Authors: Mark Alpert
It turned out to be a rewarding choice, at least career-wise. He rose swiftly through the ranks. After ten years he was promoted to lieutenant general and assigned to lead the Fourteenth Air Force, the biggest unit in Space Command. At first the job seemed a perfect fit for him, but soon the Pentagon slashed his budget, leaving Hanson unable to do anything ambitious. Worse, he had to deal with personnel issues, bureaucratic squabbles, and hundreds of petty problems. The Air Force promoted him again three years later, putting him in charge of all of Space Command, but the only part of the job he really enjoyed was visiting the airmen at the Space Operations Center at Vandenberg. He went there whenever he could, often late at night. He liked to chat with the radar specialists and stare at the jumbo screen showing the thousands of satellites orbiting the Earth.
That's why Hanson was still on duty when Sarah Pooley sent the alert about Object 2016X. He recognized her name immediately. Twenty years ago he'd read about her studies of the Martian microfossils. He knew NASA had punished her for sticking to her guns, and that she'd spent time in a mental-health clinic afterwards. In other words, she was brilliant but erratic, which is why Hanson didn't take her too seriously when she rushed into the operations center three nights ago. But that had been a mistake. He shouldn't have underestimated her. She was the first to recognize the uniqueness of 2016X. She was far better equipped to analyze the object than any of the experts on Hanson's staff.
The only problem was, he couldn't trust her. She was too independent, too unstable. Even after he persuaded her to sign a contract with the Air Force, he still questioned her loyalty. He knew she'd ignore the contract's restrictions if they got in her way. So Hanson ordered one of his menâhis longtime aide Colonel Gunter, a good ol' boy who was adept at playing dumbâto secretly install a spy-software package on her laptop. This allowed Hanson to see all her notes and monitor her movements.
He was baffled at first when she neglected her assigned duties and arranged to meet the Con Edison inspector. But at the same time, Hanson couldn't help but admire her bravery. She wasn't afraid to investigate the outlandish notion that 2016X was an alien space probe. And because she had no fear, she was free to explore all the possibilities. By the time she collected her otherworldly sample from the Con Ed manhole and gave it to Dr. Philip Clark for testing, Hanson was convinced she was right. That's when he notified his superiors in the Pentagon and shared the startling facts with them. Although the defense secretary and the Joint Chiefs were skeptical, they agreed there was enough evidence to justify taking the first steps of Contingency Plan Orion.
The Defense Department had contingency plans for every imaginable catastrophe, from global pandemics to supervolcanoes. The Orion Plan detailed how the U.S. military should respond to the discovery of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. The plan authorized Hanson to take extraordinary measures to keep the discovery secret, including the fabrication of a cover story. And the plan gave him the authority to arrest Pooley and Clark and anyone else who might contradict that story. Just to be on the safe side, he also arrested Gino Torelli, the Con Edison inspector.
Hanson had exchanged a few words with Sarah during her arrest, but she was furious and uncooperative, so there was no point in continuing the conversation. Colonel Gunter took the suspects to the Federal Building downtown and locked them in detention cells normally used by the FBI. It was a shame, really. Hanson could use Sarah's help right now. She could probably offer some good advice on how to locate the alien machinery underground. But she'd already proved she couldn't follow the rules. She'd violated her confidentiality agreement when she talked to Philip Clark, so what was to stop her from telling the whole story to
The New York Times
? No, she had to be detained until the crisis was over, and Hanson would have to find the alien machinery on his own.
He looked up at the night sky again. He tried to analyze the problem as Dr. Pooley would, breaking it into smaller parts and considering all the variables. He pictured Sarah in the Con Edison manhole, staring at the slender black strand she'd discovered. She'd written in her notes that the strand had pulled away from the power line right after Torelli pointed his voltage detector at it. Perhaps this was simply a coincidence. But in her notes Sarah had mentioned a more disturbing possibility: perhaps the alien cable had somehow noticed that Torelli was observing it. Maybe the strand had disconnected from the power line and retreated from the manhole because it didn't want to be observed.
