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The FBI loaded the body into a gray van. A Bureau diplomat approached Jeff. "We appreciate your consideration in this matter, Mr. . . ."

"Boeing. Jeff Boeing."

"Mr. Jeff Boeing. You understand that the alien's devices may tell us something just as important as its body will."

'Like new ways to kill people,' Jeff thought. "Okay," he acquiesced, "I'll let you keep its — uh — belt. The rod and the disk attached to it may have some uses, though I haven't figured them out. As for the box, um . . . I'd rather keep it."

"I'm afraid we can't let you do that."

"Ah," Jeff thought he understood. "Federal bureaucracy?"

"More than that," the diplomat informed him. "National security. We couldn't hand any of this over to you any more than we could hand it over to the Soviets."

"Aha," Jeff nodded, "The Russians. I knew they'd get roped into this somehow. Don't they always." His sarcasm was as clear as the Joshua Tree night had been.

The FBI diplomat cleared his throat uncomfortably. "We would also appreciate your continued cooperation, Mr. Boing."

"That's Boeing. Like the airliner company."

"Boeing, Boeing, 'scuse me. You see, we also shouldn't let any of this get out to the press until they're . . . ready for it. So, I'd like to ask you if —"

"If I'd keep my mouth shut about it. Right. Come on! I found this . . . this creature, not you."

"Yes, you did, and I speak for the Bureau when I say that we all appreciate your sense of duty in turning it over to us."

"I didn't turn it over to you. I reported it to the local police, and they turned it over to you."

The diplomat exhaled uncomfortably. "All right, I wasn't going to tell you this, but I'm afraid I'll have to burst your bubble. You weren't the first to spot this anomaly: Edward's tracked this bogie on radar all the way down. When we sent a team to the site, all we found was a shallow crater and marks in the sand leading away from it, showing that someone had been here before us and had dragged whatever it was away. The LAPD bulletin this morning put the missing pieces together for us, and we came right over and picked the creature up. So it's not 'yours'."

"It's not 'yours,' either," Jeff replied.

"Mr. Boeing," the diplomat stared at him levelly, "Are you familiar with a long-standing legal precedent known as 'eminent domain'?"

"The right of the State to take private property for public use without the owner's consent," Jeff replied without skipping a beat. "Last I heard, it requires an act of the Legislature, and I don't remember seeing the House of Representatives taking this to a vote on C-SPAN."

The diplomat grunted. "Nevertheless, this is still a matter of national security, and that gives us a power of temporary seizure until the lawmakers or courts decide. I'd advise you to divulge as little as possible. Um, good day, Mr. Boeing; we'll be in touch." He turned to leave.

"Just a moment," Jeff interrupted him. He drew a long, calculated breath. "There's a lot of people in that precinct house who saw the alien besides me."

"Y- yes . . . so?" The diplomat was visibly nervous.

"So it would be reeeally easy for me to get some of the local newspapers down here and convince these cops to corroborate my story. If I told them."

The FBI representatve shook his head. "All right, all right, Mr. Boeing. What do you want?"

"Take me with you," he said matter of factly. "Let me see what happens to the creature and its tools."

The diplomat sighed, and pursed his lips. He turned to one of the other FBI agents, and mumbled something Jeff couldn't hear. The agent mumbled something back. The diplomat raised his eyebrows slightly, then turned back to Jeff. "Very well, Mr. Boeing. I suppose it's the least we can do. Hop in."

And in he hopped, cramping the front seat of the van with yet another passenger. A metal wall separated him from the rear of the van, where they had the body of the alien — or whatever it was. That creature was bringing him all the sights that this vacation could ever offer.

Unfortunately, those sights became progressively less interesting as the trip wore on. The driver turned into the warehouse district and made his way to the low rent end of town. All the paint was worn off of the two story brick warehouse they finally parked inside of; and all of its windows were either broken or boarded up. Jeff figured it was either scheduled for demolition or built to look that bad on purpose.

Judging from the professional, glittering high-tech gear he found inside, he guessed that his latter assumption was probably correct.

The diplomat escorted him through a long corridor. Every door along the hall was closed, most of them — but not all — with a keypad lock. "I'm going to have to ask you not to go into any room where I don't accompany you," the diplomat said. "Officially, this facility and its existence isn't classified, but most of what's inside it is. There is almost certainly paperwork in process to classify both the alien corpse you found last night and its equipment. Once that happens, you will absolutely need a security clearance if you wish to see any more."

