Alan Foster - The Metrognome and Other Stories

Eventually she looked up at her husband and smiled. "You know, J.W., I think I've got an interestin' idea . . ."

"Actually, Miss Goldberg," Joe Chester was saying as the late-model station wagon bounced along the sunny back road, "I'm convinced that if it did come down intact, it did so in such a place and fashion that we're never going to find it. We've been looking for a month now, and we haven't got a hint as to its whereabouts. Myself, I'm pretty sure it burned up at the last minute on entry."

"Science," the older woman told him in a voice buttressed by dedication, "requires patience even above brains, Major. I'm sorry we're inconveniencing you. Please feel free to go home any time."

"Oh, that's all right," Chester replied, a polite if false smile plastered across his face to conceal his irritation. "No trouble at all."

Turning away from the backseat, he stared out the front window again at the snow-covered wheat and corn fields they were passing through. He couldn't leave any more than they could, though his reasons were different, if no less compelling. His orders had directed him to accompany and watch over the little expedition for as long as the three scientists found it worthwhile to continue.

He wondered what Charlene was doing today.

A chance glance at his watch told him the date as well as the time. If the three musketeers in the backseat kept this up many more weeks, he would miss spending the holidays with his family. Somehow he had to convince them that further search was absurd.

Before this had started, he'd been more than half-convinced that the suspected UFO was more fictional than real. Failing that, it had certainly burned up, blown up, or otherwise scattered itself undetectably across a wide section of west Texas. Even if it had existed and had come down in one section, this part of the state was crisscrossed with uncountable deep creeks overgrown with cottonwood, live oak, and other thick vegetation. Or it could have fallen into a deep dirty lake.

A thousand people, he was positive, could scour the same territory and have no better luck than the five of them had had. A month of this was more than enough.

He was sick of the whole business-sick of small-town motels, sick of lonely beds, and sick of the scientists' subtle but certain air of condescension toward him. He was even getting sick of real country cooking, a sure sign it was time to quit and go home.

They still had some time left before the holidays. He resigned himself to continuing the hunt a while longer.

The day wore on, and they followed the by now monotonous procedure of interviewing farmer after farmer. If even one had seen something strange, anything out of the ordinary, he would have understood the scientists' insistence on going on.

But none of the puzzled men and women they talked with had noticed anything out of the ordinary. That was hardly surprising, considering the terrible storm that had raged that night. Everyone had sensibly been inside in bed or stretched out in front of a roaring fire.

Some of the looks they got suggested that many thought the peculiar group of five people had spent too many such nights wandering around exposed to the elements, with the result that their brains were slightly frozen in spots.

"It's getting dark," Sarah Goldberg noted. "We'd better be getting back to Albany." She was first back into the station wagon, oblivious to the curious stares of the two cattleman they'd just interviewed.

"We've about covered all the farms and residences in this area," she said when the wagon was rolling again. "Tomorrow we'll move our base of operation to Breckenridge and commence a fresh spiral outward from there."

As the temperature outside dropped, Chester turned one the car's heater. To add to his discomfort, it had begun putting out a disagreeable odor lately, in addition to a steady grinding as-if a bearing or something had broken loose and was rattling about inside it.

He couldn't find fault with it. It had been in constant use all day and night the past month. It was only sounding the frustration and irritation Chester felt himself.

In the rapidly growing darkness the driver, known to them all only as Pat, had switched the brights on. The extra illumination was welcome on the narrow back farm roads. Pat rarely had to dim them, as oncoming cars were infrequent.

This part of the county was especially thinly populated. Pat slowed, afraid of missing the Albany turnoff, and Goldberg began screaming like a high-schooler whose date had unexpectedly turned out to be the town wolf.

"Stop the car! Stop the car!"

The usually phlegmatic, imperturbable Pat slammed a size-thirteen shoe on the brake, and they were all thrown sharply forward. Chester pushed hair from his eyes and turned to look angrily into the backseat.

"What is it now, Miss Goldberg?" he asked, fighting to remain civil. The old woman's eyes ignored him as she stared out the window on her left.

"Look-look at that," she murmured.

Something in her tone made Chester turn quickly to gaze in the indicated direction; he had to peer around the considerable bulk of the driver to do so.

Disappointment was instant. Just off the road and ahead was yet another of the many isolated ranches they'd passed and stopped at during the past month. This one was a bit more modern, a little larger than the average, but otherwise unspectacular.

Befitting the season, it was lined around roof edge and windows with Christmas lights. Two plastic, meter-high candy canes flanked the entrance to the yard in front of the main house.

Chester felt a pang of homesickness at the sight, as he had at every such group of decorations they'd passed. He'd never get home in time to string his own lights. Charlene and Mary-Ellen would be heartbroken, and the things would sit up in the attic, unused, for another year.

"Not the house. Not the house," Goldberg stammered, noticing the direction of his gaze. "Off to the left of it, in the back."

Off to one side of the house and set farther back from the road was a large barn. The front edge of the barn's roof was also lined with lights. The cause of the staid scientist's sudden hysteria was located there.

As was common in such structures, a large square gap was set above the ground over the barn's entrance, opening into the hayloft. The opening was currently filled by an object of indeterminate size and dimensions.

It lit the whole front of the barn with an incandescent yellow glow as soft and intense as an Arizona sunset. Within the yellow dwelt a horde of colored pinpoints arranged in intricate and strange patterns to form a photonic mosaic. The lights shifted position as they watched.

"It's so bright, the smaller lights so deep and rich," Tut observed quietly. '"LEDs, maybe?"

"No," objected Goldberg with assurance. "The color is too intense even for that. Pull in here, Pat; there's no gate. "

Until now the stoic sergeant had responded with equanimity to requests from all his passengers. This time he glanced for confirmation from his real superior.

"By all means, Pat, let's see what it is," Chester declared, unable to take his fascinated gaze from the enigmatic object. So bright was its glow that it overwhelmed the sign that had been strung on wire just beneath it. The sign was cut from silver foil and consisted of four large letters: N-O-E-L, Chester read to himself.

Little bounces jostled the occupants of the station wagon as it turned left into the dirt driveway running toward the barn. As they stopped next to the house and the sergeant turned off the motor, the barking of two or more large dogs could be heard. Nothing rushed to meet them, however.

"I guess they're chained or in the house," Tut commented nervously. Chester wasn't surprised at the slight tremor in Tut's voice. Numerous stops had already shown that the huge engineer had a genuine fear of dogs.