Star Trek The Original Series From History's Shadow (17 page)

A pen?

Then, an odd buzzing sound filled the air, and everything went dark.

FOURTEEN

Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania

November 11, 1957

Wainwright’s eyes opened and he jerked himself upright, his ears ringing with the unholy clatter of the alarm clock’s bell. Reaching for the nightstand, he slammed his hand down on the clock’s stopper and ended the assault on his hearing. The room’s near-silence returned, broken only by the sound of the clock continuing to tick. He turned on the bedside lamp and saw that it was 6 a.m., his normal waking time, but he did not even remember setting the alarm.

Swinging his body so that he could rest his feet on the floor, Wainwright stretched his muscles, forcing away the lingering tendrils of sleep. There were none of the usual aches and pains that greeted him on most mornings, and now with greater frequency than in previous years. In fact, he could not remember the last time he had awakened feeling this well rested.

It was just as well, he decided as he stood and reached for the robe cast across the end of the bed. He and Marshall were in for a long day of travel, first driving back to Olmsted Air Force Base where they would—with luck—catch a passenger or cargo flight heading for Wright-Patterson that day. Their orders specified a return date of tomorrow, but Wainwright was hoping to convince the officer in charge there of getting
him and Marshall moved to an earlier flight. After all, he had been doing this long enough now to have learned a few tricks for getting where he needed to be.

As long as there’s coffee, I’ll get by.

Pulling on his robe as he made his way to the window, Wainwright pushed aside the heavy curtain. It was still dark, but the first hints of pink were visible over the trees beyond the roadside motel’s other set of buildings. Parked outside his room was the dark blue sedan he and Marshall had checked out of the motor pool at Olmsted. At the building that housed the motel’s main office and reception desk, the owner was posting a short wooden pole into a mounting bracket affixed to the wall outside the front door. He then proceeded to unfurl the American flag wrapped around the pole, which now extended at a forty-five-degree angle from its holder. Other businesses across the street that were visible from his window also had flags displayed, and it took Wainwright an extra moment to remember that today was Veterans Day. He wondered how the federal holiday might interfere with travel.

He turned at the knock on his door and he angled his head to see Marshall standing outside his room. Already dressed in her uniform, she held what looked to be a coffee cup in each hand. Seeing him looking at her through the window, she smiled. After pausing to make sure his robe was secured about his waist, Wainwright unlocked and opened the door.

“Good morning, sir,” Marshall said, offering him one of the coffee mugs.

“Morning,” Wainwright replied, accepting the cup. He held it in both hands, enjoying its warmth as he smelled the coffee’s aroma. “Where did you get this?” he asked, stepping back from the door and gesturing for her to enter the room.

“Front office,” Marshall said, walking to the small table
set before the window and taking a seat in one of its two straight-backed chairs. “I went looking for a diner that might be open this early, but the manager insisted on making it for us. It’s Veterans Day today, you know.”

Wainwright nodded. “I know. You’re up early.” He figured she had to have been awake at least an hour, given her forthright, professional appearance.

“I had a good night’s sleep, sir,” Marshall said as she settled into one of the chairs. “Best one I’ve had in I don’t know how long.”

Wainwright grunted in agreement. “Funny. I was thinking the same thing when I woke up. I slept like a baby.” Pausing, he frowned at his own statement. “Why do people say that? I don’t think I slept more than two hours a night for the first six months after my son was born.” That made him stop again. How long had it been since he last had spoken with Michael? The boy had recently celebrated his eleventh birthday, for which Wainwright had called to congratulate him. There was much to talk about, of course; school, sports, friends, and other important activities which so consumed boys of Michael’s age. Wainwright had opted to refrain from asking about Deborah or her new husband, not wanting to put his son in the position of thinking he might be betraying his mother’s confidence. Though the divorce had been amicable and both he and Deborah had pledged to remain friends for Michael’s sake, Wainwright knew she eventually would find someone else with whom to share her life. She had done so, becoming involved with a civilian engineer in California. Wainwright had met the man and his gut instinct told him he was good for Deborah, someone who would be home most nights and would treat her and Michael with the respect and love they both deserved.

