“With the exception of a few minor details, these people were the same as us in almost every way. They obviously had our spirit of adventure and exploration, the same qualities that have driven our own species to great heights. The most amazing aspect of this find on the surface of the Moon is that the humanoid remains discovered inside of Shackleton Crater have been determined to be as much as seven hundred million years old.”
With that announcement, the press room erupted. Many of the senior members had never seen this kind of excitement, or even pure astonishment, in the White House. The room quieted as an assistant press secretary stepped forward and removed the linen from the first picture. The president remained where he was.
“I am here today to clear up some misconceptions about what has transpired on the Moon and to deny any wrongdoing by the United States in the explosion that rocked Shackleton Crater last week. I will also announce preparations for the return of this country to the surface of the Moon and the reasons behind it. First, I would like to make a brief statement concerning efforts currently underway in other nations for going to the Moon. These attempts will not be based on any exploratory effort. The fact is, there’s a race on to recover not only alien military technology from seven hundred million years ago but to recover something perhaps even more important, something that will make nuclear fission outdated-a mineral that could escalate the race for far more destructive weapons than we currently possess. The United States will not allow any substance indigenous to the lunar world to be brought back from the Moon.”
The statement was as close as the president could come to making a military threat.
Joe Horn, a quiet family man from Eugene, Oregon, waited patiently outside the well-maintained house in the Pasadena suburb of Monrovia. The radio was on and he listened to the president’s address streaming live from Washington, meaning the west coast of the United States was just waking to the news that America was now in a dead-on race to the Moon. This was a mission meant to undercut the most basic statement of the Holy Bible, that man was created by God Almighty. Now the world was in a rush to prove that it wasn’t God who accomplished this miracle, but visitors to whom most of the scientific world would kneel and give their allegiance-the new Golden Calf of the heretic.
Mr. Horn, a man taken to the heights of fervor in the name of God, sat stoically and waited. He watched patiently for the person he had come to see, the leader of the zealots who had been on television day and night for the past two weeks with their little mechanicians of science. He had asked his Baptist minister yesterday for guidance before his long drive down the coast. He had been told that the discovery on the Moon meant nothing, that the faith of all religions should not be shaken by the miracle that was currently taking place, that this discovery only meant that the range of God’s miracles was not restricted to just this one solar system.
Horn didn’t believe it. The more establishment religions were calling for calm, but Joe wasn’t interested in being calm. The word of Rev. Samuel Rawlins was starting to reach the ears of the true followers of the Lord. He was calling for all men and women of the true faith to take up the cause of stopping these blasphemers before they could deface the word of God. Now Joe was here to strike the first blow for Rawlins, as he knew the voice coming over the airwaves had spoken only to him when it called for the righteous to rise up.
Joe Horn sat up straighter in his old, battered pickup truck as the man he had been waiting for stepped out onto his front porch with briefcase in hand.
Joe’s heart started pounding, threatening to break free from his chest as he watched the man kiss his wife good-bye and then pick his small daughter up and hug her. He watched as the man set his daughter down on the porch and waved to both. As the man approached his Hyundai, Joe stepped from his pickup and strode across the street.
“Mr. Nathan? Mr. Stan Nathan?”
The mission leader from Jet Propulsion Lab turned and saw an older man walk toward him from across the street. He was wearing farmer’s overalls and had a green baseball style cap on. His smile was broad and friendly. When he had called out his name, he saw out of the corner of his eye that his wife had hesitated closing the door and stood with her daughter in her arms, wondering why her husband was being approached. Two other neighbors of Nathan’s were heading for work and paid the old man no attention as they went to their own cars.
“Yes, I’m Dr. Nathan,” he said, placing his left hand on his car’s door handle. His eyes widened when he saw the man reach into the large pocket in the front of his overalls.
Joe Horn reached inside and came out with a very old. 38 Police Special. He started shooting as he ran straight at the engineer. The first two bullets struck the door and a third the driver’s side window as Nathan reacted quickly, ducking and throwing his briefcase up for what little protection it would provide. Joe Horn stopped shooting so he could take aim more carefully. He hadn’t thought to bring more bullets than the six he had chambered in his father’s gun, which had lain upon a shelf in his bedroom closet for his entire forty-year marriage.
Stan Nathan lost his balance and fell backward as the realization of what was transpiring hit him full force. He thought he heard his wife scream, but he couldn’t be sure. He heard a car start and as he fell on his backside he thought he heard the backfiring of another car. That was when he felt the first sting of being shot.
Horn had taken several strides toward the fallen engineer and now stood within five feet. He placed a trembling hand on the. 38, aimed, and fired.
“We cannot allow the blasphemers to spit in the eye of God!” he cried out. He fired twice more, finally hearing the hammer hit on nothing but an empty shell casing.
The last two bullets were more than enough to do the job. The fifth round had caught the aerospace engineer in the side of the head after careening off a large Texas Instruments calculator inside his briefcase. The sixth and final bullet hit him directly in the heart.
Mrs. Nathan screamed again as she watched her husband die in front of her. The one neighbor who had started his car heard the shots but had reacted far too slowly to stop the inevitable. When he saw the assassin standing close over his neighbor, the man threw his car in reverse and peeled rubber on his way out of the driveway. He was under the impression that the maniac would soon turn his attentions to the woman and her child. The car bounced as it careened into the roadway and then it bounced again over Stan Nathan’s driveway. Before the neighbor fully realized what he was doing, the rear bumper struck Joe Horn and sent him flying into the shrubbery Stan had planted when he and his young wife had moved into this, their first home, years before. The neighbor knew he had hit the killer of his friend hard enough, so he just sat there after bringing the car to a stop on the manicured front lawn. He was shaking badly as he heard Nathan’s wife screaming and his daughter crying.
The U.S. Air Force C-22B transport aircraft sat next to the American consulate hangar at Berlin’s busiest airport. The aircraft was on loan to Department 5656 from the U.S. Air Force, but to Jack Collins’s frustration it had become nothing more than a large mobile hotel. They hadn’t moved or disembarked since their arrival in Germany.
Jack sat in one of the large seats near the back of the aircraft while Carl was in the plane’s galley making them lunch. The plane and its occupants had been sitting at Tempelhof for the past sixteen hours while Pete Golding, with the assistance of Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III, stumbled through the elusive Columbus files that Europa had been able to uncover from German and Allied reports and documents. So far they’d hit a stone wall, and it was driving Jack crazy, especially knowing that Sarah, Mendenhall, and Ryan had flown out of Nellis bound for Houston and the training regimen that had been set up for them.