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PROLOGUE
The night sky looked like spilled diamonds and the moon, a huge quartz marble just waiting to blast its way right through the middle of all those gems. The light they shed was enough to make it easy for a darkly dressed man to navigate his way along the vacant ski trails of Snow Bowl, tucked among Flagstaff, Arizona’s sacred San Francisco Peaks.
The man had been hiking for several hours through newly excavated land filled with huge lengths of pipe that would soon carry reclaimed water up the mountain to make snow for the resort when Mother Nature couldn’t.
The man knelt down and buried his hands in the soft blanket of pine needles that covered the ground. He uttered a guttural moan of sadness and anger disrupting the crickets’ song that filled the night.
Then, on the western edge of the sky, a tiny spot of light moved rapidly into view. The man watched it grow larger and larger as it approached the earth.
Other people far below him saw it too, and thought many things. Was it a comet, a shooting star, asteroid, Iron Man, the space shuttle . . . a UFO?
That last choice was what Kate Sullivan hoped it would be as she watched the white ball race across the Arizona sky. It was about time others in the universe made themselves known. It didn’t matter what they looked like or what they wanted; we just couldn’t be the only ones out here!
Then, when whatever-it-was looked big enough to be the moon’s little sister, it disappeared somewhere among the local mountains. Kate waited, holding her breath. But nothing happened. There was no explosion, nothing but the clear night sky.
The man far above her on Mt. Humphreys held his breath too, huddling fearfully among the pines transfixed as the rapidly approaching fire ball silently moved to within 700 feet above and to the north of him. Then it stopped and hung like a volatile Christmas tree ornament casting an eye-piercing shaft of white light down to the ground.
This was too much for the man. He scrambled to his feet and took off down the hill. However, he was too slow to escape the pulsing light. It kept pace with him, illuminating his way through the trees and onto a well-traveled trail. Then, as fast as it had come, the hovering fireball pulled in its beam of light and disappeared.
In that second, the huge, silent UFO—for, indeed, that’s what it was—vanished in a Harry Potter-like ‘cloak of invisibility’ and quickly moved to a lower mountain range. It hovered quietly for some minutes hundreds of feet above the ground, searching for other human life forms. When none were detected, a much smaller disk-shaped object the color of pale moonlight emerged from the UFO’s underbelly. Moments later, it landed gently in a clearing that still carried scars from a controlled burn gone rogue many years before.
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The air around the disk vibrated gently. Animals that had run for cover as the thing descended slowly poked their heads out in curiosity. The noticeable vibration felt good, not menacing. It was like a gentle massage that you could feel inside and out.
Little animal eyes watched tentatively as the disk changed colors. It went from a pale, translucent moonlight shade to a solid, cool gray. The air settled. The massage stopped. An opening appeared on the underside of the object. A contained light about the size of a large duffle bag slowly drifted down and settled itself on the ground.
After a few moments of silence, with nothing threatening coming from the bag of light, a small Albino Mule deer—an extremely rare genetic variant of her sister breed— inched forward out of the shadows on delicate brown hoofs. She sniffed the air. Nothing off-putting was there, so she moved closer. Her erect, big ears honed in on the light like sensitive antennae fine tuning for bet/=ter reception.
It would seem that the light and deer were at a standoff, each sizing up the other waiting for something to happen. And then it did. The light began to move folding in on itself then pushing out like a curious amoeba. The deer nervously scampered back into the shadows.
In moments, the light solidified into a form. Its spindle legs moved tentatively over the ground and its big ears aimed directly into the shadows where the small deer had disappeared. The two looked at each other as if into an invisible mirror. They matched in every way. It was the light’s first form on earth. It was heavy now in the flesh of a deer.
Morning came a little later than usual for Kate Sullivan. Last night’s unexplained visual phenomenon had taken a toll on her sleep. Disturbing dreams kept her tossing fitfully in a tangle of bed sheets. The first was about a tropic resort facing an inland channel choked with slithering sea creatures just waiting to grab her should she accidently step into the warm water. Then there was the plane that plunged out of massive storm-filled clouds above the resort. Kate watched as it banked at a sickening angle and then broke apart falling into the sea just yards down the beach. That one jarred her awake in a panic, keeping sleep away until 4:30.
It was almost 8:00 when Kate slowly made her way downstairs into a tidy kitchen that was small yet open with angled half-wall counters dividing it from a larger, wood-floored living room. She went straight to the coffee pot to prepare a carafe of her favorite Kona blend before turning on the radio hoping to hear some details about last night’s incredible fire ball sighting. (Surely the local news would have some kind of explanation.)
