Majestic by Whitley Strieber

had an absolute and inalienable right to know. As Don Gray must have seen it, his obligation to the American people and to mankind superseded every other consideration.
    Well, he had informed the people. Now he would tell the brass. He entered Blanchard's sanctum. The clerk let him through immediately.
    The colonel was affable and smart. He had been an extremely successful officer, and he was next in line to take Eighth Air Force. Although he was a West Point man, the colonel seemed much more Air Force than Army. His command style was informal and consultative. Mostly, he was pleasant, although small problems could cause outbursts of temper. One morning he had chewed Hope out for tying up the base telephone lines. A few minutes later, though, he was laughing about it.
    He was a heavily decorated officer. He had the Legion of Merit, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross with an oak-leaf cluster, the Bronze Star, the Air Medal with a cluster, and the Presidential Unit Citation for his work as operations officer of the Twentieth Air Force that had been responsible for bombing Japan.
    Gray had a simple relationship with him. He respected the colonel and made that clear. In return, Blanchard trusted his intelligence assessments. As he approached the inner sanctum, Gray wondered how the old man was going to take what he was about to say.
    Blanchard looked up at him, his eyebrows raised, a question in his face.
    There was only one way to handle the situation. Just come right out with it. "Colonel, we found the debris from a flying disk this morning."
    Blanchard stared a moment, then his eyes crinkled into a smile. "I thought Hesseltine was the practical joker," he said. "If you guys are looking for suckers I suggest you try another colonel."
    Gray looked straight into his eyes, trying to communicate the high seriousness that he felt. "Sir, I'm not kidding."
    He watched a series of expressions cross Blanchard's face. The smile became a more wary expression, then a long stare. "Was there any hostile action?" "None."
    "You have wreckage? An accident?" "Apparently."
    Blanchard pressed his intercom. "Get Payne in here," he said. He was always a man to involve his deputy. A moment later Lieutenant Colonel Payne Jennings appeared. He was a compact, intense man, a polished officer. Even though he wasn't a West Point graduate, he projected the formality and to a degree the rigidity of traditional army. Still, people liked him because he was fair and always willing to push for you with the colonel if he felt you had a good argument.
    "Don found a crashed flying disk," he said to Payne. The deputy reared back, his eyes widening. Then he burst out laughing.
    "Let's see if we can get General Ramey to buy into that when he comes down." He looked from the colonel to the major, saw they weren't laughing and pursed his lips. "This is for real?"
    "Yes, sir," Gray said. "Ray Walters and Hesseltine have the wreckage over in B-2. They're trying to piece it together."
    Without another word Blanchard and Jennings headed out to the hangar.
    Very little headway had been made putting the pieces together. "The nearest we can tell, what we have here is a part of a larger device." Hesseltine sounded very professional, and Gray was pleased.
    Blanchard picked up a piece of the parchment, ran his fingers down the columns of squiggles. "Gentlemen, I have to say that I'm a little awed."
    "I thought it was a historic occasion," Gray said. "That's what I told Lieutenant Hope." Blanchard and Jennings nodded absently. That was a hurdle jumped. They'd just agreed that this story would be given to the public. Gray was proud of them.
    Blanchard held some of the parchment up to the light. "It's like wallpaper. You wouldn't have wallpaper in a military vehicle."
    "We can't know that," Walters said. "I don't think we can assume anything."
    "This is just a pile of tinfoil and wallpaper. What I'd like to see is the rest of the thing."
    "If this was a mortal wound."