Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998 11:49:29 +0000 From: Heather Markham Subject: Aliquantum Salio - Chapters 7-9 "ALIQUANTUM SALIO" by Heather Markham CHAPTER SEVEN The town they were driving through was large and had a Las Vegas feel to it. He remembered how it looked at night. All bright lights and casino halls. There were seedier parts to the town too he remembered, where red shoe girls wandered the streets at night looking to make a fast buck from some guy who'd just hit the jack-pot on some money spinning, gambling game. Al had gone there occasionally, just to browse but Al's philosophy was that if he couldn't charm a girl into his bed then he wouldn't bother, he certainly would never pay for the privilege! Scully was looking out of the window, looking at the sights and taking in the atmosphere of the place, even during the day the place had an air of excitement about it. "Quite a place to build, right out in the desert like this." she said indicating the centre of the city-like town. He drove on for another fifteen minutes or so. The town seemed to end abruptly, with just one or two buildings straying into the desert area. They were back on the dusty road. A couple of miles further on, they rounded a boulder out-crop and there was a neon sign flashily, proclaiming, "The Mirage Diner and Motel Complex". Sam, knowing where it was located, had already anticipated it and had slowed the car. He drew up out front, walked around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door for Scully. With a quirky grin, a sweeping bow and a wave of his hand he gestured her out of the car and over to the small diner. "A gastronomic delight awaits." he joked. She got out, put her hand on her hip, tilted her head once again, smiled and said sweetly, "I guess chivalry isn't dead after all, Mulder." As she walked off, his grin broadened and he trailed after her and entered the building. Inside the brightly and colourfully lit diner, the tables and seats were arranged in stalls. Sam recognised the familiar scene with fond memories. He was almost home, he was so close to getting back to the Project, his Project, that it made his heart pound. Even though Al had warned him to keep away from the place until they had more information about the leap, simply contemplating the possibility of going anywhere near there, raised his spirits immensely. Sam walked with Scully over to one of the tables adjacent to the windows, they sat down. Sam looked wistfully around the restaurant, remembering the good old days. Scully regarded him as he picked up the menu, "Well, what do you suggest we should have for lunch, Mulder? Is there Pumpkin pie on the menu?" He scanned through the list of foods, no pumpkin pie! That was definitely a let down. Still, that wasn't surprising, he hadn't eaten here in...how long? Two years? He sighed, they'd probably got a new cook by now. Then he spotted that there were spare ribs on the menu, his favourites, B-B-Q'd with a rich sauce. He shook his head in disappointment, "Nope, no pumpkin pie but I highly recommend the ribs though." Scully folded her arms across the table and leant forward, a smile on her face "I'd love some, do you remember the last time we ate ribs together in a diner....turned out they could have been from a very dubious source." Sam didn't quite know what she meant by that, "Er..yeah, we..ell, you won't have tasted anything like these." Scully continued to gaze at him, it was as if she was searching him for a reaction, he smiled at her, it was one of Sam Beckett's typically sweet smiles, on Mulder, however, it looked somewhat out of place. He looked up and gestured to the waitress that they were ready to order. She came over to the table, note-pad in hand. "Miss, could we have an order of ribs and side salads, please." she didn't even bother to look at him as she scribbled down the order. Scully, took out her I.D. held it up for the waitress to see, waved a couple of photos at her with the other hand "Excuse me miss....Excuse me..." she finally managed to get the attention of the waitress, who seemed to be more concerned with chewing her gum, than anything else. "Have you seen either of these two men in the last couple of days?" The waitress gave a quick glance at the pictures, "Nope, can't say as I remember them. What have they done?" Sam cut in, "They haven't done anything, we're just trying to find them, we believe they could be in danger out in the desert. They were driving a silver van-trailer." The waitress thought for a few seconds and took the photos from Scully's hand and gave them another look, "Mmm, I remember this guy." she indicated to the photo of Langly, tapping it with her pencil, "Weird looking guy. He kinda reminded me of Garth.....you know, outa Wayne's world." Sam didn't have a clue as to what she meant but Scully obviously did, because she nodded, looked over at him and bent her head down slightly to hide an amused grin. She looked at him as if she was waiting for another wry comment. He just shrugged back at her. The waitress continued, "Their van, was as weird looking as he was. The guy..." she poked at the photo of Langly, "was asking questions about UFO's and stuff, wanted to know about the Project Centre out at Stallions Gate." Scully picked up the conversation. "So, there is some kind of secret government facility out there. Do you know anything about it? Where it is?" Sam felt a little uncomfortable with Scully's questions but there wasn't much he could do about it. His heart skipped a beat, if he had the opportunity to go to the Project Centre, then he guessed that was where he was meant to go, sent there by the hand of fate, God or whoever it was that controlled his leaps, his destiny. The waitress nodded and looked around the diner. "Sure, I know about the place. It's not exactly what you'd call a secret either. A