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Read Excerpts from The First
Migration:
Skeeter and Taylor
Darren Meets Tracey
Project TIME
The UFO
An Evening with Tracey
PROLOGUE
The Anomaly
“Our fuel’s running
low. I don’t know how much time we have
left,” Skeeter
grumbled, frustrated by the heavy layer of frost
that obscured his
view through the snow cat’s windshield. He
rubbed a small
circular patch on the glass with his gloved hand
and peered into the
darkness. The shrieking winter storm cre-
ated a whiteout
condition in front of him. Skeeter shivered and
glanced at the
thermometer, registering sixty-seven degrees be-
low zero and
dropping. His mind, already numbed by the fumes
from grease and
diesel fuel that permeated the cabin, fought
the maddening
vibration from the staccato thuds of the treads
on the ice.
“Jesus, how’d we get in such a mess?”
he asked Taylor, his
passenger. “Do you
see any sign of ’em?”
“Nope,” Taylor
answered. “Nothing.”
Skeeter and
Taylor were members of a United States geo-
physical team
studying the shrinking ice pack on the Ross Ice
Shelf. Skeeter
drove the last snow cat in a convoy of seven
returning to the
Admundsen-Scott Base Station at the South Pole,
but in the storm he
had lost sight of the others. The lead cat,
Delta One,
contained the electronic equipment necessary to
navigate back to
the base. Tense with concern about straying
off course, Skeeter
grabbed the mike with a trembling hand
and shouted a
transmission above the growl of the snow cat.
“Delta One,
this is Delta Seven. Do you read?”
“Delta Seven,
you’re readable, but weak. Do you have us in
sight?”
Skeeter
squinted through the clearing in the windshield and
swore to himself,
“Damn it, all I see is snow streaking right into
the headlights. I
feel like I’m diving into an abyss.” He clicked
the mike switch and
answered, “Negative, Delta One, I can’t
see shit.”
“Delta Seven,
stop for a minute and turn off your lights.
We’ll shoot a
flare.”
Skeeter turned
off the headlights and in the darkness said
to Taylor, “You
watch out back. I’ll watch the front. Our
situation’s pretty
simple. If we don’t find them . . . we die.”
“Delta Seven,
did you see the flare?”
Skeeter looked at
Taylor and saw him shake his head.
“Christ,”
Skeeter swore, “they could be anywhere—ahead
of us, behind us,
or right next to us—and we’d never see them.”
Again he shouted
into the mike, “Negative, Delta One, we have
no visual contact.
Can you wait a few minutes and try another
flare? The snow
might let up.”
“Delta Seven,
we’ve been stopped now for over fifteen minutes.
We’re low on fuel,
too. We can’t chance running out in
this storm,” came
the weakening reply. “If you don’t see us in a
minute or two,
we’ll have to go on to the base without you.
We’ll bring back a
search party.”
“For corpses,”
Skeeter muttered, staring into the blackness.
After a few
minutes, he snapped the lights on and said, “Taylor,
we’re going outside
and drop the sledges to save fuel. Then we’re
going to push on by
ourselves.”
“But Delta One has the global positioning navigation equip-
ment. How can we
get back to the base without following them?”
Taylor asked.
“We’re going
to stay on the same heading we were on before
we got lost.”
“You’re crazy.
We don’t have a chance of finding the base
that way.”
“Maybe we can
get within radio range. Do you want to die
here?”
“No.”
“Okay then,
we’re going outside to drop the sledges. Don’t
get more than an
arm’s length away from the snow cat. Let’s do
it.”
Skeeter opened
his door and scaled down the side of the cat
over the
ice-encrusted treads. The wind tore at him, making
even the act of
standing difficult. He struggled back to the hitch,
using a
hand-over-hand grip on the treads. Taylor came around
from the other
side. With Taylor’s help and all the effort Skeeter
could muster, he
disconnected the sledges. He brushed the ice
from his eyebrows
and beard.
“We’ve got to
hurry,” Skeeter shouted over the shrieking
wind. “Take a can
of kerosene, and I’ll get one too. If we get
snowbound, we’ll
need a fire.”
Skeeter
struggled with one of the ten-gallon cans and made
sure Taylor kept
right beside him with another can. He reached
the relative safety
of the snow cat when the wind howled to a
level that made
further progress impossible. He had survived
Hurricane Ito many
years before, but this gale was worse. The
wind began a
strange and rapid reversing, slamming into the
snow cat from first
one side, then the other. Skeeter dropped
the kerosene can
and flung Taylor to the ground against the
side of the cat,
grasping for any available hand-hold to keep
from being blown
away. He felt the air being sucked out of his
lungs and his eardrums resonating from a sudden drop in pres-
sure. He saw an
iridescent haze similar to Saint Elmo’s fire
cascade over the
snow cat. The occurrence, unlike anything he
had ever
experienced, terrified him.
“God help us!”
Skeeter screamed. He was astounded when,
as if in answer to
his plea, the wind abated and in a few minutes
became a mere
breeze. The snow stopped, and the temperature
warmed to above
zero. The moon became visible in the clearing
sky.
“There they
are!” Taylor shouted, pointing to a row of pin
lights. “Look! Over
there. There’s the convoy.”
“I see ’em.
Dump the kerosene and start a signal fire. I’ll get
the radio.”
Skeeter opened
the door and reached into the cab for the
mike. He barked his
transmission as the signal fire bathed the
snow cat in a
flickering, orange light.
“Delta One,
Delta One, this is Delta Seven. We have you
in sight. Do you
see our signal?”
Silence.
“Delta One,
Delta One, this is Delta Seven here. Do you
read?”
Nothing.
He checked the
radio’s frequency and volume. He tried again
to raise Delta One
but had no luck.
“Damn, now the
radio’s gone bad. Taylor, keep the fire going.
