NINE
Fay galloped across the grassy plain atop her Appaloosa, Bandit, trying to outrun the approaching storm. With darkness falling, her father would soon come looking for her, and he’d tan her hide if he found out she’d gone riding without finishing her after-school chores. As she felt the hot wind in her face and watched Bandit’s silky mane toss from side to side, Fay thought it would be worth the risk.
In just a few days, he’d be yanking her from everything she’d ever known in her ten short years. She’d never even been out of New Mexico and now her father wanted to uproot the entire family so he could go run his cousin’s sheep ranch near someplace called Lake Wakatipu on the other side of the world. And the worst part was that they’d have to leave Bandit behind. She’d argued that it wasn’t fair, but nothing she could say would change his mind. The best she could do was spend as much time as she could with her beloved horse, so she’d taken him for long rides every evening whether her dad liked it or not.
But he’d be extra mad if she got stuck out in a thunderstorm. Flash floods could happen in the blink of an eye, and to get home she’d have to cross many arroyos on the Foster sheep ranch where the foreman, Mac Brazel, let her ride undisturbed.
The clouds rolled in, lightning piercing the sky every few minutes. She was still seven miles from the barn and safety. At this rate she’d be soaked by the time she got there, and there’d be no way she could hide what she’d been doing if she walked into the house drenched and covered with the smell of horse. Then her behind would get the belt for sure. She pressed her heels down and urged Bandit to go faster.
A new sound intruded over the pounding hooves. Faint at first, the hum grew steadily, coming from the west behind her. Too constant to be thunder, it sounded like an engine, but no one would be idiot enough to try to drive a truck through the uneven terrain.
Fay looked over her shoulder to see where it was coming from, but the plain was empty to the horizon. The sound grew louder still, and she realized that it wasn’t coming from behind her. It was overhead.
With White Sands Proving Ground only thirty miles away, she’d heard some of her friends talk about planes that sometimes flew high above the Army base. Two years ago, she’d even heard the faraway boom of something her father later called an atom bomb. That had gotten the kids talking when the news had been made public. To them, nothing was better than a government secret, unless it was a secret weapon that could destroy an entire city.
But the noise she heard now wasn’t a bomb, and it wasn’t the drone of aircraft propellers. This was more like the whine of a thousand trumpets blowing in unison. And it was heading straight toward her.
She pulled up sharply on the reins, and Bandit whinnied as he came to a stop. Fay looked up into the low- hanging clouds hoping to catch a glimpse of the noise’s source. Then, just like heavy seas parted by a ship’s prow, the clouds slid aside, and a flying object like nothing she’d ever seen screamed out of the sky.
Her mouth agape, Fay struggled to keep Bandit from bolting as a giant, silvery disk descended directly at them. Not knowing which way to go, she kept the horse still. The flying disk had no propellers, just two gaping black openings on either side. The craft had to be wider than the local high school’s football field.
Before she could decide on a direction to go, it roared overhead, deafening her and spooking Bandit. He reared up, bucking Fay, and while she sailed through the air, she realized that the object that she’d thought was a disk was actually the shape of an oblong wing with no body. Then she hit the ground, smacking her rear harder than her dad would have and rolling away from Bandit’s panicked stomping.
Fay raised her head in time to see the silver wing plow into the ground a quarter-mile in front of her, spraying dirt into the sky as it skidded to a stop.
The whine from the craft didn’t end, but she could see no further movement.
Wincing from her bruised backside, but otherwise in one piece, she cooed at Bandit until he calmed and came to her. She climbed back on and tentatively rode toward the motionless air vehicle.
She knew she should just ride straight on and tell her father what had happened, but she also felt intense curiosity about the craft. Her father had taken her to an airfield one time to see the Army planes, and they’d all had white stars and numbers painted on the sides. This object had no markings whatsoever.
When she reached the front of the craft, Fay dismounted the horse and tied him to a scrub brush to keep him from bolting. She could see now just how huge the thing was, the wing standing more than five times higher than her thin frame.
As she walked along the wing’s length, she ran her hand over its smooth skin, the metal cold to the touch. She didn’t notice the cracked square of glass lying on the ground until she was right next to it.
No, not glass, because it wasn’t shattered, but it was transparent like a window pane. She looked up and saw the space where the pane would go. The frame around it had been ripped apart from the force of the crash. Although the front of the craft was partially buried in the earth, it was too far above her to see inside without hoisting herself up. Now she wished she hadn’t dismounted Bandit.
Her heart raced as she tried to decide what to do. If someone was hurt, Fay had to help them, but she was terrified about what she might find. Living on a ranch, she’d seen death and injuries: broken bones, impalements, rotting sheep that hadn’t been discovered for a week. But this was different. There might be injured men inside.
Her dad had raised her to be tough. She’d become the son in the family after her brother died when she was two. Her father took her shooting and roping, taught her how to shear and hunt and fish. Fay convinced herself she could handle whatever she discovered in there and then report back. It would take only a moment to investigate.
Wrapping her leather gloves around the frame, she prepared to pull herself up when a silver hand shot out of the opening and grabbed at her wrist.
Fay fell backward and screamed. She shrieked even louder when she saw the face that peered out the window.
Although it was the size of a human and had two arms, its bulbous silver head was twice as large as a man’s, framing two circular black eyes and a wide slit where the mouth should have been. The grotesque face lacked any nose. She screamed again when the creature climbed over the window’s sill and landed next to her, breathing heavily before collapsing to its knees. Blue fluid bled from its stomach. It put its three-fingered hands to its head, shaking it back and forth as if it were trying to decapitate itself. After a moment, it gave up and sank to all fours.
With a guttural tone, the thing babbled at Fay in a language she’d never heard. She shook her head in disbelief, and before she could scramble away, the creature lunged at her and grabbed her leg. She tried to twist free, but its grip was too strong. He crawled toward her and took her hand.
Fay was scared beyond reason, sure that the thing was preparing to eat her, but instead it stood and pulled her to her feet. Without letting go of her hand, it loped toward Bandit, babbling nonstop the entire way, as if it were terrified about something inside the downed craft.
She struggled but couldn’t break free. When they reached Bandit, the creature patted the horse on the neck, then threw Fay onto the saddle. To her dismay and surprise, the thing climbed awkwardly up behind her and lashed the reins, launching Bandit into a canter with surprising skill.
It was only then that Fay realized that the whine from the craft was getting louder by the second. They fled across the plain in the direction of a slope leading down to an arroyo a half-mile ahead. For some reason, the creature was desperately trying to put distance between them and the craft.
Lightning flashed, followed seconds later by the crack of thunder. The storm would arrive in minutes.
When they reached the slope, the creature dismounted and pulled Fay off, leading them down into the dry streambed, soon to be swollen with water from the coming storm. With one hand on Bandit’s rein, it pushed her against the twenty-foot-high vertical wall of the arroyo and covered her body with its own. As it did so, a tremendous blast like a thousand thunderclaps split the air.
The thing hadn’t been trying to kidnap her. It had been trying to protect her.
Bits of debris rained down around them, but none of them were large enough to injure them or the horse.
After a minute, the thing rolled over and lay on its back, wheezing with great effort. Its shaking hand snaked