lot of the guys who work there, come in here." Sam nodded automatically, in agreement. He used to be one of those guys. The place hadn't changed much since then either. He looked around the diner, at the customers, he couldn't see anyone he recognized, not that they would know who he was even if he did spot someone familiar. He couldn't very well have said, `Hi'! Scully prompted the waitress, "So, where exactly is this place?" The waitress narrowed her eyes in suspicion, "If you're Feds, how come you don't already know?" she asked. Sam cut in once again, he used what he thought was a sterner tone of voice than usual, "Look, can you tell us or not? Just answer my colleague's questions." The women pouted, flipped the photos back on to the table in front of Sam and indicated to the South with her pencil. "It's about five miles South of here. `s all I know." with that she turned as if to walk away to the next customer. "Hey, What about our order....." She glanced back at him over her shoulder. "Okay, okay." she said. Sam slid the photos over so that he could get a better look at them, after all, he was supposed to know Langly quite well and up until then he hadn't really known what the guy looked like. He stared at the waitress as she walked off, he looked over at Scully, wrinkled his nose, pulled a face and commented, "The service here has really gone down hill." Scully slid the photos back and put them away. She stared at him. "Mulder, if you know this place so well, how come you didn't know about the existence of the government facility?" Sam felt a little hot under the collar, how could he answer that one. "Oh, well, it was before I worked on the.....the....X-Files. I wasn't here investigating anything.......so, why should I know about it." It sounded a really feeble answer. Scully pursed her lips and frowned "Mulder, that's a really feeble answer, you know. If I find out you've been holding out on me here, I'll..." Sam leaned forward towards her and raised one eyebrow. "Would I hold out on you, Dana?" he replied, a note of sarcasm in his voice. Scully eyed him suspiciously, a wry grin on her face. "I'll reserve judgement on that." she said. The waitress suddenly seemed to appear from nowhere and placed their order in front of them. Scully looked at the food. It did look very good and it smelled just as wonderful. She looked up at Sam, he was already tackling a particularly large rib, gnawing at it, a very small trickle of juice ran from the curve of his mouth to his chin. He was obviously enjoying it. She joined in the feast, although, a little more delicately than he was. It tasted very good. They chatted as they ate. Sam was becoming more and more coated in rib juice. "Mulder, you've gotten juice all over yourself." Sam put his fingers up to his mouth to check, spreading more sauce with the action. Scully picked up a napkin and reached towards him. He looked at her, a little surprised, he moved his head back just a fraction. "Let me get that." she said and carefully wiped the small trickle from his chin. she chuckled quietly, "You know, I really can't take you anywhere! You're just like a big kid." They looked at each other and laughed. Dana was beginning to sense something more about him, his personality was different somehow, lighter, warmer, much more relaxed, certainly more talkative, gentler. Was it because he saw how she had reacted to Eddie Blundht, the guy who had impersonated him a few weeks ago. Mulder had walked in on them when they had been alone in her apartment, had he realized how close she'd been to kissing him, or rather, the other Mulder. Perhaps he had decided it was time to lighten up a little. Perhaps he was considering a relationship with her. If he was, then how should she react. Did she want to take their partnership one step further. She'd always been able to rely upon him to be there for her, she did like him.....very much and when he was acting the way he was now, well, she felt an even greater warmth towards him but how would an emotional, romantic relationship affect their working relationship. She mused over it for a couple of minutes while he ordered dessert for them both. Mulder could be very cute when he wanted to be. She decided to wait and see what he did first, she had been wrong about him before and almost misjudged his intentions. Yes, she thought to herself decisively, she would just wait and see what transpired. Sam was just finishing his dessert and almost choked on it as Al appeared, standing next to him, his dark eyes shining brightly, a grin on his face, "Well now, don't we look cosy. You look like you've been enjoying your meal. You certainly look as though you've been enjoying the company too." Al chuckled to himself, as he moved around the table and sat himself down next to Scully. Sam glanced at him and pulled a face, then added "This is real good, you ought to try some." Al, still grinning, remarked "I do, Sam, all the time. Remember?" Luckily, Scully thought Sam was talking to her. "The ribs were enough for me. I think we ought to be going soon, time moves on and all that." Sam glanced up briefly and commented, "Yeah, don't I know it." She called over to the waitress and took out her wallet. Sam quickly put out his hand and stopped her, "No, let me get that." She wasn't expecting that either! Boy, he had changed! He paid the bill and stood up. He glanced quickly around the place, there was nowhere to talk to Al privately here, he'd have to use the washroom excuse again. He excused himself from Scully and headed off to the men's room. "Al, am I glad to see you. Are you okay? What happened to you? The last time I saw you, you disappeared in a haze of electrostatic light!" Al brushed at his hair with his free hand. "Ya don't have to tell me about it, kid. We got another huge power surge, it knocked out pretty much every damned thing. It