― Stanisław Lem, Solaris
Well, Sully and Abe bit off more than they could chew going up on Pine Ridge.
Here they were deep in a limestone cave miles from town and no way to call for help
Sully pointed his flashlight beam in the direction Abe was looking and felt his hear stop.
About fifty feet ahead of them was a metallic wedge-shaped craft resting on the cave floor.
“Oh my God,” Abe groaned, “I don’t believe it.”
They both knew what it was—they just couldn’t wrap their minds around what they were seeing. Neither spoke. They just stood and stared in awe, until finally, Abe came to his senses, and crept forward and gingerly reached out a hand and touched the hull of the craft.
“It feels hot,” he shouted back to Abe.
Abe had a look of utter terror on his face. He was shaking so hard he could hardly stand up.
“Gotta go—get outa here,” he shouted and turned and clambered up the wall to the path and began scrambling wildly back in the direction from which they came. Sully waited a second or two and then fear also seized him and he chased after Abe as fast as his legs would carry him.
They ran, slipped and fell most of the way back to the opening of the cave—it seemed to take hours, but must have been only about twenty minutes.
Outside, in the afternoon sunlight, Abe was still shaking—probably from shock.
“I can’t believe it,” he kept repeating.
Sully was worried. “Maybe we should light a fire and rest for a bit.”
“No way!” Abe shouted. “Let’s get the hell outa here.”
They made their way back to the camp and then back down the cliffs to the SUV. It was dark by the time they got back to Sully’s.
“Do you want to come in for a drink?” He asked Abe.
Abe just shook his head. “I gotta go.” That was all he said. That was the last Sully saw of him.
Two days later, Sully shows up in my office, eyes haunted—dark circles under them and still pale as a ghost. He tells me what happened—all the details—wants to make a full report.
I take down his story and then he insists I organize a search party and go back up there with him. I balk at first, but he has the intense fire in his eyes that kinda scares me and I figure I should humor him.
So, the next Saturday, six of us are up on Pine Ridge searching for this fissure. We find his fire and follow the trails, but find nothing. We search for maybe three hours until everyone’s hot and tired and out of sorts.
All the way home, Sully can’t stop talking about doing it again.
That’s when I make my executive decision and charge him with touching an alien craft.
Now, nobody in town will venture anywhere near Sully’s shop, but that doesn’t matter—he’s not there.
Most days I hear, he drives his SUV out to the conservation area and spends the day looking for that elusive fissure.
Abe seems to have fallen off the face of the earth and Sully’s no longer surly, but sullen.
His court case is going to come up in a week or so and he says he’s going to defend himself—have his day in court.
I try to talk some sense into him, but Sully, won’t listen.
He’s had an experience and wants to tell the world about it. He’s convinced aliens are real.
All I know is Sully is a changed man and no one knows for sure what happened to him—but something weird happened for sure, that day up on Pine Ridge.