'Look!' He pointed.
His wife gasped.
'Oh, wow!' The comment escaped his eldest son, who normally was too cool to show pleasure or enthusiasm for anything.
The people sitting behind Wally inhaled so sharply he could hear it.
'It's a saucer!'
People were standing now, pointing. All over the stadium, people were rising to their feet.
A vast, awed silence fell upon the frozen crowd as the saucer dropped lower and lower toward the center of the field.
A worried Elmer Disquette was on the mound for the Dodgers. He was in his fourth inning of work and was starting through the Rockies' lineup the second time. The catcher had just asked for a curve to this right-handed batter, Disquette's bread-and-butter pitch; in fact, the pitch he had to throw to get people out. His fastball he used merely to set up the curve. He didn't have a decent change-up or slider, a fact he had brooded over for years. Staying too long on the mound was Russian roulette for short-relief men with limited repertoires, as Elmer Disquette well knew.
He glanced at his dugout — all the guys were on their feet — as he went into his windup.
The batter was coiled.
Elmer knew the pitch wouldn't break when he released it, just a millisecond too early.
Ramon Martinez was the batter, and he swung with everything he had. Just up from the AAA farm club, Colorado Springs, Martinez was playing in his third major league game. He had yet to get a hit. If he didn't start getting some hits, he was going to be riding a bus back to the Springs in the very near future. That bus ride was in his mind when he felt the shock of the bat connecting with the ball.
The ball went off the bat climbing. Ramon's heart sank. Another pop fly to center.
He got started toward first as he followed the flight of the ball. It went up, up, up, right under that big black saucer shape…
And the ball kept going, going, going…
Unbeknownst to Ramon, or anyone else in Coors Field, the ball entered the antigravity field under the saucer and got a free ride for about a hundred feet, just enough. The Dodger center fielder wasn't even trying to catch the ball. He was standing dead in his tracks staring at the saucer. The baseball went over his head and cleared the fence in straightaway dead center by ten feet.
Ramon Martinez leaped straight up at least three feet, his heart filled with joy. He jabbed both fists aloft, then jumped with both feet on first base. After he spiked the bag good and proper, Ramon set off for second, so overwhelmed by the moment that the absence of crowd reaction didn't even register.
While Ramon was bounding around the bases, the crowd was watching the saucer, which was dropping lower and lower toward second base.
As the ship neared the earth, dirt began flying around. The dirt was lifted from the area around second by the saucer's antigravity field and swirled by the gentle breeze blowing in from left.
The cloud of dirt got Ramon's attention. Like everyone else in the stadium, he too looked up. When he got to second he was feeling light on his feet, as if his contact with the earth were being severed. He dropped to his knees and clutched the bag with both hands.
'We better get going before anyone panics,' Rip said to Charley. He was eyeing the people near the exits. They were still frozen in place, their mouths hanging open, but that wouldn't last. The urge to flee would strike soon.
'Okay,' Charley said softly and eased back the collective while she turned the saucer with stick and rudder.
When the ship was pointing toward the Scoreboard in center, she eased the stick forward. As the ship began accelerating, she twisted the throttle grip. The rockets rumbled into life as the saucer shot over the Scoreboard.
With Coors Field safely behind her, Charley Pine came on hard with the rockets and pulled the nose up sharply. The G pushed her back hard into her seat.
The thunder washed over Wally Greenberg like an ocean wave. It engulfed him and overwhelmed his senses as the fireball of the saucer's rocket engines rose and rose and rose into the heavens.
When he finally looked around, the boys' faces were shining. 'Did you see
Wally Greenberg stretched both arms above his head and shouted to the heavens. 'Yesssss!'
Ramon Martinez walked to third base, then home. He kept his head down, concentrated on the placement of each foot. As he walked he crossed himself again and again, endlessly.
A thing like that — a man has to think on it, get it into proper perspective.
Elmer Disquette stood on the mound rubbing his face. He took off his glove and rubbed his face some more and spit in the dirt.
The catcher wandered out.
'Tough break, man.'
Elmer snorted. 'What in hell was that, anyway?'
'Hey, I don't know, man. It didn't land and that's something.'
'I didn't even think of that.'
'A bunch of aliens running around the diamond… ' the catcher mused as he watched the crowd stampede for the exits. 'I don't think I'm ready for that much diversity.'
The television cameras at Coors Field caught it all.
Although the game was not being televised live, the saucer was barely out of sight before the networks had the feed on the air nationwide. In the White House the president and his advisers watched in horror as the saucer slipped into the lights and dropped toward second base.
'My God!' the president whispered. 'It's
They sat mesmerized until the saucer disappeared from the camera's view.
'They are more advanced than we are,' muttered the secretary of state. 'We may have to become their slaves.'
Bombing Joe looked at her in horror. The old biddy's screws were coming loose.
'People will think that religion is bunk,' said O'Reilly. 'Morals, ethics, the philosophical underpinnings of civilization are all in question. The government may collapse.'
'Where in blazes is my UFO team?' Bombing Joe wondered aloud and trotted away to call the Pentagon again.
The president pounded his fist on the arm of his chair. 'An off-year election less than three months away,' he said bitterly, 'and now
Chapter Eleven
The night was well along when the saucer settled onto its struts in Egg's hangar. The last hour and a half of