Circling impatiently at her feet, yowling for breakfast was Mimi, Kate’s ample-bellied, soulmate cat. This late start to morning was totally unacceptable to her and she felt obliged to let Kate know. But soon the yowling turned to purrs as Mimi watched Kate spoon her favorite seafood delight into the little blue-gray ceramic bowl that had her name etched in the clay. Kate put the bowl on Mimi’s mat, gave her a loving scratch behind the ears, then poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table listening to the news:
“Local police throughout Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico have been inundated with 911 calls reporting last night’s sighting of what appeared to be a huge ball of light that disappeared near Mt. Humphreys north of Flagstaff. Those who witnessed the event said that it could not have been a meteor. And rather than a fireball, they described it as an incredibly bright object that grew larger as it streaked closer to the San Francisco Peaks. Interestingly, Lowell Observatory astronomers told us that their telescope was focused on a very small area of the southern night sky, and therefore were unable to venture a guess as to what the phenomenon might be. The Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center tracked the object on radar as the ground crew at Flagstaff’s Pulliam Airport watched it travel toward the San Francisco Peaks. They felt sure the object’s trajectory would send it crashing into the mountains. However, seconds before that happened, the object disappeared from both sight and radar. Public and private search crews are now combing the pine forest for some kind of tangible evidence that whatever was seen last night could be found.”
Well, well, well, thought Kate. How nice they’re not passing it off as swamp gas or an errant weather balloon. She opened her front door and retrieved the morning paper.
Pictured on the front page was a grainy photo of the suspicious flying object shooting across the night sky. It was half the size of a full moon – really quite impressive and thought-provoking when one realized how close Flagstaff was to Winslow’s Meteor Crater and the devastation that could have happened if last night’s thing had crashed to earth. “We wouldn’t be having those thoughts had that happened now, would we?” Kate chuckled.
She read the article quickly but found no new information. With all the people searching the forests around Mt. Humphreys, someone was bound to discover something sooner rather than later, thought Kate. That is, if the thing had landed.
The pull of gravity upon the alien’s new ‘body’ was quite painful at first. But it was prepared and as night wore on, it forced itself to move, bending and stretching, pushing itself through air that felt like a smothering viscous fluid. Gradually, familiarity took hold; soon the space visitor was enjoying its ability to run and jump among the pines joined by its little earth twin that was joyfully trying to keep up with its new-found friend.
The rest of the newspaper offered more disturbing news than Kate wanted to read, so she attacked the latest Sudoku puzzle in the back of the sports section while eating blueberries, oatmeal, and a toasted English muffin slathered with reduced fat, super chuck peanut butter.
The morning was lovely – perfect for a walk around Mt. Eldon’s Fat Man’s Loop, or even farther up the hill if her knees and energy allowed. So, that was the plan. Bless retirement! Bless her health at 67+ years! Life in Kate’s neck of the woods could not, in this precious moment, be better.
The alien felt warm sun on its back and found the scent of the pine trees a tangible presence. So different from its own planet was this ‘Earth’—so heavy with myriad types of matter. Its vibrations were so much slower yet acute in a dull sort of way. Life – how incredibly unique it is from one space dimension to another. A noise interrupted the alien’s thoughts. It turned to see what it was and as it did its little twin hurriedly ran into the woods. The alien could feel the deer’s fear and thought it too might be better off running while in this present life form; something stopped it.
From out of the forest stepped another life form, one on two legs. It was human. It picked its way carefully along the forest floor alone and unafraid. It radiated a far more complicated energy than the four-legged animal form the alien had assumed. This one exuded many thoughts and feelings in all directions away from its core.
This is what the alien had come for. After all the preparation and watching of this planet’s life forms over the centuries, the time to interact with its most sophisticated species had arrived. Kate picked her way slowly among the pines. It had been a while since she had ventured along this trail. Memories of past knee strain came to mind and caused her to focus intently on the challenge of the climb. It would be wonderful if she made it to the top again. If she didn’t, that would be all right, too. But for the moment, her body was working just fine with an assist from her blackthorn walking stick.
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She had just taken several steps into a clearing along what had been a rather pine-crowded trail when she stopped dead in her tracks. There in front of her stood the most beautiful Albino Mule deer she had ever seen. In fact, it was the only one she had ever seen. Astounding!
It stood as quiet and still as a statue, looking at her with the most beautiful deep brown, probing eyes. Kate didn’t move a muscle. She even found herself holding her breath for fear an exhale would cause the glorious creature to run away into the safe, hidden corners of the forest. But that didn’t last long, and soon she released a noticeable sigh and began breathing again. The deer tilted its head slightly to the side looking almost like a dog. Kate couldn’t help herself and laughed out loud.
The alien didn’t quite know what to make of this. But it certainly didn’t feel threatened, as the human carried no weapon except a stick of some sort. So it took a step closer and focused its thoughts directly into the rush of emotions coming from the human. This time it was the human who cocked its head.
Kate didn’t know what to think. Her mind felt invaded by something bigger and stronger than she. She felt stuck in a powerful mental quicksand, unable to move or understand what held her fast. It was one of the most unusual experiences she had ever had – not so much scary, but more overwhelmingly foreign.
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