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Show 73. "Coming back to that patch on the ground there at Skull Mountain " Dr. Burke turned to JD. "It's not going to change much over winter if it's the way you described it. You ought to go up next spring and see what you can find." "I plan to. And next time I'll chain myself to my camera." "Take another witness," Tom suggested, "besides your sister, that is. For corroboration." "I think Garth Magleby will go up with me." "JD," Mr. Evans said, pausing for everyone's attention, "we were talking before you got here. We wondered if you and Stephanie might have seen a meteorite." JD couldn't believe his ears. "Approach it this way," Mr. Ivans spread his hands in explanation, "what natural phenomenon did that thing most closely resemble? And then take it from there. Could what you saw have been something explainable? Something in the realm of nature?" Gayle joined the conversation from her place on the sofa. "It was something you didn't recognize, so you called it a UFO. Couldn't it have been something else you'd never seen before?" "Like what?" JD asked. "What big glowing object sits on a power pole, floats across space, then lands without making a sound? Meteorites don't float. They streak! And whoever saw a meteorite shoot back into the sky again? Ball lightning, if you're thinking of that, is about the size of a grapefruit, isn't it?" "In rare cases," Dr- Burke said, "a meteor can actually appear to move upward, up from the horizon of the witness. I'm not saying this was the case here." Mr. Evans laughed. "Sorry, JD, but most of us would have to see it to believe it." His daughter shook her head in agreement. "Oh, I know that," JD admitted. "I'm not going around expecting people to believe me," he looked ruefully at Gayle. She might have trusted him, at least. Whenever he'd brought the subject up since, she hadn't wanted to listen. Like seeing the UFO was some kind of heresy. A month ago he'd been perfectly conventional and acceptable. Suddenly, whamo! He was a UFO witness on the lunatic fringe. |