She stopped and knew she should think before she said anything. She didn’t. “No comment,” she blurted out.

It was, of course, among the worst things she could have said.

They rented three vans: one to use as a kitchen, the second to serve as a control center, and the third to be a general-purpose shelter. They also erected a tent in which to store equipment.

Max had established himself at the Northstar Motel in Fort Moxie. He called Stell to tell her he’d be staying near the site for several days and asked her to arrange to get his car delivered so he would have local transportation.

Lasker agreed to take over the administrative aspects of the dig. He wasted no time designing an overall plan, appointing supervisors, devising work teams and assigning them rotating responsibilities, and putting together a schedule that allowed the workers almost as much time in shelter as exposed to the elements.

He also thought nothing of throwing a few spadefuls of earth himself. His attitude caught on, especially when April and Max joined in. Consequently, things happened quickly. And on the same day that the Fort Moxie News hit the stands with its UFO story, Lem Hardin, who worked part-time at the lumberyard, broke through to a hard green surface.

UFO ATOP JOHNSON’S RIDGE?

SCIENTISTS:

“NO COMMENT”

by Jim Stuyvesant

Fort Moxie, Dec. 17—

Dr. April Cannon, who is directing an excavation effort on Johnson’s Ridge, refused today to deny escalating rumors that she has found a flying saucer.

Cannon heads a workforce of more than two hundred people who are trying to unearth a mysterious object, which was found recently after an intensive radar search. Archeologists at the University of North Dakota commented that Johnson’s Ridge is an unlikely site for Native-American artifacts, and they are at a loss to explain the reasons behind the Cannon initiative.

The story was picked up immediately by the major wire services.

Max’s first intimation of the breakthrough came with a loud round of distant cheers. He got up from his desk and was reaching for his coat when the phone rang. “The roof,” Lasker told him.

The word passed quickly around the site, and people scrambled up ladders and dropped wheelbarrows to hurry over to see. What they saw, those who could get close enough, was a small emerald-colored patch protruding out of the dirt at the bottom of a ditch.

April was already there when Max arrived. She was on her knees, gloves off, bent over the find. Max climbed down beside her.

“Feels like beveled glass,” she said. “I think I can see into it.” She took out a flashlight, switched it on, and held it close to the patch. But the sun was too bright. Dissatisfied, she removed her jacket and used it to create shade.

“What is it?” asked one of the workers.

“Can’t tell yet.” April looked at Max. “The light penetrates a little bit.”

“You’re going to freeze,” he said. But he put his head under the spread jacket. He could see into the object.

April produced a file, took off a few grains, and put them in an envelope. Then she looked up and spotted Lasker. “Be careful,” she said. “We don’t want any spades near it. I don’t care if it takes all year to get the dirt out. Let’s not damage this thing.” She put her jacket and gloves back on and climbed out of the hole. “Don’t know, but that doesn’t look to me like the roof of a shed. Maybe we’ve really got something.” The envelope was the self-sticking kind. She sealed it and put it in a pocket. “Max,” she said, “I need a favor.”

“Name it.”

“Fly me back to Colson?”

“The action’s here.”

She shook her head. “Later it will be. But this afternoon the action will be at the lab.”

April never understood how the media found out so quickly. The Ben at Ten TV news team arrived before she and Max could get off the escarpment, and they were quickly joined by some print reporters.

“No,” she told them, “I don’t know anything about a UFO.”

She told them she had no idea how the story had got started, that they weren’t looking for anything specific, that there’d been reports of a buried object atop the ridge, and that they had found some thick glass in the ground. “That’s it,” she said. “It’s all I can tell you for now.”

Carole Jensen from Ben at Ten pressed for a statement.

“How about tomorrow morning?” said April. “Okay? Nine o’clock. That’ll give us a chance to try to figure out what we’ve got. But please don’t expect any big news.”

Max flew them back to Chellis Field. April wasted no time jumping into her car, declining his invitation for lunch. “I’ll call you when I have something,” she promised.

Max checked in at the office, ordered pizza, and turned on his TV just as the noon news reports were coming on. And it was not good. There he was, standing beside April and looking foolish, while she transparently dodged questions. Worse, the reporter identified him as the owner of Sundown Aviation.

The anchor on The News at Noon referred to the delusions often associated with UFO buffs, and cited a gathering two weeks earlier on an Idaho mountaintop to await the arrival of otherworldly visitors. “Is the Fort Moxie dig another example?” he asked. “Stay tuned.”

In midafternoon the clips showed up on CNN, which lumped Johnson’s Ridge in with a report on the crazy season. They interviewed a visibly deranged young man who maintained there was a power source within the Pembina Escarpment that allowed people to get in touch with their true selves. In Minnesota a group of farmers claimed to have seen something with lights land in the woods near Sauk Centre. There were stories of alien abductions in Pennsylvania and Mississippi. And a man in Lovelock, Nevada, who’d crashed into a roadside boulder and tested positive for alcohol, swore he was being chased by a UFO.

“Max, you’re a celebrity,” Ceil told him. He hadn’t seen her standing in the doorway. She was wearing an immaculately pressed Thor Air Cargo blazer, dark blue with gold trim. Her hair was shoulder-length, and it swirled as she pulled the door shut.

Max sighed. “On my way to fame and fortune,” he said.

She sat down opposite him. “I hope you make it.” Her expression was set in its whimsical mode. “I was down looking at the Zero today.”

“And?”

“If you really have a UFO up there, the rest of this stuff is going to look like pretty small potatoes.”

He grinned. “Don’t bet the mortgage on it.”

“I won’t, Max.” She smiled. Max felt warmth flood through him. “Listen, I’m going up to Winnipeg. You busy?”

He shook his head. “Just waiting for a phone call. How long are you going to be there?”

“Up and back. I’m delivering a shipment of telecommunications parts.” Her eyes went serious. “Max, is it really there?”

“I doubt it,” he said.

She looked disappointed. “Pity. Anyhow, why don’t you come along? You can show me where you’re digging.”

Max saw himself coming out of a Washington studio after an interview with Larry King. Ceil would be waiting, but as she approached he would wave her away. “Talk to you later,” he’d say. “I’m on my way over to do the Tonight show.”

“Max?” she said.

“Yeah. Sure, I’ll go.” He did want to hear April’s results as soon as they became available. “Which plane?”

“Betsy.”

“Okay. Let me finish up here and I’ll meet you outside.”

He called April, got her answering machine, and told her how to raise the C—47. Then he left a note for Stell (who was at lunch), pulled on his jacket, and wandered out onto the runway.

Ceil was already on board. He could see her up in the cockpit, going through her checklist. The C—47 still carried its original insignia. The only external concession to its real mission was the corporate mallet and the legend Thor Air Cargo tucked away on the tail.

Max climbed in through the cargo door and closed it. The interior was filled with packing cases. He threaded his way through to the cockpit. Ceil, talking to the tower, raised a hand to acknowledge his presence. Max took the copilot’s seat.