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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
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