Jeff folded his arms as he walked along. "I thought you guys only granted security clearances to flag-waving ultra-patriots who'd never so much as taken a liberal arts course in college."

"That's not exactly fair," the diplomat said, "But there is some truth to it. The Red Scare in the 1950s had a huge impact on FBI policy, some of which is still lingering today in 1981. If you do decide you want a security clearance, you'll have to go through a rather extensive background check and interview process. But for now," he grinned and gestured as they reached an open door, "We can let you inside."

The room within contained more scientists in lab coats than agents in black suits. Four tables dominated the room. On the largest, the alien's corpse lay stretched out, its six tentacle arms flopped out to its sides so that its tentacle fingers hung over the table's edges. The second table held the alien's disk, the third held the rod with the rectangular handle; and on the last there lay the box, propped up on its eight clamps so that its button and hood faced upward.

A man in a blue suit, neither agent nor scientist, noticed Jeff and walked up to him. "You must be the guy who found all this."

"Yeah," Jeff said, "That's me."

"I'm Henry Sampers, assistant manager of this site." He proffered his hand; Jeff shook it. "I'm guessing," Henry continued, "From the puzzled expression on your face that you're wondering what's going to happen next. Each of these four tables is going into its own separate room, for what we like to call First Crack Analysis. The body's going with an autopsy and bio sample team. The other three are each getting a couple of engineers and metallurgists assigned to them, who'll bring in whatever help they need when they learn more. You can continue to watch, until such time as we receive intelligence classification paperwork, but you can only be in one room at a time."

As if on cue, four groups of scientists and agents released the casters on the tables and began wheeling them away. Each table held its own, fascinating intrigue: he could follow the alien corpse and see what life on other planets was made of; he could follow either of the two tools the creature had carried with it on its belt, and discover what kinds of wondrous contraptions its species would never leave home without; or . . .

"I know where I'm going first," he said, and followed the box with the clamps sticking out of it.

The investigation proved rather boring at first. They measured its dimensions with tape measures and metersticks, took pictures from every angle, wrote copious notes, and didn't even get around to touching it for nearly half an hour. Jeff had to tell them that he'd already pressed the pink button before they dared trying to press it themselves. The same effect happened when they did: the box made a brief humming noise, and simultaneously a tiny spot of yellow-white light appeared where each of the eight clamps met the box. Then the box went dark and silent again.

The hole in the bottom of the box's protruding hump was, one scientist noted, just about the right diameter to allow one of the alien's tentacle-like fingers to fit inside it. The touch-sensor inside, against the inner top of the hood, was obvious; it even moved ever-so-slightly inward when pressed. But as before, pressing it did apparently nothing.

The scientists continued to play with the box as best they could. They brought out spectrographs to analyze the light given off whenever they pressed the button, and they pressed it a lot. Radiofrequency emission sensors picked up nothing, no matter the state of the button or the touch-sensor. The points where the clamps met the box looked jointed, but the clamps wouldn't move no matter how hard anyone pulled or pushed on them (though they didn't push them too hard for fear of bending or breaking the metal). They searched all around the box for an access panel, or even a seam, but there was none. Finally, the team lead — a scowling man with a brown mustache who probably got up on the wrong side of the bed every morning — had had enough. "Okay," he grunted. "We're going to get inside. Get the diamond saw."

One of them left, and returned less than a minute later wearing safety goggles and carrying a wicked-looking circular saw. The diamond-coated teeth on its blade looked like they could chew through an Abrams tank. Jeff's heart sank; they were going to destroy the box just to see what made it tick. It seemed like such a waste. "Stand clear!" the scientist called out, then the saw whirred into life and spun up like a jet turbine. The scientist sighted along the top of the box, then brought the banshee-pitched spinning blade down right on its centerline. The sound changed to an almost-deafening grinding noise, and sparks flew . . . but the blade didn't sink down into the metal surface. He pressed harder. The pitch dropped against the heavier resistance. Bits of metal flew in all directions, one of which bounced off of Jeff's pantleg, and Jeff worried that he wasn't wearing safety goggles himself. This continued for about four more seconds, then the pitch rose.

