He could depart secure in the knowledge that few would make the same distressing discovery. But what if it was a bottle and some poor bear stepped on it? Or worse, a busted can with sharp aluminum edges? He hesitated, torn between the need to get back on the road and a desire to do the right thing.

What the hell, he muttered to himself.

Using the compact light to illuminate the way, he entered the cave on hands and knees. Occasionally he would pause to locate his target. The nearer he got, the less it looked like a can or bottle. The reflective portion appeared to be attached to a much larger, nonreflective mass.

Gallon jug, he thought, with a shiny cap. Or a busted picnic cooler with metal handles. Traveler’s trash. Whatever it was he’d drag it out and dump it in one of the fifty-five-gallon oil drums that served the picnic area as trash containers. It would be his good deed for the day.

The cave narrowed and when he whacked his head against the shrinking ceiling he had a few choice words for Mother Nature’s imperfect design, both of the tunnel and his own hulking, ungainly body. Feeling gently of the bruise and coming away with dry fingers, he shuffled on.

It looked like glass, but he still couldn’t make out the nonreflective remainder. Though bright enough, the mini Maglite’s beam was very narrow. He lowered it slightly and picked out what appeared to be a bundle of old clothes on the cave floor.

Sure enough, there was a cache to it. Isolated from prowling kids and forest rangers, the cave wouldn’t be a bad place for some transient to spend the summer while scavenging the leavings of hundreds of picknickers. It certainly beat a shelter in Albuquerque or a flophouse in El Paso. The only drawback was that its occupant would have to shift to warmer climes during the winter months, perhaps leaving a few simple possessions behind in the process. Ross searched for the expected wine bottle.

Instead of glass, his light glimmered on a curved faceplate. This was attached to the bundle of clothing. And both were inhabited.

This time when he hit his head on the ceiling he drew blood.

Too startled to utter an oath, he sat down heavily on the peeling granite, gaping at the thing behind the transparent visor. It was clear and unmarred and the Maglite picked out ample detail within. Aware that he was breathing much too hard and fast, the way he sometimes did when he was working on top of a rig in bad weather, he forced himself to keep calm.

Easy now, he told himself. The most likely explanation was that he was the victim of an elaborate practical joke.

But by whom? Besides the family that had arrived after him he’d seen only the couple of old trailers. Their probable occupants didn’t seem the type to concoct such an intricate gag. Or such an expensive one.

No giggles reached him from outside the cave and there was no sign of hidden cameras. He was precisely as alone as he imagined.

So if it wasn’t a gag, then what the devil had he found, and how had it come to be here?

Advancing slowly, he leaned over his discovery and played the narrow flashlight beam across the strange shape, stopping at what he’d originally believed to be a glass jug or bottle. Behind the gently curving transparency a face stared back up at him. The eyes were shut tight. All three of them. The lids were shiny and slightly iridescent, like mother-of-pearl, and the sockets smaller than those of a human child of comparable size.

From the top of the faceplate to the bottom of the brown, crinkly fabric the figure was barely three feet in length. Triangular in shape instead of flattened like a human, it boasted three arms and three legs along with the triple oculars. The face featured a prominent bony ridge or keel down the center, with concave cheeks or depressions on either side. The middle eye occupied a depression on this ridge, and was positioned slightly higher than its two counterparts.

Below lay a narrow slit about an inch in length and below that, a slightly wider, longer slit framed by a pair of fleshy protuberances like silvery cockscombs. There was no evidence of external ears. The head itself was a rounded dome divided by the continuation of the facial ridge, which in turn was a continuation of the unseen spine.

The facial keel was matched by one that ran the length of the body. An arm emerged from the upper portion and a leg from the base, each duplicated by counterparts at the back portions of the skeletal triangle. Though they were hidden from view by stiffened pads that were an integral part of the suit, he could feel tripartite toes or hooves at the end of each leg. Similarly, each arm ended in a gloved, three-fingered (or at least three-digited) hand.

