Alcantaran 1: Alien Abduction by Terry Compton Page B

it casual and don't show too much interest."
    Ron took his time the next day putting things back together.   He jury rigged some cables to hook electrical power to the stripped rocket.   He figured Wurden would throw a fit if he tried it on the one he was trying to make whole.
    Wurden saw the cables and came over to see what he was doing.   "What do you think you are doing?   Do you have authorization to do that?" Wurden cried in alarm.
    "Well,   this is just a piece of junk now that everything has been stripped.   I just thought I would try this experiment to see if I could tell what this thing was supposed to do.   I didn't see anything on the computer that even suggested anybody had ever tried this," Ron stated matter of factly.
    He touched a switch and suddenly there was a force field around the rocket.   He grabbed a meter to see how strong the field was.   It was pretty strong for the little current he was applying.   Wurden didn't say another word.   He just hovered right over Ron's shoulder as he continued his experiment.   Ron increased the current just a tiny bit and the field strength increase four fold.   He tried pushing against the field and found he couldn't budge it.   He grabbed a hammer and tried smacking the rocket.   The force field grabbed the hammer and slowed it to a stop.   The hammer felt like he had hit a big bowl of cold molasses.   When the blow stopped, he could pull the hammer out with no resistance.   The force field momentarily increased from the energy of the blow.   Ron shut the power off and reached in the rocket to make a few adjustments.   He didn't let Wurden see him flip the valve to the original position.   He turned the power back on and tried his experiments again.   When he increased the current this time, there was no increase in the field strength.   He tried the hammer and this time the force field ricocheted the hammer blow.   When the hammer ricocheted back, it almost smacked Wurden in the head.   Wurden zipped back a safe distance and continued to watch closely.   Ron increased the current quite a bit with no increase in the field strength.
    Ron started muttering for Wurden's benefit, "Stupid piece of junk.   You work one time this way and the next time you don't work."
    He turned off the power and made a couple more adjustments.   He tried the experiment with the same results.   The meter showed that a large well-placed blow would go right through the force field and destroy the rocket.   He continued to make adjustments and experiment with the same results.   Finally he turned to Wurden, "I don't know what happened the first time I turned the power on.   It worked fine then but every time since, it just won't work.   I think I could take some kind of bar and drive it completely through the rocket with a hammer.   The force field is so weak and doesn't get any stronger with an increase in current.   Is that what your scientists found?"
    Wurden was pretty non-committal but Ron knew he was right.   Wurden was making notes and sending them to his superiors about the experiments.   Ron had tried some things the Bug's scientists hadn't thought of.   Wurden got a response back from his superiors telling him to have Ron check out the ancient space ship.
    Wurden stated officiously, "Follow me.   We have another mystery for you to take a look at."   He led Ron to the rear of the old space ship.   He touched some buttons on his personal computer and the rear door on the space ship opened.   Ron approached the old ship with awe.   No one really knew how old the ship was but it showed its age in the dents and scrapes on the skin.   The ship was 579 feet long and cylindrical in shape.   It was 175 feet in diameter at the back and stayed that diameter until close to the nose, where it slowly tapered to a blunt nose like on a 747 jet.   The bottom was flattened and had legs with pads for landing gear.   It had two fins that started as a taper 50