"Russian?" Brice asked, looking at Sam Morgan.
The dark complected Fed pulled the mangled cigar from his mouth and
pointed it toward the twisted wreckage. On the far side, Cartwell and
Dickson were looking it over.
"Why not?" Morgan asked.
"It seems outlandish, somehow."
Morgan grinned, his peg-like teeth flashing. "You small town cops are
good. I won't take that from you. But you look at everything from a
local viewpoint. In our business, you broaden, you might say.
"Look at the facts, Nolan. The Defense boys spotted the thing up north.
Radar locked on it and gave it a speed of over two thousand miles per.
So it crashes and we find no wings, no tail assembly ... and I have the
hunch that the damned thing ran on nuclear power."
"Atomic?" Nolan whispered, amazed. While the Federal cop talked about
nuclear power and fantastic speeds, all Brice could think of was the
watch he'd found at the scene. How the hell could an artist learn to
pilot a thing like that in a mere thirteen months, and what the hell was
behind it all. "You mean, atomic power?"
Morgan nodded. "See that funnel shaped gismo over there, with the round
ball-like affair?" He was pointing to what was probably the tail of the
ship, at least it was not the section that had absorbed the smash into
the ground.
Nolan nodded.
"That's a nuclear reactor," Sam went on. "Uncle Sam doesn't have
anything in the air with that kind of power. I think we're testing a few
engines, but nothing flying yet."
"Then it is Russian?"
"That's my guess. No other country would build it. Oh, Great Britain
could, but if it was one of theirs, they would have plastered the red
and blue targets on it. Offhand, it looks to me like a glorified version
of the old U-2 thing, only on their side."
Brice didn't answer. He stared at the wreckage as though it were some
sort of demon, while a million thoughts burst in his brain. Nick Danson
was in this? He flew it? Where did he get it? How did he get it? Was it
Russian? Was Nick a Russian spy?
He tried to cover the amazement on his face by lighting a cigarette.
"How come it didn't develop into a pint sized Hiroshima, if it has
atomic power in it?"
Morgan grinned at him, as though he was a kid. "I said it was powered by
atomic energy, not atomic bombs. There's a kind of difference in..."
"Hey, Sam! C'mere!"
Both of the men turned to look across the twisted mass of wreckage to
where Cartwell and Dickson were standing. The blond Fed was holding up a
piece of the wreckage and his face glowed with excitement that he didn't
try to cover.
"C'mon, Nolan," Sam grinned. "Let's go see what my buddy dug up ... I'll
bet its a Russian manufacturer's trade mark."
They skirted the wreck and trotted up to where Cartwell stood with the
piece of metal. "Russian, huh?" asked Sam.
"Russian, hell," Cartwell snorted. "It looks like a cross between
Chinese and Arabic."
Sam took the piece and looked at it, the cigar clamped belligerently in
his jaws. After a tense moment, he grunted noncommittally and passed the
thing to Nolan Brice.
He knew nothing of Russian, Chinese or Arabic, but he knew what Chinese
characters looked like. The imprinted marks on the metal bore a certain
resemblance to the Chinese language, but yet were not the same. It
consisted of strange marks that were like nothing Brice had ever seen
before.
"There are similar markings on the control panel," Dickson said into the
silence.
"Crap," Sam Morgan snorted. "I say Russian. How about you, partner?"
Cartwell furled his blond brows. "I think I'd rather let an expert look
this piece over before I make any kind of guess as to where that wreck
flew from." He turned to Nolan. "Where can we find an expert, Brice?"
"Everett College would be the only place I know of."
"Okay, we'll give them a try. Where's Lieutenant Peters?"
Morgan jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the other side of the
clearing. "Over there," he said, "dressing down one of his Weekend
Warriors."
"Sam. How about going over and remind him to keep any characters off the
site. I have a horror of having the news boys scoop us on this."
Sam nodded and took off to talk with the Army. Dickson looked at
Cartwell.
"Anything for me?" he asked.
"No. Just continue with your investigators. You can make the
arrangements about having this thing hauled down to Everett, but check
with me before you do. Okay?"
Dickson nodded.
"C'mon, Brice," Cartwell said. "Let's get Morgan and find out what the
college professors can tell us about this screwy thing."
They wrapped the piece of metal in Cartwell's jacket and the three of
them headed through the forest toward the road in the valley.
* * * * *
Professor Nichols was a wisp of a man who peered at them through small,
bright eyes nearly hidden in fleshy folds. Although his body was about
the shortest Brice had ever seen on a man, the brain beneath his crop of
white hair had made him a giant. A linguist all his life, Professor
Nichols spoke a dozen languages fluently, in addition to reading and
writing them. Brice knew him by reputation and grinned at him as he came
into the empty Dean's office.
"Gentlemen?" He favored them with a smile. "I'm Nichols. Doctor Bendtolz
said you wanted to speak with me."