almost knocked me out too, my hair got singed. Sam, look it's still coming out!" He continued to rub at the top of his head, "The hand-link is in for repair, I'm having to use the back-up. I hope-to-God we don't lose this one. Jeez, Sam, any more of these unprecedented power surges and there won't be a Project Quantum Leap for you to try and get back to! Gushie is down to running a continual diagnostic but he can't work out where all this power is coming from." He frowned, narrowing his eyes in suspicion, born from a gut feeling, "I'm sure Ziggy knows more than she's letting on. Boy, will I be glad when this leap's over." Sam's eyes were fixed on Al's, "You'll be glad! How do you think I feel, Al!?" Sam's voice expressed it as a statement rather than a question, "I'm so close to Project Quantum Leap I can feel it drawing me home! Please, Al, tell me this leap is for me." Al shuffled his feet and gave Sam a look of understanding. He felt it must be really hard on his friend to be so close and yet so far away. He still didn't know whether this leap was for his friend or not. Ziggy couldn't tell. She may be a hybrid super computer but she couldn't predict with any certainty what was going to happen in this leap. The time difference was so small she didn't have enough time to receive and collate all the data. Her program didn't included `future comparisons'. Al couldn't tell if Sam would have the chance to visit the Project Centre before leaping out. Sam was standing watching Al, waiting for him to say something positive. "I can't tell you if this leap's for you, Sam, we just don't have the relevant data. You're too close to our time for Ziggy to come to any conclusions." Sam raked his fingers through his hair, typically, he began pacing the floor. "Then why are you here. What have you got for me?" "Oh yeah, I had Gushie patch the surveillance equipment into Ziggy's defence scanners. She made a sweep of the desert and located Langly's van, It's what I was about to tell you last time, before the handlink got fried and nearly took me with it. The van's parked just of a dirt track about six miles south-west of the Project Headquarters. No sign of the two men, though. I left Ziggy trying to re-align the sensors to pick up life signs." Al tapped on the brightly coloured hand-link key-pad and read the data. A look of concern growing on his face, "My God, Sam, you better get out there, now. Ziggy's done it but she says she can only pick up one life sign and that's a pretty weak one." Sam turned, stared at Al for a second or two and then rushed from the washroom, bumped into Scully coming out of the powder room, almost knocking her flying. "What's the sudden rush?" she asked, jogging to keep up with him. "We gotta leave now, I think Langly and Churnik are in trouble, they need our help, now!" They reached the car outside at the same time. Sam jumped in and started up the engine barely giving Scully time to open the door and climb in beside him. "Mulder, What's wrong? How do you know they're in trouble. How can you possibly tell? You don't even know where they are!" Sam didn't have time to explain, he couldn't tell her the truth anyway. He glanced at her quickly as he slammed the car into gear and shot out of the parking area. Al had re-appeared in the back seat. He was directing Sam as they went along. "Mulder, Mulder...tell me!" implored Scully. "I just know, okay! I just know that they are in danger. Don't ask me to explain....I can't." Scully took that to mean that he didn't know how he knew. She was worried about him, his mood had changed so quickly. CHAPTER EIGHT He was heading directly toward Project Quantum Leap headquarters. The road was still as familiar to him as it was two years ago when he'd last driven down it. Suddenly, Al shouted at him to turn off the road onto a track. He hurled the car onto the desert trail, they were tossed from side to side as he negotiated the awkward, rocky, scrubby terrain. Scully was holding on for dear life, "Mulder, slow down, you're going to wreck the car before we get there." she shouted trying to make herself heard above the noise coming from the straining engine of the car. He took no notice. Al directed him down an incline and around a rocky out crop. He ordered Sam to stop the car.....this was the place. Sam slammed on the brakes, the car slew to a halt sending up a cloud of dust. He shoved open the door, waiting a few seconds for Al to take the lead and raced off down the rocky slope. Scully leapt out of the car and raced after him. There, parked at the bottom of the hollow, was Langly's van. The figure of a man's body lay sprawled on the ground about twenty feet away from the vehicle. Al was standing leaning over the man, concern creasing his features. "Sam, quick, ya gotta do somethin, he looks real bad!" Sam dashed up beside him and flung himself down beside the unconscious figure of Langly. He checked the man's wrist and found a weak pulse. He struggled out of his jacket, bunched it into a makeshift pillow, gently lifted the man's head onto it. Scully, caught up with Sam and quickly knelt on the other side of him, checking the pulse in Langly's neck. Al, hovered close by, "Is he alright Sam.....Sam is he alive? Will he pull through?" Sam gave Al a quick acknowledging glance and turned to Scully. "How is he, will he make it?" "His pulse is weak but steady, his temperature's way up, though. He's dehydrated and he needs water but I think he's okay. My guess is, he's been out here, laying in the sand for several hours. As to what happened to him, what knocked him out....I wouldn't care to guess! He doesn't seem to be bruised or injured in anyway other way. Mulder...check if there's any water in the trailer?" Sam hurried to the van, checked quickly inside, found a canteen of water and ran back to Langly. Sam pulled out a handkerchief, soaked it in a