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.
Wasn’t anything else to do but to do it, he decided laconically. He’d worked most of his adult life in a dangerous profession and knew that sometimes you just had to throw the valve and see what resulted.
Gripping the mini Mag in his teeth, he slowly slipped his right arm beneath the corpse. Nothing arose to contest the gesture and he felt only cool dirt beneath the dry suit. His left hand went beneath the three legs. He lifted, and the body came up easily in his arms.
The alien felt light but might have been more of a burden to someone smaller than Ross Ed. It weighed no more than fifty, sixty pounds, he estimated. Certainly nothing he couldn’t handle with ease.
Crouching low, he turned and started back toward the entrance. Once through the cleft he was able to straighten. Cradling the alien against his chest, he slipped the Maglite and keys back in his pocket.
The three legs and three arms lay slack, but the head remained upright. Whether this posture was a consequence of alien anatomy or some internal support mechanism he didn’t know and couldn’t tell. Rigor mortis, maybe, he told himself. Did the alien even have a skeleton? Feeling of the dangling legs, it was hard to tell.
Returning to the picnic site, he found no sign of the boisterous family which had impelled him to climb the granite outcropping. That suited him fine. He had no desire to encounter them or anyone else, lest he might be asked to explain his peculiar burden. A light was visible in one of the distant transient trailers, but no one emerged from within.
The big Caddy remained as he’d left it, sunlight glinting off the chrome. The same light allowed him to view the alien face with greater clarity. The dun-colored, slightly mottled flesh did not appear mummified or desiccated. Ross Ed suspected that in life his prize was just naturally gaunt.
The same went for the rest of the body, though there was a noticeable thickening where shoulders and hips ought to be located. Pressing one ear to the faceplate, he heard nothing.
Unlocking the car, he put the ice chest and the half-empty chicken bucket back in the trunk. He was about to add the alien when a mildly mischievous thought caused the corners of his mouth to twitch upward.
Slamming the trunk shut, he walked around to place the corpse in the spacious passenger seat, taking care to seat it in an upright position. No telling how long the poor fella (despite the lack of any proof he had decided to think of it as male) had been stuck in that damn cave. Time he saw something of the country. It would be nice to have a driving companion the rest of the way to California.
While the head remained perfectly upright, the limbs lolled loosely. Splaying out the three legs kept the body securely positioned.
Leaving his find, he relocked the car and returned to the cave. An extensive search revealed nothing else; no signs of a ship, no tools, no bits of suit fabric, no other caves, nothing. But on occasion, when stepping over a log or kicking aside a pile of pinecones and needles, or gazing up through the branches, he would see strange skittering creatures or great suns or hazy worlds rotating ponderously on their endless path through the cosmos. They would pop up unannounced and then fade from view, like the dots that appear when a bright light is abruptly flashed in one’s eyes.
Flashbacks, he told himself. The longer he walked the less frequent they became.
Convinced there was nothing else to be found, or at least nothing else that he could find, he returned to the parking area. The alien was as he’d left him, seated motionless in the passenger’s seat. Ross flipped the key in the ignition, pulled off the dirt, backed onto the pavement, and headed down the highway toward Alamogordo.
No one glanced in his direction as he made his way down the winding road and out of the mountains. To see his passenger another car would have to come within a foot or two of the Caddy. Even if someone did, at most they might think there was a funny-looking mannequin propped up in the passenger seat.
Ignoring the usual tourist-oriented billboards and blandishments, he drove straight through Alamogordo, not stopping until he reached the town’s western outskirts. There he pulled into a Quickstop. A glance at the fuel gauge had revealed that the Cadillac was almost as thirsty as he was.
Popping the massive hood, he checked water, oil, and battery while the gas pump click-clicked away dollars as efficiently as any slot machine. Throughout, his passenger offered neither comment not advice but instead sat patiently, awaiting a return to the road. Iridescent eyelids flashed briefly as Ross Ed worked his way back to the pump.
He winced at the amount on the meter, a by-now-reflexive response. The total was always greater than he expected. The price of comfort, he reminded himself resignedly.
Drawing his battered wallet from a front pocket, he entered the store and found himself in line behind a slim teenager who had adopted the protective sandy coloration of the nearby desert and a stout rancher slicked with grease. Patiently the man counted out dollar bills to pay for the two tanks of gas consumed by his enormous, extra-cab pickup.
While he waited to pay, Ross Ed let his gaze wander around the rest of the store. Sticky Slurpee machine, magazine racks, room-length glass-doored refrigerator crammed full of cold drinks, box displays of candy, cookies, road medicine and cheap souvenirs, forlorn baby cactus, and in the distance, a scarred restroom door whose cryptic handprint hieroglyphics all but cried out, “Abandon hygiene all ye who enter here.”
