Chapter 6
The shepherd-mix popped his head up from the passenger seat in the truck and started barking.
“What is it, Marv?” Jim Kaufmann asked his pet.
The dog continued barking with his eyes focused across a field to his left.
“I don’t see anything, boy. You know you’ve got better eyes than I do, so if you see a deer or a stranger across the field, I’ll need it to get closer before I see it too,” Jim said as he looked where the dog’s attention was focused. “Is that it? That cloud of dust?”.
“Hmm, that’s a bit odd,” Jim mumbled. “Looks like the dust could be coming from one of our fields. But why? I guess we better check it out.”
The farmer drove off in the direction of the small dust cloud.
“I hope I’m wrong with what I’m thinking,” Jim said to the dog as much as to himself. “I hope Alex hasn’t sent one of his planters into my field. Mr. Koch pays too little attention to his equipment and proper mapping. It can’t be any of the high school kids taking a shortcut to school, since it’s Sunday.”
Jim smacked the steering wheel on his pickup. “I’ll bet you it’s someone coming up from Kansas City on their way to one of the Kickapoo casinos, and taking their wheelers through my property! I’ll bet you anything they’re digging big ruts and I’ll have to send out a discing unit to even the ground again before planting!”
Jim accelerated his truck to find the source of the disturbance. But what he found was not city dwellers out for a joy ride. Instead, it was something that, at first, he thought was a building that had been dropped into the middle of his farm. It was three stories tall and probably two-hundred feet long. He slowed down to assess the situation as he got about a half-mile away, and his first clear thought was “I just planted that field!”, realizing the “building?” was in the middle of a field he had sown with corn the day before.
Before he could continue, the commscreen in his truck lit up with the name “Nemaha County Sheriff’s Department“.
‘Did he see this thing come in?’ Jim wondered. “Answer,” he said to the console, and then “Hello” once the audio connected.
“Jim,” said the voice on the phone, “where are you at?”
“Funny you should ask that question, Mike. I’m staring at my freshly planted field off Goff-Oneida Rd, and there is a new building, or a new something in the middle of it. But the funny thing is I don’t remember putting any building seeds in the planter yesterday,” Jim answered with notable sarcasm. “And where are you this morning?”
“Jim,” the Sheriff’s voice said with urgency, “don’t go near it.”
“Near what?”
“Near the ship!”
“The what? That’s not a ship, and besides, how would anyone have hauled it here, since these roads can barely support the weight of the equipment we’re using these days?”
“Jim, tell me you’re parked and not driving,” Mike nearly commanded.
Jim pulled to the side of the road and stopped his truck. “Yes,” he said, “I’m parked. Now start making sense, Mike, or I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to host your re-election fundraiser next week, since I don’t normally support deranged candidates.”
“Jim, it’s the spaceship!” the Sheriff blurted out.
Marv had started barking again, with his front paws on the dashboard, the hair on his back standing up, and his tail straight back. Jim hadn’t seen him this agitated in a long time and was tempted to get out of the truck as crazy as the dog was getting. He was trying to fit lots of different pieces of information together, but the pieces were scattered and not matching up well, and Jim needed more sense from this whole situation before he started running around. Besides, he knew that if he opened the door, his dog was going to barge out and run right across the field to hunt down whatever that thing was. “Quiet, Marv!,” Jim commanded. The dog looked at him, quieted, but was still standing up in the truck as tense as before.
Sheriff Mike continued with a little more calm in his voice, “I got a call from Offutt Air Force Base about ten minutes ago, and they said they were dispatching fighter drones down here, since they tracked one of the objects through the atmosphere that was headed this way. I asked them what path it was taking, they gave me the coordinates where it was likely headed and when I plugged them into my console, it came up on your farm.”
“Hmmm,” Jim thought, “that certainly puts all the pieces together.”
“Jim, exactly where are you and what do you see?” Mike asked, again sounding a bit frantic.
“I told you, I’m on Goff-Oneida Road. About half-way between 144 and 128,” Jim replied, now feeling a bit vulnerable. He, like everyone else in the world, had heard about the first object approaching Earth yesterday with two more on its tail, and the casts were all excited about what was going to happen next. Plenty of casters put out their ‘final’ broadcast, telling their viewers to make whatever preparations they felt appropriate for “the end.” One of the old movie channels played a sound-only radio broadcast from 150 years ago of “War of the Worlds”. Jim didn’t really have time to follow any of that, since he wanted to get another three fields planted today and had to get the planters started. A part of him was really annoyed that all of this was getting in his way.
“Mike, are you telling me that those objects are really spaceships, and one of those landed in my corn field? It looks more like a rounded factory than a spaceship, to me,” Jim said, not quite hearing the joking tone he normally used.
“Jim, don’t go near it!,” his friend shouted.
“I’m not, Mike!”, Jim shouted back. “I’m sitting in my parked truck like you told me!”
“OK, I’m on 36 and just passed Road P. I’ll be there in five minutes,” the Sheriff finished as his disconnected the call.