The suit itself was nonreflective and ribbed with embedded wires and cords. These terminated in a lumpy metallic backpack of some kind that appeared to flow seamlessly into the material of the suit itself. Similar lumps and bumps embellished the front of the suit and the three arms. The rear half of the faceplate or helmet was opaque.

Upon concluding this preliminary inspection, his reaction was one of pity rather than disgust. He knew men who’d been caught in oil fires or rig collapses who looked a whole lot worse.

As to what it was, unless it was an exceptionally clever fake placed here for who knew what incomprehensible purpose, Ross Ed figured that it had to be an alien. Though not an especially imaginative individual, he’d seen enough television and movies to know that much. It wasn’t a very impressive-looking alien, either. Certainly not intimidating. Ugly, yeah, but pretty sensibly put together if you thought about it. That tripod-leg setup ought to provide a lot of stability, and the three-eye arrangement good visibility. He wasn’t sure how the arms worked together.

Both the suit and the creature within looked to be in an excellent state of preservation. Enough dust and dirt had accumulated on and around the body to suggest that it had been lying in situ for some time. There was absolutely no sign of life, not when he had felt of the arms and legs nor when he began to brush away the accumulated grime. Exactly how long it had been resting there, in the back of the little cave, he couldn’t begin to estimate.

A cluster of mushrooms grew from the blown-in soil that had nearly buried the left arm. As he shook and brushed it clean he saw that their filaments hadn’t penetrated the space suit. Or Earth suit, he corrected himself. Though thin, the material did not stretch or tear under his sometimes clumsy ministrations.

When he’d finished he sat back and stared afresh at his find. “Howdy.” His voice echoed slightly in the confines of the cave. He didn’t feel especially foolish, and there were no snickering onlookers to mock him. “How’re you feelin’?”

There was no response, no reaction whatsoever. The other-worldly figure lay as he’d left it, still and unmoving. A raven complained somewhere outside. A bumblebee whizzed past the cave entrance, uninterested in the extraordinary confrontations taking place within. Otherwise it was dead silent in the dead cave with the dead alien.

Where had it come from? he wondered. Was there a ship tucked away back in the trees or buried beneath the seemingly undisturbed rocks? He’d spotted no signs during his short climb. While the cave itself was difficult to reach, the surrounding mountaintops frequently played host to hikers and horseback riders. Even a small ship or the fragments of a damaged one would surely have been seen by now.

But if there was no ship, how had the alien come to be here? Had it been abandoned in a moment of haste or confusion like the proverbial E.T.? Ross could only theorize.

One thing that did not surprise him was his continuing calm. After all, he’d seen plenty of Star Trek and X-Files and Twilight Zone reruns. The reality of the alien was not shocking so much as it was poignant. Poor little critter, he found himself thinking. Lost or marooned here to die all alone and abandoned in this cold, dark place.

He certainly couldn’t just leave it. While the alien hardly qualified as litter, it begged to be removed. And while Ross Ed wasn’t the owner of a particularly vivid imagination, unlike many of his friends, at least he had one. The alien corpse embodied certain … possibilities.

Surely scientists would want to examine it, he mused. As its discoverer, he would be famous. That didn’t interest him, however, as much as the financial potential. Roughnecking was a tough life dominated by uncertain prospects and a short future. He could use a couple of easy bucks.

As he reached for it he considered again the possibility that it might be nothing more than a clever fake, like those phony Bigfoot footprints they kept finding up in Washington and Oregon. An elaborate hoax placed in the cave for some gullible country boy like himself to flash on national TV.

Bending low and using the flashlight, he found he could see porelike pits in the drawn skin of the triangular face. If it was a fake, it was a mighty good one. He wondered at the color of the eyes concealed by the opalescent lids.

With the remaining two fingers of his left hand he gently stroked the vitreous, transparent material of the faceplate, wishing he could feel of the skin beneath. The material felt more like metal than glass. It was surprisingly warm to the touch and slightly roughened.

As rough as the surface of the planet he found himself gazing down upon.