The scientist shut off his circular saw in bewilderment. There was still no furrow cut in the metal of the alien box. When the saw blade spun down to a stop, its diamond teeth were now a jagged mish-mosh of broken stubs. The bits of flying metal hadn't been pieces of the box, they'd been the diamond-tipped saw teeth! He leaned in close to where he'd been sawing on the box, then said incredulously, "It's not even scratched!"

Everyone, Jeff included, crowded around for a better look. The top surface of the box was as smooth as if no saw had even touched it. Under his breath, the team lead muttered, "Holy cats, what the hell is it made out of?"

Abruptly, the team lead took a step back and said, "Let's try a different tack." He pointed at Jeff. "You said the alien was 'wearing' this when it crash-landed next to you, right?"

Jeff nodded. "It looked like the clamps on the box, well, 'let go' of the alien when it died."

"And in that brief moment before it died," the team lead went on, "You saw glowing yellow patterns swirling around its body?"

"Yeah," Jeff agreed.

The lead picked up the box, and turned it toward Jeff clamps first. "Can you show us how it was wearing this box?"

Jeff blinked. With some trepidation, he took hold of one rib on each side, and pulled the box toward his own torso. "Well, it was kind of around its midsection. Or its chest. Not that the alien really had a chest to speak of, more like a place where its upper tentacles attached. The box was right up against it." To demonstrate, he moved the box closer until the smooth, flat side — the side opposite the button and hood — pressed against his own chest. "And these, these ribs here, they weren't sticking out open like this." He moved his arms to the outsides of the ribs and, remembering how the scientists weren't able to make the ribs move, rested his arms against them. "They were clamped shut around the alien, kind of hugging it." As if in instinct, he pressed his arms inward against the rib-clamps as if bringing them against his body.

And when he did, the clamps closed around his chest and clacked into place.

A chorus of gasps rose from the scientists around him. "Oh, nuts!" Jeff exclaimed. He grabbed the bottom pair of rib-clamps and tried to pry them open, to no avail. Then he tried pulling on the ribs above those. Then the ones above that. Nothing. They wouldn't budge.

"Take it off!" the team lead ordered.

"I can't!" Jeff cried.

The scientists crowded around him, each trying to pull the rib-clamps in a different direction. None of the clamps budged, but Jeff nearly got pulled off-balance. The only thing that kept him from stumbling was the dance classes he'd gone through in high school and college.

Jeff looked down at the box in desperation. "Well . . . maybe one of these two controls releases them." He slipped a finger in the hole underneath the hood, and pressed the touch-sensor. The rib-clamps remained rock steady. He pressed it a second time. Still nothing. He tried pressing it twice in quick succession, then holding it down for a few seconds. Nothing changed. "That's not working." He took his finger out of the hole. "Maybe . . . maybe the big button then."

He pressed the pink button. Just once. But this time, instead of the subtle hum and eight little momentary points of light, a whirling hiss filled his ears and dozens, if not hundreds, of streaks of yellow-white light poured out from the points on the box where the ribs met it, and swarmed tightly around him until his entire body was encased in them. He looked out in horror through the yellow-white curtain of swirling light covering his face. Everyone in the room was glaring at him wide-eyed. The team lead said, in a voice jarringly soft-spoken, "Don't. Move."

He glanced worriedly at his arms and torso, and froze. The streaks of light were less than an inch from his body at every point. If he so much as budged, he might touch one of them, and God only knew how deadly that might be.

The team lead said, "We could try pressing the button again, maybe that'll turn it off. But I don't want to go anywhere near that yellow light curtain."

One of the scientists lunged for a meter-long metal rod set against one wall. "I could use this!"

The team lead glared at the rod for about a second. "Put on insulated gloves first, Ted," he said. "That aluminum rod will make a pretty good conductor, if that light effect happens to be electrical."

"Oh!" Ted said, "Right." He pulled on a pair of disposable rubber gloves, then picked up the rod. "Let's try it." He walked up to within a few feet of Jeff, who was still frozen in fear, then aimed the the far end of the rod at the pink button on Jeff's chest-box and jabbed forward. Nothing happened. He pushed again, then squinted. "It's . . . it's not even reaching the button! I can't push the end of the rod past the light-curtain!" He pulled the rod back, and looked at the end he'd been pushing against the yellow light. "It's not melted." He took off a glove and touched the tip of the rod. "In fact, it's not even warm."

