Aquifer: A Novel Page 6

  Suddenly Bill stopped reading to himself, angrily pointed to the paper as he shook it with his other hand and blurted out to everyone, “It says here in the paper that a couple of professors from St. Louie U. are gonna be down here all summer studyin’ frogs so they can shut down our logging operations!” He began to read quite dramatically out loud, or more accurately, paraphrase out loud, from the article before him.

  “That don’t make no lick o’ sense. What’s frogs got to do with loggin?” asked Zeek.

  From the corner where two men were playing checkers on a card table a voice answered, “Nothin’! My sawmill cuts logs, not frogs. They ain’t shuttin’ me down!”

  “Wait,” interrupted Bill. “I stand corrected. It says the frog guys don’t want to shut us down. The idiots just want us to go back to horse and mule teams to cut and haul out selected trees. Sounds like a couple of self-righteous, pompous college professors,” he added sarcastically.

  “May as well shut us down. Ya can’t make any money that way,” opined the checker player as if his was the definitive opinion.

  “And many a good man’s been killed loggin’ that old-fashioned way,” added Zeek.

  “Yeah, well that’s just like the government. First they take away all our best farm land to make national parks so the city slickers can destroy our way of life, and now they want to take away our timber industry too! Ya just can’t trust ‘em,” stated the checker player.

  =/=

  CHAPTER SIX

  Two Rivers

  Two Rivers Ranch was a tourist retreat featuring a motel, restaurant, gift shop, and two dozen rentable cabins. Additionally, the Park Service operated a small campground just beyond the commercialized tourist area. Canoes could be rented for float trips, either with or without a guide. Shuttle vans with canoe trailers delivered tourists, equipment, and canoes to various drop-off points along the area’s rivers, then picked them up at their designated departure points, depending on the length of float desired. Trips could be arranged that lasted only a few hours or up to a week or more.

  One of the more popular float trips dropped tourists off upriver at Round Spring National Park and picked them up downriver at Big Spring National Park. It was a short distance that could be driven in a couple of hours but usually took four days to float because of frequent stopping for fishing, swimming, sightseeing, camping and the lazy current of the river. The most popular short float trip started at Two Rivers Ranch and ended at either Powder Mill or Blue Spring, requiring three to four hours of float time. Floating the Current and Jack’s Fork rivers was not only a popular tourist activity. Most of the locals floated with consistent regularity too. The use of outboard motors was greatly restricted within the national park, leaving canoes as the primary method of floating.

  Sport fishing for largemouth and smallmouth bass, red-ear sunfish, trout, pike, drum, perch, crappie, channel cat, walleye, and a dozen other varieties was very popular in the clear waters of the Current and the Jack’s Fork Rivers.

  Two Rivers Ranch rested at the confluence of the two rivers that formed the basis for the Ozark National Scenic Riverways park system. At their point of impact, the Current River flowed almost due South, while the Jack’s Fork River flowed due North. The Jack’s Fork was about one-third the size of the Current. The two mighty rivers hit head-on forming a sideways “T” junction. After colliding, their combined water flow took an easterly route following a twisty, winding path through the Ozarks. The merged rivers retained the name Current River. About ten miles downstream from their confluence the merged river nosedived to the South, heading to Arkansas, and eventually emptied into the Mississippi River.

  Dusk was just beginning to settle upon the gravel bar where Clayton and Larry made their camp. They settled on the south bank of the co-joined rivers, just downstream from the “T” junction at Two Rivers Ranch.

  The campfire had burned down to coals. Their tents were pitched and a Coleman lantern hung from a pole. The two men finished their dinner while being serenaded by a plethora of frogs croaking along the river and in the slough on the far bank. The chorus of frogs was joined by myriads of crickets singing from the grasses near the tree line.

  As loud as it was, the aggregate ruckus of the frogs and crickets was dwarfed by the thunderous, raspy, rhythmic rising and falling of the consolidated voices of an entire forest filled with cicada locusts. They sang from the trees behind the men where the gravel bar joined the forest.

