Page 31 of Stardusted
And while the rational side of me screamedcoincidence, my gut whispered otherwise.
After all, that was an awful lot of ball lightning.
I’d seen something. I’dfeltthe heat lingering on the road below where it had hovered. The brightness had stung my eyes. The hum, the electric buzz in the air—it’d all felt real.
All too real. Visceral, even now.
I tried to shake off the memories, but they clung like cobwebs.
Occam’s Razor said the simplest explanation was usually the right one. But there wasnothingsimple about glowing balls of fire causing car accidents. Or floating all over the city.
I needed to understand what was happening.
Problem was, I had no idea where to start.
“I reckon you’re right,” Bob said when I stayed quiet. He snapped his newspaper straight. “You know more about this stuff than I do with all your fancy schooling. Speaking of those folks—sounds like that anthro-whatever professor of yours has some secret project going on. You know about that?”
The plate I was scrubbing slipped from my fingers and plopped into the water.
I twisted to stare at him, up to my elbows in suds. “What? How’d you hear about that?”
“Went to the diner yesterday for my Tuesday pancakes. Lettie said her son Dan—you know, young guy on the force—hadto set up some escort for a delivery to the university. Something about the military working with the school’s lab. Even got guards there. Crazy stuff.”
Themilitary?I jumped when Bob slapped his paper down.
He didn’t seem to notice. “Whole thing sounds mighty suspicious, if you ask me. Lot of air traffic around that base lately, too, and that place’s supposed to be practically shut down.”
He was right. The base was supposed to be a ghost town. I swallowed hard, my pulse speeding.
After Landon’s offhand comment yesterday, I hadn’t thought much of his claim that Professor Stern was involved in something fishy. But now…? Hearing it twice like this couldn’t just be a fluke. There had to be some truth to it.
So what the hell would the professor be working on that would needmilitaryescorts and guarded deliveries?
I’d taken a few of his classes. He taught some of the two-hundred-level courses I’d needed for prereqs. Nice enough guy. Fair grader. Liked tweed jackets and overhead projectors. Nothing about him screamedtop-secret liaison to the government.
I racked my brain for his last published study. Something about the placement of Native American burial mounds aligning with ancient constellations.
Ancient constellations.
Unidentified flying objects.
Solar flares.
A chill tiptoed down my spine.No. There wasno way.
…Was there a connection?
“You okay, kid?” Bob’s raspy voice cut into my thoughts, and I realized I’d been staring into space. I blinked and met his rheumy eyes. He squinted at me with clear concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Not a ghost. Maybe aliens, though.
“Sorry.” I turned back around and fished out the plate, rinsing it and moving on to the silverware. “That’s just…surprising. Weird.”
Weird. But…
A glance at the clock told me I had a few minutes before I needed to head to class. I mentally reviewed my schedule. There was a decent break between my last lecture and my shift at work.
Perfect.
