Free Star Trek The Original Series From History's Shadow by Dayton Ward

day, he thought, but he would not be holding his breath.
    A knock from outside the office interrupted his thoughts, and Wainwright looked up to see a shadowy figure standing just beyond the door’s glazed, translucent window. “Come in.”
    The door opened to reveal Lieutenant Darren Benjamin, one of Captain Ruppelt’s aides. Like Wainwright, he was dressed in the standard blue officer’s service dress uniform, with blue trousers and jacket over a light blue shirt with a dark blue tie. A lock of his dark brown hair dropped down across his forehead, and Wainwright suspected the younger man used some sort of hair tonic to achieve that look.
    “Good morning, sir,” Benjamin said, closing the door behind him and moving to stand before Wainwright’s desk. He was carrying a green file folder; on the cover Wainwright could see the stamped words “TOP SECRET.” Stopping in front of the desk, Benjamin held out the folder. “Captain Ruppelt asked me to deliver this to you pronto.”
    “Another sighting?” Wainwright asked, taking the folder and laying it on his desk. As he opened the file and began perusing its contents, his eyes locked on one particular piece of information on the report’s top sheet. “Yuma?”
    “Yes, sir,” Benjamin replied. “Last Thursday, the seventeenth. At least a half dozen witnesses reported seeing a flat, white disk traveling in a straight line across the sky over the mountains of the testing ranges. Two more people reported seeing it again the next day. All of the observers were military personnel. We got the call that day, with the follow-up report arriving Saturday afternoon. Given the nature of the incident, and the witnesses involved, Captain Ruppelt wants you to head out there and have a look.”
    Wainwright sighed, chastising himself for the breach in military bearing in the presence of a junior officer. “Sorry, Lieutenant. I guess I’m still tired from the last trip. We just got home last night.”
    Never mind the empty house .
    “Understood, sir,” Benjamin said. “For what it’s worth, the captain mentioned that very thing when he handed me the file. He told me to tell you he apologizes for sending you out again so soon, but . . .” The younger man’s expression turned sheepish. “You know how it is, sir.”
    Nodding, Wainwright forced a small smile. “Yep. That’s how it is, all right.” He spent a brief moment scanning the report’s top sheet before flipping to the supplemental pages, looking for certain key phrases that Blue Book liaison officers at other bases had been instructed to use when taking statements from witnesses. So far as he could tell, the accounts as provided by the Yuma base personnel were detailed, lacking the sort of embellishment he long ago had come to associate with reports submitted by less-credible observers. Fora moment, his inner cynic—cultivated after years of taking reports of alleged sightings from people just looking for attention or validation from the government or society at large—wondered if the witnesses had worked together to arrive at a consistent story to tell the Yuma liaison officer. The questionnaire developed by Captain Ruppelt for use when interviewing those making such reports was designed to detect such collusion, but experience had taught Wainwright that the process was not foolproof. He knew he would not be able to judge the veracity of this report until he had a chance to question the observers for himself.
    Guess I should start packing. Again .

SEVEN
    Yuma Test Station, Yuma, Arizona
    April 22, 1952
    “Well, considering this is my first time here,” Wainwright said, guiding the Jeep down the narrow, dusty service road, “it’s definitely everything I hoped it’d be.”
    As she held on to the dashboard from where she sat in the passenger seat, Marshall’s laugh carried over the sound of the vehicle’s engine. “Just once, why can’t they send us to Florida, or Paris?”
    Wainwright did not reply,