  The short crisp chirps of a cricket may last only a half second. The deep ribit of a frog may last as long as an entire second, or perhaps even two. The cicadas however, were the true singers. The vibrations of their raspy voices pulsated for up to a half minute. When one would begin to sing, every cicada within a quarter mile seemed to join in. The noise volume of just one locust would drown out the voices of the frogs and crickets. When the hoards of locusts from the forest sang in unison it could be deafening.

  The unmelodic strain of the cicadas gyrated in both pitch and intensity in an annoying, grating, gravelly, harshly unpleasant tone that lasted for several minutes. It then trailed off in a slow diminuendo until, as if directed by a musical conductor, they would all suddenly stop. Profound silence would reign for a minute or two only to have the deafening sound wave begin anew.

  The polyphonic nightly chorus was completed by the softer, yet high-pitched, shrill, whistling calls of the whippoorwills as they roosted in the tree branches of the thick forest on the far side of the river.

  Sound was not the only sensory distraction. The sky was filled with the intermittent blinking of hundreds of fireflies.

  In this insane, yet serene setting, Clayton felt totally at home. He stretched for a moment then sank into a folding, cloth, camp chair.

  “Ahhh . . . this is where man was born to live, out in nature, where the pace of life isn’t so hectic. You can spend a lot of time doing absolutely nothing, and doing it slowly to savor the moment.” He paused momentarily to take a sip of coffee from a blue, porcelain coated, tin cup. Setting it down, he reached for his dinner plate which rested on a log beside his chair. “That deep base croaking from the other side of the river is your garden variety American Bull Frog . . . that higher chirping is a spotted leopard frog . . . but the overpowering orchestral background coming from all around us, other than the ever-present cicadas of course, is produced by hundreds of tiny tree frogs. They’re all singing for their mates.” Clayton rambled on as if nothing else in the world was as important as this setting.

  “It's a regular cacophonous racket,” Larry observed. “Won’t be any sleeping tonight with all that noise.”

  “To me it’s a symphony,” chuckled Clayton as he took another long sip from his coffee mug. “And I find it very soothing. It lulls me right to sleep.”

  “It’s sure different from the night sounds of where I grew up. That incessant locust racket is enough to drive a man insane . . . yet somehow I feel at home here,” admitted Larry.

  “Sooo, after you’re done with school, Larry, what are your plans for life?” Clayton asked as he drained his coffee mug and lazily stretched in his camp chair.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’m just concentrating on finishing my degree; but, someday I’d like to get married and raise a family, I guess.”

  “You want a family?” Clayton inquired, a little astonished. He was pleased but somewhat surprised since that was the last thing on the minds of most of his students. “That’s good . . . I kind of wish I’d had one,” he added longingly. Then, giving remorseful counsel that Larry had not expected, he continued. “Take it from one who never took time from his profession for that priority; you’ll never regret having a wife and family, but if you don’t get married, then you will most definitely regret not having them when you reach my age.”

  Larry threw another log onto the campfire, sending up thousands of flying sparks which quickly dissipated into the night sky by rapidly blending in with the hundreds of erratically blinking fire flies. He then cont
emplatively asked, “Then how come you never took the leap?”

  Clayton removed a pipe from his breast pocket, along with a pouch of tobacco, and began to fill it. “Oh . . . I'm a loner. Always had my studies . . . a shrink ‘ud probably call it relationship aversion, attributed to my childhood.”

  “Your childhood?” Larry asked, raising one eyebrow.

