Jerry Oltion: Space Aliens Taught My Dog to Knit!

Delmer Dawkins leaned across the circular bar table, pinning his copy of the National Revealer beneath one jacketed elbow while he gestured wide with his other hand only inches in front of his companion’s saturnine face. “It’s bigger than we thought,” he said in a whisper that echoed off the glass wall beside them. Beyond, the city of Seattle glistened in the late evening sunlight. “It’s not just NASA. We’re pretty sure SETI, the Air Force, and the Catholic Church are in on it, too.”

“Is that so?” Leo Stevenson leaned back a few inches, but Delmer followed him, his tie nearly dipping into the glass of mineral water he’d forgotten in his excitement.

“Yes, it’s so. But they’re not as big as us. We’ve got our own people in high places. Very high places.”

Leo smiled. “Where, the Moon?”

Delmer narrowed his eyes. Was Leo making fun of him? Or was he just putting on a front for the rest of the bar patrons? That was the trouble with conspiracies; even your friends could be in on them, and you never knew for sure. But Leo was above suspicion. Not because he was too honest to have secrets, but because he was too greedy. Leo was a Hollywood producer; if he knew anything about a clandestine space program, he would have made a movie about it years ago.

“Don’t laugh,” Delmer said. “That’s where we think their secret base is. On the far side, of course, where astronomers can’t see them.” He shook his head sadly. “The legitimate astronomers, that is. Not all of them are on our side. The conspiracy has spread to academia, too.” Delmer scanned the bar nervously. There were a dozen or so occupied tables; most of them held couples deep in conversation, but at one a lone woman nursed a drink and glanced at her watch, and at another sat a man reading a newspaper. Wearing sunglasses.

Delmer glanced quickly back to Leo. In a real whisper this time, he said, “We’re being watched.”

“Really?”

Delmer admired the cool way Leo rattled the last few ice cubes in his empty rum-and-Coke glass, then sucked one into his mouth, never once looking up. He acted as if it didn’t matter to him in the slightest whether federal agents shadowed him in hotel bars. As if the whole situation were inconsequential, a lark.

“There’s just one thing that bothers me about all this,” Leo said, not even bothering to lower his voice. “How could the government start a secret space program and put a base on the Moon and all that, and manage to keep it secret for twenty years? Come on now, you’re talking about the same people that screwed up Watergate and couldn’t keep Clinton’s sex life or the Bin Laden connection under wraps.”

“Clever diversions, all of them,” Delmer said softly, wishing Leo would quiet down as well. The guy with the newspaper wasn’t even pretending to read anymore.

“Diversions?” Leo asked.

“That’s right. Some of our agents were getting too close to the truth, so they started a scandal to mask the internal shakedown. It’s one of the oldest tactics in the book.”

“Is it?” Leo crunched on his ice cube, swallowed.

“Don’t scoff at the government. They kept the F-117 Stealth Fighter secret for years.”

“Hmm.” Leo shrugged. “So what are you going to do about this Black Space Program of yours, now that you know it exists? Sell people UFO insurance?”

Delmer ignored Leo’s dig. Ever since Leo had scored big in the movie industry, he loved jazzing his former college buddies about their mundane professions. Well, Delmer would impress him before the evening was over, he knew it. “We’re going to blow it wide open, that’s what,” he said. “We’ll start with—” He suddenly became aware of a person standing just behind his left elbow. He turned in his chair, expecting to see the muzzle of a gun pointed at him from beneath a folded newspaper, but instead he saw the single woman from the other table. She was tall, rail thin, with dark blond hair that fell in bangs just short of aquamarine eyes. She wore no makeup, and her clothes, from the blue and green flannel shirt to the tight Levis to the canvas hiking-boots, looked like a tourist’s attempt to mimic the local grunge scene. Definitely not an executive look.

“Excuse me,” she said, smiling shyly. Her voice had a slight drawl. Delmer guessed Texas or maybe New Mexico. “I was supposed to meet someone here at seven, but I just realized my watch isn’t working. Do either of you have the time?”

Both Delmer and Leo immediately looked to their wristwatches and said, “Seven thirty.”

“Seven thirty-one,” Delmer amended when he saw the digit change.

“Oh. Yes, I’m sure I missed him, then. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Not at all,” Leo said magnanimously.

The woman took a step past them as if to leave the bar, but her hip bumped the table. Delmer’s mineral water sloshed, and he reached to steady it, but she was quicker. “Sorry,” she said, setting the glass back down in front of him. She flashed a quick smile, then turned away again.

They watched her weave her way through the tables to the door, Leo apparently with simple lust, Delmer with suspicion. What had she been up to? Was her sudden appearance some kind of warning?

When she disappeared into the lobby, Leo turned around and picked up his glass. Three or four ice cubes were all that was left in it, and they clung stubbornly to the bottom when he tilted it up to his lips.

“Here, let me borrow some of that,” he said, picking up Delmer’s water glass and pouring a half inch off the top of it into his own glass to float the ice cubes.

“Wait!” Delmer said, grabbing his arm. He’d figured it out. “Don’t drink that. She poisoned it.”

Leo rolled his eyes. Prying Delmer’s hand loose, he said, “Del, don’t you think you’re taking this conspiracy business a little too seriously? She didn’t poison your drink.”

Embarrassed by Leo’s patronizing tone, Delmer asked, “Then what was she doing here?”

“Asking the time,” Leo said. He took a big gulp of water, slurping in one of the ice cubes. He smiled wide at Delmer while he swallowed, as if to say, “See?” but his smile suddenly changed to a grimace of horror. He spit the ice cube back into his glass and said, “Then again…” but he never finished. His eyes rolled upward and he tilted forward until his forehead rested on the National Revealer .

“Holy shit!” Delmer whispered. He looked up at the other bar patrons, but the couples at their tables hadn’t noticed anything, and if the man with the newspaper had, he wasn’t making a move. Delmer felt completely alone. His confident “we” a few minutes before had been bravado, nothing more; the truth of the matter was he had never met another person who believed in a clandestine space program, or in Bigfoot or the face on Mars either, for that matter. He’d only read their articles in the newspapers.

He looked back down at the top of his friend’s head. My God! he thought. Leo is dead. Whatever the woman had slipped into the water had killed him instantly. And Delmer would no doubt be on the top of the suspect list. He’d frequented this bar often enough over the last few years, somebody was bound to recognize him…

Still, he couldn’t waste time worrying about himself. Leo was dead! Poisoned by the drink that should have been his.

Here was his proof that the Black Space Program existed, but how could he use it to convince anyone? Delmer tried to think: What should he do now? There was no way he could save Leo, but if he acted fast he could at least track down the woman who had killed him. And maybe, if he played it right, she would give him the proof he needed to blow the whole story wide open.