Event

SIX

Alice Hamilton met Collins and Everett at the large double doors to the main conference room. She stood with two briefing folders in her hand and made a "hurry up" gesture at the two men, fanning the folders toward the doors.

"Niles, the senator, and the others are waiting for you to start." She ushered them toward the conference room.

"What's up, Alice?" Everett asked in a whisper.

"Not now, Carl, get in there. You have some things to discuss before they call the president." She handed them the briefing folders, one each to Everett and Collins, on their way into the large room.

As they entered, Jack counted seven people seated around the huge oval conference table. The senator was at the opposite end, flipping through some papers in front of him on the polished table. He didn't notice either Collins or Everett as they seated themselves. Alice took her place to the senator's right, in between him and Niles Compton, who was sitting cross-legged reading a report and rubbing his forehead. He finally looked up.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming on such short notice. But as you'll see, it's important that we put this thing in your hands as soon as possible." Niles paused and looked straight at Jack.

"First off, Major Collins, I'm sorry for having to throw you into the fire on your very first day, but you'll have to limp along the best you can."

"Yes, sir," replied Jack, looking at the faces around him.

"I assume the rest of you have seen the major's 201 file and know his capabilities and qualifications?"

There were nods around the room. Collins noticed he and Everett were the only two out of the ten in blue jumpsuits. Everyone else wore either a lab coat or casual clothes.

"Major, we'll save the introductions for later," Compton said.

Jack just nodded in response.

Niles placed his papers on the floor and took a laser pointer from his breast pocket.

"We had a situation occur this morning over the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Panama. It seems on the surface we had an incident involving two naval jets. The aircraft, two F-14 Super Tomcats flying off the USS Carl Vinson, were lost at 0640 hours this morning."

The men and women around the table sat in silence at the news. Collins could see that they were accustomed to reports of field losses. He didn't know if that was a comforting thought or not.

"The navy at the moment is very tight-lipped about the incident, as they always are."

The senator interrupted, "Just to let you know, Major Collins, we don't normally investigate every naval incident that comes along."

"Uh, quite," Compton said, clearing his throat again. "We only know something was different because at the time of the incident, we were retasking Boris and Natasha."

Everett pulled his yellow notepad over and scribbled quickly, then slid it in Jack's direction. It read, KH-11 satellite--we own it; code name is Boris and Natasha.

Collins raised an eyebrow at this new information. For anyone other than the military, the CIA, or NSA, owning a KH-series spy satellite was amazing. He now knew the director and the senator had to have some kind of reach; they not only had access to military personnel, but their equipment also.

"The lucky thing is," Compton continued, "we left Boris's ears on and Natasha's eyes open. For the simple-minded among you, we left the damn thing running while we moved it, as we were recalibrating several of her systems. We were moving the satellite to observe an area of Brazilian rain forest that may be hiding some ruins we were interested in... so what we caught was by pure chance only." Now he looked at his paperwork and shuffled it. "Okay, here's what we know, people. The fighters were flying a standard combat air patrol, or CAP as the Navy terms it. They received a call about an intermittent contact closing on the carrier group position. We have that on tape for those of you who would like to hear it later. They were told the target kept blinking on and off the air-search radar of every ship in the group." Compton paused again. "Boris and Natasha could see with her cameras what the carrier could not with its radar." He removed the blank cover off the first picture on the easel.

"People, I want you to keep your cool about this and try to stay focused," Lee said calmly, not looking up. "We here at Group have dealt with the extreme in history, nature, and strange science, but none of you have ever dealt with anything like this before."

The gathered men and women exchanged questioning looks around the table. They had indeed had to deal with extreme Events, so what could be so shocking the senator had to put a disclaimer on it?

The first still picture was of the two navy Tomcats. Compton pointed them out with the laser pointer; the small red dot highlighted the aircraft. The picture showed them side by side, one slightly in front of the other, a good close-up shot. Then Compton removed the first picture to reveal the second high-definition shot.

