The Forge of God

  "Jesus," she said again. "Must be something."

  He wiped his eyes with a corner of the flannel bed sheet. "Yup."

  5

  Edward Shaw swirled the spoon in the cup of coffee and stared at the glass port mounted at head level in the sealed chamber door. He had slept soundly during the night. The chamber was as quiet as the desert. The clean white walls and hotel-style furniture made it reasonably comfortable. He could request books and watch anything he wished on the TV in one corner: two hundred channels, the chamber supervisor informed him.

  By intercom, he could speak with Reslaw or Minelli or Stella Morgan, the black-haired woman who had given him permission to call from the grocery store in Shoshone, seven days before. In other rooms, Minelli had told him, were the four Air Force enlisted men who had investigated his call and seen the creature. All of them were undergoing long-term observation. They might be "in stir" for a year or more, depending on . . . Depending on what, Edward was not sure. But he should have known the creature would mean enormous trouble for all of them.

  The threat of extraterrestrial diseases was sufficiently convincing that they had submitted to the rigorous two-day round of medical tests with few complaints. The days since had been spent in comparative boredom. Apparently, nobody was quite sure what their status was, how they should be treated or what they should be told. Nobody had answered Edward's most urgent question: What had happened to the creature?

  Four days ago, as they were being led to the sealed chambers by men in white isolation suits, Stella Morgan had turned to Edward and asked, conspiratorially, "Do you know Morse code? We can tap out messages. We're going to be here for a long time."

  "I don't know any code," Edward had answered.

  "It's okay," an attendant had said from behind his transparent visor. "You'll have commlink."

  "Can I call my lawyer?" Stella had asked.

  No answer. A shrug of heavily protected shoulders.

  "We're pariahs," Morgan had concluded.

  Breakfast was served at nine o'clock. The food was selected and bland. Edward ate all of it, at the recommendation of the duty officer, an attractive woman in a dark blue uniform with short, bobbed hair. "Any drugs in it?" He had asked the question before; he was becoming boring, even to himself.

  "Please don't be paranoid," she said.

  "Do you people really know what you're doing?" Edward asked. "Or what's going to happen to us?"

  She smiled vaguely, glanced to one side, then shook her head no. "But nobody's in any danger."

  "What if I start growing fungus up my arm?"

  "I saw that one," the duty officer said. "The astronaut turns into a blob. What was its name?"

  "The Creeping Unknown, I think," Edward said.

  "Yeah. 'Creeping' or 'Crawling.'"

  "Goddammit, what will you do if we actually get sick?" Edward asked.

  "Take care of you. That's why you're here." She didn't sound convinced. Edward's intercom panel buzzed and he pushed the tiny red button below a blinking light. There were eight lights and eight buttons in two corresponding rows on the panel, three of them live.

  "Yeah?"

  "This is Minelli. You owe us another apology. The food here is terrible. Why did you have to call the Air Force?"

  "I thought they'd know what to do."

  "Do they?"

  "Apparently."

  "They going to shoot us up on a shuttle?"

  "I doubt it," Edward said.

  "I wish I'd majored in biology or medicine or something. Then I might have some idea what they're planning."

  Edward wondered aloud whether they had isolated all of Shoshone, blocking off the highway and the desert around the cinder cone.

  "Maybe they've put a fence around California," Minelli suggested. "And maybe that's not enough. All of the West Coast. They're building a wall across the plains, not letting fruits and vegetables through."

  The intercom system was wired so they could all talk at once or privately. They could not exclude the watch or the chamber duty officers. Reslaw joined them. "There's only four of us, plus the four investigators—they didn't isolate that clerk, what's her name."

  "Esther," Edward said. "Or the kid at the service station."

  "That must mean they're holding only those people who might have touched it, or came close enough to breathe microbes in the air."

  Morgan joined in. "So what are we going to do?" she asked.

  Nobody answered.

  "I'll bet my mother is frantic."

  None of them had been allowed to make calls out.

  "You own the store?" Edward asked. "I've been wanting to thank you ..."