TWO

Stately white clouds swirled above patchy blue oceans, more numerous and smaller than those of Earth. The continent in the center of his vision seemed almost familiar. Isolated from the other landmasses, it straddled the equator in tropical splendor. A chain of large, high islands trailed in majestic procession from the eastern shore like a disembodied tail. Ross Ed’s knowledge of geography was rudimentary, but he knew he wasn’t looking at Africa, or South America. Australia, perhaps, flipped upside down and nudged northeastward. No, he decided. This landmass was too rounded, too green across the middle.

His perspective tipped and three moons swung into view. Two were jagged and irregular in outline while only the third formed a gleaming disk like Luna. Outward his perception rushed, past a triple-ringed gas giant whose bright pastels put the bands of Saturn to shame.

Other worlds rushed by in bewildering succession, to be replaced by visions of gigantic nebulae and clusters of multihued comets. In one system a dozen separate asteroid belts separated an equal number of planets, while in another the gravitational wrestling of twin worlds generated enormous tides on each other’s surface. There were astronomical objects for which he had no name: titanic, tenuous red suns and minuscule black spots around which inconceivable energies raged, parallel bands of incandescent gas ejected by an artificially shaped supernova, lines of force which strained mathematical probabilities, and most spectacularly of all, a triple-sun system that somehow managed to sustain half a dozen worlds in comparative stability, a grand cosmic juggling act in which gravity performed tricks unsuspected by the finest theorists. Two of the six planets supported carbon-based life-forms so bizarre and specialized that they could not have survived anywhere else, despite the most stringent and careful preparations.

Outward again, racing at physics-defying velocity through the galaxy in search of additional wonders to unveil to his startled eyes. Whirling, twisting, and plunging down into another system, uncataloged and unrecognizable. Everything spinning, a universe gone mad, sucking him into a whirlpool of forces beyond his understanding or control.

The throbbing in both legs made him blink. He was back in the cave, still kneeling before the alien body, his left hand having slid off the faceplate to lie limply at its side. A check of his watch revealed that he’d been kneeling thus for nearly an hour. The pain in his thighs came from badly cramped muscles.

Wincing, he sat back and stretched both legs out straight, wriggling them to restore the flow of blood. The resultant tingling was momentarily unbearable. He kneaded the muscles with both hands and the fiery prickling gradually faded.

The dead alien hadn’t moved.

Ross Ed was now completely convinced it was not a hoax. No one could have faked what had just happened to him. He’d heard of virtual reality, but knew you had to don special equipment to experience it. He didn’t think it could be projected into someone’s head through simple hand contact. What he’d just experienced was unreal reality, initiated when he’d made contact with the suit’s faceplate.

As soon as he felt that his legs would cooperate again, he crawled forward. It was time for decisions. The light from the mini Mag was fading and he had no desire to be caught out in the dark.

In case the experience he’d just undergone was repeated, he assumed a comfortable sitting position next to the alien. Tentatively, he reached out and touched the faceplate for the second time. Because of what had happened to him, the proximity of that alien face to his tracing fingers made him a little nervous.

This time there was no distortion of reality, no breathtaking tour of unseen worlds and distant plenums. He caressed the faceplate with his fingers, feeling the alien material. After a little of this he allowed his hands to trail off the transparency and down onto the suit. He could neither see not feel a seam, buckle, zipper, or any other type of connection. The material of the faceplate seemed to flow into and become the dark brown fabric of the suit.

Nothing reacted to his touch or played with his head. He might as well have been inspecting a common cadaver in the Abilene morgue. There was no way he could know that any astronomer on the planet would gladly have traded a year of his life for Ross Ed’s past hour.

Tilting his head back, he tried to see through the tons of rock above his head. No new visions enhanced his view of the universe. If mere touch could generate such revelations, what would happen when he tried to move the body? Something equally apocalyptic but more personal? Something perilous instead of enlightening?

Might the body be protected against movement, and was he about to disturb a grave? Would aliens booby-trap a burial site?

He tried to see it anew; as a small, unimpressive, inhuman corpse jammed in the back of a nondescript cave high in a range of little-visited mountains. Using the Maglite, he examined the body from all sides. There was nothing to show that wires, leads, or connection points attached it to the ground, or to anything else. It appeared wholly self-contained.