The Gifting

One - Probe

One

Probe

The cows alerted him to it.

H.T. Wall stopped his pickup and climbed out of the cab in time to see the trail of light and smoke arching through the sky. The cattle bawled in fear as they ran for the slough and the thick copse of trees for protection.

He could hear it now. A loud roaring sound, very much like the way the movies portrayed it, but this looked a lot more spectacular than it did on the big screen. It was like it was setting the clouds ablaze. He had no idea a fireball could be all white. He always thought it would have orange and red flames coming off of it, like at the end of one of those rocket ships.

The glowing object arched slowly and gracefully toward the horizon. Within a few seconds, it disappeared behind the hills, and H.T. braced himself. When the thing hit the ground, the whole world shuddered. He grabbed the bed of his truck to keep from being jolted off his feet. The cattle screamed down in the gorge.

Climbing back into the pickup, he put the truck into four-wheel drive and slowly headed toward where he thought the fireball landed. He quickly discovered he needed to keep an eye open for unexpected sinkholes that had opened up after the jolt.

It took him nearly an hour to top the small rise. Stretched across the hundred and fifteen acres was this year"s corn crop. Or had been. That strange object from the sky had plowed a wide furrow into it, leaving many plants blackened and smoking from the heat.

Ditching the truck, he trudged down the hill to circumvent the field"s outer perimeter. The fireball continued to send a cloud of smoke into the air, making it easy to hone in on.

He finally managed to set eyes on the half-buried object. It was sitting inside a slight depression, ringed by a lip of freshly turned dirt and ground up corn plants. Beneath the smoke and char, he thought he could detect a shell bearing a shiny metallic finish.

Wall stood at the edge and gazed down at the thing that had come from the sky. Pulling his cell phone from his hip pocket, the farmer dialed 9-1-1.

" County Emergency. Is this about the purported meteorite spotted over the county?"

"Yes, it is."

"Then you need to hang up, sir, and dial the county sheriff"s office."

"No, ma"am. You don"t understand. That so-called meteorite, if it is a meteorite, just plowed into my corn crop. But I"ll be honest with you, it don"t look like no meteorite."

The woman on the other end was suddenly interested. "What did you say your name was, sir?"

"Harold T. Wall. I have a farm out on county road two twenty-three. About six hundred acres. You might want to tell the sheriff to call NASA. Have them send one of those scientists over here to check out whatever this thing is, because one thing is very clear."

"What"s that, Mr. Wall?"

He kicked a pile of dirt hanging on the lip of the hole. The clumps hit the smoking object, making it ring like a bell.

"As far as I know, meteors don"t have smooth metal skins, or look like some sort of science fiction probe. It looks more like one of those satellites those guys at the space agency send up into orbit."

He paused as something caught his eye. "Hold on a minute." Getting down on one knee, he leaned closer to the object. When the realization kicked in, his hands began to tremble as he put the cell back to his ear.

"One more thing, missy. When they send that scientist from NASA, better let him know this object has writing on it."

"Writing? Can you tell what it says?"

"No, I can"t. It"s not in English, and my gut feeling is it any kind of writing you"ll find on God"s green Earth, either."