Jim stared across the field.
“It does look like some sort of factory, doesn’t it,” he said out loud as he was looking through his own binoculars at the craft. “I can see things sprouting from its sides and digging into the ground.”
Another minute passed. “I’m not sure ol’ Mike’s instruction to just sit tight is such good advice, eh Marv? Maybe we should head back home now.” He was about to start up the truck and head the other direction when he heard the siren.
The Sheriff’s vehicle was flying – quite literally this time. He knew his friend didn’t like lev-mode on the police cruiser and kept the wheels on the ground whenever he could. It also gave a wasteful impression, he told Jim, and he didn’t want people to think he was wasting their money on an unnecessary use of energy. But this time, Mike was traveling probably as fast as he ever had, Jim guessed, and levitated 10-feet over the road.
The police cruiser slowed down as it approached Jim’s truck, and the wheels grabbed the road again. The Sheriff pulled alongside the truck, rolled down his window, and asked Jim “What’s it doing?”
Jim just looked at his friend with an ‘Are you kidding me?’ look and said nothing.
Mike paused, turned to look across the road towards the spaceship, and began to roll the passenger-side window down for a better view. Three objects blurred past them overhead and then, slowing down, turned around, and headed back towards them. That’s when both the farmer and the sheriff heard, and then shortly thereafter felt what must have been a triple-sonic boom as sound waves caught up with the U.S. Air Force drone craft. That finally made the dog hop down and hide in the wheel well of the truck. The craft began circling above, like some giant hawks looking for a prairie rabbit.
Jim could hear his friend talking to his console. “Return call – – Offutt Air Force Base,” Mike said.
“Offutt AFB, this is Lt. Commander Turgidson. What news do you have for me, Sheriff McAllister?”
“You’ve probably got as good or better a view as I do,” the Sheriff replied, “since your drones just passed overhead. Nothing is really happening on this end. The spacecraft is pretty much just sitting in a field.”
“Try again, Mike”, Jim said, starting to get out of his truck and walk around both vehicles. “It looked like it was sprouting something earlier.”
“Who’s that?” the Lt. Commander asked.
“James Kaufmann. It’s his farm where the spacecraft landed,” Sheriff Mike answered.
“What’s he talking about? Sprouting?”, the Air Force officer demanded.
“Jim, come over here so he can hear you,” the Sheriff asked.
“Mike, you come over here so you can see what I’m talking about,” Jim replied.
And the Sheriff got out of his cruiser as suggested. He held up some binoculars to get a better look and said “Turgidson, I’m sending this through the console. Are your drones picking this up?”
“Yes,” the Lt. Commander answered, “we’re seeing it.”
“Tell me what that thing is doing to my ground, would you Lieutenant?” Jim commented.
“I’m no more an expert in these matters than you are, Mr. Kaufmann,” the Air Force officer replied. “If I had to guess, I’d say the craft is either digging in supports or burying pipes to either inject the soil with something or begin sucking in the ground. But I’m just a paranoid military guy who has read too many science fiction stories as a kid.” And then he paused. “Hang on, I’ve got another call to take.”
Jim looked at his friend. “So, we’re just going to let it sit there? On my field?” Jim asked.
“What do you have in mind?” Mike asked, turning to his friend with a quizzical look.
“I don’t know…. Send a cast to the… the ship, and tell it that it’s not welcome here and to go someplace else,” Jim said with some exasperation.
Mike just shook his head and returned to watching the spaceship.
“Sheriff McAllister?”, Lt. Commander Turdigson called out.
“Yes, I’m here,” Mike replied.
“We think you should evacuate everyone within a five-mile radius of the object, Sheriff. We don’t know what the craft is going to do, and we’re sending down additional units to help with the monitoring. In the meantime, we recommend keeping people a safe distance away.”
Jim thought to himself “My house is only two miles from here. Does that mean I can’t go back home?“
As if reading his thoughts, his friend, Sheriff Mike, said, “Jim, I’m going to round up the Deputies and try to contain this situation before it gets out of control. If my memory is correct, there’s only two other houses with someone living in it nearby: the Jacksons and Mrs. Mueller. Nobody had moved into Larry Karlson’s place, correct?”
“I’ve not seen any action over there since his kids came for his funeral,” answered Jim.
“Good. Then I can trust you’ll take care of yourself and clear out to a safe spot until we know what’s going to happen, right?”, the Sheriff said as he got back in his cruiser, put it in motion and started giving commands to his console. “Conference all Sheriff staff. Use 911 priority.” and with that Mike drove away.
As he stood there in the road, Jim’s earlier concern was replaced with some good old-fashioned stubborn resolve. “Clear out to a safe spot?” he thought. “This place is plenty safe for me. I can’t guarantee it’ll be the same if anything from that… whatever it is… approaches my house.“
“Come on, Marv, let’s go home and make sure we’re ready to welcome any guests that come visiting,” he said out loud. “I guess we can get by with a one-day delay in the next round of planting.”