Independence Day: Silent Zone by Stephen Molstad Page B

table.
"What's this?" Dworkin asked.
    "Something I
found in the stacks. It's about a girl who swallowed an object she
found in the
grass after a close encounter with a UFO." Dworkin thumbed through the
pages. He seemed more interested in the handwritten notes than in the
report itself.
Noticing this, Okun asked if he recognized the handwriting. After a
moment of
beard-stroking indecision, the old man admitted that he did.
    "This seems to
be the chaotic penmanship of our dear friend Dr. Wells. Have 1 told you
the
interesting story of how he came to be named Director of Research for
this
project?"
    Okun wasn't going to
let himself be sidetracked again. "Check the last page."
    Sensing
he
would find something unpleasant there, Dworkin reluctantly obliged. The
sight
of the block-perspective sketch of the Y seemed to startle him
slightly. His
mind scrambled to find a cover story. If only his long-haired
coinvestigator
had confronted him with this evidence during a poker game! In that
situation,
Dworkin was a different man, capable of saying whatever the situation
required.
He would have been able to make something up on the spot. But in
matters of
work, he was accustomed to always speaking the truth. He crumpled
toward the
tabletop like a house of cards under Okun's stern glare.
    "Brickman, some
stones are better left unturned," Freiling broke in. "None of us
knows anything about that darn Y message."
    But it was too late
to back out now, and Dworkin knew it. He braced himself with a sip of
tea, then
explained. "Dr. Wells had a long obsession with this form, this shape.
He
claimed it was communicated to him by the alien shortly after the crash
at
Roswell. Like you, he said there was a feeling of urgent desperation
associated
with the transmission of the image. I believe you used the words 'doom'
and
'abandoned' to describe it. In his last years he became more and more
obsessed
with deciphering the meaning of the symbol, until it got to the point
of
blocking out other thoughts. It drove him to insanity. As this mania
progressed, he neglected more and more of his duties as director. We
were able
to mask the situation for several months, hoping he would make a
recovery, but
then he was called away to meetings in Washington. Apparently he
behaved
himself quite poorly and was not allowed to return to Area 51."
    "Poor
dude."
    "Yes, indeed.
The disintegration of his personality was a difficult thing to watch."
    "Let's be
honest," Freiling said. "The man was loopy to begin with. Slightly
off-kilter."
    "So what did he
figure out about the Y?"
    "Nothing."
    "Nothing?"
Okun asked, suspicious again. "He must have made some progress on
it if he worked for years. Didn't he even have a theory?"
    With a worried look
on his face, the old man Finally came completely clean. "Wells
suspected a
second ship. He believed that the Y was a signal, the alien equivalent
of our
SOS. There! Now you know."
    Okun nodded with
satisfaction. Once more, his gut instincts had proved to be correct—or,
at
least, he wasn't completely alone in having them. Someone else had
arrived
independently at the same conclusion, even if that someone was a mental
case.
There had to be a second ship.
    "But Mr. Okun, I
must ask you in the strongest possible terms to keep this information
secret,
especially from Mr. Radecker. As unsavory as this might sound, I
promised him I
wouldn't tell you."
    "We all
did," Freiling added. "If we didn't, he threatened to tell his bosses
about the extra paychecks we've been collecting. Next thing you know,
we'd all
be doing twenty years at Leavenworth."
    Without endorsing
that last comment, Dworkin admitted, "Mr. Radecker has found our soft
spot. None of us wants to leave Area 51 at this late date. I hope you
can
understand that."
    Again, Okun's head
bobbed up and down. He knew how scared the old men were and realized
he'd never
be able to betray them. Still, thinking ahead to his next encounter
with Radecker,
he could feel the urge to lay the whole