Maybe they can see
it,” he said. He climbed back into the
cab and retrieved a
pair of binoculars. He peered through them,
focusing upon the
lights, and swore again. “Son of a bitch! That’s
not the convoy,” he
yelled.
“What?”
“It’s some
kind of a large base camp. I see buildings.”
“Your brain’s
frozen,” Taylor shouted. “There’s no camp
within sixty miles
of here, and there are no buildings anywhere
on this whole
continent.”
“Well you come
and take a look, smart ass!” Skeeter said.
“They’re buildings,
I tell you.”
Taylor put the
binoculars to his eyes. “No way! That can’t
be. What do you
think it is?”
“It looks like
a city—it’s too big for a camp,” Skeeter said.
Pointing to the
sky, he yelled, “Look at that!” He thought he
saw the lights of a
plane streaking over the city.
“It’s some
kind of an aircraft. But nothing can fly down
here this time of
the year,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”
Skeeter felt a wave
of nausea. He tossed the binoculars onto the
seat and grabbed
the door with both hands, struggling with
vertigo. He fought
off the urge to throw up and yelled to Taylor,
“Get in.
Whatever those lights are, getting there is better
than freezing to
death here. Let’s go!”
Skeeter
slammed his door shut and wrenched the cat into
gear, not waiting
for Taylor to get his door closed. He jammed
the accelerator to
the floor. Freed of the drag of the sledges, the
cat now jolted
ahead like a huge, lurching snowmobile. Steering
toward the lights,
Skeeter could see the image of the city
become clearer.
Behind them, the signal fire weakened in intensity
and went out.
Skeeter drove the snow cat up a slope
toward a ridge
visible in the moonlight, but at the crest, he saw
the edge of a steep
bluff. He braked to a skidding stop.
“We can’t go down
that. We’ll have to find a way around.”
Across the valley
beyond the bluff, Skeeter could still see the
lights of the city.
His bewilderment turned into disorientation.
Things didn’t add
up, and his mind couldn’t deal with all the
strange inputs.
Skeeter sensed the lull in the storm was ending.
In an instant the
wind intensified and slammed into the snow
cat. The snow began
again, obliterating the lights of the city.
The snow cat rocked
and began to slide on the ice toward the
edge of the bluff.
Skeeter racked the transmission into reverse
and floored the
accelerator. The engine screamed. The treads
spun at first but
then gained traction. The snow cat crawled
away from the edge.
The wind gusted and buffeted, constantly
reversing its
direction. The temperature plummeted once again.
“We’re in
trouble! We can’t stay on this heading, and now
we don’t have any
chance to get back to the base,” Skeeter said.
“Trip the emergency
transmitter. Our only hope is to conserve
our fuel and wait
here for rescue from the station.”
Skeeter set
the brake and powered down all the equipment
that drew
electricity—even the windshield defroster. Watching
the windows become
glazed over with ice, he worried that he’d
never see his
family again. Skeeter kept up a conversation with
Taylor, trying to
force both of them to stay awake, but after a
few hours, he lost
his battle with exhaustion and nodded off to
a tortured sleep.
(To find out what happens to
Skeeter and Taylor—Read
the Book!)
Back to Excerpts Menu
HOME PAGE
This excerpt from The First Migration copyright
© 2005 by
Daniel Logan has been reprinted with permission from
James A.
Rock & Co., Publishers.
Special
contents of this edition copyright © 2005 by James A. Rock &
Co., Publishers
All
applicable copyrights and other rights reserved worldwide. No
part of this publication may be reproduced, in any form or by
any means, for any purpose, except as provided by the U.S.
Copyright Law, without the express, written permission of the
publisher.
This is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either
are the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the
publisher.
Website
copyright © August, 2006, by Daniel Logan All material in this
website is copyrighted and may not be copied, reproduced, or
distributed without permission.

CHAPTER
TWO
Tracey
—Three years later—
“It’s time to quit,
Darren. We’ve done all we can do today. We
need to leave
something for tomorrow,” said Jeff Ryder, the
construction
superintendent for Project TIME. “Let’s go get a
cold one.”
Jeff ’s suggestion hit Darren the wrong way.
Yeah, as if we
needed to leave work
unfinished so we’d have something to do
tomorrow,
he thought. We’ve been working on this $3.7 billion
project in the
middle of the White Sands Missile Range for
three years. Facing
the wartime priority deadline for startup of
the facility, it
seemed to Darren that the stack of items remaining
to be finished got
larger, not smaller. Darren had assured
his boss that they
would begin the final systems checks on schedule.
He and the whole
organization had been working twelve- to
eighteen-hour days
for longer than he cared to remember.
“That’s okay, Jeff, you go on,” Darren said. “I’ve still got a
lot to do before I
quit today. I’ve dreamed all my life about time
travel, and we’re
too close to finishing this project to let up
now.”
“Come on, man, this job’s getting to you,” Jeff said. “A
good-looking stud
like you ought to be scoring all the time, but
you spend your
entire life at this place. When’s the last time you
got laid? Not since
your divorce, I’ll bet, and your obsession
with work caused
that.”
Darren thought long and hard about Jeff ’s comments, not
sure whether he was
pissed at Jeff ’s meddling or jolted by the
truth of his
insight. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “You’re
right, Jeff, let’s
get a cold one before we head home.”
“Okay, but drinks are on you. I bought the last time,” Jeff
said. “Wanna try
the Stealth Landing again?”
Darren knew that Jeff liked the Stealth Landing, a bar in
Alamogordo
frequented by stealth fighter jocks from the
Holloman Air Base
near by. Jeff ’s choice of the Stealth Landing
did not surprise
Darren. It had more to do with the women
who flocked there
because of the pilots than with the quality of
the drinks. Darren
laughed to himself. What business did two
men their age have
in a place like that? Although Darren had a
pilot’s license, he
had never flown fighters. He would take to
the sky in an
acrobatic plane and wring it out whenever he
needed to
rejuvenate himself. He knew, with few exceptions,
that women who were
attracted to pilots were after the men,
not the joy of
aviation. If aviation meant being upside down in
a plane pulling
enough negative Gs to overcome the stomach’s ability to hold down its
contents, then most women lost interest.
