Diablo Mesa(7)

“Cecilia?”

“Cecilia Toth,” said the young woman, brushing back a mass of curly red hair with her hand. “Geophysics engineer, specializing in ground-penetrating and synthetic aperture radar and magnetometer analysis, PhD from Texas A&M.”

“Greg Banks,” said the man with the beard and shaved head. “PhD from Imperial College London, postdoc in planetary geology and exobiology.” He had a British accent.

“Good to meet you,” said Nora. Tappan had obviously managed to assemble a high-powered group. But then, he had billions to spend—nothing like the usual academic penuriousness she was so familiar with. She couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to work with an unlimited budget for a change.

“Thank you,” said Tappan. “Nora, you’ve already seen some of this, but these charts are at much higher resolution. Vitaly?”

Kuznetsov unrolled a large sheet. Peering at it, Nora saw it was a grayscale 3-D view of the site, mapped using lidar.

“You’re familiar with lidar?” Kuznetsov asked. “Ground mapping with infrared lasers?”

Nora nodded. The chart was of the entire mesa top and surrounding areas, beautifully done, showing almost unbelievable topographical detail, down to the bunches of grass and cacti.

Skip gave a low whistle.

“Resolution is less than a centimeter,” said Kuznetsov. “We mapped to a radius of a mile out, just to make sure we didn’t miss anything.” He pointed at the center of the survey. “As you can clearly see, the target area shows historic disturbance of an undetermined nature, surrounded by old tracks of earthmoving equipment and vehicles. A whole lot of activity, a long time ago. A great deal of topsoil was moved around to bury the target area. You can see it’s higher than the surrounding terrain.”

Nora nodded. It was weak evidence for a UFO crash, but she said nothing.

“Thank you, Vitaly,” said Tappan. “Cecilia?”

The tall woman with the tumble of red hair gave Nora a smile, then unrolled a vividly colored display. “What we have here,” she said, “is a ground-penetrating radar map of the site and environs. We’re lucky it’s mostly dry sand, because radar penetrates such material very well—up to three meters.”

Nora stared at the image. This was one Tappan had showed her yesterday, but larger and higher resolution. The V-shaped furrow in the ground was clearly visible, and Nora had to admit it looked like a crash signature.

“When was this survey done?” Nora asked.

“About two weeks ago,” said Toth. “This is the combined data from an overflight of a helicopter carrying SAR, digitally merged with a GPR system deployed at ground level.”

Tappan spoke. “Whatever made that long gouge came in fast at an oblique angle. This was no balloon payload. It was moving.”

“I see that,” said Nora, “but it’s still not proof it was a UFO.”

“UAP,” said Toth. “Unidentified aerial phenomena: that’s what the DoD is calling them these days. Less stigma. Anyway, take a look at this.” Toth unrolled another chart. Nora immediately recognized it as a magnetometer survey, recording the magnetic properties of the soil. Once again, she could see that the ground was peppered with various anomalies and dark spots, indicating the presence of objects or possible artifacts. The groove was, again, vaguely outlined.

“Alien artifacts, possibly,” murmured Skip with ill-suppressed excitement.

Nora stared at the image. There were indeed things down there. She found herself intrigued, despite all her misgivings.

“Greg is our team exobiologist, a specialist in what alien biochemistry might look like and what exotic materials they might have used to build their spacecraft.” Tappan sounded like a proud father.

Banks nodded.

“So that’s where we are,” Tappan concluded. “All we need now is to break ground and see what’s down there. How about it, Nora?”

Nora refrained from answering. She was still looking at the large magnetometer chart. “What’s this?” She pointed to a small, very faint rectangle visible near the edge.

“That’s five hundred yards from the target site,” said Tappan. “We haven’t analyzed or processed it at hi-res. Do you think it might be important?”

A magnifying glass was at hand, and Nora picked it up to examine the images and the magnetometer survey. “Are there any prehistoric Indian ruins in the vicinity?”

The three engineers looked at each other, then shrugged.

“There’s nothing around except the old Pershing Proving Range, fifteen miles north in the Los Fuertes Mountains and mothballed decades ago,” Tappan said. “Why do you ask?”

“Because that image looks like it might be a burial.”

“An Indian burial?”

“Yes. It should be investigated. If it is a prehistoric burial, or in fact any kind of burial, there are laws against disturbing it in any way, and we’d have to rope it off.”

“We’ll have to look into that,” Tappan said. “But now, I want to introduce you to our in-house astronomer and extraterrestrial specialist, Noam Bitan. He’s in Quonset Two.” He thanked the three engineers, who said an effusive goodbye to Nora.

They think I’m going to be their boss, Nora mused as they departed, Skip following. She had to admit she was intrigued—this was more, in every sense, than she had expected. On the other hand, she couldn’t imagine any way this project could positively impact her overall career. Noam Bitan—the name seemed vaguely familiar.