America!
It was amazing how the word hit Hunter between the eyes first. Then it went down to his throat. And finally, it got him right in the heart.
America… Yes, he'd heard this word before. He couldn't remember when, and it was certainly before he'd found himself on Fools 6, but it was in his consciousness somewhere, locked away in the memory banks, trying to get out.
America…
He closed his eyes and said it, over and over again.
America…
The flag in his pocket. The colors on his aircraft. The same red, white, and blue. They were all swirling in his head now.
America…
The ancient spacecraft back on Mars. The lighthouse on Zazu-Zazu. Calling him back.
America…
His quest across the Five Arm. To Tonk. Bazooms. Myx. The star road home to…
My God, he thought. America? Is that where I'm from?
He began to choke up but then stopped. True, the people here seemed more like him than anyone else in the Galaxy. But something was telling him the puzzle was not yet complete. He was still a couple of steps away.
Was he from this planet and somehow he'd become stranded on Fools 6 just a year ago? No, he knew immediately that all this was much bigger than that. He was not just from another place, he was obviously from another time as well.
So, could he be from this planet but from a different time in its history?
No, that didn't seem right, either…
So, what was left?
Could he be from somewhere this place was named for?
He actually thought he heard a bell go off in his head.
"Do you think this planet might be a replica of someplace else?" Hunter asked.
Gordon brightened. The other CIA men did, too.
"That's exactly what we want to find out," the CIA chief replied.
They walked about halfway down the length of the vault, where Gordon pulled out another drawer.
"While checking out those UFO sightings last week, we received several reports describing what the unidentified object looked like," Gordon said to Hunter. "Thinking it was probably you, we're very anxious for you to take a look at this."
This glass case contained another collection of papers, again bound together along one side with a spine. There were many words on these pages — almost like a newspaper — but the print was so faint, it was impossible to make them out. One page, though, was partially sealed within a thin plastic sleeve. Inside was a faded, deteriorated photograph. It was so old, the image was barely discernible.
But it was clear enough for Hunter to see one thing: It was a picture of his flying machine. Or something very close to it. Sharp nose, two wings in front, two smaller ones in back, another sticking up out of the tail. It was in flight, fire spilling out of its rear end. And right there on the underside of its wing was a painted-on version of the same red, white, and blue flag.
"Is this a machine like one that you possess?" Gordon asked.
"Let's just say it looks familiar," Hunter replied. "Any idea how old this picture is?"
Gordon shrugged. "Just a guess? At least five thousand years old. I mean, especially that example; it was old when it got here to this world. And like everything else, we can't figure out what it's printed on. It's not indigenous to this planet, though, we are sure of that."
Now this was nutty, Hunter thought. Here was an image, thousands of years old, depicting almost an exact duplicate — at least on the outside — of the aircraft he'd built himself from what he'd always assumed was some kind of lost memory.
There were words beneath the photograph, badly faded text that was barely discernible.
"Any idea what it says?" Hunter asked them.
"Now, that we've worked on for years," Gordon replied. "And as far as we can tell, it says something like 'Thunderbird over Las Vegas.' "
Gordon looked at the three spacemen.
"We know what thunder is," he said. "And Las Vegas is a city out in the western part of our country. But we were wondering: Do you guys happen to know what a bird is?"
The three spacemen shrugged.
"Not a clue," Tomm said.
They closed that drawer and opened another, this one containing more collections of individual pages attached by spines. Again, most of these documents were ancient and deteriorated. But some were not quite as old.
"Here lies documentation of another very strange piece of this puzzle," Gordon said. "It was discovered about one hundred fifty years ago that at certain times throughout our known history, there have been, on occasion, mass disappearances of people. Individuals. Sometimes families. Two or three hundred at a shot, over a two- or three-day span, and then nothing for years. These are the files on the missing. Most of them, anyway. Many witnesses nearby reported strange aerial lights just before these people vanished. The last incident was about thirty years ago. That's when some people supposedly went willingly. Waited on mountaintops for days before finally being picked up. Strange thing too: Many of those who've vanished over the years were policemen."
Hunter looked at Tomm and Zarex. It was a short leap from policeman to soldier. Could this be evidence of the Freedom Brigades?
"Maybe you can enlighten us on that sometime," Gordon suggested. "Because now we have the most intriguing item of all."
They walked to the very end of the vault. There was a door here marked #666. It was different from the rest in that it had additional security devices attached to its door handle. Gordon passed an ID card across this small scanner, and a succession of clicks was the result. Another agent stepped forward and did the same thing. More clicks. One by one, the rest of the CIA men flashed their IDs before the electronic eye. Finally, after the seventh man, the door unlatched and very slowly swung open.
Inside was a drawer that held a box approximately six feet long and four feet around. It was not made of glass. The spacemen recoiled for a moment. It looked like a coffin.
But as Gordon rolled the drawer out, it became clear that the long, slender box was actually a capsule of some kind, made of recarbonated sodium iron, also known as cobalt steel. It was sealed at its midpoint by a complicated-looking lock. A bulky, confusing control panel nearly took up one entire side of the dark box just below this lock. Every light on this panel was blinking, though weakly. There were even a few switches on the control panel. Switches hadn't been in use anywhere in the Galaxy for more than 2,500 years.
"This was found buried inside the deepest mountain on this planet, a top secret location out in our southwest called Groom Lake," Gordon explained. "It was discovered sealed inside a layer of hardened limestone in the sub-subbasement of a structure that had survived all of our periodic catastrophes. We know it's old, or it looks old, but the technology it contains is obviously highly advanced, at least for us. Finding a way to open it has so far eluded us. We believe it is a container of some kind, but we have no idea what is inside. I'm almost embarrassed to tell you that over the past fifty years, we've had dozens of scientists take a look at this thing, once they'd passed a hundred or so security checks, that is. They weren't told anything about it or where it came from. We just wanted to know how to open it. But not one of these learned men could figure out a way of breaking that seal without destroying whatever is inside."
He looked at the three space travelers. "Any ideas, gentlemen?"
Zarex studied the control panel but shrugged. It made no sense to him. Hunter also took a pass at it, with the same result.