“Sir? Are you all right?” Marshall asked, and Wainwright realized he had been quiet for several moments. His coffee, now somewhat cooled, remained undisturbed in his cup.

Wainwright cleared his throat and shook his head. “Sorry. I guess I drifted away there for a minute.” After tasting the coffee and deciding it would have been better if he had tried it when it was still hot, he set the cup on the table and moved to where his suitcase sat in a small nook near the bathroom. “I should probably get it into gear. No sense making you wait around on me. We can get some breakfast before we head back to Olmsted.”

“We have an extra day on our travel orders,” Marshall offered, taking a sip from her coffee.

Tossing the suitcase on the bed and flipping it open, Wainwright smiled. “Sure, but the sooner we get back, the sooner we can get started on our incident reports.”

“I can hardly wait,” Marshall replied, holding her cup between her hands. “I think I’m finally starting to run out of ways to describe how a witness didn’t really see what they thought they saw.”

“Just do what I do,” Wainwright said, removing assorted clothing articles from a bureau drawer. “Go back to the older reports and copy from them.”

“I’ve been doing that for years, now,” Marshall countered without hesitation, eliciting a chuckle from Wainwright. After a moment, she added, “So, what do we call this one? Reflected moonlight? Weather balloon? Fighter jet?”

Shrugging as he placed his clothes in the suitcase, Wainwright said, “The jet, once we get final confirmation from Olmsted.” They already had obtained a report from the base commander that Air Force jets had been flying training missions on the night of the sighting reported by Hugh Roberts,
a local hardware store owner and avid outdoorsman. Though sightings also had been reported by other people in the vicinity of Carbon Creek, this sleepy rural town, nothing of any substance had come from any of those accounts.

“I really wanted to believe him, sir,” Marshall said. “He sounded so sure of what he’d seen. His descriptions were so specific compared to what we usually get.”

Wainwright nodded. “I know.” Roberts’s report, with its unusual details with respect to the alleged craft’s movements and possible size, had looked promising. However, an interview with the older gentleman had convinced Wainwright that he, like his fellow witnesses, had seen nothing more spectacular than an F-102 interceptor on routine maneuvers over the Pennsylvania mountains. An excursion led by Roberts into the cold, damp forest where his sighting had taken place had yielded no additional evidence or anything else of value. His report, like so many others, would be yet another unsubstantiated and refuted entry in the Project Blue Book case files.

And yet, something about the whole thing still bothered Wainwright.

“What are you thinking?” Marshall asked, and when he turned to look at her he saw that she was studying him with one eyebrow raised.

“I’m thinking I want to go back out there and have another look around,” Wainwright replied, pausing in his emptying a second bureau drawer and tapping his fingers along its top. “Maybe we’ll see something in the daylight that we missed last night.” Even as Wainright spoke the words, he heard the lack of conviction in them, and he sighed. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s nothing out there.” He offered a dismissive wave. “Let’s just get our reports done, and
put this one to bed, and move on to the next case.” There was always a next case, he knew. That was one of the constants of this job. Somewhere, out there, the truth waited. It had not and would not be easy to find, but they had to keep looking. To stop searching was to invite disaster. “All we can do is just keep plugging along.”

“Yes, sir,” Marshall said, “but you know what I’m thinking right now?”

The odd question made Wainwright turn, and he saw that she had settled into her chair and once more was studying him. Now feeling self-conscious, he cleared his throat. “I think I’ve more than proven over the years that I never know what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking we’ve been doing this together for six years,” Marshall said, “and I don’t remember the last time you took a vacation, or even a long weekend. I’m thinking we’ve been doing this for six years, and you’ve never made a pass at me, or said anything that might even remotely be considered inappropriate or ungentlemanly.”