If that was true, Hanson thought, the implications for the GPR search weren't good. If the alien machines could sense the ground-penetrating radar, they could delve deeper underground to avoid detection. The search would be futile.
Hanson concentrated harder. He needed to think like Sarah. That was the only way to tackle the problem. He saw her in his mind's eye again, but now she was hunched over her laptop, her dark brown eyes fixed on the screen, her delicate fingers tapping the keys. She was a beautiful woman, but not in the way that a movie star or a fashion model was beautiful. She was more like an exquisite sports car, a Maserati or Lamborghini that had been engineered to perfection.
Hanson's concentration faltered. Although he admired Sarah, she also agitated him. He'd had this problem with other women over the years; as soon as he found someone he wanted, he started to despise her. That was why he'd never married. He avoided relationships because they always turned into sickening struggles. Better to focus on work, the task at hand. Although Sarah's advice might be useful now, in the final analysis Hanson was glad he'd locked her up. Her presence disturbed him.
To clear his mind he stared at the wavy lines on the GPR screen. Then he heard the sound of squealing tires behind him. Turning around, he saw an armored Humvee barreling down Payson Avenue. It was going full speed down the empty street as if a regiment of enemy tanks was chasing it.
Hanson felt a surge of adrenaline in his gut.
This is it. It's about to happen.
The corporal and lieutenant also turned around. The Humvee screeched to a halt a few yards away and an officer bolted out of the driver's seat. It was Colonel Tatum, a wiry redhead in his late thirties. Normally, he was one of Hanson's most levelheaded officers, but now his face was flushed and sweaty. His right hand trembled as he saluted Hanson. “Sir! Can I speak with you privately for a moment?”
They stepped toward the sidewalk, away from the other men. Like Gunter and the other colonels on Hanson's staff, Tatum knew about the space probe. During the mission briefing earlier that evening, Hanson had told his senior officers about the discovery of the conductive cable and its extraordinary molecular composition. He'd made it clear there was a strong possibility that the probe had originated on another planet, and that it might be using its advanced technology to spread across Manhattan. His colonels had taken the news stoically, showing no fear and not even much surprise. Since then, however, something had obviously shaken Tatum's composure. He stood too close to Hanson, and he was breathing fast.
“I came here as quick as I could, sir,” he blurted. “I couldn't radio you because I didn't know if the transmissions would be secure, and you said not to use the radio unless we were absolutely sure thatâ”
“Jesus, Tatum, slow down. What's gotten into you?”
“I'm sorry, sir. It's just⦔ Tatum stopped himself and took a deep breath. “One of the search teams found something unusual.”
Hanson felt another adrenaline surge. His stomach was churning. “What is it? Do you have the GPR data?”
Tatum shook his head. “They didn't find it with the radar system. It's not underground.”
“Not underground? Where the hell is it?”
“It's in one of the apartment buildings. The address is 172 Sherman Avenue. That's between Academy Street and West 204th.”
Because Hanson had been crisscrossing Inwood for the past three hours, he had a pretty good map of the neighborhood in his head. The address was just four blocks to the east. He stepped toward the Humvee and motioned for Tatum to follow him. “Come on, you'll drive me there. We can talk on the way.”
A wide-eyed look of panic appeared on Tatum's face, but it lasted only a moment. He shook off his fear, shouted “Yes, sir!” and dashed toward the Humvee.
Hanson got into the vehicle on the passenger side while Tatum returned to the driver's seat and restarted the engine. He turned the Humvee around and headed south on Payson. As they sped down the street Hanson felt recharged and alert and stupendously impatient. He squinted at Tatum. “What did the search team find? How big is it?”
“Uh, it's hard to say, sir.” Tatum was still breathing fast. “The leader of the team thinks they've uncovered only a small piece of the thing.”
“Uncovered?”
“Yes, sir. While the team was conducting its GPR survey of Sherman Avenue they noticed several local residents who hadn't followed the evacuation order. They'd remained in their apartments even though they had no electricity and all their neighbors had left.”
