'And right now,' Harris continued, 'at the insistence of General Hoyt Vandenburg, deputy chief of the air force, an intelligence team from the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force is on its way to the crash site to pick up the pieces. Once they get it, you can rest a.s.sured that it'll be flown out to either Carswell AFB, Forth Worth, or Wright-Paterson AFB in Dayton. So if we want to see what the h.e.l.l it was, we better get out there fast.'

'Where will I meet you?'

'Right outside the main gate.'

'I'm on my way,' Bradley said. Excited, he put the phone down and stood up, saying to Gladys, 'It's too good to be true. Something saucershaped has crashed near Socorro. I'm meeting Bill Harris at the main gate of Roswell Army Air Base, then we're going to drive the h.e.l.l out there, so don't wait up, honey.'

'But I can't sleep without your battered bones beside me.'

Bradley grinned. 'Glad to hear it.' He bent over and kissed her full on the lips, then straightened up and looked down at her. 'I owe that son of a b.i.t.c.h Wilson one thing,' he said. 'I found you when I was trying to find him. That's a pretty good trade-off, right?'

'I'm glad you think so,' she said.

He grinned and waved his hand, then left the living room, grabbed his coat, and hurried out to his car and drove into the night.

The land was flat and featureless, windblown, with the dust swirling eerily, but the sky above it held an enormous moon and a spectacular display of stars. There were very few clouds, just some candy floss, here and there, but enough to cast shifting shadows on the desert floor.

Bradley drove fast, too excited to be careful, and enjoyed the feeling of power, of magical omnipotence, that came with being isolated from the world and moving through it at great speed. He loved the desert at night, its stark, lunar beauty; loved the play of shadow and light on its barren floor, which made it seem like a living thing.

So, he was enjoying the drive and feeling excited... Then he began to feel odd, no longer alone... aware of some unseen presence. 'What the h.e.l.l...?'

He spoke aloud to break the silence, or the silence contained within the beating wind, and automatically glanced at his rear-view mirror.

He saw only a cloud of billowing dust churned up by his wheels.

Nothing else... just the darkness... the stars seeming to move away... the sky unfolding radiantly in his wake as the car barrelled forward. Nothing else in the mirror.

Yet his heart started racing.

He glanced left and right, convinced that something was out there. He saw nothing and glanced up, where there was nothing unusual, and so concentrated on the road straight ahead, aware that he was sweating.

'Dammit, Bradley,' he said. 'Imagination...That's a dangerous thing.'

Talking to himself... talking aloud to calm his nerves.

There was nothing out there but moonlit darkness, starlit sky, shifting shadows...

No, something was out there... What was that? Something moving. A flashing light. Growing bigger. Approaching... Yes, dammit, approaching!

He saw the light, then it was gone, though it hadn't flashed on and off. It had flown from east to west at tremendous speed, then maybe shot upward so fast it just disappeared.

Where was it now?

Bradley felt his skin crawling. His fear was an embarra.s.sment. He was aware of something out there, couldn't see it, but could feel it, and his hands became slippery on the steering wheel when his heart raced in panic.

He tried to convince himself that he was imagining it... but then, as his helpless fear deepened, something flashed in his eyes.

He almost swerved off the road, but blinked and straightened out. He squinted into the darkness, trying to see between the headlights. A pool of light brightened on the road beside the car, keeping abreast of it, speeding along and growing brighter and wider until it covered the whole road.

Bradley glanced up and was blinded by dazzling light.

Then he lost control.

's.h.i.t!' he exclaimed, his voice reverberating in his head as he fought with the steering wheel. The car swerved off the road, out of the light, then back onto the road and into the light again. 'Jesus Christ! What the...?'

The light disappeared abruptly. The car barrelled into the darkness. Its headlights had gone out and Bradley frantically worked the switch. Then a ba.s.s humming sound, an infrasound, almost physical, filled the car and tightened around his head as the engine cut out.

Bradley slammed on the brakes, went into a skid, straightened out, and was slowing down when something pa.s.sed above, shot into the darkness ahead, then became an enormous, burning globe that froze right in front of him.

The car came to a halt. It just rolled to a stop. Bradley sat there, hardly believing what he was seeing, but too stunned to move.

He was looking at an enormous, glowing, saucer-shaped object that was hovering in midair along the road, almost as wide as the road. It had a silvery, metallic appearance, showed no surface protuberances, and seemed to possess a perfectly seamless surface beneath that eerie green glowing.

Bradley sat in the car, too stunned to move, mesmerized by that thing out there. Then that thing, the flying saucer, sank lower and settled on the ground. It didn't appear to have any legs it just settled down on its base then the ba.s.s humming sound increased, tightening around Bradley's head, and he saw a panel opening up in the base of the saucer.