Helen had been one of the few women he knew who loved
flying. But she
left him four years ago when his work on the
NASA research grant
ruined his private life. Darren remembered
the happy times
when they were first married. She taught
mathematics. He ran
a government-funded research program
in the physics lab
at M.I.T. on possible modes of time travel. At
that time their
lives were in balance. But, when NASA took
charge, Darren’s hours and commitments overwhelmed his abil-
ity to maintain a
good relationship. Small disagreements led to
major conflicts,
and after one vicious argument, Helen stormed
out with the words
straight out of a soap opera: “Get a lawyer.”
Darren had not seen
her since. Her lawyer handled the divorce
proceedings in
court, and—
“Hey man, did you hear me? Do you wanna try the Stealth
Landing?” Jeff ’s
voice broke into his thoughts.
“Sure, Jeff, go on ahead. I’ll fill my briefcase and be there in
twenty minutes.
Don’t let any leggy blonde fool you into thinking
you’re a fighter
jock. Your heart wouldn’t last.”
“Yeah, but what a way to go, huh? See ya there in a few
minutes.”
Darren gathered up the instrumentation diagrams he and
Jeff had been
checking and put them into a locked file. He
stepped into the
men’s room to wash his face and comb his hair.
Thinking of Jeff ’s
comments, he studied his reflection in the
mirror. He had the
build and natural good looks of a quarterback,
but he had never
even stepped onto a football field during
college. He
concentrated on his study of physics instead.
His face featured a
wry smile, no matter what his mood. Sometimes
the smile came from
the humor he saw in things, but
other times it
caused people to wonder what he knew and wasn’t
sharing. Strands of
gray added a touch of dignity to his wavy
brown hair. In a
suit and tie he could be quite distinguished
looking, but he
hated suits and seldom wore one. His weathered
jacket gave him a
bit of a disheveled look, belying the constant
worry and turmoil
going on in his head. The unassuming
looking man he saw
in the mirror had control of a project vital
to the survival of
the country, if not the world.
Darren left the men’s room and walked up the metal stairs
to leave the
underground complex. The sterile, gray interior,
illuminated by the
cold, flickering glow of fluorescent lights
added to his somber
mood. The hum of computer-controlled
equipment, running
unattended, amplified the inhuman feeling
of the
surroundings. Darren felt minuscule, and a sense of
being alone
overcame him. His footsteps resonated in the cavernous
chamber and gave
him the eerie feeling that someone
was following him.
Turning around, he realized he had been
startled by an
echo. Embarrassed, he thought,
This place is enough
to make anyone feel
spooked.
The enormous
responsibility he
carried for the
project dwarfed all the other priorities in his life.
And the immensity
of the task sometimes made him question
his ability to pull
it off.
Darren reached the top of the stairs and opened the door
to the outside. The
sight of the brilliant stars in the desert
night sky and the
rush of a cool dry breeze restored his faith
in himself. Gazing
at the stars always helped him put things
in perspective. As
big as his responsibilities were, they paled
in comparison to
the sheer size of the universe. And the stars
contained an
implicit message of an order, a purpose, a meaning
to life.
Jeff had no doubt ordered his second beer by now. Darren
closed the door
behind him and hurried to his car, the only
one remaining in
the parking lot. Pulling into the Stealth
Landing lot a short
time later, he heard the unmistakable
beat of an electric
bass guitar going full tilt. The place looked
crowded.
Once inside, Darren searched for Jeff. He spotted him at a
table stacked with
empty beer glasses and surrounded by a couple
of Stealth pilots
and several women. Seeing Darren, Jeff waved and
shouted above
the din for him to come join them. Darren wasn’t sure
he was in
the right mood yet. His mind remained on the myriad details back
at the missile range. He went over to the table anyway.
“Darren, this is Kyle, Jim, Amy, Kim, and, and . . . uh . . .”
“. . . Tracey,” she said, with a smile.
She was stunning,
well-dressed and poised, but she looked
like she felt out
of place. She seemed happy to meet someone
who didn’t appear
to belong there, either. Darren could not
believe how pretty
she was. Trying not to be obvious—but failing—
he couldn’t resist
making a visual assessment of her features.
His gaze settled on
her face, surrounded by shoulder length,
auburn hair. The
sounds and images around him faded
into a dream-like
background.
“Tracy was my grandfather’s name,” Darren heard his own
awkward detached
voice say, “but, you . . . you’re . . .”
“A woman!” she laughed. “I’m happy you noticed. Tracey’s
a woman’s name
these days. My parents added an ‘e’ to the spelling,
but there are lots
of other ways to spell it.”
Now Darren felt stupid. You would think a man his age
could be more suave
than to stammer like a teenager calling a
girl for the first
time. He tried for a save. “Yes, but however you
spell your name,
you’re a beautiful woman,” he recovered, hoping
in the dim light
she would not notice the red tinge of embarrassment
creeping across his
cheeks. The sensation surprised
Darren. He met
pretty women all the time in his work and
conversed with them
at ease. This woman knocked him off balance,
taking him outside
his comfort zone, yet the give and
take fascinated
him.
“Thank you, Darren,” she replied. “Now tell me about your
name.”
Darren sensed trouble ahead. He tried to slough off her
question with a
quick answer. “My dad named me. His parents
came from Ireland,
and Darren’s an old Celtic name.”
“Go on. What does it mean?”
Darren swallowed. “My dad always had high aspirations for
me. Well . . . uh,
roughly translated, it means ‘Great One.’”