"Here, we were checking the diagnostics on the satellite, and so we went to a more wide-angled shot to bring the optics to a nominal setting. It took us longer than I would have liked to wash these images through the computer afterward."

As everyone took in the second picture after Niles stepped aside, their eyes widened and not just a few hearts beat a little faster. Gasps and exclamations were voiced from around the table. Most leaned closer trying to take in what was clearly something most had never considered possible. The room suddenly became like a vacuum, and a few of the Group even leaned back and closed their eyes, then looked again as if that would change the image they were seeing.

"What in the hell is that?" Walter Dickinson, the head of the forensic sciences, asked, knowing full well what was depicted.

"I'll tell you what it looks like, Walter. It looks kind of like a flying saucer."

Collins looked from the picture, then back to Lee. Then he studied the photo again. It was definitely saucer-shaped, round and flat like a plate, with what looked to be a smaller dome on top.

"I've been staring at these pictures since early afternoon and I still can't believe what I see, but there it is, clear as hell. Those two fighters were chasing one damn big flying saucer."

Collins stood and walked to the easel for a closer look at the computer-enhanced picture. The others calmed their chatter and watched. Jack brought his right index finger up and traced a nearly invisible line from the back of the saucer to about two hundred feet behind the craft.

"Any idea what this might be, Dr. Compton?" Collins asked from in front of the easel.

"Only speculation at this point, it may be damage of some kind. We believe it was leaking fluid."

"Not caused by our fighters?" Jack asked, seeing the smaller Tomcats far behind the saucer.

"Not according to the chatter on the radio," Niles answered.

Jack returned to his seat.

"At about one and a half minutes into this Event, the fighters believed they had a second contact approaching at several thousand miles per hour." Compton let that sink in. "This speed estimate was confirmed by Boris and Natasha's Doppler radar, and we have a printout of the actual speed of that second bogey."

"I take it the carrier battle group was aware of the situation by this time?" Virginia Pollock asked. She was in her early forties and had accepted Dr. Compton's offer to come from the General Dynamics Corporation and be assistant director. Now she was the department head of Nuclear Sciences.

"Negative, Virginia. All radio contact between the carrier and her aircraft were lost as they approached the object."

Compton reached up, then hesitated before removing the picture.

"Now, this is where we believe the attack occurred."

The room went deathly silent at the mention of the word attack. He took the picture of the two planes and the saucer down. The third picture showed the second Tomcat falling, really nose-diving, out of the frame. But there was something strange about it; this picture had a different color hue to it, a greenish color, possibly explained away by bad computer imaging.

"Right here the pilot of the second F-14, the wingman, called a Mayday. His engines had shut down, and before you ask, there's nothing wrong with the picture. That light is from a source other than the planes or the craft they were chasing."

"What source?" Everett asked, standing to see the image better.

"This one." Niles Compton removed the picture, revealing the new image beneath. Everyone now stood to get a better look.

"Damn," Everett said. A chorus of other exclamations followed. Jack could only clench his jaw muscles.

A second giant saucer was in the picture Niles had uncovered. The F-14s were far below it as the picture showed the second UFO closing in on the lead Tomcat. Without saying a word, Compton removed the picture and replaced it with another. Now several of the Group members sat hard into their high-backed chairs. Talking started all at once after the picture was digested.

The image showed in horrible detail the second saucer slamming into the lead navy fighter from the rear. In this still shot, the plane was already coming apart in flames. The image was so clear you could see either the pilot or his radio intercept officer falling free of the aircraft with his seat still attached.

The senator continued to write, having said virtually nothing to this point, but when he did stop writing notes and look up, he eyed Major Collins, who continued to study the picture. Lee tapped the tabletop with the knuckles of his right hand. It took three raps to finally get everyone's attention. The old man took a deep breath, and as he stood, he gestured Compton over to his side, speaking to him in a low tone. Then Compton went to his seat and lifted a large file to the table and then waited.

