The Second Ship Read online

  “Good morning, sweetheart.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  Gilbert McFarland was tall and slender, with brown eyes and a mouth upturned in a perpetual smile. His thick brown hair was hidden under the constant, old floppy fishing hat he wore that sported an assortment of hand-tied flies and a button that proclaimed, “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish...”

  “It looks like it’s going to be another beautiful day.”

  “Yep, but you’ve missed the best part of the sunrise.”

  “Your mom and I saw it through our bedroom window.”

  “That hardly counts. Glass filters the view.”

  “Hmm. Not everyone is born to rise before the sun. You hungry?”

  “I’m getting there.”

  “Good. Breakfast’s almost ready.”

  Heather followed her dad back into the house. Her mother, Anna, moved through the kitchen and breakfast nook with an efficiency that made everything seem as if it positioned itself of its own accord.

  “Well, you’re looking a little tired this morning,” her mother said, touching her forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. I was just a little bit anxious to get up this morning.”

  Her mother smiled knowingly. “As if we don’t all know the reason. I suppose I should set out a couple of extra places for breakfast.”

  Heather was about to say she wasn’t sure what time the Smythes were returning when the doorbell rang. The Smythe twins had been eating breakfast, and any other meal they could get away with, at Heather’s house for years. Mrs. Smythe’s cooking was legendary for being inedible. She didn’t even like eating her own cooking, so she hardly blamed Mark and Jennifer for taking advantage of the McFarland hospitality. The favor was returned in the form of regular barbecues Mr. Smythe hosted at the Smythe abode.

  Heather opened the door and then stepped back. “Wow. You guys look great. I didn’t think you could get a tan in Alaska.”

  Mark grinned. “Don’t kid yourself. I did some rock and glacier climbing. You’d love it there.”

  “Good atmosphere to catch up on some reading too,” said Jennifer as she gave Heather a quick hug.

  Heather laughed. “You guys hungry?”

  “Starved,” Mark said. “Mom almost got up and made omelets this morning.” The look of horror on his face made Heather laugh even harder.

  Her mother met the twins with huge hugs, immediately ushering them to their chairs and passing around the pancake platter, which everyone set about doing their best to empty. By the time breakfast was over, the family had heard all about cruising Alaska, followed by Jennifer’s excited summary of the biography she’d read about Madame Curie.

  A horn honked outside and Heather’s father rose, wiping his chin with a napkin. “Oops. My ride’s here. Gotta run.”

  “Have fun at the lab today,” said Heather.

  “Always do.”

  While he had never gotten a doctorate, or even a master’s degree, Heather’s father was one of those indispensable people at the lab known as a tech. So was Mr. Smythe, who currently waited outside in their driveway. It was his week to drive the carpool.

  Heather’s dad had a knack for building any mechanical contraption to exact specifications, given the most cursory information. His real title was machinist, but he had turned the job into an art form. He loved the lab, which provided him access to an unequaled machine shop and the opportunity to make an assortment of oddities for the scientists.

  While her father was master of all things mechanical, Fred Smythe was lord of electronics. Together, there was nothing they could not create or improve upon. It was only fitting that they were next-door neighbors.

  As Heather’s dad reached for the front doorknob, it burst open, and he was almost bowled over by Fred’s blocky form as he raced into the living room. Before Heather’s dad could react, Mr. Smythe grabbed the remote and brought the old television set to life.

  “Gil, get your butt in here. You’ve got to see this!”

  The CNN logo accompanied by “Breaking News” formed a banner along the bottom of the screen. The camera suddenly cut away from the news anchor to the president seated at his desk in the Oval Office, backdropped by the presidential seal and an American flag.

  The president began speaking directly into the camera.

  “My fellow Americans. It is with great pleasure and excitement that I come before you today with an announcement, an announcement for which you have unknowingly been kept waiting almost sixty years. Through multiple presidencies, several wars, the landing of men on the moon, up through today's troubled world situation, a matter of unfathomable scientific importance has been preciously guarded by this government.

  “As will become clear in moments, this secrecy was required so the government could investigate the national security and public safety ramifications of this discovery. However, recent breakthroughs promise such huge benefits to mankind that I, in consultation with key congressional leaders, have decided to make them public.”

  The president paused momentarily, and Heather wondered if he had lost his place on the teleprompter. Then, taking a deep breath, he continued.

  “In late March of 1948, just outside Aztec, New Mexico, the United States military discovered a crash site for a ship of unknown origin. That origin has since been conclusively determined to be from a star system other than our own. In short, it is a spaceship from another world, constructed using advanced technologies, many of which we still cannot fathom.

  “For the past several years, a team of our top scientists has studied this ship under a program called the Rho Project. I will now turn this briefing over to the lead scientist on the Rho Project.”

  The McFarland household erupted into pandemonium, with excited shouts eventually drowned out by bellows for quiet from Misters McFarland and Smythe.

  On the television, the president’s image had been replaced by a speaker standing at a podium in a press conference room. The speaker was immediately recognizable to anyone from the Los Alamos area: Donald R. Stephenson, deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in charge of special projects, many of which were unnamed. Apparently one of those projects was about to make a name for itself.

