to have moved at all. Together with silver sparkles, there was red light, mysterious yet beautiful, that pierced through the wall of the tornado, making the whole thing so bright that it could be seen even from Las Vegas city.

Driven by curiosity, people who saw the light hopped into their cars and drove to the countryside. As they got nearer to the tornado, they felt a strong heat wave coming towards them through their windshields, forcing them to stop their vehicles some fifty yards away from the wind pillar. The visitors had absolutely no idea of what was in front of them, and were lost for words.

Very soon after that night, the wind pillar caught the attention of the local government. Police cars swarmed the area, forcing spectators to leave due to security reasons. A top national scientist also arrived with his group. His name was Ince, a half bald climatologist who looked slightly obese and clumsy in his grey-blue jacket and a twisted necktie. Excited about his new research, Dr. Ince adjusted his thin, black rimmed spectacles constantly and surveyed the place with special equipments. The scientists had quickly set up a temporary research station near the wind pillar; but after 24 hours of hard work, they were still scratching their heads before the strange thing – they had not come across anything like this before in their entire lives.

Suddenly, when the researchers were about to get some sleep in their tents, a transformation occurred to the tornado: it turned from a pillar of wind into a vertical beam of light. Since the heat around it had ceased a little, Dr. Ince, together with the other scientists and policemen, tried to walk near it, but felt a strong force and even greater heat than before as they reached about two yards in front of it. The force pushed them back and nearly knocked them over. Looking up into the beam of light, Dr. Ince now saw a huge sphere about fifteen feet in diameter, floating still among the pale red light in the center of the beam. This sphere was black on the outside; although it looked solid, Dr. Ince declared that it didn’t resemble any kind of metal, stone or wood. Nobody knew what it was.

Dr. Ince feared the potential danger of the Black Sphere and ordered his men to take a closer look at it using a tower ladder. But other than the fact that the Sphere had a ‘flawless’ surface, the men could report nothing more.

‘What should I do? What should I do?’ panicked Dr. Ince. For another 24 hours, he tried to enter the Pillar using varies methods, but he went back to the station without any reward. He wanted to cry, realizing that he was representing the country that claimed itself to be the world’s best in science and technology.

This strange object had been popular on the news, of course, being suspected as an “U.F.O. of some sort.” However, the Pillar of Light anchored at the same spot months after its appearance and never took any further changes. The public had gradually lost interest in it.