little of the water, dampened the man's cracked lips, then placed it onto the man's forehead. Scully watched for a reaction. Langly stirred and groaned, his eyes fluttered open, he tried to speak but his throat was too dry and would only allow a croak. Scully raised his head, took the water from Sam and held it to his lips. The man gulped at the water, coughing and spluttering. He eased himself up a little, looked around, then looked at the two F.B.I. agents crouched beside him. "Wh....What happened, where am I?" Sam supported the man's weight as he sat up. Scully began to question him gently, "We were rather hoping you could tell us what happened. Byers sent us to find you. You came out here checking for UFO's. You lost contact with him yesterday. Do you remember?" Langly shook his head and began to sink back down to the ground. "Mulder, help me get him into the shade, let's get him inside the van." They managed to get Langly to his feet and half carried him into the van. They lay him on one of the long bench seats, passing him more water as he settled back to rest. He took another cool swig from the container. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright, his eyes widening with sudden concern, he shot out a hand to grasp at Sam's arm, "Wait, where's Churnik? Have you found Churnik? He was with me!" Al appeared inside the van, bending over Langly to hear him better. Sam and Scully looked at each other, Sam recognised the look which intimated that he should go, check outside. He went back outside and surveyed the inhospitable terrain. He couldn't see signs of anyone else being around. Al joined him, shielding his eyes from the sun and looking around as he gestured to the surrounding desert. "Hell of a place to get lost in. I wonder what they were doing out here." "They're UFO freaks....they were out here UFO watching." "Yeah, well, looks like they might have gotten more than they bargained for." Sam was scanning the barren, inhospitable desert. "Al, we've no chance of finding anyone out here without some help. Get Ziggy to do another sweep of the area." Sam stood there in the heat of the desert, wiping the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his shirt. Al tapped the request into Ziggy's surveillance data-banks. The hand-link squealed and squeaked, he jiggled it, pulling a face of irritation and impatience. He looked up at Sam, concern edged in his voice. "Ziggy says there are no other human life-signs out here for miles......hold on....she's picking up a residual aura frequency.....Sam, he's under the van...Churnik's under the van." Sam immediately turned and loped off back to the van. He skidded to a halt, threw himself to the sand and scrambled beneath the van. He could just make out the sprawled figure of Churnik's body. "Scully, Scully......out here, quick....it's Churnik!" Scully jumped from the van's doorway and ran to join him. Sam pulled at the man's legs, dragging him from beneath the van and scrambling to his feet as Scully took over. She turned the body over and checked for vital signs. She looked up at him and shook her head and confirmed what he already knew. "I'm sorry, Mulder, but he's dead." She raised Churnik's head slightly and gently closed the man's eyelids. As she stood up she noticed an oily residue on the fingers of the hand she'd placed behind the dead man's head. She rubbed at it between her fingers and tentatively smelled it, it had a strange odour. She wrinkled her nose and wiped her hands on a hanky she carefully withdrew from her pocket. Al looked down at the body and winced and moved a few paces away from the body and turned away. Sam noticed what Scully was doing, and asked, "What's that on your hands?" "I'm not sure, could just be oil leaking from under the engine". Sam bent down instinctively and checked the man's neck. He picked up his jacket, taking two small forensic bags from his pocket, he wiped some of the sticky, oily substance from Churnik's neck and smeared it into each bag, which he then slipped into his trouser pocket. Scully watched him as she took out her cell phone. "I'll have to call the sheriff's office and the county morgue. Can you go back and check on Langly. See if you can get anything out of him, now he's had a few minutes he might remember something. Al accompanied Sam back into the van. He always hated breaking bad news. He lowered his voice slightly to a tone of sympathy "I'm sorry...we just found Churnik...There's was nothing we could do, I'm afraid he's dead." Sam moved to sit on the bench opposite. "Oh God, no! How? He was with me...what happened to him?" Sam looked down and shook his head. "I'm sorry but we don't know yet. Scully is just calling for the sheriff to come out. What can you tell us about it, do you recall anything...anything at all?" He asked, searching the man's face for indications of memory. The man still didn't look too good. "Can you remember anything, yet? Do you have any ideas as to what happened here?" Langly rubbed at his eyes, his face wrinkled into a pained expression. He looked as if he were trying to force his memory to surface from some hidden depth. He was struggling with his own mind, forcing something to come back to him. "Yeah..... yeah, I...I remember something. We got here a couple of days ago. As soon as we arrived we went out to the area where that research facility is supposed to be. It was dark but we could see some brilliant blue lights sparking around one of the mountains. We took some photos and I contacted Byers. We...me and Boris, were pretty tired so we came back here to crash out for a while. We went back to the mountain next morning and discovered the Project Complex on the other side of the mountain. We stayed, observing it for hours, hardly anyone came in or went out....just some guy and woman in a flashy car," Sam glanced up at Al, who shrugged and