  "For letting you call? Really smart of me, wasn't it? My family owns the store, the café, the trailer court, propane distributorship, beer distributorship. It's not going to be easy keeping this quiet. I hope she's okay. God, I hope she hasn't been arrested. She's probably called our lawyer already. I sound just like a spoiled rich kid, don't I? 'Wait'll my mommy hears about this.'" She laughed.

  "Well, who else here has connections?" Edward asked.

  "We're supposed to be gone for two more weeks," Reslaw said. "None of us is married. Are you . . . Stella?"

  "No," she said.

  "There it is," Minelli concluded. "You're our only hope, Stella."

  "Don't be so glum," the chamber supervisor intruded. He was in his mid-twenties, a first lieutenant.

  "Are we being bugged?" Edward asked, angrier than he had any real right to be.

  "Of course," the supervisor replied. "I'm listening. Everything's being recorded on audio and video."

  "Are you running security checks on us?" Stella asked.

  "I'm sure they are."

  "Damn," she said. "Count me out, guys. I was a student radical."

  Edward cut through his anger and frustration and forced a laugh. "You and me both. Minelli?"

  "Radical? Hell, no. First time I voted it was for Hampton."

  "Traitor," Reslaw said.

  "Speak not ill of the dead," Edward cautioned. "Hell, he was good for science. He boosted the space program."

  "And cut the hell out of domestic spending," Morgan added. "Crockerman's no better."

  "Maybe we'll meet the President," Minelli said. "Get on TV."

  "We're going to be here for the rest of our lives," Reslaw predicted with Vincent Price intonation. Edward couldn't tell whether he was being serious or melodramatic.

  "Who's the oldest?" Edward asked, deliberately asserting leadership and moving them on to less timely subjects. "I'm thirty-three."

  "Thirty," Minelli said.

  "Twenty-nine," Reslaw said.

  "Then I'm the oldest," Stella said.

  "How old are you?" Edward asked.

  "None of your business."

  "They know," Reslaw said. "Let's ask."

  "Don't you dare," Morgan warned, laughing.

  All right, Edward thought, we're in good spirits, or as good as can be expected. We're not being tortured, beyond a few pinpricks. No sense learning everything about each other right away. We might be here for a long time.

  "Hey," Minelli shrieked. "Supervisor! Supervisor! My face . . . My face. There's something growing on it."

  Edward felt his pulse quicken. Nobody spoke.

  "Oh, thank God," Minelli said a few moments later, milking the situation for all it was worth. "Just a beard. Hey! I need my electric razor."

  "Mr. Minelli," the supervisor said, "no more of that, please."

  "We should have warned you about him," Reslaw said.

  "I'm known to be something of an asshole," Minelli explained. "Just in case you might be having second thoughts about keeping me here."

  PERSPECTIVE

  AAP/NBS WorldNet,

  Woomera, South Australia,

  October 7, 1996 (October 6, USA):

  Despite Prime Minister Stanley Miller's decision to "go public" with news of extraterrestrial visitors in South Australia, scientists at the site have he
retofore released very little information. What is known is this: The object discovered by opal prospectors in the Great Victoria Desert is less than eighty miles from Ayers Rock, just over the border into South Australia. It lies some 210 miles due south of Alice Springs. Its appearance has been disguised to resemble the three great granite tors of the region, Ayers Rock and the Olgas, although it is apparently smaller than these well-known formations. The Department of Defense has surrounded the site with some 90 miles of razor wire in three concentric circles. Current investigations are being carried out by scientists from the Ministry of Science and the Australian Academy of Science. Help has been offered by officials at the Australian Space Research Center at Woomera and NASA's Island Lagoon tracking facility, although scientific and military cooperation with other nations is by no means certain at present.

  6

  The dark gray Mercedes bus took Arthur Gordon and Harry Feinman from the small Air Force passenger jet through a heavily guarded gate into the Vandenberg Space Operations Center. Through the window, over a concrete hill about a mile north, Arthur could see the top half of a space shuttle and its mated rust-orange external tank and white booster rockets poised beside a massive steel gantry.

