An overhang near the top kept part of the mound in perpetual shade, allowing winter snow to linger. He considered climbing farther, but the slight chill didn’t bother him and there was a natural seat formed by the junction of two slabs of stone where he could dine in comfort. Set into the flank of the modest cliff, it offered a pleasant prospect across the gently undulating treetops.
Might as well soak up some cool before heading down into the desert, he told himself as he laid down his burden.
Just past his chosen bower a narrow cleft in the rocks beckoned inward. It wasn’t a very big cave, but he decided he’d better check it out. He’d never seen a bear outside a zoo and didn’t want his first wild encounter to occur while he was seated on a bare hillside above a fifty-foot drop.
Bending, he peered cautiously into the opening and sniffed. No animal smell emanated from within. Would a bear still be hibernating this late in the spring, with most of the snow hereabouts already melted? He doubted it.
Satisfied that he was safe from marauding bruins and screeching kids (or screeching bruins and marauding kids), he settled back to enjoy his lunch. Cracking the cooler, he popped the cap on a Lone Star and excavated an unidentifiable section of chicken from the cardboard bucket. Having cooled to the consistency of a used tire, the drumstick was just right. Blissfully attuned to his surroundings and at peace with the world, he washed down huge bites of greasy fowl with long drafts of ice-cold suds.
A second beer soon followed the first, with a third for dessert. Sitting the empty bucket aside, he snugged down between the rocks and let the brooding sun warm his legs. Three beers wouldn’t affect his driving, Ross Ed’s capacity for Lone Star being proportionate to the rest of him.
Always something of a loner, he luxuriated in the solitude. It was a characteristic which had driven more than one lady friend to distraction … or to other men. Not that he was in any hurry to get married. In fact, Ross Ed had never been in much of a hurry to do anything, unless it was watch a Cowboys’ game. There was no sign of the invading suburbanites and the only sound was the occasional querulous squawk of a scrub jay.
After an hour or so of enthusiastically doing nothing he thought it might be fun to have a last look at the little cave. The sun now illuminated part of the interior, but to see all the way in he’d need the flashlight from the car. The possibility of encountering a bear no longer concerned him, but rattlers did. Still, it was mighty cold for rattlesnakes, and early in the season. If there were any slumbering inside, they’d like as not be pretty torpid.
Taking out his car keys, he switched on the mini Maglite he kept on the steel loop and directed the tiny beam inward. It revealed a broken, stony floor and little else. Smooth-sided walls of gray granite, coyote droppings, and a few old, gnawed bones. No beer cans, a few abandoned cobwebs, and no sign of snakes, musical or otherwise. Turning to leave, his light glinted off something in the far depths of the recess.
He frowned. Could some fool have dumped bottles or cans all the way in the back? He’d fancied himself the first traveler to picnic on the isolated ledge and didn’t like the idea of having been preceded by some indifferent, littering slob.
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.