  “Yeah. I was orphaned . . . twice,” Clayton said, striking a wooden match across the thigh of his denims, lighting the pipe and taking a couple of quick puffs, then flipping the flaming match stick into the campfire. Larry looked confused, so Clayton continued. “I was adopted just after birth - technically I guess I wasn’t an orphan, though I never knew my biological parents, or even where they lived. But, they were my first family, sort of. I guess that when you’re cast off at birth like some unwanted possession, then it really wasn’t much of a family. Anyway, they’re dead now . . . at least to me. . . All I know about them is that my birth mother’s name was Valoura Sutton. I never understood why she gave me up, but I guess she had her reasons . . .” Clayton stared into the campfire for several seconds. Then, realizing that his mind had drifted to events that had happened decades earlier he apologized. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bore you with such triviality.”

  “No, that’s fine. Go on,” Larry coaxed.

  “Well, my second family, my adoptive parents . . .” Clayton took in a deep breath and held it momentarily before exhaling, giving himself time to collect his thoughts. His face wore a sad expression, or perhaps one of disappointment. “Well . . . I'm sure they loved me, in their own sort of way, but they both had demanding careers – university professors. I guess I kind of followed in their footsteps in that regard.”

  Clayton took another puff on his pipe. “Growing up, I was always in the way . . . an inconvenience.” He stared off into the distance as if reliving long forgotten, painful experiences. Then with a jolt he continued, “In my senior year of high school they were both killed. Hit by a drunk driver.” He took an exceptionally long puff from his pipe. “This ring,” he pulled at a gold chain around his neck from which dangled a small infant ring, “is the only meaningful possession I have of my childhood. I’m told that my birth mother gave it to me. I guess I wear it to remind me to never give up hope.” He turned the tiny ring over between his fingers and stared at an inscription on the inside. “Though I think that she gave it to me as a key to a puzzle I’m supposed to solve.”

  Clayton stared across the river, momentarily lost in his thoughts. Then he abruptly cleared his throat, tucked the ring back inside his shirt, and nodded his head toward the chorus of croaks and bellows in the background. “These frogs are my third family. They’re all I have now. They're my children, sort of.” He randomly swung his arm as if vaguely pointing to the trees, the mountains, and the river. “I have a responsibility to care for them, to protect them and their habitat. If I’m successful, then perhaps someday you can bring your own children camping out here.”

  “I’d like that. It’s so peaceful out here . . . rejuvenating . . . but before I experienced it I didn’t know what I was missing,” Larry said as he raised his gaze heavenward. The sky was jet black, filled with an immensity of brilliant stars readily visible in the moonless night sky. “Just look at those stars! I’d never actually seen the Milky Way before coming here, only pictures of it.”

  Suddenly, upriver, a brilliant, massive streak of tremendously bright light appeared in the sky and seemed to be rushing toward the two men at a tremendous speed. But the lighted object produced no sound. It continued its silent onrushing and within just a few seconds the object was above them filling the entire sky from horizon to horizon. Before either of them could respond, however, their bodies were thoroughly racked by the deadening, bone jarring concussion of a tremendous sonic boom generated by something huge screaming overhead at Mach 3 and only a few hundred feet above the valley floor.

  Clayton instinctively recognized the shock wave for what it was, even though he had never been so close to the source of one before, nor been so thoroughly jarred by its impact. Although he recognized what he was experiencing, his mind could not fathom the intensity of the experience. He instantly remembered when he was a teenager, back in the 1960s, that commercial airliners occasionally broke the sound barrier creating sonic booms which, though quite mild in comparison to this one, broke windows in stores and homes. Laws were eventually passed that limited aviation velocity over populated areas. So to Larry’s generation, sonic booms were unknown. Therefore, what Larry had just experienced, was something for which he was totally unprepared.

  As the flaming incandescent object screamed overhead it lit up the entire riverbank so brightly that the men’s eyes could neither focus nor adjust. They were momentarily blinded by its brilliance. The flash lasted less than a second – only to be immediately followed by a tingling and mildly searing heat wave. The cool evening air was instantaneously heated by fifty degrees. The momentary heat wave passed just as quickly as did the flash of light, sharply contrasted by the chilling dampness of the Ozark night air which seemed to be sucked in behind it. Then thick, heavy darkness and silence settled in. The silence was elusively palpable. Even the critters of the forest dared not break the stillness. The sound of the two men’s blood coursing throughout their bodies was the only sound they heard as it thundered in their ears with each succeeding heartbeat.

