greenish-black object come to rest after digging up half of my pasture. I immediately went out to take a look at the object."
"Were you alone?"
"Yes, I was alone. My grand-daughter, who lives with me, was visiting her sister in Faverton for a few days."
"Go on."
"When I got to the object, I saw that it was egg-shaped and still very hot. It was about 10 feet in diameter at the large end and had a hard green surface covered with small bumps at regular intervals. After it had cooled, I reached out to touch the object. Even though the surface was very hard, it did not seem like metal or plastic, but more like a turtle shell. I could not find any markings on the outside, and the only opening was in the rear end and appeared to be a circular exhaust. Since half of it was still buried, I thought that something might be below ground level. I poked and prodded it for the rest of the day but never made a dent in it. Jenny, she's my grand-daughter, came home about dusk, but she refused to go anywhere near the thing."
"Did the object move or make any noises or do anything but lie there like a giant cucumber?"
"No, as far as I could tell it didn't do anything."
"What happened next?"
"Well, the next morning, I asked six of my neighbors over to look at it. They were Jack and Frances Barlow, John Sumpter, George Stammyer, and Ruth and Gladis Evans. After looking at the object, we sat down and had a discussion about what to do about it."
"Did you come to a consensus?"
"The group was evenly divided between theories that it was an asteroid and an Air Force test ship."
Thanks to my clearances and my numerous lunches with military-complex nerds, I am privy to a lot of classified information on DOD developmental projects, and I have never heard of the military working on a flying cucumber. This does not mean they would not try to build one; it just meant I had not heard of it.
At about this time, Mr. Tolson's daughter, Jenny, came in with some coffee for us. She was a slender blonde, about five and half feet tall, around 35, and very pretty. From that point on, what Mr. Tolson was saying became somewhat less important to me. Luckily, Glen was listening; plus I was carrying my recorder. She sat down in a chair next to Mr. Tolson.
Mr. Tolson continued. "We decided that since it was on my land, I should try to make a profit from it by charging admission to see it. A lot of people had apparently seen it come down and had wandered onto my land to find out what it was. That's when we got the idea of surrounding it with chicken wire and charging admission."
Dragging my attention away from Jenny, "Did you consider notifying the federal government?"
At this he laughed, which answered my question quite clearly. "It came up in the conversation, but we decided it might not be a good idea."
My opinion of him immediately increased, but I had to keep that to myself. Having worked for the government a long time, I know how the system works. I have to do a lot of things in my official capacity that I might not like on a personal level. This looked like one of those times, but I’ve found that it is not a good idea to let personal feelings encroach upon your job. I asked in my most officious tone, "Could we take some readings and investigate the site more closely?"
"Sure. Are you going to take the thing away?"
"As long as you report the money you've made charging admission on your taxes, you haven't done anything wrong." This was bunk, since my taxes have generally been regarded by the IRS as classic works of fiction. I have been audited more times than a Mafia don. "As for removing the object, it looks like soon there won't be anything left to remove. I can't tell you exactly what we will do until we investigate more. For now, we will have to seal off the area and restrict access."
“Okay, if you have to... I want to be of help.”
Glen and I left the house and went back down to the crash site to begin our preliminary investigation in earnest. Once inside the fence, we carefully checked the ground around the crater for anything out of the ordinary. It was difficult because of the crowd of people surrounding the crater fence. They didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular, just looking around and waiting for something to happen. What? I don’t know. It was at this time that we found what appeared to be smashed garden-variety slugs near the flying cucumber. Glen flagged the spot, took pictures, and collected a sample. The pictures came in handy later, since the remains had almost totally liquefied by the time we got them back to the lab. I had to admit that, if this was a fake, it was very well done. It appeared as if the vehicle came in at a low angle and at a controlled speed. Assuming this was an alien ship, which I was still a long way from believing, at the time, then the most logical explanation for this type of landing would be if the ship was not meant to land on the surface of a planet at all. Unfortunately, this was never confirmed. There was not much left of the thing in the crater, and it was giving off a very strong odor. I had Glen make a close inspection and get the samples, while I decided to do some checking upwind. Between the two of us, we made all the readings we could using our field units and took lots of digital pictures and samples. When we were done with our preliminary testing, we up linked the data and images to headquarters in Washington, so they could begin analyzing it.
We had been at it for a while, and by now there was only about an hour of daylight left, so we decided to wrap things up and talk to Mr. Tolson one more time before going back to our boarding house. I had been working on some questions for Jenny. And one or two of them actually had something to do with the case.
When we met with Mr. Tolson again, I asked him, "Has anything strange been happening since this thing landed in your field?"
"No, nothing, aside from the steady stream of curious people dropping by."
"What about your health. Mr. Tolson? I'd heard that your arthritis had gotten much better lately."
"Sometimes the arthritis gets better for short periods of time, and I just thought it was one of those times. I have to admit that I've never seen it go away this thoroughly. It actually feels like it has gone away altogether, though that’s just wishful thinking."
"How about your neighbors that visited the site the day after the landing?"
"They have also been experiencing very good health, but I hadn't given it much credence. Of course, Ruth Evans' lung cancer has apparently gone into remission. I don't think we made the connection at first, but then I decided that by making the connection between the landing and our improved health would help attract tourists."
"It worked because a lot of the tourists are here to ‘take the cure.’" I believe the correct term for them is suckers. “Jenny, how has your health been? You appear to be, um, very healthy."
She laughed and blushed slightly. "Thank you. My health has been fine, but then it has always been that way."
I then made some witty small talk and succeeded in keeping my foot out of my mouth most of the time. We said our good-byes and left.
Back in the car, I said to Glen, "We have some very serious questions to talk over before we make our report. For example, was this a very good fake, an excellent fake, or the real thing--which I doubt? Are the Tolsons in on it? Should we call in the big guns from DC? Did Jenny find me attractive, and is she unattached? And how come I haven’t seen a McDonald's in the area?" The questions were not in order of priority.
When we got back to Mrs. Simmington's, we were just in time to sit down with the group for dinner. We had a pretty normal conversation that started out on aliens and drifted to frog gigging and unusual body growths. By the time I finished dinner, I was beginning to worry that the local food or water may affect a person's IQ and decided that maybe I'd better not stay in the area too long. It would be good for Glen to get some experience on his own, but I knew that I would have to stick around regardless of the risk to my mental capacities.
Once in my room, I got on a conference call with HQ to discuss our next steps. I told them I did not see any obvious evidence of fakery and t
hat a more detailed look would be a good idea. The visit to the impact site and the discussions with the locals, especially Mr. Tolson, had made it clear that there might be more going on here than just alien-invasion hysteria. Admittedly, over the years, my instincts had dulled, and I had become a little jaded, but there was something about this whole situation that triggered a warning light in my head. I was still reluctant to kick it up a notch since that would cost the government money, which they don’t like, and would bring considerably more scrutiny of my handling of the situation. But I decided to go with my dulled instincts and called it a Code Yellow, which meant that tomorrow the manure would hit the blower. I would have to begin taking this a lot more seriously.
The next morning, Glen and I arrived at the site early. Even so, there were large trucks already there, waiting for us. I had only been privy to about half a dozen of this type of operation and had run only two in my years in the government, so this was a big thing for me. In addition to the trucks, a group of six security guards with sidearms was also there waiting for us. I had them begin clearing all the civilians out of the area. Then I turned to the trucks. Among other things, the trucks contained fencing materials, and I had the crews off-load the material. I told them to removed Tolson’s fence and constructing