Free Close Encounters of the Third Kind by Steven Spielberg Page B

home.”
    “Listen,” Neary said. “The sound . . . listen.”
    The gathering in the field stirred as an unusual sound came over them, permeating the air. It was a rhythmical noise, blowing against the wind—louder now. And suddenly it was coming faster and more frenzied than any of them had expected, and fear shot through them all as they tried and failed to interpret the internal combustive pounding and . . . two blinding anticollision lights swallowed their world. The very air was displaced. And with the sky like summer noon, the lights suddenly gave way, clearly revealing two Air Force Huey helicopters that descended howling upon pockets of the idle curious, beating on them with hot air, gas exhaust, sucking dirt, napkins and human debris up into the spiraling convections, and still the screaming machines maneuvered around each other until even aluminum chairs, card tables, blankets, and picnic leavings were sent up and distributed to the next county.
    In dismay, in self-disgust, and in some anger, too, he watched the two Air Force helicopters hover a dozen feet above them.
    Neary saw the little old woman with the snapshots as he chased after them, whirling wildly in the wash from the two choppers, whose beams blinded her.
    Barry screamed. He jumped and began to run. Jillian grabbed him. “Barry, it’s only helicopters, Barry.”
    “Yeah,” Neary shouted over the noise and dust “They’re ours.”
    The downwash from the rotors had set a road sign trembling. Neary watched it vibrate for a moment, just as the road sign had vibrated that other night. Then it had seemed wild, supernatural, something caused by . . . well, perhaps by night things.
    Now he could see quite plainly that a sign was vibrating in the harsh wind of a maneuvering helicopter. It was happening right here in front of a hundred witnesses.
    And for the first time in this whole insane affair, Neary began to doubt not only what he’d seen, but what he’d thought about it.

14  

    O ut here in the desert the stars were big and hard as diamonds. Some of the stars closest to the horizon scintillated from all the rising heat released after another desert scorcher.
    It was midnight in Barstow, California, and the monstrous parabolic ear of the Goldstone Radiotelescope was listening to the sky. Station 14 was down for overhaul. That was the cover story. But the same 210-foot dish that tracked the Viking, Helios, Pioneer, Mariner, Jupiter, Saturn, and Voyager missions was honed in on a state vector in “deep space.” Inside the blockhouse a sign barked to all who entered: N ETWORK D ATA P ROCESSING A CTIVITIES . O N-DUTY O PERATION P ERSONNEL O NLY ! C ONTACT MC COPSCON 5883. A handprint Ident. box blocked a vacuum-sealed doorway like a sentry. There was a lot of anxiety on this special night. Six right hands pressed down on the sentry box, handprint identifications were made, and the door hissed open. It looked more like a storage area than the mission control computing center. The core of activity was a geodesic cubicle that rested on a flatbed trailer in the center of this otherwise dark and empty warehouse. Inside, the cubicle looked like a college fraternity prank. Two dozen project members were scrunched up to their shoulders in CRTs, telemetry tracking hardware, command function consoles, transmitter and receiving units, and, most incongruous of all, a mini-Yamaha synthesizer and Claude Lacombe doing a five-note exercise on its keyboard. It seemed like he was sending a message. His fingers touched staccato, but the sound was undeniably India. Benares. The sky music. It was finally serving its hypothetical purpose.
    And then came the response. The CRT readout was flooded with it. The hardcopy poured out of an IBM in reams. The paperwork was all over the floor, and project members were all thumbs trying to read it. It wasn’t coming back. It was numbers. For fifteen minutes there occurred a rush of pulses that dotted the paper. There were pauses