  "I didn't know you were prepared for this sort of thing, I mean, to bring specimens here," Arthur said to the blue-uniformed officer sitting beside him, Colonel Morton Hall. Hall was about Arthur's age, slightly shorter, husky and trim, with a narrow mustache and an air of quiet patience.

  "We aren't, speaking frankly," Hall said.

  Harry, seated in front of them next to a black-haired lieutenant named Sanborn, turned and peered around the neck rest. Each member of the civilian group was accompanied by an officer. "Then why is everything here?" Harry asked.

  "Because we're the closest, and we can improvise," Hall said. "We have some isolation facilities here."

  "What are they used for, under normal circumstances?" Harry asked. He glanced at Arthur with an expression between roguishness and pique.

  "I'm not at liberty to discuss that," Hall said, smiling slightly.

  "It's what I thought," Harry said to Arthur. "Yes, indeed." He nodded and faced forward.

  "What were you thinking, Mr. Feinman?" Colonel Hall asked, still smiling, albeit more tightly.

  "We're moving biological weapons research into space, Harry said tersely." Automated modules controlled from Earth. Bring them back here, and they'll have to be isolated. Son of a bitch."

  Hall's smile flickered but, to his credit, did not vanish completely. He had sprung his own trap. "I see," he said.

  "We all have the highest clearances and presidential authorization," Arthur reminded him. "I doubt that there's anything we can be kept from knowing, if we press hard enough."

  "I hope you appreciate our position here, Mr. Gordon, Mr. Feinman," Hall said. "This whole thing was tossed into our laps just a week ago. We haven't straightened out all of our security procedures, and it'll be some time before we decide who needs to know what."

  "I would think this takes priority over practically everything," Arthur said.

  "We're still not sure what we have here," Colonel Hall admitted. "Perhaps you gentlemen can help us clear up our priorities."

  Arthur grimaced. "Now the ball's in our court," he said. "Touché, Colonel."

  "Better your court than mine," Hall said. "This whole thing has been an administrative nightmare. We have four civilians and four of our own men in isolation. We have no warrants for arrest or any other formal papers, and there is no—well, you can imagine. We can only stretch national security so far."

  "And the LGM?" Harry asked, turning back again.

  "He's—it's—our star attraction. You'll see it first, then we'll interview the men who found it."

  " 'It,' " Arthur said. "We'll have to find a less ominous name for that soon, certainly before 'it' becomes common knowledge."

  "We've been calling it the Guest, with a capital g," Hall said. "It almost goes without saying, we'd like to avoid any leaks."

  "Not likely to avoid it for long, with the Australians having gone public," Harry said.

  Hall nodded, facing up to practicalities. "We still don't know whether they have what we have."

  "What we have, the Russians probably already know about," Harry said.

  "Don't be cynical, Harry," Arthur admonished.

  "Sorry." Harry grinned boyishly at the officer beside him, Lieutenant Sanborn, and then at Hall. "But am I wrong?"

  "I hope you are, sir," Sanborn said.

  On a concrete apron a mile and a half from the shuttle runway stood an implacable concrete building with inward-sloping walls, covering about two acres of ground. The tops of the walls rose three stories above the surrounding plain of concrete and asphalt. "Looks like a bunker," Harry said as the bus approached a ramp inclining below ground level. "Built to withstand nuclear strike?"

  "That's not really a priority here, sir," Lieutenant Sanborn said. "It would be next to impossible to harden the launch sites and runway."

  "This is the Experiment Receiving Lab," Colonel Hall explained. "ERL for short. ERL holds our civilian guests and the specimen."

  In a broad garage below ground level, the bus parked beside a rubber-buffered concrete loading dock. The front passenger door opened with a hiss and their escorts led Harry and Arthur out of the bus, across the dock, and into a long, pastel green hallway lined with sky-blue blank-faced doors. Each door was described by numbers and cryptic acronyms on an engraved plastic plaque mounted in a small steel holder. Somewhere, air conditioners hummed quietly. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and new electronics.