whispered, "Well, I do go out sometimes, you know!" Langly was still talking. "Every now and then the mountain would sort of crackle into life, electro static sparking all over it. The day was getting pretty hot, we went back to the van for supplies. I tried to contact Byers again but somethin' was interfering with our communication systems, man, it was real weird.....I kept getting power dips. Then the batteries died, even the back-up batteries were flat. in the batteries.....never happened before...we waited till it got cooler and went back out there at night. Man, you shoulda' seen the mountain, it was really somethin' ya know. Then Boris spotted all these strange lights in the sky off to the north, there were at least half a dozen of them. Suddenly, they all seemed to converge over that damned mountain. God know what they do in there!" Langly began to cough, Sam gave him some more water but he pushed it away. He pointed to a cupboard above and behind Sam's head. Sam reached up, opened it and took out the contents, a hip flask of liquor. "I'm not so sure you should be drinking this, you're still pretty dehydrated." "I know what I need." growled Langly. He took a swig. Sam gave Al an odd look, Al shrugged back at him. Neither of them could figure out what would account for the strange convergence of lights. Sam was beginning to wonder if they really were due to UFO activity. Scully entered the small trailer, "The sheriff's on his way, I'll have to go back to do the autopsy...any luck here?" she spoke as she came to sit next to Sam, filling the seat Al was already occupying. Al frowned and moved over. The liquor had obviously done its job, Langly continued, "We watched all night and all night the strange lights came and went. Then at about 5...5.15am, the whole place lit up. The whole mountain was engulfed in a kind of strange blue fire! Oh man, you shoulda' been there." He paused to take another swig from the flask. Al looked across at Sam, "That was about the time our guset arrived in the Waiting Room. The blue light must have been the reaction of your leaping into Mulder." Langly frowned and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, "We got photos.....somewhere....." He looked around, "Hey, what happened to my cameras, my equipment!" Scully urged him to calm down and continue, "Anyway, the lights overhead came together and joined with one big triangular craft. We watched it for a couple of seconds, then it shot off to the east. We ran back to the van and tried to follow it. We got about five miles, we saw the thing just hanging there in the sky, the van stopped, the ignition just cut out, nothing would work. I remember getting out......I remember.....I remember picking up the camcorder. A noise.....God..an awful, screaming....." he stopped talking and buried his head in his hands, "I don't know anything after that." he mumbled, he moved his hands round to the back of his neck and rubbed absentmindedly. His face suddenly froze, his fingers searching out a small triangular wound just below and behind his ear. He looked up at them, a silent plea in his eyes. "What happened to me? My God! What did they do to me? What did they do to Churnik?" Scully moved forward and carefully examined behind the distraught man's ear. There was no mistaking the raised triangular wound he had sustained. She held his hair back for Sam to see. He'd noticed a similar mark on Churnik's neck when he'd taken the forensic sample but had kept it to himself, he hadn't wanted to suggest anything until he'd heard what Langly had to say. Sam couldn't shake the feeling that he'd failed part of this leap, that it was somehow down to him that Churnik had died. "I was too late...I didn't get here soon enough." Scully assumed he was talking to her, "It's not your fault. We couldn't have gotten here any sooner. I still don't understand how you knew to come here. It's a miracle that we found them at all!" Al nodded in agreement, "She's right Sam, it wasn't your fault. You're still here, you haven't leaped out yet, so, he couldn't have been the reason you were sent here." Sam looked helplessly across to Al, hoping he would guess what he wanted him to do. His friend gave him a nod of comprehension, "I'll go back and see what Ziggy can come up with. I can't give any guarantees though, we don't have much in the way of relevant data." He stood up and tapped on the keys of the hand-link, instructing the Imaging Chamber door to open. He glanced back down at Sam and added, "Say, Sam you don't think the two men really were abducted by little green men do you?" Sam just considered him with a steady gaze, a gaze which Al took to say well, have you a better explanation? The Chamber door opened and Al disappeared leaving Sam with Scully, leaving them there to find the answers, the truth. Sam and Scully were waiting outside the van, discussing the incredible events when they heard the sound of police car sirens coming from the distance. Two police cars and a hearse came into view and drew to a halt a few yards away. The Sheriff and his deputy officer walked over to the body, studied it for a few minutes and then came over to join them. The occupants of the vehicles got out and busily set about the task of bagging up and removing Churnik's body. Scully explained everything that had happened to them. The aging, rather hefty sheriff went to interview a still very shaken Langly. He emerged some fifteen minutes later and approached Sam, a look of incredulity on his face. "Your friend doesn't have much respect for the law, does he? How ever incredible his story sounds, I'm prepared to accept at this point in time that he was not responsible for Churnik's death." He removed his hat and scratched at his balding head, "I've heard about some other pretty weird goings on out here. As he is a personal friend of yours, I don't see any reason