Jeff was breathing harder now. His left arm had been up at an awkward angle when he'd pressed the button, and keeping it still took effort. His shoulder muscle was beginning to fatigue. If they couldn't figure out how to turn the lights off soon, he was going to move whether he wanted to or not. "Guys," he said slowly and deliberately, "I'm going to move my pinky finger. Just the one finger. I need to find out what will happen."

The team lead shook his head. "That's not a good —"

Jeff moved his finger anyway. There was no pain, there was no heat, his finger didn't disintegrate or get chopped off . . . and the swirling lights around his finger moved with it. He moved the finger back to where it had been. The encasing yellow lights moved back to where they had been. He took a deep, satisfied breath, then let his arm fall to his side. All the surrounding lights moved with the arm, too. "This light-curtain is tracking me!" he said. He took a step forward. Then a step back. Then did a full-blown pirouette. The lights matched his every move, staying a fraction of an inch from his skin or his clothing at every point, instant by instant.

"Not only is it letting me move," Jeff said, "It's making it easier to move! Like it's assisting me, or it's taking away some of my body's inertia, or something." He looked at Ted, still gripping the aluminum rod, and snapped his fingers. "Hand me that rod, would you?"

"Uh, okay," Ted said, holding it out lengthwise for Jeff to grasp.

The team lead puzzled. "What do you have in mind?"

Jeff took the rod and held it like a baton. It felt surprisingly light. Then he tapped his leg with it. As before, it stopped when it touched the light curtain surrounding him, not quite reaching his pantleg. Then, to the surprise of half the people in the room, he whacked his leg with it as hard as he could. It bounced off the swirling yellow lights once again, stopping short of making contact with his body. He started pounding himself with the rod over and over again, in other places, including the side of his head and the front of the box strapped to his chest. Each time, the curtain of lights turned the metal rod away with a dull clack. "Gentlemen," he announced at last, "What we have here is the space alien equivalent of a suit of armor."

Then he tossed the metal rod gently to one side, and struck his leg with his own fist. This time, it made contact. Hard contact. "Ow!" he yelped, more in surprise than pain. He furrowed his brow and brought his fist close to his leg more slowly, watching intently. When the curtain of light surrounding his fist met the curtain of light surrounding his leg, they seemed to merge together and then open a hole in the two overlapping curtains that his fist could slip through. "Huh!" he said. "Nothing on the outside can touch me, but I can touch myself. Maybe I can . . ." He brought his index finger up to the box on his chest, and poked at the pink button. Unlike the metal rod, his finger made it all the way to the button and pressed it. It made a satisfying click, but nothing changed.

Jeff frowned. "Well, now we know the button won't toggle this energy field off."

The team lead squinted. "Try the touch-sensor inside the hood."

Jeff hooked his index finger inside the covered finger-hole on the box, and pressed outward. The yellow tracers emanating from the clamps instantly ceased; the lights swirling aroung him dissipated inside of a couple of seconds. He smiled and breathed a sigh of relief.

"There we go," the team lead said. "Now let's work on getting that box un-clamped from your chest."

Jeff held up a hand. "Now hold on. I kind of like what it does for me." He pressed the pink button again, turning the energy streamers back on.

The team leader scowled. "Mr. Boeing, turn the device back off!"

"You guys can find out a lot more about what it can do when it's turned on than you can when it's turned off," Jeff said. "And someone's gotta wear it for it to work at all."

The team lead grunted, then said, "You've got a point. Sammy, point the spectrograph at him. We can at least see if the light curtain is giving off emission or absorption lines."

A sandy-haired scientist wheeled out some kind of camera on a stand and started fiddling with its knobs. Jeff figured this was probably the spectrograph. Then Ted, the one who'd tried to push his chestbox button with the aluminum rod, smirked and said, "So, does it give you super strength and X-ray vision, and make you fly?"

Jeff raised his eyebrows at him, then said, "Well let's see." He walked right up to Ted and, much to his alarm, lifted the scientist over his head with one hand. "I am stronger! I normally need both hands to do a lift in a ballet."

Now it was the team lead's turn to raise his eyebrows. "You dance ballet?"

Jeff lowered Ted to the ground and replied, "I prefer modern dance, actually. Ballet's too stilted. Oh, and as for the box giving me X-ray vision, I don't think so. Unless you're all wearing lead underwear."

The team lead scowled at that. Half the team giggled in spite of themselves.