Tracey’s response relieved Darren. Rather than taking advantage
of his awkward
position, she gave him a genuine smile,
tipped her glass
toward him, and winked. In that moment their
eyes connected and
would have remained so had it not been for
Jeff ’s intrusion.
“She’s Kim’s sister. Here visiting for awhile,” Jeff yelled.
“But
don’t start talking
politics because she’s a professional woman
. . . er, I mean,
she’s on President Earlman’s staff.”
“Well, welcome to Alamogordo,” Darren said, feeling his
anxiety return upon
learning this beauty who already had him
somewhat
tongue-tied was a White House staffer. “I hope you
don’t think all the
people on our project are as unsophisticated
as we have been.”
“No, I know I caught you off guard in this pub,” she replied.
“I’ll give you the
benefit of the doubt. It doesn’t help that
they put the time
travel project in such an out-of-the-way place.
Maybe there’s hope
for you to get up-to-date by putting your
machine on fast
forward!”
Darren recognized Jeff must have been talking to her about
the project.
“Perhaps I can go back in time a few minutes and
do a better job of
introducing myself. I’d like that chance. You’re
visiting Kim?”
“Yes, she’s my baby sister, and I haven’t seen her for four
years—not since the
election. But the main reason for my trip
is to prepare a
background piece for the president on Project
TIME.
“I knew a member of the press secretary’s staff was scheduled
to visit next week.
We’ve been working hard to put our
best foot forward.
But I never dreamed I’d get off on the wrong
foot before the
visit began.”
“No one said you got off on the wrong foot. You do have an
uphill battle to
help the president win support for the continued
funding of this
project. Getting your project through Congress
will be a big
hurdle for him because this is an election
year. But let’s forget this meeting happened tonight. We’ll begin
all
over again Monday at the start of our official visit. Right
now, I’m going to
have Kim take me home. I’ve had a long
day.” She arose,
bid her farewells, and worked her way toward
the door. Darren
noticed a number of envious eyes followed
her all the way.
( (To learn where Tracey
went—Read
the Book!)
Back to Excerpts Menu
HOME PAGE
This excerpt from The First Migration copyright
© 2005 by
Daniel Logan has been reprinted with permission from
James A.
Rock & Co., Publishers.
Special
contents of this edition copyright © 2005 by James A. Rock &
Co., Publishers
All
applicable copyrights and other rights reserved worldwide. No
part of this publication may be reproduced, in any form or by
any means, for any purpose, except as provided by the U.S.
Copyright Law, without the express, written permission of the
publisher.
This is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either
are the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the
publisher.
Website
copyright © August, 2006, by Daniel Logan All material in this
website is copyrighted and may not be copied, reproduced, or
distributed without permission.

CHAPTER FOUR
Project TIME
As the group
reassembled at 8:00 the next morning, Darren
noted that all had
taken his suggestion to wear casual clothes.
All except
Jennings, of course, who had on dress pants and a tie.
At least he hadn’t
worn his suit jacket.
Oh well,
Darren thought,
let him sweat a
little and get some grime on his pants; it’ll serve him right.
Tracey, as usual,
was dressed in good taste for the occasion in tan khakis and
an open-collar blue chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up
part way.
“Good morning,” Darren announced to the group. “We
have three stops to
make on the tour this morning. Then, following
refreshments, we
will conclude the visit with our panel
discussion.”
“What all are we going to see?” someone asked.
“First, we are going to the control center so you can see
how we operate the
complex. Next, we will go down into Sector
1 to see the VME—the
Vimmy—and some of the other
equipment. For the
last stop we will go to the bunker in the
center of the
complex. The HumVee we will use to penetrate
the time vortex and
the associated gear are housed there. We
plan on about an
hour and a half for the tour. We must stay on
time because the
question-and-answer session is scheduled to
begin at ten.
“One thing I need to point out,” Darren said as he pulled
his ID holder from
his shirt pocket, “is that your ID badges
have the markings
of a radiation dosimeter on them. As he
opened the holder
to show them his ID badge, white sand spilled
onto the conference
room table.
“Ah-h . . . uh . . .,” he began as he struggled for words to
explain the
embarrassing occurrence. Darren saw a knowing
smile break across
Tracey’s face—just before she placed her hand
in front of her
mouth to suppress a chuckle. “Um,” Darren
went on, “. . .
this wind-blown sand gets in everything around
here. But as I
started to say, you needn’t be concerned about the
radiation
dosimeters, because we have not brought any radioactive
materials onto the
site yet.”
“Why will you have radioactive materials?” Jennings asked.
“I thought you said the mass extraction process wasn’t like a
nuclear reaction.”
“Oh, it’s not,” Darren answered, trying to brush the sand
off the table
without being noticed. “The radioactive materials
are used in some of
our precision instruments. There is a minimal
potential for any
exposure but OSHA regulations require
the dosimeters.”
The conference room door opened, and Sandy and Jeff
Ryder entered. “You
all met Sandy yesterday,” Darren said, “and
I would like to
introduce our construction superintendent, Jeff
Ryder. They will
assist me in conducting the tour. Before we
divide into three
groups, are there any questions?”
“Why do you call it Sector 1?” came the question.
“Remember, our circular tube—let’s call it a ring from now
on—is 100 miles in
circumference. We have to keep the ring at
the
correct temperature. We have to keep a precise vacuum in
side it. We have to
brace it and provide vibration dampening
and lots of other
things too technical for me to go into here. To
keep track of
things, we have divided the ring into 360 sectors,
or one degree per
sector. Each one is about 1500 feet long and
contains all the
necessary equipment and instrumentation for
that sector. Sector
1 is the first, and it is the home position for
the Vimmy.”
“Any more questions?” Darren asked, pausing for a moment.
“If not, I’ll turn it over to Jeff to get us going.”
In mock military
tones, Jeff said, “All right, everyone, you
are in my command
now. Darren’s the easygoing one, but I’m
the
General.