  Then the silence was shattered as Clayton dropped his dinner plate and coffee mug onto the ground and slowly rose to his feet. As he stood, he turned his head to follow the arching glide-path of the now distant flaming object. He watched as confusion and disbelief drained his face. Both men gazed at the falling object until it disappeared behind a distant hill beyond the bend in the river downstream, only to be immediately followed by the brilliant light of the object’s impact silhouetting the mountain ridge before them.

  Obviously this was not a plane crash. Neither was it a meteorite. The two men were stunned and speechless, standing there as the lone witnesses to the demise of the celestial object which had just passed above them.

  Shortly the deep boom of an explosion came from the direction of the impact.

  “Twenty-five seconds . . . about . . . five miles from here. First thing in the morning we’re checking it out,” Clayton declared, not knowing what else to say.

  =/=

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Cheyenne Mountain

  Eight hundred miles to the west, chaos ruled at a military satellite tracking station buried deep within Cheyenne Mountain outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado. A training exercise had been in progress in which a new breed of Star Wars weaponry, a Laser-guided Missile Defense System (LMDS), was being tested. Moments earlier, a drone target rocket had been launched from a base in the South Pacific.

  Everything had been proceeding according to expectations. The drone had been on course and the satellite defensive weapon had locked onto it.

  “Systems Report!” General Branigan had snapped at a technician bent over a computer work station.

  “The drone should enter the intercept range within three minutes,” the technician had reported. “The LMDS is powering up and will soon be ready to take it out.”

  “Let’s hope this thing works half as well as the designers claim it will,” groused General Branigan.

  The General and his aides had watched the wall-sized projections of computer screens and monitors that were mounted around the room, while other team members had been focused on their personal computer screens. Trajectories had been calculated, time to impact was indicated, capacitance charging levels were projected; both manual and automatic tracking and monitoring of all aspects of the test were reflected upon the massive wall screens.

  “Star Wars laser capacitance is now fully charged. Time to firing is T-minus 30 seconds and counting,” the technician had reported. “Target drone is on course.”

  “Switch to tactical onboard computer targeting and auto fire sequence . . . Gentleme
n, let’s see what this puppy can do,” Branigan had ordered.

  The computer console screens reported the drone’s trajectory relative to the targeting satellite’s position. A computer-generated voice poured from the intercom system counting off the seconds until the clock registered 0:00.

  At that moment a laser beam had automatically fired from the Star Wars LMDS satellite.

  Then, to the astonishment of everyone who had been glued to the projection monitors, a tremendous explosion occurred midway between the targeting drone and the LMDS.

  “What the? . . .” exclaimed General Branigan.

  “General, tracking computers indicate that the laser struck an object that didn’t exist. It just materialized from nowhere,” reported an aide.

  It seemed like an eternity had passed, but a glance at his watch told General Branigan it had only been five minutes. During that time an army of technicians and engineers had scrambled to determine what had just happened. There had been no doubt that the laser from the LMDS had struck something. But radar, visual monitors, radio, everything had verified that the skies were clear, there was nothing there prior to firing. Nevertheless, something had been hit. Now they needed to ascertain what it was in the hopes of preventing an international incident. The implications of this accident were beyond imagination. If some nation had perfected a stealth technology so advanced that its armaments were totally undetectable by our most advanced monitoring devices . . . but General Branigan checked his thoughts before they reached their logical conclusion. This was a scenario that he was not willing to entertain.

  An aide checked his computer again, then addressed the General. “Sir, our calculations show that the object we struck is massive, bigger than anything we’ve ever launched. Bigger than anything that anyone has ever launched. It’s fallen out of orbit and is careening toward the Mid-West. Impact is calculated to occur in . . .” He checked his consol again. “It’s already down, Sir!”