Lee started talking, looking toward the last picture that had been shown. "Major, this is exactly what Niles and I were trying to explain earlier about our Group. The few people in government who know we exist, and that's just the Joint Chiefs and the National Security Council, would say this isn't in our area of expertise, that it should be the military's problem, but this is what we call an Event, this could be life-altering on any level you care to look at. We have an advantage," he said, looking at all the faces around the table. "We have some experience with this sort of Event, or I should say, I do, in my younger days when I was director of this underground anthill."

Several people mumbled their surprise at what the retired senator had just said, but it quickly died down.

Alice slipped the senator two small pills and he quickly swallowed them with a sip of water, then he removed his cane from die edge of the table where he had hung it and stood and limped to the picture on the easel and tapped it with his index finger.

"President Truman first appointed me to this Group in 1945, and amazingly we had a similar craft follow the same trajectory as this current one two years later, on July the second of 1947. A little town in New Mexico was rocked by an explosion," Lee said, and paused for a moment. "I'm sure you know where I'm headed with this."

Collins watched Lee as the old man recalled the past. He was looking even older than he had this morning, and Collins wondered what medication he had taken just a moment before.

"The Roswell Incident," stated Celia Brown, an African-American professor of natural history from Cornell.

"Correct, the Roswell Incident." Lee then popped the picture again with his fist, rocking the easel. "Roswell, New Mexico. From the evidence collected back in '47, we had us a flying saucer crash, ladies and gentlemen. And at this moment I'm playing a hunch, just a spec of my old memory returning, if you'll so indulge me. If this guess of mine plays out, we have a very serious and dangerous problem on our hands. Just before Boris and Natasha lost contact with the two objects, indicating and confirming the facts we overheard on the carrier's radio frequency that the objects did have some sort of stealth capability, we got a possible track on their trajectory."

"You said that the satellite had lost their track, sir?" Everett asked.

The old man limped back to his chair, leaning on the cane even more. "Yes, after the targets went stealth, they vanished from radar and the imager on Natasha went out of range. But it was her track that we used to project the course. You see, it didn't gain altitude, maybe from the suspected damage, we don't know. So, if it continued to lose that altitude, it may just have come down somewhere."

Others around the huge conference table were looking from the pictures to one another, trying to absorb it all.

"The first craft not being in stealth mode I can understand, maybe damage, but why would the second craft not use the advantage of stealth? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense," Virginia Pollock said.

"We don't have any answers, just good questions like yours, Virginia," Lee said. "But it may very well be that the second craft didn't care if it was seen at that point or not, knowing it would not be tracked afterward. We just don't know and it's dangerous to speculate."

As if on cue, Compton opened the large file folder and then walked over to a fax machine. He entered his security code and started the pages through the machine.

When Lee was satisfied the fax was being sent, he turned to Alice. "Make the call now, please." Then he looked at Niles. "Dr. Compton, with your permission..."

Niles nodded and sat down after he had completed the faxing of the papers from the thick folder.

Alice pushed a small button on the tabletop and a lid popped up, and slowly, as if driven by small hydraulics, a red phone raised flush with the table. She then picked up the red handset and punched the only button on the instrument. She gestured to Compton, who went behind the camera and made a final adjustment, then went to the wall and pulled open a set of doors, revealing a hidden high-definition plasma television screen.

"Yes, sir, we're ready on this end," Alice said into the mouthpiece of the handset. Then she took it from her ear, placed it in a small cradle, and pushed it firmly down until it clicked into place.

"We set?" Lee asked.

"Yes, sir."

On the screen there was a flash of blue, and then it stabilized into a solid picture. An image flashed on: the seal of the president of the United States. Then another image appeared: a man this time, sitting on a sofa. He was wearing a denim work shirt and was leaning forward with his arms placed on his knees, his fingers intertwined in front of him.

