Journal of a UFO Investigator by David Halperin Read Free Book Online

suspicious?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, to explain I wasn’t used to total strangers inviting me to dinner. “At our place. So you can meet Rochelle. Don’t worry, you’ll like Rochelle. You and she will have a lot to talk about.”
    â€œSo Rochelle is your sister?”
    He seemed to find the question extremely funny. “No, she isn’t my sister,” he said, laughing, mostly through his nose. He threw himself back into his chair and laughed some more. “ Not my sister,” he said again. He pushed a button under his desk; there was a loud click from the turnstile. “The phone number is on my card,” he said. “Give me a call. We’ll arrange something.”
    â€œThanks,” I said. I was about to put the card into my pocket but suddenly dropped it back onto his desk. There was something dangerous about that card—maybe those eyes printed on it, which I hoped sooner or later I’d be able to forget. If I took the card, my life would be changed in some way I could not foresee or undo once it had happened. “Well, see you around.”
    â€œHey, wait, wait—”
    I dashed out. The third-floor elevator was a few steps away from the entrance to the Rare Book Room. I heard him calling me; I had the sense of missing something. I was so eager to be gone I didn’t stop to think what. I ran inside the elevator and pressed the button marked “G.” I went down, down, down . From the elevator I rushed into the Newspaper Room.
    And found no one there.

CHAPTER 5
    THE ROOM WAS EMPTY. CAVERNOUS.
    No Jeff, no Rosa. No shabby middle-aged men at the long brown tables, reading the current newspapers. The fluorescent ceiling lights were on as usual. But the microfilm machines were dark and deserted. Coats, notebooks, pens—all gone. Chairs neatly beneath the tables, newspapers back on their racks. There was no librarian.
    My first thought was my watch had stopped. I hadn’t been in sight of a window for hours. Somehow it had gotten to be past five; the library had closed. Outside the building it was dark and cold. The last bus to Kellerfield had left without me.
    But the clock on the wall read 3:35, and the second hand swept around its face.
    I stepped up to the long, curving counter. RING BELL FOR SERVICE, read a hand-lettered sign. I struck the bell with my hand, listened to it echo through the empty room. I waited. No one came.
    I rang again, waited again. My fingers felt for the Delta Device. I forced my hand out of my pocket, back to the counter. Not yet time for that. Nothing was falling from the sky on top of me. Not yet.
    For a minute or two I kept on pounding the bell. When I couldn’t stand any more of its ringing, I ran out, down the winding corridor, up the stairs. Then up more stairs. Everywhere was neat. Still. Empty.
    No librarians . . . no readers, browsers, borrowers . . . no guard at the main exit checking bags and briefcases. The late-afternoon sun shone through the windows of the high-ceilinged reading rooms, onto the carpeted floor. On the spines of silent rows of books, the gold lettering glittered.
    Oh, God. It’s begun.
    UFO invasion? Nuclear war? The missiles that should have been fired last October: were they on their way?
    â€œJeff,” I called out softly. Then, louder: “Kazik! Kazik!” Before I knew it, the Delta was out of my pocket and I’d squeezed it, hard. The soldering popped open. The wiring crammed inside the sheet metal casing erupted onto my palm.
    I stared down at it. I tried to push it all back in, to force the gadget together long enough to send out a signal. All I managed was to cut my thumb on the metal’s edge. The mass of curls and coils, spilled out, refused ingathering. The Delta was ruined, wrecked for good, useless as a teddy bear in a thunderstorm. I tossed it somewhere among the long tables and began to run.
    At the elevator I jabbed the up button. The