Event

brought the smell of something else as Gus sniffed and looked around. His eyes settled on a rather large piece of debris that was leaning against a huge boulder about thirty feet to his front. Stepping farther into the valley, a funny and almost scary thought crossed his mind and occurred over and over. There had to have been people piloting this... this whatever it was. If it wasn't automatically piloted, that meant a crew. If some had survived, just how in hell would he get them out of here and back down the mountain? Buck was missing, and even if he weren't, he was far too old to carry anyone all the way to town. He looked around at the scattered wreckage, doubly worried now.

He quickened his pace and walked right up to the piece of metal that was leaning against the rock. He hesitated a moment with his hand poised on the upper half of the panel. Gus figured he would check this out, then get the hell out of here and find Buck and go to the cabin and drink for about a week. He lightly touched the strange metal, running his fingers over what looked like hieroglyphs etched on the surface. The memory was vague, but he had seen something like them once in the museum up in Denver. He had taken a whole paycheck one month, splurged, and caught some culture for the first time in years. He went to the movies, saw a film about wars in space or something (stupid was what he thought), then he went to see the Egyptian exhibition over at the Museum of Natural History. While there, the tour guide had explained that the name of the writing that had been found on things in Egypt was called hieroglyphs. He believed that was what he was looking at right now. They were a metallic pink and violet in color and were engraved deeply into the metal about a quarter of an inch. He ran a finger over the engravings and received a strange electrical charge through his entire hand to his elbow. The feeling was familiar and somehow comforting.

Suddenly, the metal fell over toward him and he had to step back quickly to keep from getting hit by the sharp edges on the piece of wreckage. When what was on the other side was revealed, his eyes widened in shock. Still strapped into some sort of reclining seat was what looked like a person, but from what he could see, it was small and skeleton-thin. Gus swallowed and looked closer. The body looked half-crushed and had been gashed all over. He realized it was without clothes. It was light green with darker, grayish green highlights, and it was possibly bloated in death. The old man realized he wasn't looking at anything that would pilot an airplane that he knew of. He swallowed and stepped backward, his eyes never leaving the small body that had died strapped to its seat.

While in Korea, his squad had come across an American F-84 Sabre jet that had crashed not far from their position. They had assumed the pilot had escaped, parachuting to safety. But when they investigated what was left of the aircraft, they saw what appeared to be the body of the pilot still strapped tightly to his seat. He had been as mangled and crushed as the being Gus was now staring at.

One side of its face had been caved in on impact, so Gus couldn't get a good idea of what the person, or thing, looked like. He did see that the being was without one strand of hair on its head. The small hands had three long fingers and a thumb. The thumb was almost as long as the digits it was curled up beside. There were no visible fingernails. Its one visible eye was large and the pupil was black as coal. Gus had to turn away as he saw his own aged reflection in the dust-covered eye.

He swallowed and was just starting to turn away when his foot slipped into a hole in the ground. He dropped down, catching himself at the last moment, desperately clawing at the sides of a large boulder to keep from falling into the gaping hole. Gus quickly scrabbled away and gained his balance. When he looked back into the hole that had nearly swallowed him, the old man saw a gaping maw that resembled a mouth. As he watched, rocks and dirt were still trickling into the hole from his close call. As his breathing finally calmed, he noticed the edges of the dark pit were smooth all around, as if the sides had been carefully excavated and not torn. It was as if a plug had been pulled from the compacted earth. Gus reached down and ran his fingers around its opening. It was not only smooth to the touch but was coated with a shiny substance that was still somewhat damp. He quickly pulled his hand away from the strangeness of the hole and rubbed his fingers together, finding them sticky. It also gave off a sweet odor, like a just-peeled banana.

The old prospector was close to panic. He found himself backing away, and then he remembered what was waiting behind him. The mangled body would be lying there strapped into its seat. He stopped and stood as straight as he could, then he took first one step, then two, then suddenly found himself walking faster.