"Mr. President," Niles said, standing and looking into the camera.

"Good evening, Dr. Compton, what have my favorite people got for me today?"

"Sir, may I first apologize for disturbing you at Camp David. We know you like privacy when you're away from your office."

"Nonsense, Doctor, actually you saved me from some burnt hot dogs and underdone burgers." The president looked around conspiratorially. "My daughters are grilling." The people gathered in Nevada chuckled in politeness at the remark.

"Well, this may put off your appetite slightly, sir," Senator Lee interjected.

"Senator Lee, this is a pleasant surprise, how are you today?"

"I'm fine, sir, but we do have disturbing news to bring to you."

"I'm listening."

"Undoubtedly you've had the incident in the Pacific brought to your attention?" Lee asked.

"Yes, I have, a terrible tragedy."

"Has the navy provided you with details as of this time, Mr. President?"

"Not yet. The Navy Department said the preliminary results of their investigation will be forwarded by tomorrow morning," the president answered, leaning back on the sofa.

"The Event Group will send you some information the navy may not provide you, sir, not that they could. We came upon it purely by accident."

"What information is that, and why not forward the intelligence on through the NSA or the CIA? That shouldn't compromise the Group."

"We think this should be kept pretty close to the vest at this point, sir. Plus we have some conjecture we think is relevant that you may be interested in."

The president looked thoughtful for a moment, then looked into the camera. "You've got my attention, Mr. Lee, but I'm not comfortable with the fact you're not bringing the navy in on this. After all, we can say this information came through NSA to protect the source."

"I think you'll see why in a moment, sir." The old man hesitated briefly. "And we have made queries through and of the navy, sir, as Director Compton here can attest to, after having the door slammed on his ample nose."

"I'm used to handling territorial disputes, Senator."

"Mr. President, we... or I should say I, have a problem at the moment with the navy handling this situation."

The president looked down at his hands. "You know I give the Group a lot of leeway, Senator, but if the information you're sending me isn't compelling enough, I'm going to have to side with the navy on this issue. It was their aircraft and lost air crews. I see no reason why a sister agency of the navy should handle anything in this purely naval affair, outside of offering any intelligence they may have in their possession." The president was showing a little more color than he had just a moment before.

"Director Compton will get you up to speed on what we know, sir, then we can go into what we"--again Lee caught himself--"I suspect."

The president pursed his lips and gave a shake of his head. "As I said, the only things you are keeping me from are my daughters and their version of a barbecue. Continue, Dr. Compton, by all means."

Compton asked for Collins and Everett to help slide the easel to a position where the man at Camp David could get the best possible view.

Collins noticed that Lee walked over to a seat lining the wall where he could still see the presentation, but placed himself well out of the way. Alice sat in the chair next to him, and it looked as if she was admonishing him for something. He seemed to growl at her as she straightened and fell silent.

After Niles had finished briefing the president on the saucer incident, Collins looked at the screen as he sat in his seat. The others settled in their chairs and looked at the new folders that had been placed in front of each place by one of Niles's assistants.

As they looked at the screen, the president had disappeared.

"Maybe we scared him off," commented the senator, to break the silence in the room.

Everyone chuckled. Within a few seconds the president walked back into the frame. He sat down at the couch with his reading glasses perched on his nose. Without looking up he said, "Admiral Raleigh at CINCPAC headquarters concurs with your pictures. They have a survivor of one of the two Tomcats, and according to the admiral, he tells a pretty amazing story. A story that fits with the evidence you produced." The president looked up from the file he had just received from the Event Group via fax.

"What about the survivor, Mr. President? Does commander in chief Pacific plan on holding him?" Compton asked.

"He's being quarantined and flown to Miramar."

Niles Compton looked toward the camera and the large image of the president behind it. "Sir, we may want to interview that officer at the earliest possible time."