to hold him at the moment but I will want to question him again after I've received the autopsy report. If I leave him in your charge, will you see to it that he doesn't leave the area." Sam nodded in agreement and added, "The other weird stuff you've heard about, does it concern the government facility a few miles away." Sam noticed that the heavily-built sheriff looked as if the heat of the late afternoon sun, was beginning to get to him. He obviously wanted to get out of the desert as quickly as possible. The sheriff took out a large square handkerchief and dabbed at the sweat trickling down his forehead. "We..eell, let's see now, most of the things folk see out here do seem to occur near the Project Centre. We get quite a few reports of UFO's too, though. I guess I don't believe half of the things some of the crack-pots claim they've seen out here. If you really want to know more, stop by my office and I'll let you see some of the weirdo reports." The man turned from Sam and walked back to his car and joined in conversation with his deputy. Sam went back into the van to check if Langly wanted to ride into town to the hospital. Langly was sitting hunched up on the long seat, his knee's drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped protectively around them. He was starring out through the window at the activity going on outside. He looked up at the deep blue sky above the scene. "All my life I've wanted to see an alien craft.....up real close. I've always dreamed of the chance for a close encounter. I've followed up on reports and chased all over the place, searching out anomalies, searching for UFO's and aliens. Over the past few years I've gotten pretty close, I've gotten quite a lot of UFO footage. I caught some pretty good stuff on video a couple of months back over Arizona." He gave a halfhearted laugh, "Caught some of them, yeah, right! Now it seems they've caught me, only, man.....I think....I've changed my mind!" He turned from staring at the sky and gave Sam a piercing look. "Never thought I'd get so close to one it would almost kill me! Never thought I'd feel so afraid of them." he paused for a moment, looking back out at the sky, "You know me, Mulder, I don't scare easy, I've had some really heavy guys after me before now, guys from sweeper teams....I don't know why I felt so afraid? I always thought they would turn out to be benevolent creatures, why kill Churnik?" Sam answered slowly, "We don't know that they did kill him. We won't know anything until the autopsy has been performed." He walked over and laid a hand on Langly's shoulder "You still don't look so good. You're still in shock. You should go to hospital and let them check you out." Langly shook his head, "No, I don't like hospitals, I hate the smell." A violent uncontrollable tremour shook him, his voice filled with repulsion, "I don't want anyone touching me." he paused and swallowed hard, "I'll be fine, I just need to think, get things straight in my head. You know me Mulder, never let anyone get the better of me yet. I don't intend them to get to me, either." His hand moved up to finger the scar on his neck. Sam peered more closely at the strange mark, "I don't know. I think you should get them to inspect this wound." Langly rounded on him angrily, raising his voice, "No way, man! This is proof! I'm not letting anyone touch this until I get back to the team!" "Okay, okay, calm down. No one's going to touch you. Look, you're in no fit state to camp out here in the desert alone and you're certainly in no fit state to drive all the way back to Washington. I'm taking you back and booking you in to the motel near Stallions Springs. The sheriff says he may want to interview you again later, so stay where you're put...okay!" Langly didn't reply he just turned back to look out at the clear blue sky. Scully poked her head round the van door. "We're ready to leave. Is Langly coming with us to the hospital, he should see a doctor you know. I'd like to check out that scar properly." "No, he say's he hates hospitals. I don't think he'll let you check out the scar either, not yet anyway. He say's he'll be okay.....I'm not so sure though. I'm driving him back to the Motel....hey...one thing...." He paused to take out one of the small plastic forensics bags. He tossed it over to Scully. "soon as you get to pathology, get them to analyse this. It's the substance from Churnik's body." She caught it and replied, "Do you intend staying with Langly, or will you be joining me later." Sam glanced over at Langly who was now beginning to pull himself together. "I'll see what I can find out here first, then I'll make sure he's settled in at the motel. I'll book us both a room while I'm there. I'll come and join you later tonight." Scully nodded and went back to join the sheriff. The three vehicles left together, raising a dust trail behind them. Sam checked out the exterior of the van, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He checked under the van, there was no oil leaking from the engine. The soil beneath it was relatively clean. He wandered around the van looking for signs of a struggle. He could see the imprints in the dust where he'd dragged Churnik's body from under the van but he couldn't see any signs made by the man crawling underneath. He wiped his fingers along the side, the top and the underside of the vehicle.....no oily residue anywhere else! He hoped Al wouldn't be too long in getting back to him. He had an open mind where UFO's and aliens were concerned. He shared Mulder's beliefs that we weren't alone in this universe. After all, he had seen a UFO close up, himself, once before. He'd almost had a close encounter of his own. Al wasn't so sure of things like that. Although Al believed in the occult, ghosts and such, when it came to things like aliens or little green men as he referred to them, then