You will
follow
my instructions! In the alcove outside
the conference room
we have hard hats, goggles, and ID
badges. Let me know
if anything does not fit. Okay, let’s go.
Snap to it.”
The visitors got up. Some ran for the restrooms and others
walked to the
alcove to get their gear. Darren always enjoyed
this portion of any
visit. Many guests had trouble with their
hard hats—some
would even put them on backwards. He liked
to watch Jeff try
to remain calm while assisting with the equipment.
Darren knew that
Jeff could not understand their inability
to do the most
basic and simple things. Darren caught bits
and pieces of the
conversations.
“No ma’am. You must wear a hard hat, I know they muss
up your hair a
little,” and, “Sir, the strap for your goggles goes
around your head,
not your hat.” And last, “Let’s see, we have
eight visitors and
three of us, so that’s four each in the first two
cars and three in
the third. Let’s go, people.”
Darren got in the
third car and Tracey and Jennings joined
him. Darren drove
with the convoy to the control center building
and parked.
Everyone assembled once again in front of Jeff.
“We’ll go inside,” Jeff instructed the group, “but I ask you
to remain clear of
any barricaded area where construction work
is going on, and
please do not touch any of the controls. We’re
not in operation
yet so you wouldn’t start any equipment, but
we are fine-tuning
the controls, and you might cause an erroneous
reading. Thanks,
and stay close to me.”
They went inside and climbed two flights of stairs. They
entered a room that
looked similar to Mission Control at NASA
in Houston, but
with one major difference. This room had a
huge panoramic
window overlooking the complex. The visitors
rushed to the
window and looked out in awe at the view. For
the first time they
were able to see the scope of the undertaking.
They were amazed by
the image of a huge circle of blockhouse-like
structures,
interconnected with concrete beams, disappearing
to the horizon.
Tracey exclaimed, “It’s like a giant, modern-day Stonehenge!”
“What you see are the concrete beams and pillars that carry
pipe and cable to
each of the 360 sectors,” Jeff explained. “You
don’t see the ring
itself, since it’s eighty feet underground, but
you can see the
concrete covering it. The concrete is there to
keep any rainfall
from seeping down to the ring and causing
havoc with
temperature changes.”
Jeff pointed out the thirty-six stations inside the control
room. “Each station
allows a specialist to monitor ten sectors,”
Jeff explained. A
huge bank of video displays dominated the
front of the room.
“Those screens provide information about
the Vimmy—speed,
temperature, stability, and so forth,” Jeff
said, “and we also
can monitor the bunker at the center and
receive data from
the HumVee and the timers.”
“What kind of timers?” the intern asked.
“Oh, I forgot,” Jeff said. “We call the people in the HumVee
the timers, short
for time travelers. It’s a good thing Darren isn’t
scheduled for the
first mission,” Jeff continued, warming to the
moment, “because
we’d have to call him the
old-timer!”
He began
to laugh his
booming laugh.
“How many timers are there?” Tracey asked, joining the
laughter at
Darren’s expense, “and who goes? What are the
qualifications,
and are there any women participating?”
“I want to keep you on schedule, so please hold those questions
for the Q&A
session,” Jeff suggested. “Besides, I’d prefer
Darren give you
those answers. Well, we’ve used up our allotted
time here in the
control center,” Jeff said. “Let’s go on.”
As they got back into the cars and began the drive to Sector
1, Darren told
Tracey, “We haven’t finalized the list of timers
yet. It will
include several women. There will be three timers on
the first trip. One
will be a scientist. Another will be a special forces
expert. And the
third will be a communications specialist.”
“Why the special forces expert?” she asked.
“We hope we will not need that expertise, but remember,
we will be
traveling into an environment that may contain any
number of physical
threats. Our number one priority is to be
observers, but as a
last resort, we may have to counter physical
threats to protect
the lives of the timers.”
“Wouldn’t it be a violation of the ‘Grandfather Paradox’ to
kill something in
the past?” Tracey asked.
“Of course it would,” Darren answered, noting that Tracey
had done her
homework. “As you know, the Grandfather Paradox
suggests that if a
person were to travel back in time and, for
example, slay their
great-grandfather, then that person would
never have been
born. All the future events associated with that
person and his or
her descendants would be changed.”
“We are prepared to risk the lives of the timers when they
are in the past to
avoid any potential harm to future humans.
That is a
fundamental understanding the timers must accept
when they are
selected. But the last resort killing of a single
member of non-human
life forms, such as wild animals, dinosaurs,
and so forth,
offers almost zero risk of altering subsequent
events. It’s a risk
we are prepared to take.”
By that time the three cars had pulled up to the entryway
closest to the
control center.
“This is Sector 1,” Jeff pointed out
as the members of
the group gathered in front of him, “Remember,
it’s the sector
where the Vimmy is housed. Watch your
step as we go down
the stairs.”
As they descended the stairwell, the sound of footsteps and
voices echoed in
the chamber. The hum of the fluorescent lights
provided white
background noise. Upon reaching the bottom,
the visitors were
astonished by the complexity of the equipment.
In the center of
the curved corridor they saw a smooth
round tube about
eighteen inches in diameter.
“That’s the ring,” Jeff said. It had all kinds of piping,
wiring, and
pieces of equipment connected to it and was anchored
to the outer
wall by massive braces and springs. A huge vacuum
pump driven by a gas turbine
occupied the center of the sector.
As Jeff was explaining the purpose of each piece of equipment,
someone asked,
“Where’s the VME?”
“Stand over here,” Jeff suggested, pointing. “I’ll show you.”
He pressed a button
on a miniature control panel. A section of
the tube opened,
and the visitors could see the reflective interior
surface. As the
hatch opened all the way, the visitors could
see the impressive
VME resting in its home position. It was a
marvel of
miniaturization with a myriad of circuits and mechanisms
visible through a
transparent center section. Each conical
end and each of the
two collars had the same shiny finish as the
inside of the ring.
