33
AT FIVE O’CLOCK, Nora entered Quonset 1, her brother reluctantly in tow, for a meeting called by Tappan. Skip hadn’t wanted to come—he was embarrassed and afraid he’d be fired—but Nora had persuaded him it would be worse if he stayed away. All the scientific staff was there. They took seats around a large conference table at the back of the building. Tappan was the last to arrive, striding in at five minutes past, heading directly to the head of the table. Instead of sitting, he placed his hands upon the back of the chair and passed his gaze over the troubled group.
“Well,” he finally said. “As you all know, we weren’t able to find Noam Bitan. We aren’t sure if the disappearance was intentional or accidental. Naturally, we’re concerned, and it’s been reported to both the FBI and the county sheriff.”
He glanced around again.
“It turns out, as most of you now know, that Dr. Bitan had discovered something of great significance to our project—a discovery that may explain his disappearance.” Yet again, his gaze swept the room, this time coming to rest on Skip. “He took his assistant, Skip Kelly, into his confidence. I’m going to ask Skip to now share that confidence with us.”
Nora glanced over and saw pure panic on Skip’s face.
“M-me?” he stammered.
“Yes, you.” Tappan drilled him with his eyes. “I can understand why you felt compelled to keep that information from the rest of the team—but now the time has come for you to share it with everyone. We need to hear it from your own lips.”
“Yes, sir,” said Skip. “I’m really sorry. I realize I’ve let down the team.”
Tappan waved his hand. “Please stand up so everyone can see you.”
Skip got to his feet, nervously smoothing down his hair. “Well, as I mentioned earlier to some of you, Bitan decided—I mean, his observations and calculations indicated—that this site, the traditional Roswell site…was not where the UAP crashed. He believed the spaceship came in at such a shallow angle that it basically skipped off the ground, went airborne again, and crashed somewhere else. His calculations indicated where it might have landed. We were looking for that place when…when he disappeared.”
“I assume you didn’t find it?” asked Tappan.
“No.”
“Thank you, Skip. Is there anything more?”
Nora saw Skip hesitate. “No, that’s all.” He sat down, his face covered in a sheen of perspiration. She was glad he hadn’t gone on to share Bitan’s story of alien abduction.
“The Three Engineers have gone over Bitan’s calculations,” Tappan said. “They’ve confirmed he was right: the UAP did indeed skip off the ground and keep going. What’s more, the idea that this is a skip site is consistent with Nora’s excavation of the groove, or trough, and its lack of substantial evidence. And this afternoon, Greg Banks did refined calculations of the UAP’s possible trajectory. Greg?”
Banks rose, holding a sheaf of papers. “We reran Bitan’s calculations using computer modeling of the presumed shape, speed, and angle of the object, along with its mass, air resistance, and so forth. Obviously, we’re lacking quite a few data points. But the model indicates Bitan was somewhat off in his calculations of where the thing might have landed. We believe its trajectory would have taken it farther, beyond the hills. It probably would have landed somewhere in the vicinity of the Los Gigantes buttes or in the foothills of the mountains beyond.”
“How certain are you?” Tappan asked.
“About eighty percent, within the elliptical area we’ve outlined on our map. That’s the area being overflown with the lidar plane as we speak.”
“Thank you. And now Vitaly will cover that. Vitaly?”
Kuznetsov rose, smoothing down his hair. “Once we had Greg’s calculations, we called in a lidar survey of the area. Fortunately, both aircraft and pilot were available at the last minute—for a price, of course. The plane flew up from Albuquerque around four and, as Greg just mentioned, should be on-site around now. It’ll take about three hours to scan the five-square-mile target area. We should have the data processed by tomorrow morning. There is a little bit of a twist, however.”
“What’s that?” Tappan asked.
“There’s an area in the eastern part of the Los Fuertes Mountains where the airspace is closed. It’s quite a ways outside the projected landing area, so I don’t think it will impede our discovery of the true crash site. But our pilot is having to fly a rather circuitous route to avoid that airspace.”