Gus was almost to the spot where he had entered the valley when he fell to his knees holding his head. The immense and overwhelming feeling of fear and confusion were sounding again; this time jabbering accompanied the feelings. It was even more desperate than it had been before. Suddenly the old man realized something as he removed his hands from his head. The sound wasn't coming from his own head as it had been earlier; no blood was trickling from either his nose or his ears. The sound was coming from somewhere behind him in the valley. As he listened, the confusing sounds echoed off the rock walls and bounced around. What was more confusing, Gus had the horrible feeling that the sounds would attract something he didn't want to see.

Gus turned and crept slowly in the direction of the cries. He carefully stepped around some of the metal debris as he crept closer to the noise. He bent over, shakily placing his hands on his knees to get a closer look at the bottom of a huge rock. He at first thought the sound might have been coming from inside the piece of granite, then realized this was ridiculous. That was when he saw it was coming from beneath the huge boulder. He noticed movement at the base of the rock as the soft jabbering suddenly stopped. He went to one knee as he felt something akin to relief mixed with horror flash into his mind.

Gus tilted his head and looked farther into the hole, trying desperately to penetrate the blackness. He moved his head closer, fear filling his mind. God, this thing must be terrified even more than me! A feeling of dread washed over him like a small wave, making him hesitant, and he tensed a little, but the feeling lasted only a second. Inside, he still sensed danger and pure animal terror, just as a deer might feel at the sight of a pair of headlights. As he looked into the coal blackness of the hole, he thought he saw two small pools of darkened water. Then they disappeared. Confusion clogged his mind as he tried to figure out what he was seeing in the dark. Then it struck him with the suddenness of a lightning bolt, as the twin pools reappeared: he was looking into the eyes of something that had come down with this thing, and its eyes had just blinked at him.

'Hey,' he said softly, 'I'm not gonna hurt ya.'

The thing blinked and continued to talk in the strange jabber Gus didn't understand.

'You hurt?'

As soon as he asked, he knew without a doubt, that, yes, the thing in the hole was indeed injured.

'You wanna get the hell out of there?' he asked, not really knowing what to call it, or even if he was being understood. 'Hope ya understand my lingo, boy.'

Gus suddenly straightened and looked around him. His eyes settled on the hole at the other end of the valley, the one he had almost stumbled into. Now it wasn't confusion, but terror that struck his mind. The dark void of that hole that was coming toward him, freezing him with the horror he sensed was there. Then his eyes quickly traveled to the rocks above him. He felt as if he was being watched. He had had that feeling a hundred times on a hundred different nights in Korea, and this was no different. He thought that whatever eyes watched him meant him harm. Again his eyes roamed to the large hole. That was a different fear from what he was now feeling. The hairs on the back of his neck were still at attention, so he shook his head to try to dislodge the confusion he felt because of the hole in the ground and whatever was up in the rocks.

He turned back to the creature still cowering underneath the boulder.

'Well, come on, let's getcha outta there,' he said nervously, looking back at the hole a distance away, half expecting something to come charging out of it. When he turned back, his eyes widened in shock. There, with long fingers shaking and extended outward, was a hand. The slender fingers were light green, like the first mangled being he had found in the wreckage. A darker smear of liquid was on one of the extended fingers, and as Gus watched, a small drop of fluid fell from the digit and hit the sandy dirt around the hole and soaked in. Then his eyes went back to the hand, and without realizing it, he reached out and grasped it. He felt the shivering of the owner and relaxed his grip. He reached deep into the hole with his free hand and found what he hoped was purchase under the unseen being's other arm. Gus pulled gently at first, then harder as he realized the little body was wedged under the boulder like a cork in a bottle. As he pulled, he felt the creature shift and start to help. A long minute later he was done. As the strange being came to rest after Gus had released it, it immediately started looking around at its surroundings, its large eyes blinking rapidly in the brighter world outside the shade of the boulder. The old man sat hard on his butt and stared in amazement and wonder at what he had pulled from the rock.

The creature, after surveying the crash site, slowly lay down on its back and began gazing up at the blue sky