  Looking at the man had always made Heather feel uncomfortable somehow, as if those sharp eyes were picking her out of the crowd, drilling through her, reaching into her very soul. He was a wiry, slender man with a sharp face, a high forehead, and an intense mouth that looked as if it had never been forced to twist into a smile. His brown hair still showed no sign of graying or thinning, even though he was in his mid-fifties.

  Timeless. That was how Heather thought of Dr. Stephenson. No age fitted him. It was like the way the funny Pat character on the old Saturday Night Live reruns was gender-ambiguous. You certainly couldn’t tell by looking.

  Dr. Donald Stephenson was widely regarded as the smartest man on the planet. He had gotten out of the army in his mid-twenties and quickly attained doctorates in astrophysics, mathematics, and chemistry from MIT. Three Nobel Prizes before he was forty had been enough to propel him into his current high position at the laboratory. Heather had heard from her father that if the man were not so completely dislikable, he would no doubt have been named director instead of deputy director, not that he showed any interest in moving away from the projects he kept under his strict control.

  Both her father and Mr. Smythe despised the man, although that was a sentiment so widely held among the scientists and technicians around the laboratory that it raised no eyebrows. To her it seemed that Donald Stephenson reveled in making others hate him.

  Now before a roomful of reporters, he spoke steadily as a sequence of slides flashed on the screen behind him, scenes filled with a cigar-shaped ship draped with instruments, workers moving along catwalks that clung to its surface, a ramp extending up into the interior. There were no shots of the interior of the spaceship.

  Although Heather was too excited to follow
the droning monologue, the gist of it was clear. Recent breakthroughs in deciphering some of the alien technology had yielded results so important and startling that they could not, in good conscience, be kept from the world, results that had ramifications on both energy production and on the health of the world's population.

  In coming weeks, those results would be carefully released to a select group of the world's scientists for verification and to allow for external analysis of whether the breakthroughs were safe for rapid dissemination to the governments of the world.

  The slide show ended. Dr. Stephenson’s steel gray eyes swept the room. “I will now take your questions.”

  Bedlam. It took a full five minutes to get the reporters settled down so individual questions could be heard. After that they came hot and fast.

  “Why keep this from the American people all this time?”

  “Will independent scientists have access to the starship?”

  “Shouldn’t this discovery be turned over to the United Nations?”

  On and on went the questions, many of which were deferred to the political leadership to answer. It was immediately clear, however, that despite the US government's declared willingness to share technologies from the project, that openness did not include access to the starship itself.

  As the news conference ended, a slow shudder crawled along Heather’s back, up her bare neck, and into her hairline. For a split second, it seemed that she would recall the details of last night’s dream. Then the feeling was gone, replaced by the lingering sense of dread with which she had awakened.

  3

  Why anyone even bothered to open school on schedule defied rational explanation, considering the demonstrators and nutcases that had descended, like locusts, upon Los Alamos. The start of junior year should be exciting, but all Heather could muster, as her mom's van weaved its way slowly through the throngs of demonstrators, was dismay.

  To be fair, the demonstrations were not aimed at the school, nor were the demonstrators even allowed close to the school grounds. Still, the disruption threatened longtime residents' comfortable way of life.

  Military security had been beefed up all around the national laboratory, but in the towns themselves, madness reigned. News reporters from nearby Santa Fe and Albuquerque stations arrived first, followed by national news teams in top-heavy satellite vans. Meanwhile, hordes of sundry groups filled hotels and campgrounds for miles around.

  Los Alamos was full, White Rock was full, Santa Fe was full, Taos was full. Even all the hotel rooms of Albuquerque had been filled, and that herd of humanity now jammed the sidewalks, alleys, and streets of Los Alamos. Heather didn’t know how many forests must have been felled just to supply the wood and paper for the handheld signs, but it couldn’t have been good for global oxygen production.

  Everywhere she looked there were signs, some of which were being used as pugil sticks to attack opposing sign bearers.

  Mark leaned across the seat and prodded her with his elbow. “Now there’s something you don’t see every day.”

  A man in a long robe and a sign that proclaimed, “Jesus loves us, not aliens!” was engaged in a wrestling match with a fellow wearing a shirt sporting a classic green alien figure with crossed bandoliers, twin six guns, and lettering that proclaimed him “El Vato Verde... Roswell, New Mexico.”

  Heather averted her gaze as the El Vato guy pulled the other fellow's robe off, held it up over his head, and went running down the street waving it like a lasso to a loud chorus of catcalls from the other marchers.

  “You’d think after a couple of weeks it’d calm down,” said Jennifer, “but it’s getting worse.”

  Mark snorted. “I’d say this is just the beginning. Dad says both city councils, for Los Alamos and for White Rock, are considering curfews after dark.”

  Heather moaned. “Oh that’s just great. Isn’t this going to be a wonderful school year? No football, basketball, or any other after-school sports. And forget about dances. We’re going to be restricted to the school grounds all day.”