A few visitors stepped forward to get a closer look.
“Sorry,” said Jeff, as he pressed a button to close the hatch
covering the VME,
“that’s as close as we can let you get. We
can’t risk someone
touching the surface or dropping something
on the surface.
That might cause an imperfection that could
lead to a failure.
Let’s go back upstairs.”
((To find
out what happens upstairs—Read
the Book!)
Back to Excerpts Menu
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This excerpt from The First Migration copyright
© 2005 by
Daniel Logan has been reprinted with permission from
James A.
Rock & Co., Publishers.
Special
contents of this edition copyright © 2005 by James A. Rock &
Co., Publishers
All
applicable copyrights and other rights reserved worldwide. No
part of this publication may be reproduced, in any form or by
any means, for any purpose, except as provided by the U.S.
Copyright Law, without the express, written permission of the
publisher.
This is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either
are the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the
publisher.
Website
copyright © August, 2006, by Daniel Logan All material in this
website is copyrighted and may not be copied, reproduced, or
distributed without permission.

CHAPTER SIX
Pangaea
Darren awoke at
dawn the next morning with a dizzying headache.
He rummaged through
his bag for his coffee pot and aspirin.
Too much stress
yesterday,
he concluded.
Plus it didn’t help
being awakened by
those Nighthawks flying over. With a hangover
like this, I
should’ve at least enjoyed a few beers last night.
As Darren warmed the water for coffee over a camp stove,
he wondered how
Tracey had spent the evening—and how she
had spent the
night. Had Rick managed to sway her to say yes?
Had she spent the
night with him? He didn’t care to dwell on
that possibility.
Darren shivered in the brisk morning air, wishing
he had packed a
jacket. He gulped down his coffee and
began to think
about the day ahead. He got out the cinnamon
rolls he’d brought
and wolfed down the entire package as he
anxiously waited
for the front gate to open so he could leave.
Darren gathered up
his gear and tossed it into the car. When
he started the
engine, the blare from the car’s radio startled him.
With a reflexive
action he punched the power button to shut it
off.
I don’t need any
damn racket until my headache lets up a little,
he thought.
He left the park without any challenge from the gate attendants
and drove to his apartment. He checked his answering
machine for
messages and was disappointed that there were none.
He had hoped for a
message from Tracey saying that she had
returned early the
night before and that the thing with Rick
was over. But there
was no word from her—besides, she had his
cell phone number
and could have reached him.
Darren got ready for work and drove to his office. Before he
even got close to
Sandy’s desk, she called out to him with excitement,
“Did you see it? The whole town’s buzzing about it. It
was even on CNN
this morning! I tried to get a glimpse, but I
didn’t—”
“Hold on, Sandy. Whoa! Slow down! What are you talking
about?”
“Jeff said he saw it. It shook him up,” she exclaimed.
“Sandy, what the hell is
it?
Tell me.”
“You know. A . . . uh, UFO,” she gasped, out of breath. “It
must’ve come right
over where you were last night. It was west
of town. How could
you have missed it?”
Jeff Ryder walked
up with some work authorization forms
in his hand.
“Darren, you need to go catch the TV broadcast,” he said.
“Alamogordo is experiencing its fifteen minutes of fame.”
“I’ll go, too,” Sandy said.
Darren was still trying to catch up with all of this. Three
cups of coffee
hadn’t been enough. His headache was worsening.
He poured a fresh
cup from the community pot and followed
the two to the
video-conference room. Sandy tuned the
TV to CNN and took
a position right in front of the screen.
Framed by a
“Breaking News” banner, the anchor was voicing
over a panoramic
aerial view of Alamogordo. “Some residents
of this sleepy town
in New Mexico awoke at about one
o’clock this
morning to see the image of a UFO in the distance
over the White
Sands National Monument.”
“See, what’d I tell you?” Sandy said. Darren had never seen
her so animated.
She could not sit still.
The anchor went on. “Radar at the nearby Holloman Air
Base locked on the
UFO’s image, and F-117 Nighthawks were
scrambled to make
an intercept.”
Now it was Darren’s turn to feel excited. Those must have
been the jets that
had awakened him.
No wonder they were
going
flat-out. They were
on a full military intercept of an unidentified
intruder.
“The fighters were unable to see the UFO,” the anchor continued,
“but we have
accounts from eyewitnesses who did see
it. We take you now
to our reporter, Jim Raymond, on the
scene in
Alamogordo. Jim, are you there?”
“Yes,” Jim replied. “Standing beside me is Hector Ramirez,
who saw the UFO.
Mr. Ramirez, please describe what you saw.”
“I had just got home from the evening shift at the base
when something
caught my eye west of town.”
“What did it look like?” the reporter asked.
“Well, it’s hard to describe, but it had a ring of bright lights
around its edge. It
came in from the north and hovered right
over the park for a
few minutes. Then it sped up and streaked
out to the
southwest over the mountains, going fast, man—real
fast.”
“Did it make any sound?”
“No. I didn’t hear nothing,” Hector answered.
“What do you think it was?
“I wish I knew, man. I mean, I’ve heard about them UFOs
for years, but . .
. well, uh . . . this thing was
real.”
“What did you do after it disappeared?”
“I went inside my house and gathered up my family. I told
them to stay close
by me until we were sure it was gone. I was
scared,” Hector
said.
“Well, that’s one eyewitness’s account. We will bring you more
after the break,” concluded the anchor. During the commercial,
Jeff stepped into
the anteroom to refill his coffee. Darren
joined him, but
Sandy remained glued to the TV.
“Sandy said you camped out last night at White Sands. Did
you see anything,
Darren?” Jeff asked.