  The hall opened into a reception area equipped with two long brown vinyl-upholstered couches and several plastic chairs spaced around a table covered with magazines—scientific journals, Time and Newsweek, and a lone National Geographic. A young alert-looking major sat behind a desk equipped with a computer terminal and a card identification box. One by one, the major cleared all four of them and then punched a code into the keypad lock of a broad double door behind his desk. The door opened with a sucking hiss.

  "The inner sanctum," Hall said.

  "Where is it?" Harry asked.

  "About forty feet from where we are right now," Hall said.

  "And the civilians?"

  "About the same distance, on the other side."

  They entered a half-circular room equipped with more plastic chairs, a small wash-up area and lab table, and three shuttered windows mounted in the long curved wall. Harry stood by the bare lab table and rubbed his hand along the shiny black plastic top, examining his fingers briefly for dust—the gesture a professor might make in a classroom. Arthur's mouth twitched in a brief smile. Harry caught the twitch and lifted his eyebrows: So?

  "Our Guest is behind the middle window," Hall said. He spoke into an intercom mounted to the left of the middle window. "Our inspectors are here. Is Colonel Phan ready?"

  "I am ready," a soft, almost feminine voice replied over a speaker.

  "Then let's get started."

  The shutters, mounted on their side of the window, clacked and began to rise. The first layer of glass behind was curtained in black. "This is not a one-way mirror or anything fancy," Hall said. "We're not concealing our appearance from the Guest."

  "Interesting," Harry said.

  "The Guest has requested a particular environment, and we've done our best to meet its requirements," Lieutenant Sanborn said. "It is most comfortable in conditions of semidarkness, at a temperature of about fifteen degrees Celsius. It seems to enjoy a dry atmosphere with approximately the same mix of gases found in our own air. We believe it exited its normal environment at about six o'clock on the morning of the twenty-ninth of September to explore . . . well, frankly, we don't know why it left, but it was caught by daylight and apparently succumbed to the glare and heat by about nine-thirty."

  "That doesn't make sense," Harry said. "Why would it leave its . . . environment . . . without protectio
n? Why not make ail the necessary precautions and plan the first excursion carefully?"

  "We don't know," Colonel Hail said. "We have not interrogated the Guest or caused it any undue strain. We supply it with whatever it requests."

  "It makes its requests in English?" Arthur asked.

  "Yes, in quite passable English."

  Arthur shook his head in disbelief. "Has anyone called Duncan Lunan?"

  "We haven't 'called' anybody but people with an immediate need to know," Hall said. "Who is Duncan Lunan?"

  "A Scottish astronomer," Arthur explained. "He made a fair mess of a controversy about twenty-three years ago when he claimed to have evidence of an alien space probe orbiting near the Earth. A probe he thought might be from Epsilon Bootis. His evidence consisted of patterns of anomalous returned radio signals that seemed to have been bounced from an object in space. Like a great many pioneers, he had to face disappointment and recant, after a fashion."

  "No, sir," Hall said, again with his enigmatic smile. "We haven't spoken to Mr. Lunan."

  "Pity. I can think of a hundred scientists who should be here," Arthur said.

  "Eventually, perhaps," Hall allowed. "Not right now."

  "No. Of course not. Well?" Arthur gestured at the dark window.

  "Colonel Phan will give us a direct view in a few minutes."

  "Who is Colonel Phan?" Harry asked.

  "He's an expert in space medicine from Colorado Springs," Hail said. "We couldn't find anyone better qualified on such short notice, although I doubt we could find a better man for the job even if we searched all year."

  "You didn't ask us," Harry said. Arthur nudged him gently in the arm.

  The lights in the viewing room dimmed. "I hope someone's making videotapes of our Guest," Harry whispered pointedly to Arthur as they pulled their seats close to the window.

  "We have a digital recorder and three high-resolution cameras working around the clock," Lieutenant Sanborn explained.

  "All right," Harry said.

  Harry was obviously nervous. For his own part, Arthur felt both alert and vaguely anesthetized. He could not quite accept that an age-old question had been answered affirmatively, and that they were about to see the answer.