Hanson remembered the shadowy figures he'd seen in some of the windows. “Yes, I noticed a few of them on Payson Avenue too.”
“So the search team called in a military police unit to sweep through the buildings on that block and round up the stragglers.” Tatum paused to catch his breath. He steered the Humvee to the left and started driving down Academy Street. “In one of the buildings the MPs found an old man in a ground-floor apartment who hadn't heard about the evacuation order. They tried to explain to him why he needed to leave the neighborhood, but instead of listening to them he kept complaining about the smell from the apartment next door. At first the MPs thought he was senile, but then they noticed the smell too, a really bad fishy odor coming from that apartment.”
“This is turning into a long story, Tatum. Can you get to the point?”
“Sorry, sir. The MPs also noticed that the front door to that apartment was hot to the touch. They thought a fire might've started in there, so they broke down the door and went inside.” Tatum slowed the Humvee at the intersection of Academy and Sherman and took another left. “The living room was hot, but it wasn't smoky. The smell seemed to be coming from the bedroom, but the MPs couldn't open its door. They hit it with their battering ram and it still wouldn't open, but after a few hits the door started to crack andâ”
“There! That's it.” Hanson pointed at a crowd of soldiers outside an apartment building. Although the street was very dark, he could make out the number 172 above the building's entrance. “Stop here.”
Tatum hit the brakes, and Hanson jumped out of the Humvee before it even stopped moving. The soldiers on the sidewalk looked puzzled when they saw their commander, but they automatically stepped out of his way and saluted him as he rushed into the building.
Hanson felt as if he were being drawn inside, as if an invisible rope were pulling him toward the scene. He charged down a corridor and ran headlong into the foul-smelling apartment. A dozen of his men stood in the living room, all of them aiming their flashlights at the wall on the room's right side. They turned their heads and saluted when Hanson entered the room, but they kept their flashlights trained on the wall.
This wall, Hanson realized, was the one that stood between the living room and the bedroom. The soldiers had already pulverized the bedroom doorâit lay in splinters on the living-room carpetâand inside the door frame was a rectangle of blackness. At first glance Hanson thought he was simply looking into another dark room, but after a moment he saw the reflections of the flashlight beams glinting off the black rectangle.
A sheet of shiny black metal blocked the doorway. Polished and flawless, the sheet extended behind the wall on both sides of the doorway, running the whole length of the room. The soldiers had used a battering ram to pound holes in the wall to the left and right of the door frame, and through each hole Hanson could see the same metallic sheet.
He studied it for several seconds, mesmerized by its strangeness. Then Colonel Tatum caught up to him, dashing breathless into the apartment. Hanson snapped out of his trance and pulled Tatum aside, leading him across the living room to a sliding glass door that had been opened to air out the place.
They stepped outside to a dark patio furnished with a chaise lounge. There were more soldiers out here, pointing their flashlights at a smallish window in the brick wall, the window to the apartment's bedroom. It, too, was blocked by a metallic sheet. One of the soldiers, a muscular sergeant, stood by the window with a sledgehammer in his hands. He'd already shattered the glass, which lay in shards on the ground.
Pointing at the window, Hanson turned to Colonel Tatum. “Is the bedroom completely enclosed in the black metal? On all sides?”
Tatum nodded. “We poked holes in the floor of the apartment above it and found the barrier there too. It's like a big metal box surrounding the room. We think it's connected to structures beneath the surface, but we haven't found the links yet.”
“Have you tested the barrier? Tried to break through it?”
“Yes, sir. Look at this.” Tatum stepped toward the sergeant who held the sledgehammer. “Sergeant, hit the barrier again. Show the general what happens.”
The soldier nodded. He raised his hammer, cocked it over his right shoulder, and swung it hard.
The sledgehammer's head slammed against the black metal. With a ringing
thunk
, the hammer bounced off the sheet, recoiling so violently that the sergeant almost lost his grip on the handle.
Hanson stepped closer and saw a small dent in the sheet, maybe three inches wide and half an inch deep. As he examined it, though, the dent disappeared. The metal oozed back into place and became perfectly smooth again.