“No. I was sound asleep,” Darren answered, “but the fighters
woke me up. You
wouldn’t believe how low they were and
how much noise they
made when they came over. They were
screaming. But
Sandy told me you saw something that bothered
you.”
“I sure did,” Jeff answered. “I was working late last night
and something out
to the west caught my eye. I don’t think it
was any aircraft.”
“Jeff, you’re sure it wasn’t the fighters you saw?”
“Remember, Darren, I was a gunner in the air force,” Jeff
said.
“Yes, but what does that have to do with what you saw?”
“The only ones of us who made it through gunnery school
had to demonstrate
special skills. First of all, we had to be able
to identify any
type of aircraft by its silhouette. When we trained
on simulators, we
had to anticipate the target’s trajectory and
its capability to
change speed or direction.”
“So?”
“What I saw was no airplane. It wasn’t shaped like a plane.
It didn’t have the
navigation lights and strobes of a plane. And
it didn’t move like
a plane. No plane I’ve seen could have changed
direction and
accelerated like it did. I know I didn’t imagine it,
but I also know it
wasn’t a plane.”
Jeff ’s serious comments dumbfounded Darren. As they returned
to the main room,
Darren noticed the work authorization
forms Jeff was
holding.
He switched off the TV and said, “Come on, both of you, we
don’t
have time for this; it’s almost ten o’clock. Let’s get back to
work.” Jeff agreed and gave Darren the forms for his approval.
Darren signed them, and Jeff hurried out to the complex to get
the authorized tasks started.
(To find out if it was a UFO or
something else—Read
the Book!)
Back to Excerpts Menu
HOME PAGE
This excerpt from The First Migration copyright
© 2005 by
Daniel Logan has been reprinted with permission from
James A.
Rock & Co., Publishers.
Special
contents of this edition copyright © 2005 by James A. Rock &
Co., Publishers
All
applicable copyrights and other rights reserved worldwide. No
part of this publication may be reproduced, in any form or by
any means, for any purpose, except as provided by the U.S.
Copyright Law, without the express, written permission of the
publisher.
This is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either
are the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the
publisher.
Website
copyright © August, 2006, by Daniel Logan All material in this
website is copyrighted and may not be copied, reproduced, or
distributed without permission.

CHAPTER SIX
Pangaea
Darren opted to
stay late and complete some pressing work,
including polishing
a presentation he intended to make before
a Congressional
oversight committee hearing in two weeks. He
had made little
progress when his phone rang. “This is Darren,”
he answered. He
recognized the voice on the other end of the
line as Tracey’s.
His pulse quickened and a wave of excitement
went through his
system.
“Darren, could you come over?” Tracey pleaded in a muted
voice. “I just got
back, and I don’t feel like being alone right
now.”
Darren showered in the bathroom adjacent to his office and
drove to Kim’s
apartment. Tracey opened the door to greet him
as he came up the
walk. She had on a pretty sun dress and was
wearing high-heeled
open sandals. She looked stunning, and
Darren was glad he
had taken a few minutes to freshen up.
“Darren, thanks for coming over. It’s been a tough day. Kim’s
still in
Albuquerque,” she said. “I have to go back this weekend
to pick her up.” As
Darren got to the front porch, she put her
arms around him and
hugged him. Darren put his arms around
her and held her.
“Are you okay?” he
asked. He knew she had been crying.
“I am better now that you’re here, but I didn’t think I would
get through last
night,” she said. “Rick didn’t expect me to turn
him down. He felt
certain I would marry him.” She stopped,
unable to speak
further. She turned her head away from him to
hide her
expression.
“It’s okay,” he assured her, gently turning her face back toward
him.
“I hope so,” she said. “Well, I thought about what you said—
you know, about
listening to your inner self—and about
that
being the hardest
thing to do. When I did, I knew Rick and I
were not meant to
be. Before it was over I cried a lot. Rick got
angry at first,
then he cried some, too. But he’s on a plane back
to D.C. now,
and—it’s over.”
“If you were listening to yourself, you did the right thing. I
dreaded the thought
that you would agree to marry him because
I knew your heart
was not in it,” Darren said. “I also have
to admit to a
selfish motive, Tracey. My life is brighter since I
met you. I would
not have handled it very well at all if I had lost
you before I even
had a chance to try to win you over.”
She relaxed, as if
agreeing with him. Loosening her embrace,
she took his hand
and led him inside.
“Come in,” she said. “As long as
we are being open with each other, I have a confession to
make.”
“What’s that?”
“My relationship with Rick has been over for a long time.
We just made it
official. He used me to help promote his political
ambitions, and I
used him as a defense against having to
deal with other
men. It all worked pretty well for me until you
came along and made
me realize I wanted more. That night in
Santa Fe I, uh . .
.,” Tracey hesitated, then she abruptly changed
the topic. “Have
you eaten? Are you hungry?”
“No, and yes,” he replied with a grin.
“Kim doesn’t have a thing here, but I brought back a good
bottle of wine, and
we should be able to find some cheese and
crackers,” Tracey
suggested. “That’ll tide us over until we decide
what to do about
dinner.”
“Sounds good,” Darren answered.
Tracey began rounding up the wine and cheese. Darren
looked around the
living room at Kim’s apartment. It was decorated
with Southwestern
furnishings, including a kiva fireplace
in one corner.
Darren stacked a few piñon pine logs into a pyramid
atop some kindling,
took a match from the hearth and lit a
fire. Exploring
further, he opened the heavy Spanish wooden
doors to see a
small courtyard’s rock garden filled with a variety
of cactus plants,
yucca, and sage. The pleasant aroma of the garden
complemented the
smell of the wood burning in the fireplace.
Tracey came into
the room with a platter of snacks and an
open bottle of
wine. She motioned Darren to a seat on the
couch and set the
platter on the coffee table. She poured the
wine and as she
handed Darren his glass, she said, “I found this
wine on the way
home this afternoon. It’s rare. I want to recognize
the promise of a
new relationship with it. Here’s to us.”
