Newton Chadwick was a child of his place and time, and he didn't know what to make of it. Sure, he had read his share of science fiction as a youngster — and that was precisely what it was, fiction. He had seen the Buck Rogers matinee features, watched space cowboys shoot it out with aliens bent on conquest. Or worse. Mind candy for a Saturday afternoon.
The saucer changed everything. Everything!
The other men on cots weren't sleeping either. They coughed and tossed restlessly, but no one was breathing deeply or snoring. Physicists, mathematicians, working engineers — they were from the nation's finest universities and large industrial concerns. No doubt they were also wondering what they would find when they opened the saucer in the morning. And, because they were human, thinking about how the discoveries they would make would build careers and reputations.
Finally, when he could stand it no longer, Chadwick eased from his sleeping bag, stepped into his clothes and shoes, and slipped out of the tent. The night sky was full of stars, countless points of light flung carelessly into the inky blackness by… by… God?
Young Chadwick had never thought much about God. He had been dipped in religion as a child when his father and mother dragged him to church at irregular intervals, but little of it had stuck. Tonight, staring upward at the gleaming stars in the obsidian sky, he realized that if there were a God, He was a whale of a lot larger than the white-haired old man depicted on the stained glass windows of that church in New Jersey.
And there was the Milky Way, a ribbon of light that stretched from horizon to horizon, a galaxy of countless stars.
For the first time in his life Newton Chadwick felt as if he were marooned on a small island in an endless sea, confined to a tiny spit of sand, unable to escape.
One of the wizards was a slim older man with wispy white hair surrounding a tanned bald pate who habitually sucked on a pipe. He was the gloomiest of the lot the following morning, saying little in response to the excited inanities and speculations of his colleagues as they ate a hasty breakfast in an army mess tent. He ate in silence as they discussed the possibility that one of the creatures who had flown the saucer might still be in it. 'Did the army open the thing?' No one knew.
Finally someone drew him into the conversation with a direct question. 'I wish I weren't involved in this,' he said gloomily. 'I wish I were back in my lab at the university happily ignorant of the existence of that thing.' He jerked his head in the direction of the hangar that held the saucer.
'What are you saying, Fred? The arrival of the saucer is the most exciting thing to happen on this planet since Christ rose from the dead.'
'As I recall, the news of the Resurrection made a great many people very unhappy,' Fred responded. 'The saucer story will be greeted the same way. Who do you think is going to be overjoyed at the news? The clergy? Industrialists? Union leaders? The politicians? When they pause for a moment's thought — and I'll freely admit that they rarely exercise their brains for that long — the politicians are going to realize that the arrival of a spaceship flown by intelligent creatures from another solar system is going to rock civilization. May even shatter it.'
'Anarchy? Are you predicting anarchy?'
Fred toyed with the remnants of his breakfast. 'A man my age should probably stay out of the business of crystal ball predictions. However, I do think our report is going to give official Washington one hell of a scare. My gut feeling is we are wasting our time. We'll never be allowed to say a word about anything we see or do here today, and yet no one here will ever be able to forget it. We'd all be better off not knowing.'
The discussion swirled around the table, but Newton Chadwick didn't participate. He rarely did. The senior men had careers, tenured faculty chairs and hard-earned reputations to worry about. He didn't. Newton forked eggs and potatoes, drained a second glass of milk and left the tent while they pondered the shape of the world in the coming Age of the Saucer.
The saucer was parked in a large hangar at an unused air base in the desert wastes. The wizards rode for an hour on the bus to get there. One of the officers handed out a special badge to each man, who was required to wear it on a chain around his neck as if it were a set of dog tags. They were all in such a hurry to see the saucer again that they donned the tags without protest and queued up to get past another soldier, a sergeant, who scrutinized each badge even though he had just watched the officer hand them out and the wizards put them on.
As usual, Chadwick found himself at the end of the line. He ground his teeth and waited his turn.
There it was! Sitting under the lights on its legs, apparently undamaged by the rough handling it had recently received.
They found the entry hatch on the belly of the saucer quickly enough. As the rest of the group fondled the machine and examined the rocket nozzles and tried to see through the canopy into the dark interior, three of them worked on getting the hatch open. Twenty minutes later they were still at it. They would have spent the day staring at the mechanism if one of them had not kept his hand on it for about ten seconds, then tried to manipulate it. Now it opened.
'It is sensitive to heat,' they cried to their colleagues as they gathered on hands and knees under the saucer to examine the mechanism. As they excitedly discussed how this minor miracle might be physically accomplished, Newton Chadwick wriggled between them and slithered up through the hatch.
The interior was dark, lit only by the overhead lights from the interior of the hangar that penetrated the canopy. And it was empty of the creatures, living or dead, who had flown the saucer. A much relieved Newton Chadwick began a hasty inspection.
There were seats equipped with seat belts. Humans, Chadwick concluded. Or humanoids, humanlike creatures. Controls, a pilot's seat, white panels where the instruments should be… pedals for the pilot, a stick on the right and left. And a headband. Much like an Indian's headband that he and his friends had worn in play not too many years ago.
He picked up the band and inspected it as closely as he could in the gloom. As he did so, several of his colleagues worked up the courage to join him in the saucer's interior.
'I see you're still alive, Chadwick,' the senior man said acidly. Obviously the boy didn't know his place in the pecking order, but what could you expect from a youth with his credentials?
'He's our mine canary,' the second man announced. His displeasure was also evident. 'If there are horrible bacteria waiting in here to smite us, at least we have five minutes.'
Chadwick couldn't resist. He coughed, grabbed his throat and made a retching sound. The older scientists scurried back out the hatch.
Newton donned the headband. Well, the saucer people apparently had heads about the same size as his, which was seven and an eighth in baseball caps.
Hmm…
'Are you alive in there, Chadwick?'
'I feel quite feverish, sir.' They liked it when he called them sir. 'Vision fading, coming and going.'
'Get a doctor! Quickly.' The call was repeated, which caused the soldiers to scurry about in a frenzied way. Chadwick ignored the commotion: He was too busy pulling and pushing the half dozen knobs and levers on the instrument panel. Surprising that there were so few. He had seen the cockpit of a four-engine airliner, which was stuffed with dials and gauges and dozens of levers…
Aha. The entire panel came to life when he pulled out one of the red knobs.
He stared at the white panels, which changed colors and became almost transparent. Symbols appeared.
And he saw into the heart of the machine.
The headband… My God!
He tried to organize his thoughts, and saw the presentations on the panels before him change as fast as thought.
It was some kind of calculator, like the Univac. He had read of it, a giant machine that filled a building and could be used to make scientific calculations. This was like that, only…
His mind galloped on. How does the saucer work? Where did it come from? Who flew it? He got immediate answers to these questions, although he didn't fully comprehend the information he saw.