"Now, can I fly?" Jeff said. "According to that Greatest American Hero TV show, I need to run three steps then jump with my hands out in front of me like I'm jumping off a diving board." He stepped backwards into a corner of the room and gestured for everyone to give him space.

"No," the team lead insisted. "Do not try that in here!"

"Alley oop!" Jeff called out, took three quick steps, then leapt upward . . . and crashed into the ceiling.

The building wasn't a tough concrete structure; its ceiling consisted of little more than thin soundproofing boards punctuated by fluorescent light fixtures. Jeff smashed right through the ceiling, through the flimsy roof behind it, and shot into the bright blue sky beyond.

The team lead looked up through the hole in the ceiling, watched the yellow streak of light that was Jeff Boeing dwindle into the distance, and mumbled, "So much for keeping it classified."

As when the light-curtain had first activated, Jeff was too scared to move a muscle. He kept climbing, arms outstretched before him, at a nearly vertical angle. It took him a good quarter of a minute to shake off the initial shock, and try to get some kind of handle on what was happening to him. It felt like his energy field was pulling him along in front, and pushing him from behind at the same time. Maybe if he changed the angle of his hands . . .

Yes. He moved his hands a nearly imperceptible amount to the right, and his path curved and headed in a new direction. He angled them downward, and his climb angle shallowed. Every move seemed intuitive, as though the light-field generator could divine his intentions. In less than a minute, he had mastered aerial maneuvering, and the full elation hit him. "WAHOO!"

Now . . . how about speed?

How did one tell an alien energy generator box to accelerate? Stretch your arms out farther to the front? Streamline your body by putting your head down? Think "faster, faster"? Well, whatever he was doing, it was working — He felt his speed pick up even as he thought about it, as though all his little tricks of straining himself were only hindering him. Whatever alien engineers had built this box clearly designed it not to need any special training to use, even if its user belonged to a different species.

He glanced over his shoulder to look at Los Angeles rolling away behind him. To his surprise, he saw a wide yellow streak left in his wake, like an airplane contrail, only glowing. Like the lighted trail of a tracer bullet. He angled himself around, turning more tightly than the quickest fighter jet, and skimmed the cityscape right above the tops of the buildings. He could make out the people on the sidewalks below as they streaked past; some of them were looking up at him and pointing.

He knew he could accelerate. Could he come to a stop?

He leaned backwards and thrust his legs forward, as though sliding into second base. He screeched to a halt almost instantly, then hovered there a hundred feet off the ground. Now a crowd definitely started gathering below him. He thought he saw one of them take out a camera. He kind of . . . liked the attention. Or at least the idea of this much attention. It was like being on stage, dancing under a spotlight for the audience.

A grand exit was just as important on stage as a grand entrance. He raised his head and right arm to the sky, and shot straight upward.

He kept going, willing himself to climb faster and faster. He could turn, he could accelerate, he could brake . . . did he have any altitude limits? A few scattered clouds lay above him; he pierced the cloud deck at twelve thousand feet, and almost immediately came out on top of them, soaring into the wild blue yonder. Despite the thinning air, he had no trouble breathing. Was this "suit" of energy armor he was wearing acting like the pressurized cabin of an airliner? He kept climbing, now moving faster than any Daytona racer. He had no idea how high he was now, and wished the aliens had built some kind of altimeter into the chest-box. He still had no trouble breathing, and didn't feel cold. But the sky around him was gradually darkening. It faded from the bright blue of a sunny day to a kind of dark purple, and then . . . to black.

Black. With stars. He was in space.

He stopped his climb, and just floated there above the Earth's atmosphere. The whole majestic panorama of Earth lay before him, its land and oceans and clouds looking just like the NASA photos — but photos could not do it justice. Every human being who'd ever beheld the Earth from space was changed by it in some manner. The vast scale of it all. The utter lack of national boundaries. The seeming insignificance of all the squabbles down below. The razor-thin blue halo of air protecting it all.

Jeff glanced down at the wonderful box on his chest that had made this view possible. He could do so much good with it, far more than he ever could at the shelter. To think the FBI wanted to keep it a secret! Jeff narrowed his gaze. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. They couldn't keep it a secret if everyone knew about it. He'd fly back down to Los Angeles, and find any and every news reporter he could — newspaper reporters, TV news crews, everyone. They would all see the alien armor-generator box in action.

And Jeff Boeing, its wearer, would become something the world had never seen before: A genuine super-hero.

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