  “I don’t know,” Jennifer replied. “It’ll probably be good for the student body to pay more attention to their studies and a little less to all the extracurricular activities.”

  Mark stared at his twin sister. “Oh, yeah. That sounds really, really fun.” He turned back to Heather. “You know, when we first heard about the starship, I thought it was cool. But now it looks like it’s just going to be a giant pain in the butt.”

  Heather’s mother angled the Windstar van into the school parking lot, bringing it to a stop with a squeal of protest from brakes that her father had been promising to get fixed for the past month.

  “Okay, kids. Enough complaining. Grab your stuff, get in there, and try to enjoy yourselves. This is high school. It’s supposed to be fun.”

  The three grinned at her, nodded, and waved as they slung backpacks over their shoulders and then merged with the mass of other students making their way through the high school doorway.

  Entering the bustling hallway was like leaving the Kansas farmhouse for the rainbow-colored Land of Oz. Students high-fived friends not seen all summer, smiled, chattered, and gave out hugs.

  Heather stepped to one side, a grin spreading across her face, as she was jostled from side to side by students scurrying in search of assigned classrooms and lockers. She felt like she was in the midst of a salmon spawning run. The principal and teachers looked like bears wading out into the stream to sweep the fish to their ultimate destinations.

  “Heather,” Mark yelled back at her. “Come on. We’re going to be late for math.”

  Heather leaped back into the stream of young humanity, allowing it to propel her down the hallway toward her first period class. She only hoped her luck would be better than the salmon’s.

  4

  Mesa. The Spanish word for “table.” Why they had come to call their favorite ridgeline retreat The Mesa, Heather couldn’t remember. The high finger of land that extended out between two deep canyons bore no resemblance to a table, or even the top of one.

  In most respects, it was similar to hundreds of other places in this red rock region of the New Mexico highlands, a place where it appeared the land had split and cracked on three sides, falling away into steep canyons hundreds of feet deep, carved from the rock by the effects of water and wind over the millennia.

  Their mountain bikes had carried them to this remote hideaway they’d visited on dozens of other weekends. But it was not rock climbing or hunting for mythical, lost gold mines that brought them to The Mesa this first Saturday of the school year. It was the contents of the large box strapped to Mark’s bike.

  After Heather slid to a stop and dropped her kickstand, she pulled off her bike helmet and slung it over her handlebars, glad to feel the fresh air blowing through her hair. Mark already had the box unstrapped and was lovingly carrying it out beyond the trees into the clearing.

  Here, the ridgetop was flat and treeless for a quarter mile before dropping away steeply into the canyon beyond. It reminded Heather of the fingernail on a giant hairy finger pointing southwest. Perhaps Cortez himself had used it as a guidepost back to Mexico.

  “Here, give me a hand with this,” said Mark, unwrapping the packaging that cradled his prized airplane.

  It was a beautifully painted model of a Piper Cub aircraft, complete with engine and remote control. They had built other model aircraft before, but this was the most detailed kit to date. It took them most of the summer to build, and so far they had only flown it in the park near their house. This would be its true maiden voyage outside that protected training ground.

  As Mark held the small funnel, Heather filled the fuel tank, careful not to spill any of the fuel on the ground.

  Jennifer moved up beside them, fumbling with the control unit and a small handheld TV. It had been her idea to attach the tiny micro-camera to the aircraft, a camera that broadcast a short-range color signal that could be picked up on a selectable frequency by
the TV. True, the picture was not high resolution and required line of sight between the camera and the receiver, but it was still a fun addition to the project.

  Heather had routed the signal through her PDA. That way they could save a couple of minutes of the video on a CompactFlash memory card and replay it later. Their fathers had helped too, with little hints here and there to get the teens past sticking points. But, for the most part, this was their own work.

  Getting the thumbs-up from Jennifer, Mark turned toward Heather. “How’s the wind speed?”

  She held up the small anemometer, its four little half ping-pong ball cups whirling in the gentle breeze. “Holding steady at four knots. Looking good.”

  “Okay then, here we go.” Mark spun the small propeller, and the engine coughed to life on his second attempt.

  Jennifer moved the throttle control, and the engine revved up and down as she played with it, the sound cutting through the quiet rim country like a bright flashlight in a cave. She moved more controls, getting the thumbs-up from Mark as he checked to see that the control surfaces on their aircraft responded correctly to the commands.

  “How’s the video feed?” Jennifer yelled above the whine of the engine.

  Heather grinned. “Looks good, at least when Mark keeps his face out of it.”

  Mark shook his head. “Very funny. Are we ready?”

  Jennifer held up five fingers, lowering them one at a time as she counted backward out loud. The engine gunned as Mark released the small plane, sending it shooting out and up. Jennifer brought it banking around in a circle above them, gradually getting a feel for the thing, before putting it through some climbs and dives.

  After a couple of minutes, Mark moved up beside her. “My turn, Doc.”

  Jennifer arched an eyebrow at her brother, but handed him the control box, keeping the long antennae out and away from his body.