Brice introduced himself and the Federal men and, after a round of
handshaking, Cartwell handed the chunk of metal to the professor.
"We'd like to know about the writing, Professor," Sam put in.
Nichols examined the etching on the metal for some time before he looked
up. His small eyes searched their faces in turn, then he smiled thinly
as though witnessing a very bad gag.
"Are you gentlemen playing some sort of joke?" he asked.
"The Government doesn't pay us to play jokes," Cartwell informed him
cryptically. "Do you know the language?"
Professor Nichols shook his head. "I know every spoken language in the
world, and I know many of the dead languages at least by sight. I don't
know this one."
"You're serious?"
The old man nodded. "This must be some sort of jest on me. There is no
language on Earth, dead or alive, that matches this."
"We aren't joking, Professor," Nolan said seriously.
"Then, my friend, someone must be playing a joke on you. No linguist can
identify this language. I'll stake my reputation on that. Where did you
get this?"
Cartwell smiled. "I'm sorry, professor, but we cannot disclose that
information. We'll also have to ask you to forget about it. Government
business, you know."
"Yes, of course. Is there anything else? I have a class in three
minutes..."
"No, that's all. Thank you, Professor Nichols."
"You're welcome. Good day, gentlemen."
As the door closed behind him, a thick silence fell over the three men.
Cartwell looked out the window and pulled at his lower lip with a blunt
thumb and forefinger; Nolan sat on the edge of a desk, looking at the
strange writing as an ethnologist might stare at the bones of the
missing link.
"What now?" Sam asked, softly. "Call in a Martian to get his opinion?"
"It's not funny, Sam."
"Don't I know it," Sam shot back. "We've got some kind of tiger by the
tail in this case ... a tiger bigger than the Kremlin, and I'm wondering
how this will all sound in a report to the capital."
Cartwell snorted and ran a hand through his blond hair. "I'll let you
write the report, Sam."
"You go to hell. I like my job and I don't want to get booted out
because of a science fiction twist on an otherwise normal
investigation."
"What's the next move?" Nolan asked, trying to ignore the sinking
feeling in his stomach.
Cartwell shrugged. "Go back to the wreck, I guess and try to figure out
something."
Sam suddenly slammed his fist on the table and several textbooks danced.
"John," he exploded. "You _know_ what this means, don't you? If the
professor's right, and this gibberish on this chunk of metal _isn't_ an
Earth language, then we got problems! You know what we got up there? We
got a Flying Saucer! A space ship!"
"Oh, my God, Sam cut it out! I don't believe in the damned things, I
refuse to."
Sam snickered. "It looks to me as though you haven't any choice in the
matter. It's like refusing to believe in a Ford V-8; it don't make any
difference whether you believe it or not, it's there."
"Jesus," Cartwell said softly.
"And that isn't the payoff. We didn't find a body in the wreckage.
Unless that ship traveled by remote control, it had a pilot who is
wandering around the country right now. I can see it now. A wounded
little green man running around trying to hitch a ride back to Mars.
It'd be funny if it wasn't so damned serious."
Cartwell nodded at his partner. "We'd better get back up there to the
site. Maybe the air search or the rescue squads picked something up.
Coming, Brice?"
Nolan forced a grin. "With little green men running around?" Then he
became serious. "I'll be up a little later. I have something to do down
here."
Morgan snorted as they headed for the door. "See if you can locate a
Buck Rogers ray gun. We might need it."
They went back to their cars and Nolan Brice wedged himself behind the
wheel but he didn't start the engine. He sat there, instead, watching
the Government men drive off down the street, his mind whirling with a
million jangling thoughts that tore through him viciously. Flying
saucers, Martians, little green men! The whole damned thing was
impossible, ridiculous...
But true. A man just couldn't sit down and say "I refuse to believe in
lightning." It didn't make sense. You had to believe what your mind told
you ... and his mind was telling him wild things.
It all fit. Hell, it fit with a perfection that was absolutely
fantastic, but crazy enough to be the truth. Nick Danson, commercial
artist, disappeared thirteen months ago and every police agency in the
country can't locate him. It was as if the earth had opened and
swallowed him; but it hadn't been the earth, it had been the sky. _They_
had done it ... the Martians, or whatever the hell they were.
Why? Why steal a Terran?
To replace him? To send an alien being down to take the place of the
Terran they had stolen. That took care of the confusion the watch had
represented. For awhile it had looked as though Nick had piloted that
space ship, but now Nolan knew better. It wasn't Nick. It was an alien!
Beth!
Had an alien, posing as Nick, located Beth and was now engaged in using
her to help in whatever they had come here to do? How many other Missing
Persons cases were wrapped up in this thing? How many aliens were
walking the streets of earth right now? To hell with that, Nolan, he
roared at himself. The important thing is Beth. You've got to find out
about this thing and stop it, before something happens to her.
He started the car, slammed it into gear and gunned it out onto the
street, the tires screaming a protest...