THIRTY-TWO YEAR old United States Air Force Capt. Hallen Vincent Jenners was at the controls. He was not piloting any old ordinary aircraft, but a sleek, highly sophisticated UFO, commonly known as a flying saucer.
The ship’s interior was dimly lit, drab grey for the most part, metallic, and had finely sculpted walls throughout with very few display panels or coherent controls visible. Everything inside was curved and surfaced entirely by smoothed edges, with only a couple of 3-D animated star maps perceptible on bare low-lit walls.
* * * * *
HE SPOKE QUIETLY to himself into his cell recorder...
“I don’t know how it all began, but I’m piloting a state-of-the-art flying saucer heading for a star system called Zeta Reticuli where I found myself from the distant past, traveling at the speed of light... It all started with the discovery of a binary code made up of ones and zeros I discovered in the desert three years ago...”
Jenners remembered more...
“It happened at White Sands Testing Facility in New Mexico one night when I and another solider were driving at night in the desert in an Air Force SUV patrolling the parameters of the base...”
Jenners was a tall, fit, nice looking man with blue eyes and short wavy brown hair. He was at the wheel when he suddenly noticed a bright halo of pulsating light in the distant foothills.
He spoke into his recorder...
“We were out on re-con when I saw something curious ahead, about three hundred meters in the distance before the sage brush covered hillside.”
The soldier riding shotgun, Cpl. Martin Blunt saw the pulsating light too and got his attention.
“Captain, you see that?”
“Yeah, Corporal, I see it. We’re going over to take a peek.”
Jenners turned the SUV up off a side road in the direction of the light.
As they approached, the bright light ahead seemed to be changing colors. A frightful tingling sensation rose up Blunt’s spine, the kind of feeling one gets when you know something bad is going to happen.
“What you suppose it is, Cap’?”
“Don’t know, but we’ll soon find out.”
Coming closer, cresting the top of the hill, Jenners cut the car lights and rolled slowly and quietly up to the object.
Then they saw it... It was a large fifty-foot, motionless reddish-yellow glowing spacecraft in the shape of a triangle, hovering some three to four feet off the ground with an odd humming noise emanating from it.
“What in the..?” said Jenners, perplexed. He was overwhelmed, stunned to the point of immobility.
Cpl. Blunt appeared ill at ease, too.
“I don’t like the feel of this, sir,” he said gritting his teeth.
Jenners stopped the SUV, got out strapped on his .45, grabbed his Geiger counter and started walking towards the glowing spacecraft.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Captain.”
“Get on the horn, Blunt. Call H.Q... Let ‘em know what we have. I’m going for a closer look.”
“Don’t go near it. It could be hostile.”
“Keep quiet and get on that call to base.”