he was more like Scully, he was more of a sceptic. Sam carefully checked the immediate area. He kicked idly at the sand, he wasn't really sure what he was looking for. The sheriffs men would have found anything if there was anything to find. He stared out towards the direction of the project complex and wondered if he would get the chance to go there. He was so close...so close. If only he could get back there, if he could find the slightest excuse, he might be able to do something, he might be able to solve the problem with the retrieval process and adjust Ziggy's program, he might be able to leap home for good. The thoughts tantalized him, teased at his mind. Suddenly, Langly emerged outside and called over to him, bringing his thoughts back to the matter in hand, to the reality of this leap. He returned to the trailer-van. Langly joined him in the front seats and they headed back to the motel. CHAPTER NINE County Morgue, Path Labs. Stallions Springs 8pm. New Mexico time. Scully had Churnik's body laid out on the autopsy table. She had opened his chest cavity and had examined his heart. The heart now lay in a kidney bowl on a silver trolley beside the table. She had just removed the top half of his cranium and was examining the brain when Sam pushed open the rubber doors to the room and entered. Sam's medical education prevented the scene from affecting him in anyway. Bits of his surgical training pushed itself through his rapidly returning swiss-cheesed memory. Scully was dressed in surgical gown, cap, goggles and gloves, she was making her report into a small tape recorder. She motioned for him to come closer, to look at something. He joined her to inspect the body. "Do you know the cause of death, yet." he asked. "On first inspection it looked like a simple case of coronary arrest but I've just discovered another abnormality." Sam bent over the head of the body to get a better look. Scully continued, "The actual cause of death was cerebral haemorrhage. This man had a balloon aneurism in the left side of his brain. It looks like it was a small unintrusive one until very recently, look how the artery has split....it almost looks as if it's been pulled apart. It looks as if he had been subjected to an immense pressure change." At that moment Al appeared, unfortunately for Al he chose to reappear smack in the middle of Churnik's open chest. To Sam it looked like a scene from `Aliens'. Al looked from the hand-link he was holding, looked about him and suddenly realized where he was. The colour immediately drained from his face, his expression clearly showing revulsion and nausea. "Oh my God, I think I'm gonna barf, I'm outa here!....Arghh, yuk!" Sam caught sight of his friend, despite noticing his pallor, he called after him "No, wait!" Scully looked up, startled by his sudden exclamation. He tried to cover the automatic reaction to his best friends appearance, "Look, there at the surrounding area of brain tissue, does that look right to you. The cell tissue under the aneusrism looks a little gelatinous." Scully moved closer in to where Sam had indicated and eyed the area suspiciously, probing the tiny damaged area with a surgical instrument as she spoke. "Yes, you're right, it does look a little odd, I'll take a sample. How on earth did you notice that so quickly?" She sliced a thin layer from the man's brain and set it onto a slide, pushing it under the microscope. Sam stood next to her as she studied the sample. "This suggests that the pressure on the brain was restricted to one area only." She looked up at Sam, who knew that these symptoms could be caused by anti-gravity and localized laser and micro-waves but he couldn't show that he knew more than Mulder would have knowledge of. He asked casually, "Could it be due to anything other than pressure?" "Alcohol can cause similar cell damage, neural peptide diminishers can do the same. However, I don't think this and the other damage was caused by either of those, the area of affected tissue is too limited. I've already tested blood gases for drug toxicology, I'm waiting for the results, they should be through soon." He wandered around the body looking at it from all angles. He closely studied the mark on Churnik's neck. "What about this scar, have you looked at that yet?" he enquired. "Yes, it was a burn, it looked almost like the effects of a branding, heat applied under pressure in a localized area. I did a skin scrape but there was nothing underneath the scarring." Scully continued to examine the man's brain and body, "I still don't understand how you knew where to find Langly and this man. They could have been anywhere out there in that desert." Sam shrugged, "Would you believe me if I said it was a gut feeling, a lucky guess?" Scully answered while she continued to check the body on the autopsy table, "Damned lucky guess, if you ask me! Sometimes, Mulder, I get the strangest feelings about you." He turned to her, smiled, tilting his head on one side and replied sweetly, "I hope they're nice feelings, Scully." She stopped what she was doing, looked up at him, rolled her eyes and gave him one of her best enigmatic looks. Al had reappeared a minute later at a much safer distance from the body. He was almost hiding himself away behind a stack of filing cabinets in one corner of the room. His expression hadn't altered much since his first arrival. It looked as if he'd just been terribly sick! Sam had wandered over to him, pretending to look at some of the odd things pickled in jars on the various shelves lining the the walls of the room. Al screwed up his face as he spoke, "Oh hell, I hate this stuff, Sam.......yuk...icky stuff. All this gives me the creeps. Why did Ziggy have to come up with stuff right now of all times?" Sam stared at him gesturing with his hands and waiting to hear what the brightly attired little man had come