Terror Firma. Matthew Thomas

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       8. Aurora Bored-Me-Senseless

      The star-speckled sky arched above Dave’s head like God’s very own dandruff-covered blanket. For the briefest of seconds he suffered a stomach-churning attack of vertigo, his reeling senses telling him he was falling headlong into the infinity of endless night.

      With a jolt that almost threw him off balance Dave came crashing back to earth. The piece of earth he came crashing back to was a small patch of rocky desert, beside a dusty highway, eighty miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada. The wilderness around him was very still and very quiet, but he was not alone. Nearby a motley assortment of individuals from every walk and some stumbles of life stood silently, just as Dave did, peering up at the moonless night sky. They had only one thing in common. Hope shone from all their eyes like the light from a flickering candle flame.

      Dave stood at a very special spot. This sandy roadside verge was the nearest an unauthorized civilian (and when it came to matters like these there wasn’t really any other sort) could get to the Mecca, St Peter’s, Wailing Wall and 74 Station Road, Aberdeen of Ufology. Twenty yards away, down the gently sloping desert, a double razor-wire fence stretched off as far as the eye could see in both directions. The signs were evenly spaced: ‘USE OF DEADLY FORCE PERMITTED’. The signs were there for one very good reason. Over the jagged ridge on the horizon lay the top-secret US Air Force base known as ‘Dreamland’, or Area 51.

      This facility was so secret that officially it didn’t even exist – it said so in all the tourist brochures, books, magazines, films, TV shows and pamphlets that had been published on the matter over the past forty years. In the nearby one-stop town of Rachel you could buy a T-shirt that told you much the same thing. As far as secrets went ‘Dreamland’ was about as well kept as Colonel Gaddafi’s hair.

      Area 51. Some claimed that forty-two levels beneath the burning desert there lay a junkyard full of crashed alien craft. Others claimed that the very aliens themselves were housed here, their brains picked over by the sort of government scientist who giggled a lot and hadn’t learned to shave. But tonight Dave and the others weren’t here to speculate, they were here for the show. And as regular as an atomic clock, they weren’t to be disappointed.

      At eight-thirty precisely the first lights glided serenely above the horizon. They must have been more than ten miles away but against the translucent indigo sky they stood out like nuns in a whorehouse. As if on cue, a barely audible sigh rose from the congregation. Deferentially, camcorders were raised in unison as the nightly act of worship began.

      The display was much the same as it ever was. For thirty minutes the lights bobbed and weaved, dived and swooped. It mattered not that the event was caught on over twenty cameras, the tapes of ‘assorted coloured lights dancing in the sky’ had been seen many times on TV before. It took much more to impress a cynical public these days.

      Shortly, Dave was conscious of a figure standing closer to him than the others. ‘Mighty fine sight,’ said the newcomer, not taking his eyes from the display for a second. ‘Makes you proud to be American.’

      Dave looked his companion up and down. He was the sort of middle-aged man who had been fit once, but pizza and Miller Lite had taken their toll. Covering his broad belly was a T-shirt depicting an Arab terrorist cowering beneath a cruise missile. ‘Go On–Make My Day’ begged the caption.

      ‘Name’s Ray,’ he beamed holding out a vast hand that could have easily encased both of Dave’s. ‘Fifty-eight combat missions over Nam and not a hint of post-traumatic stress disorder.’

      Dave nodded meekly. ‘Dave. Twenty-six copies of ScUFODIN Monthly, and no trace of a book deal yet. Actually I’m not American, I’m on holiday from the UK.’ Instantly he was wondering if this was further into conversation than he wanted to get.

      ‘Ah – England!’ his new friend gushed. ‘We can always rely on you guys to back us up. Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher – now they were leaders with real balls, but this new guy of yours makes them look like pussies. Not like the wet farts we have leading us over here.’

      Dave correctly surmised that he should direct the conversation away from politics. ‘So, have you been interested in UFOs for long?’

      Ray chuckled good-naturedly. ‘Oh, they ain’t no flying saucers, boy. That there’s good old Yankee know-how driving those babies. If I was twenty years younger I’d take a shot at piloting one myself.’

      ‘So you think they’re just the latest military hardware? If that’s the case why is your government so secretive about them? Why not show them off to the world’s press to help deter aggression?’

      Ray looked pityingly at Dave. ‘They ain’t just any sort of aircraft. They’re the very latest in super-secret stealth technology recon birds. If everyone knows we’ve got them, what’s the point in having a stealth plane?’

      Dave looked thoughtful for a long while. ‘If it’s a super-secret high-tech stealth plane, why is it doing an aerial jig above the horizon and flashing like a traffic light having a nervous breakdown in front of twenty cameras?’

      Ray looked confused, an expression which seemed to suite his fat red face. ‘Why … they gotta test fly them. Can’t just send them into combat without putting them through their paces first.’

      ‘Quite,’ muttered Dave, rapidly losing patience. ‘But if it is a secret military craft why do they have to test it in quite such a public manner? It doesn’t make any sense to test a secret stealth plane in front of a bunch of snap-happy tourists.’

      ‘But they ain’t,’ growled Ray, a new edge in his voice. ‘This here’s the Free World’s most secure covert base. Ain’t nothing comes in or out of there that the Powers That Be don’t want to. We’re privileged to get a sneak preview. Next time you see those babies they’ll be on the Six O’Clock News beating the hell outa Saddam.’

      Dave pondered this long and hard. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Ain’t nothing comes in or out of there that they don’t want to.’ With that he turned on the soft desert sand and traipsed back to his waiting hire-car. He felt the display he’d just witnessed lacked just one thing – a large glowing sign projected onto the low clouds reading ‘Your Tax Dollars At Work’. Perhaps it could be subtitled ‘Return to your homes, and your 92 channels of home-shopping cable TV, safe in the knowledge that we have it all under control.’

      It had been Dave’s long and burning ambition to see Area 51 in person, but now that he had, he couldn’t help but wonder what was going on at Areas 52 and 53.

      When he returned to his motel, despite the late hour, Dave was sufficiently stirred by his thoughts to do a spot of research. In fact, as long as it involved sitting at a desk with a nice weak cup of tea, it never took very much to spur him into a flurry of investigation. As long as he had a nice cosy library full of books, or better still a microfilm reader packed with ancient newspaper cuttings, Dave was in his element. Actually getting out into the field to collect hard evidence was a far less appealing prospect. On this road trip, however, all he had with him was his laptop, and that meant, in order find what he was looking for, Dave was СКАЧАТЬ