"That's impossible, at least at this time, Niles. I appreciate the Group's help in this matter, but it's their show. Do you understand?"

Once again, Lee stood and smiled disarmingly. "Mr. President, you know I wouldn't ask without good reason, and you also know I'm not a frivolous man. You have that file in your hand and you know we're going to amaze and astound you. And in the end you will bow to what the Group wants to do. Why? Because you know we won't screw it up, number one, and number two, you love the hell out of us."

The president of the United States shook his head and laughed out loud. He tossed the file that had been sent him on the coffee table beside where his feet were propped and sat back into the cushions of his couch. He looked at the screen over his bifocals.

"Goddamn it! I was afraid of this. You look like a stalking tiger. Well, this time I'm apt to say no, you old fool," the president said, trying to sound convincing. "Niles, I gave you the job as director to keep him away from me; you're not doing too well."

"He's my mouthpiece, Mr. President."

Lee just stared into the camera; he pursed his lips and leaned heavily on his cane.

The president of the United States looked indignant. "Bastard" he jokingly hissed, "you know damn good and well I spoil you people too much."

The group around the table was settled and on the large screen the president of the United States was seated and ready. No one in the conference room, save for Niles and Alice, knew this would be Senator Garrison Lee's last actionable request to a sitting president; win or lose this last argument, he was done. The discoverer of numerous priceless historical treasures and rewriter of much of the world's history, Lee would end it all with a pitch to the president about going after a flying saucer.

"Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, in front of you is a case file that doesn't show up on any computer and doesn't exist as far as the Event Group is concerned. None of you save Niles here has ever seen it."

The men and women around the room exchanged glances. The president just looked on.

"The much-denied yet well-known incident on July the third, 1947, happened. The Roswell Incident was real, and this is the order in which it occurred. On that date an unidentified flying object did go down in the rugged cattle country of Lincoln County, New Mexico, not far from the small town of Roswell. There were believed to be no survivors at that time. On that July third, at sunrise, a rancher by the name of Mac Brazel and a neighbor boy, seven-year-old Dee Proctor, investigated a loud boom they had heard the night before. On his property they found what was described as wreckage of an aircraft, and in Brazel's words, 'It must have been a bomber or something, 'cause it was strewn over hell and back.' "The senator paused; he looked at the man at Camp David and saw he was listening intently. As Lee spoke, eighteen flat-screen plasma monitors lit up around the circumference of the conference room. The file images of Mac Brazel and those of the Roswell crash site came into crystal clarity. The president saw the same images on his screen at Camp David on a split screen.

"After, Brazel collected a little of the wreckage and took it home and contacted the county sheriff, who in turn notified the U.S. Army Air Force at Roswell, the home of the 509th Bomb Group--the only base in the world known at the time to have atomic weapons on-site, I might add. The base's intelligence officer, a Major Jesse Marcel, was sent out with another man to investigate the report." At this point several of the monitors changed pictures and showed a smiling Army Air Corp officer out in the dusty crash site where he and several military police officers were standing in a large debris field.

"Upon returning to the base with strange material from the crash site, Marcel notified the base commander, and by this time radio station KSWS in Roswell begins to teletype information of the strange crash to the world, but the transmission was cut, presumably by the FBI. But it didn't end there." The senator poured a glass of water from a pitcher and took a sip. "On July eighth; a second lieutenant by the name of Walter Haut was ordered to issue a press release by the public relations officer for the 509th." They all saw the photostat of the famous newspaper headline. "Well, that angered quite a few people with stars on their shoulders, and if it weren't for President Truman's and the Event Group's intervention, certain elements inside the United States were prepared to act against its own citizens to protect the fact they had UFO wreckage in their possession."

"What do you mean when you say 'act against our citizens,' Senator?" the president asked.

"Just what that implies, sir, that the military and whoever was pulling the strings at that time, were ready to eliminate people to keep their secret. I know, I was there in Roswell when it happened," Lee said sadly.