to tell him. "Oh yeah, sorry, Sam. Mulder woke up a couple of hours ago. He seems much more subdued now. Seems the sedative did it's job." Sam mouthed silently at Al, "A couple of hours ago! Al!" Al narrowed his dark eyes, "Sorry, kid, we had a massive surge of power at about the same time he woke up. Plunged us all into darkness for five minutes." Sam raised his eyebrows in amazement. Al chewed the end of his cigar and continued "Yeah, Sam, even knocked out the back-up generators. Ziggy couldn't get me back to you 'til now. Anyway, Mulder's being the model guest right now and he's given us a little more information about himself and his work, although, as soon as I questioned him about Langly, Churnik and their organization, the Lone Gunmen....the Lone Gunmen, Sam, what kind of team name is that? It sounds like some kind of cowboy out-fit. Anyway, as I said, as soon as I mentioned them, he clammed up...wouldn't say a word about them. I guess he's probably trying to protect them from us." Sam motioned Al to follow him back over to Scully, who had tidied up the body, removed her gloves and was on the phone to the histology lab. He called over to her, "Have they got back to you with the results on that sample yet. You did give it to them?" Scully pulled a face at him and nodded in response. Sam looked back at Al, waiting for the information Al had come here with. "Mulder still seems to think that we are holding him for some dark and sinister reasons. He has also stated that he believes that extraterrestrials do exist and that if Langly was chasing up on something then there had to be somethin' to it. He said, no smoke without fire! He firmly believes in little green men. He seems to think that the government not only knows of their existence but they are working with them to build their own anti-gravity space vehicles! He's a real weird guy! I'm more inclined to think that Churnik and Langly witnessed a military prototype test flight, the air base isn't that far away from here." Sam considered that possibility but then discarded it. If the military was trying to test out a top secret craft, why would they do it near another government facility, one where it could be tracked and observed, that didn't add up. He glanced over at his friend and shook his head and shrugged. He couldn't talk to Al about anything at the moment without Scully becoming suspicion. Al recognized the awkward situation and promised to come back at a more convenient time and he hoped, at a far more amenable location. Scully had finished speaking to the lab and had walked back over to the microscope, replacing one slide with another. "The toxicology and blood gas results are through...his white blood cells were sky high but no electrolyte abnormalities." He thought for a minute and then asked, "What about intendant reduction of the lymph population, did it show a release of glucose corticoids?" Scully's eyes widened a little, "Yes, the tests showed that too...but.." Sam spoke before she could finish her sentence. "They're both symptoms of prolonged weightlessness." Scully put her hands on her hips, tilted her head and replied, "Yes, they are but how can that be? Langly only lost, at the most eight hours?" Sam just looked at her, a quirky smile playing on his lips, one eyebrow raised. It was definitely a Mulder mannerism and one she'd seen before, "Oh come on Mulder. You don't honestly expect me to believe that those two men were abducted by extraterrestrials and were taken aboard an alien craft." Sam continued to grin. He knew how she felt about such things. "Okay, well then, what did the lab have to say about the other sample?" She picked up the note pad and read off the analysis, "The lab said the sample consisted of a strange form of organic biotype in an unidentifiable glutinous gel. I took this sample from Churnik myself. The cells seem to be arranged to form a kind of natural webbing. It almost looks as though this biota was designed as a building block. Look at the way the cells are arranged in connecting strings, Mulder." Sam viewed the strange matter, it was clearly an odd substance in the extreme. He wondered out loud. "Bare with me here, Scully, just consider the possibility that Langly and Churnik were abducted, that there was an alien ship, one which was constructed from living matter? This substance could have got onto Churnik from there?" Scully chewed at the corner of her lips as she considered it. Then she raised her eyebrows at him and replied, "Do you honestly think that could be true? There could be any number of reasons as to how that stuff got onto Churnik's body. Just because we don't know what it is, doesn't mean it wasn't produced in secret in a government lab somewhere." Sam didn't really know what he thought but the glimpses of Mulder's memories had certainly made a big impression on him, he rounded on her rather more sternly than he intended. Mulder's personality was asserting itself again, "Why is it you never give any credence to my suppositions? You don't have a better explanation, do you!" She looked slightly shocked at his retort. He controlled the Mulder in him, walked up to her, laying a hand gently on her arm, "I'm sorry. I guess this case is getting to me. You know my views on the subject." She studied his face carefully and gave him a small smile. "Yeah, I know. Look there's not much more to do here, I'll finish up. I'll file a report and inform the sheriff of my findings. There's nothing more for you to see here. Meet me upstairs in the canteen for supper. I'll be about half an hour...okay." Sam smiled back warmly, "Sure, that's a date then but I bet they don't serve ribs as good as the one's at the diner. I'll see you later." He paused at the door to watch her, that soft puppy-dog look showing on his face. He sighed and wondered how much longer he would be around. -- Heather Markham