Frowning as he sensed a knot of anxiety forming in his stomach, Wainwright said nothing for a moment, the ticking of his alarm clock the only sound in the room. Then, shifting his feet in a sudden bout of nervousness, he replied, “Allison, don’t think I haven’t considered it, but I’m your superior officer. It wouldn’t be right.” As years passed and the group working for Majestic 12 and Project Blue Book grew more insulated, Marshall long ago had evolved from her role as a simple clerical assistant. By necessity as well as her own skills, she was his trusted partner, regardless of the rank on her sleeves and despite the Air Force choosing not to recognize her contributions or those of other female personnel as being on par with their male counterparts. More than once,
and with greater frequency as their professional and personal relationship continued to strengthen, he had given serious thought to throwing caution to the wind but had held back, not wanting to risk jeopardizing the trust and friendship they had built during their years working together.

Marshall smiled, rising from her chair and stepping toward him. “I’m thinking I don’t care about that right now. I’m also thinking we have an extra day on our travel orders, and the next case will still be there tomorrow.”

As she pressed her body against him and her lips met his, Wainwright decided he liked the way she thought.

•   •   •

Cal Sutherland glanced at his watch. It was coming up on six thirty, and he had not slept at all the previous night, but he was still firing on all cylinders.

“So, faithful readers,” he said, dictating his thoughts as fast as he could relay them into his tape recorder’s microphone, “the question that should be foremost on our minds is why the government isn’t telling us the truth about the aliens. UFOs are crash-landing right here, in the very heart of our great nation!” Pacing the width of his small motel room, he reached the wall and turned to walk in the other direction. “Not only is the military concealing that information from the public, but they’re also willing to kill innocent civilians who happen to see them as they carry out their cover-up!”

Sutherland’s next thought was interrupted as the cord connecting his microphone to the tape recorder went taut and he realized he once more had to turn and pace back the other way. Grunting in irritation, he held up the mic and continued. “That’s right, knowledge seekers! Even this intrepid reporter who risked life and limb in pursuit of the truth. While investigating reports of a sighting in the small, sleepy
little town of Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania, I certainly got more than I bargained for. I followed two Air Force officials into the forest, having no idea what might be waiting for us out there, but I think they were as surprised as I was when they made what could be the discovery of a lifetime. Proof, readers! Actual proof that the aliens are among us!”

It had taken him no small amount of effort to track the Project Blue Book investigators Major James Wainwright and Staff Sergeant Allison Marshall from their headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio here to Pennsylvania. Trickier still was doing so without tipping off the military to his own skulking and digging about in search of information. His connection inside the project, a person whose identity remained a mystery to Sutherland even after more than five years, had warned him that Wainwright and Marshall were aware of an information leak. They, in turn, had on a few occasions provided Sutherland with false reports and other data in a bid not just to hamper his own investigations but also in the hopes of luring out his source.

To his own irritation, Sutherland had fallen for the ruse the first two or three times, acting on the information supporting alleged UFO sightings in various locations around the country. After traveling to the remote town of Hermann, Missouri, the scene of a sighting as recounted in the report left for him by the mysterious visitor to his office nearly three years earlier, Sutherland began to suspect he had been set up. He had been unable to find the witness cited in the report, and neither had he been able to get any of the town’s other residents to corroborate the story. At first, he thought the small, tight-knit community simply was protecting itself from exploitation by an “outsider,” but then his anonymous though trusted source at Wright-Patterson had alerted him to
the ruse. It was then that Sutherland knew that not only was the alien threat real, but also that his own government was taking an active role in keeping that information sequestered from an unknowing public.

“That’s right, my friends,” Sutherland said into the microphone, his other hand gesturing wildly in the air before him, “despite the military’s best efforts to throw me off the scent, I’m still on the case, and not only did I see it with my own eyes, but I’ve got lots of nice, juicy pictures to share with you. It’s like I’ve been telling you for years, boys and girls. The aliens are here. They’ve
been
here, and they’ve landed right in our own backyards, hiding under the cloak of darkness and the veil of secrecy thrown over them by our own government.”