"Where are the remains of the craft now?" Celia Brown asked the senator.

"We don't know. The convoy that was transporting the remains back to the Event Center disappeared in between New Mexico and Nevada. No remains were ever found, and that included ten of my best security personnel and a very good friend, a Dr. Kenneth Early."

"Was there any trace of the crash ever uncovered?" the president asked.

"The FBI investigation ordered by Mr. Truman got a lead that some of it may have shown up in Fort Worth, Texas, then Wright Air Force Base in Ohio. But by the time the FBI arrived the material had disappeared along with the people who reported the strange debris at each of the two bases."

There was a lot of whispered talk around the table now. Collins was looking at the president on the television screen, watching his commander in chief's expression changes. It wasn't every day you were told you'd had a flying saucer in your possession, only to hear that it had strangely vanished without a trace.

"Tell me you have some background, or at the very least a suspicion, on this?" the president asked.

"Yes, sir, but it's something that I would rather go into with you and my new security commander, Major Jack Collins. The FBI report was sealed by President Eisenhower in 1957."

"I think maybe the director of FBI should be in on that meeting, possibly the boys across the river also," the president said, referring to the CIA. His eyes had finally found Jack at his spot down the length of the conference table. He held the gaze for a moment, then looked at the others around the table.

"Yes, sir," Lee answered, then quickly saw he had to get the president back on track.

"Now, if you will open your folders, people. Mr. President, you have the same information in yours, which we faxed over. At this point I'll turn this over to Director Compton."

Niles stood once again. "From the records the senator turned over to me, we were able to compile a pretty accurate record of the flight path the vehicle was on in July of 1947." Niles pulled a sheet of paper out of his folder and held it up.

The others followed what he was pointing to on their own copies. At the rear of the conference room a clear plastic sheet that was ten feet in width and six feet in length came down from a hidden recess in the ceiling, and the four plasma monitors it covered were shut off. The new technology of holographic imagery, a new form of light-induced liquid crystal sandwiched between two sheets of clear plastic, came to life with the diagram Niles held in his hand. One of his assistants in the computer center had set up the program on a moment's notice from the comp center for this briefing. The result was an image that was detailed enough to show the movement of clouds and the blinking of lights in the cities the map displayed.

"Venezuela, South America, approximately 2350 hours, July second, 1947. The weather factors have been added by computer from records kept by the National Weather Service. On that date, an unidentified airborne object was reported by a Panamanian airline crew on course for Panama City to the west, and they stated to Venezuelan traffic control, 'It was round and moving at an incredible speed.' At exactly 2355 hours another report was intercepted by the United States Army in Panama, eavesdropped from a British battle cruiser off the coast of that country. It read as follows:

HMS Royal Fox, "'A low-flying unidentified object passed HMS causing burns to exposed personnel on deck. This object was believed to be damaged, as Royal Navy seamen witnessing the craft sighted smoke exiting the strange vehicle from the stern portion of the craft.'

"Now, we have it tracked to Panama at the very least, and possibly, and I do mean possibly, damaged, just like the object this morning."

"Now we move north," Compton continued. "Witnesses on the ground just north of Mexico City stated:

"'At 2359 hours, a small aircraft was taking off from an airfield when a roar filled the air to the south. As witnesses turned, they saw a huge round shape fill the sky. It flew low to the ground, so low it caused cars to rock and trees to sway so hard they cracked limbs. At that point a second disk-shaped craft dropped from the sky at an accelerated speed, enough so its wake parted and then sucked the darkened rain clouds down after its passing, and then the object slammed into a small Cessna that had just lifted off from the airfield, killing an entire family. This saucer then followed the track of the first object. Both craft swerved to the north and continued on.'

