hangar, and silence lay across the field again.
Colonel Harry Henshaw and Filipo Castilano emerged from the hangar to greet Indy and the others. They went together into the farmhouse. 'Coffee,'
Henshaw said to Richard. His demeanor left no doubt as to whom Richard and the others worked for. Coffee was placed on the table along with sweet rolls.
'Okay, let's get down to it,' Indy said. The long machinations until this moment had been grinding away his patience.
'Indy,' Henshaw began, 'I've been digging as deeply as I can into every known instance of unexplained flight—
unexplained in terms of our present science, engineering, and technology—since the first historical records ever kept.
I didn't do it myself, of course. We turned to every college and university and research office with which the government has any kind of contract. We leaned on them and we leaned real heavy. We have used everybody from Navajo shamans to longdeceased priests, thanks to the effort of Filipo, here,' he nodded to Castilano.
'We've gone into Hebraic, Moslem, Akkadian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Chinese, Japanese, voodoo, Hindu, every Christian sect and every ancient sect from people who made the ancient Egyptians look like Johnny-come- latelies.'
This was Indiana Jones's home territory. He was enjoying himself in a way he hadn't anticipated. 'Witches, too?'
'Witches, too.' Henshaw wondered about the sudden smile on the face of Gale Parker.
'Colonel, how deeply did you go into the Mayan, Aztec, Inca, and other cultures?' she put in.
'All the way.'
'Your conclusions?' Indy asked.
'I've come to the conclusion—and to the great amusement of my Vatican friend, here—that I feel I have missed ninety-nine percent of history.'
'Sounds reasonable,' Indy said to settle Henshaw's mood. 'Look, Harry, no one man knows it all, or even a small fraction of the past. Once you make a concerted effort, you find out that you've been blind to that past. It's too big, there's too much, and it's all convoluted with the intermixing of fact and fable.'
'What the devil are you trying to tell me?' Henshaw demanded.
'Simply that I expected you to run into countless incidents, from reliable sources in our past histories, that tell the stories of machines that fly just like the ones we seem to be encountering now. Huge torpedo vessels. Gleaming gold and bronze and silver discs and wheels. Mother ships that spawn smaller vessels. Great scimitar- shaped craft that hurtle through the skies, that perform impossible maneuvers, that blaze brighter than the sun, that hover above the ground. It's a long and fascinating story.'
'Indy, are you telling me that what we've run into is simply a replay of ancient history?' Henshaw couldn't hide his disbelief.
'To some extent, yes,' Indy said.
'Aha! I told you, Harry!' Castilano was almost gloating. 'The history of the Church, the history before the Church, the histories before anyone even thought of any kind of temple! It's all there, it has always been there!
And now we are again—'
'Hold it, Filipo!' Indy said in a halfshout. 'Save the absolutions for Easter, or whatever. Let's stick to the historical records. Stay away, all of us, from subjective conclusions.'
'You sound like my old history teacher,' Henshaw laughed, easing the tension that had suddenly built up.
'He should,' Gale told Henshaw. 'Remember? Professor Jones is the name.'
Henshaw nodded. 'Okay. Where do we begin?' He shuffled through a thick stack of notepapers. By his side Castilano was doing the same. Gale looked for Indy to put something before him but all that appeared was a brandy snifter. He turned to Gale. 'Take notes,' he told her. 'But about tomorrow, not yesterday.'
He winked at their fascinated audience—Cromwell, Foulois, and Kilarney. Only the newcomer to their group was fast enough to offer a slight nod in return. That Jocko, mused Indy, was hiding a very sharp mind beneath that gleaming smile and huge frame. He'd have to do some digging on his background.
Indy changed his mind suddenly. He had planned for the two pilots and Jocko simply to be outsiders, permitted to
'listen in' without participating. Then he realized how foolish was that judgment; Cromwell and Foulois were pilots.
Aces! They could fly anything, and in the information they were about to hear, there might hide a sliver of data that would prove valuable to them.
'Will, Frenchy? Come on closer. If you get a brainstorm about something, break in, all right?'
Indy turned back to Henshaw and Castilano.
'Okay. There are certain rules to follow when you're trying to extract information from what's available. First of all, we must gain access to whatever records there are that contain references to unexplained objects appearing in the sky.
But in many of those cases we'll be dealing with emotion, religious experience, and inadequate record- keeping. So what we find may have no basis in fact, or it might hold fragments of truth mixed in with nonsense. The point I'm stressing is that the moment we run up against that kind of historical record, we've got to put it aside. Just plain dump it and go to whatever may be more substantial.'
Indy looked directly at Henshaw. 'From any source.' He hoped Henshaw got the message: bring up anything