“To us,” Darren responded.
Tracey clinked her
glass against his and took a sip. “The fire
is pretty,” she
said, and curled up against him on the couch. “I
love to hear it
crackle.”
“It reminds me of the campfires we used to build when I
was a boy,” Darren
said. “Nothing better than being under a
starry sky with a
campfire.”
“Do you like it out here?” Tracey asked.
“I love it,” Darren answered, looking out to the courtyard,
“but I miss one
thing this time of year.”
“What?”
“Fireflies.”
“You mean
lightning bugs?
That’s what we call them in the
South.” Tracey
said.
“Yes. On summer nights all the cornfields would be filled
with them,” Darren
said. “You know the process by which they
make light is—”
Before he could go into the scientific explanation, she
interrupted
with, “The thing I
hate about it is that they live only
a few days.”
“I know.”
“Wouldn’t that be
awful—to have only a few days to experience
life? Think of all
they miss out on,” Tracey said.
“Our lifetimes are
comparatively shorter,” Darren replied.
“What do you mean
by that?”
“Well, humans live on average seventy-five years. That’s a
micro-second
compared to the age of the Earth. Our recorded
history goes back
only three or four thousand years, and
archaeological records
trace our species back to no more than
100,000 years.”
“That’s a long time.”
“It’s the blink of an eye relative to the timescale of the
universe.
Think of it. We
estimate the universe to be between twelve
and fifteen billion
years old. Our species has existed for a smaller
fraction of that
time period than lightning bugs live compared
to us,” Darren
said. “There’s so little we know. I guess that’s
why every time I
look to the stars, my mind tries to understand
the meaning and
purpose of the universe.”
“Do you believe there’s a God who created it?” Tracey asked,
startling him with
her directness.
“Yes, I do,” Darren replied.
“I’m surprised,” she said.
“Why?”
“Well, being a scientist,” she answered, “it seems like you
would understand
how things worked and not believe there
was anything
supernatural to it.”
He laughed. “It’s
because
I am a
scientist that I believe in God.
Many physicists do
and make no bones about their belief.”
Now it was Tracey’s
turn to wonder. “Why?” she asked.
“Anyone who understands natural laws knows that the universe
is no accident.
There’s an order behind all of it. It’s been
said by physicists
that the natural laws are a view into the mind
of God. Even
Einstein said he believed God ‘reveals himself in
the harmony of all
being.’”
“What a spiritual thought,” Tracey said. And then in a lighter
vein added, “I
believe in God, too. That doesn’t mean I have to
study physics, does
it?”
“No,” Darren laughed as he put his arm around her. The
evening light
softened with the approaching sunset, and the
glowing colors cast
by the fireplace danced on the walls.
“You’ve always been fascinated with the prospect of time
travel, haven’t
you?” Tracey asked.
“Ever since I first understood Einstein’s theory and the
possibilities
it allowed,” Darren
said.
“When was that—kindergarten?” Tracey joked, poking him
in the ribs.
“No, it was before that. I
taught
the theory in
kindergarten,”
Darren kidded.
“Aren’t you excited about being on the verge of time travel
now?”
“The irony is that, as hard as I’ve worked and as much as
I’ve dreamed, I
won’t get to travel in time myself. That’ll be left
to the timers. Even
worse, rather than going to the future where
the advancements will be awesome,
we’re going to the past first.
I don’t give a flip
about dinosaurs,” Darren said.
“You sound disappointed.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m being selfish. After all,
Goddard never flew
in a rocket, Von Braun never landed on the
moon, and Hubble
never witnessed the birth of a star in deep
space,” Darren
said.
“That puts you in good company,” Tracey said, “but remember
that Orville and
Wilber got to fly and John Glenn
returned to space
years later. You never know what might happen.
You may get a
chance. Cheer up.”
“Okay,” Darren said.
“What do you want to do about dinner?” she asked.
“Let’s talk about dinner later,” Darren said. He pulled her
to him and kissed
her slowly. This time there was no resistance,
no turning of the
head, no pulling away. She kissed him back
with an equal
intensity. He leaned her back on the couch and
kissed her neck and
one exposed shoulder.
Darren’s caresses made Tracey forget about D.C., about career,
about men who were
future senators or presidents. Her
moves showed Darren
she wanted him. She breathed in his ear,
“Please—don’t stop.”
He ran his right hand down the side of her body to her
waist, feeling the
curve of her hip. She moved with him, whispering
to him as he kissed
her forehead and her eyebrows. She
grasped his collar
with both hands and began to unbutton his
shirt.
He reached down to the inside of her ankle and unbuckled
her sandals, then
slipped them off.
“There you go again,” she whispered, “taking off my shoes.
Remember me telling
you before how that approach wouldn’t
work?”
He took the instep of her left foot in his firm grip, squeezing
it with his fingers
and stroking the top with his thumb. “I
think it has a
better chance this time,” he replied.
“We’ll see,” she
teased. Darren eased his hand up the calf of
her leg and beyond
her knee. Tracey stood up and grabbed his
arm. “Come with
me,” she said, leading him to her bedroom.
(To learn what they talked about
in the bedroom—Read
The Book!)
Back to Excerpts Menu
HOME PAGE
This excerpt from The First Migration copyright
© 2005 by
Daniel Logan has been reprinted with permission from
James A.
Rock & Co., Publishers.
Special
contents of this edition copyright © 2005 by James A. Rock &
Co., Publishers
All
applicable copyrights and other rights reserved worldwide. No
part of this publication may be reproduced, in any form or by
any means, for any purpose, except as provided by the U.S.
Copyright Law, without the express, written permission of the
publisher.
This is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either
are the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the
publisher.
Website
copyright © August, 2006, by Daniel Logan All material in this
website is copyrighted and may not be copied, reproduced, or
distributed without permission.
|