"Exactly twenty minutes later, the crash in New Mexico occurred during a rainstorm." As Compton said this, a small target blip on the hologram disappeared into moving clouds and a bright flash appeared on the screen inside the borders of New Mexico. "The senator is convinced the sightings in '47 were of the same type of saucer involved in the attack today on our naval pilots."

"It took years to piece this together by the way," the senator added. "But all witnesses to the Event said it was something they would never forget. The Royal Navy vessel had even entered it in the ship's logbook, much to the British Admiralty's displeasure."

The senator turned to address the president. "The gist of all this, Mr. President, is the fact that we have two incidents that occurred fifty-eight years apart, that are very similar in detail. The first object was attacked by a second, and we are under the assumption it was meant to bring the ship down."

"Yes, I see your point and the connections."

"The line of accounts is almost exact, the same route, two saucers, one damaged. The first saucer in '47 went down in the southwestern United States, and now we have the second Event, one on almost the exact same course as that of the first. And I believe it too may also have gone down in this country, in the same area."

"What is it you want, Senator?"

Garrison Lee walked back to his position at the head of the great conference table, his cane-aided limp now hardly noticeable. "Mr. President, I know the navy wants to keep a firm hold on this one, and under any other circumstance I would say yes, it's their bailiwick. But since this has possibly happened before, I believe it falls under the Event Group's jurisdiction according to our charter. Because of the nature of the incident in '47 we believe this episode was an Event of immeasurable proportions. Because of evidence we gathered many years ago, and I will expand on that with you and members of this group, I believe this incident today, like the one in 1947, was a deliberate action by an alien force to down that craft as an act of war."

There was mumbling around the table and the president blinked, but was quiet.

"What that brings to the table has been filed away since Roswell in 1947.1 have sent a copy of our investigation of the incident fifty-eight years ago to you on a secure link, and you will be receiving it shortly, and I stress, it is highly confidential." Lee took a deep breath and paused for a moment, then let it out. "Niles and I want our people on it, Mr. President, as we don't believe in coincidence." Then he looked from the president to those faces around the table that he knew best, the ones he had groomed for Events this important. "With the same Events so closely related and what we know of the previous one, I believe we are witness to a deliberate act for reasons unknown to bring those craft down in this country. I believe the first act in '47 failed for reasons we learned that night in Roswell, which will be explained, and if this is a successful second occurrence of a similar act, we are in deep trouble."

This time the conference room was silent as the gathered group looked from Lee to the president, Waiting, waiting for some explanation as to the senator's dire warning.

The president stood, making only his midsection visible in the frame, and walked away out of camera view. A moment later he returned. He slowly sat back down on the leather sofa with a bundle of papers in his hands.

"Okay, you damn well better keep me informed, is that clear?" He started looking through the pages that had just been faxed through to him from Nevada.

"Yes, sir," Lee answered. "And the Carl Vinson airman? We need that man here."

"I'll get on that after I've had my burnt hot dogs, is that good enough?" the president said, looking up from the papers.

"Yes, sir, and thank you, we'll be in touch. Enjoy your supper and--"

"Mr. Lee," said the president, cutting the senator off, "this may be just a little too big for just your agency to handle alone. I've got to bring some of the Joint Chiefs and Security Council in on it at the very least. Everyone across the river is already screaming bloody murder on what might very well be a military matter, regardless of what happened in 1947." The president looked into the camera with a frown as the screen faded to blue.

The senator walked over to his chair and seated himself, letting out a heavy sigh. Collins saw Alice pat his arm. He turned and smiled at his colleagues and nodded at Director Compton.

"Okay, people, an Event has been officially declared, the order will arrive shortly giving us the powers of an official presidential investigation. Now, how do we find that saucer?" Niles asked.

The room was momentarily quiet, and then the Group started making plans for what each of their departments could do to add to the search. Jack and Carl excused themselves. As for Garrison Lee, he sat heavily into his chair and rested both hands on his cane. Alice watched him but made no attempt at checking to see if he was alright. She knew he wasn't.