He hooked the last button on his shirt, stuffed it into his pants, and headed for the kitchen. He warmed up last night's coffee and it tasted like warm sulfuric acid, but it brought him around to full consciousness, even if his stomach did object to it.
When he had finished the coffee, he found the library in the den and began reading a few of the titles; often, he remembered, a lot could be told from a man by his reading habits. There were books by Bridgeman, Zaindenburg and Loomis, almost everything on the shelves pertained to art in some form or another - except for the last row. There were about fifteen science fiction volumes, mostly collections of short stories, from Asimov to A.E. van Vogt. He had a fleeting idea to start reading the stuff in an effort to determine whether or not his strange dreams came from somewhere within the pages, then he rejected it. It would take a hell of a long while to even skim through that mass of literature and he didn't have the time.
He shoved a copy of H. Beam Piper back onto the shelf and straightened. To hell with it. He had the whole house to search, before he started fumbling through something as far out as science fiction. He started rummaging through the various rooms of the place with systematic carefulness. Hoping...
When he finished the search, it was noon. He knew a lot about the cabin, but damned little about himself. The cramped, dismal attic contained what was left of pictures, odd bits of furniture and clothes after the local field mice and porcupines had their annual convention up there. The three bedrooms revealed nothing except the usual gear to be found in any bedroom, and of the downstairs section of the place, only the art studio and the combination den-library was of interest. And even these places shed no light upon the ghost of the man that haunted him. The studio contained all of the trappings of an artist, even though it was in rather battered up shape, and the den was a wall to wall replica of what a woodsman might have owned. There were the books, the stuffed heads and, of course, the guns.
The rack, on the far side of the room, contained a table with bullet loading equipment scattered around it, with cans of DuPont powder on the floor. Above it, in the gun rack were the weapons - enough to hold off a small revolution. There were two handguns and three rifles and a shotgun. He looked them over.
A Smith and Wesson .38, model 36 and a Ruger Blackhawk .44 Magnum that looked like the old peacemaker model. One of the rifles was a Marlin saddle carbine, model 336 and the other was a Winchester African rifle with a .458 bore. The last gun on the rack was a Stevens .410 single barrel shotgun. Nick grinned at the arsenal and took the .44 magnum down from the rack to clean it. It wasn't in too bad of shape, even for as long as it had remained idle; even the western style holster and gunbelt contained enough oil to make them pliable.
He slipped the magnum into the holster and buckled the gunbelt about his waist, letting it hang a little on the right side. To hell with it, he thought. If those two characters show up now, at least I'll have an edge. He pulled five .44 Special slugs from the belt and loaded the weapon, being careful to see that the hammer hung on the empty chamber. Then he decided to see how good he was.
Where the hill rose sharply for a small distance behind the house, Nick found a good area where he could test his marksmanship. He lined up five cans, a few feet apart, at the base of the rise and snapped off five fast shots at them as quick as the single action would operate. Either amnesia had nothing to do with a man's gun knowledge, or he was a natural. All five cans were blown to hell and sent skittering against the side of the hill. Stunned, but satisfied, he reloaded the revolver and dropped it back into the holster.
He prowled the grounds about the cabin with the aimlessness of a man looking for something but not sure what. Beyond the lawn furniture and the shed that contained his tools, the only other interesting thing was the creek. A fast running little stream, barely a foot deep but filled with numerous little holes that bragged of trout. He walked along the gurgling water for a ways, then he went back to the house, still unsure of what to do.
He went back to the cabin and shoved the door open and stopped dead!
She was just like the painting. Her raven black hair hung loose and free while, beneath the scant confines of the shorts and halter, the warm flesh rose and fell temptingly. Nick stood there, unable to say a word. It was Janet and the light in her eyes made him wonder what kind of a guy he'd been more than ever. She gave a little gasp of pure pleasure and flung herself into his arms, planting the ripe sweetness of her lips squarely on his.
"Janet," he managed, but she had a strangle hold on him.
CHAPTER NINE
"Russian?" Brice asked, looking at Sam Morgan.
The dark complected Fed pulled the mangled cigar from his mouth and pointed it toward the twisted wreckage. On the far side, Cartwell and Dickson were looking it over.
"Why not?" Morgan asked.
"It seems outlandish, somehow."
Morgan grinned, his peg-like teeth flashing. "You small town cops are good. I won't take that from you. But you look at everything from a local viewpoint. In our business, you broaden, you might say.
"Look at the facts, Nolan. The Defense boys spotted the thing up north. Radar locked on it and gave it a speed of over two thousand miles per. So it crashes and we find no wings, no tail assembly ... and I have the hunch that the damned thing ran on nuclear power."
"Atomic?" Nolan whispered, amazed. While the Federal cop talked about nuclear power and fantastic speeds, all Brice could think of was the watch he'd found at the scene. How the hell could an artist learn to pilot a thing like that in a mere thirteen months, and what the hell was behind it all. "You mean, atomic power?"
Morgan nodded. "See that funnel shaped gismo over there, with the round ball-like affair?" He was pointing to what was probably the tail of the ship, at least it was not the section that had absorbed the smash into the ground.
Nolan nodded.
"That's a nuclear reactor," Sam went on. "Uncle Sam doesn't have anything in the air with that kind of power. I think we're testing a few engines, but nothing flying yet."
"Then it is Russian?"
"That's my guess. No other country would build it. Oh, Great Britain could, but if it was one of theirs, they would have plastered the red and blue targets on it. Offhand, it looks to me like a glorified version of the old U-2 thing, only on their side."
Brice didn't answer. He stared at the wreckage as though it were some sort of demon, while a million thoughts burst in his brain. Nick Danson was in this? He flew it? Where did he get it? How did he get it? Was it Russian? Was Nick a Russian spy?
He tried to cover the amazement on his face by lighting a cigarette. "How come it didn't develop into a pint sized Hiroshima, if it has atomic power in it?"
Morgan grinned at him, as though he was a kid. "I said it was powered by atomic energy, not atomic bombs. There's a kind of difference in..."
"Hey, Sam! C'mere!"
Both of the men turned to look across the twisted mass of wreckage to where Cartwell and Dickson were standing. The blond Fed was holding up a piece of the wreckage and his face glowed with excitement that he didn't try to cover.
"C'mon, Nolan," Sam grinned. "Let's go see what my buddy dug up ... I'll bet its a Russian manufacturer's trade mark."
They skirted the wreck and trotted up to where Cartwell stood with the piece of metal. "Russian, huh?" asked Sam.
"Russian, hell," Cartwell snorted. "It looks like a cross between Chinese and Arabic."
Sam took the piece and looked at it, the cigar clamped belligerently in his jaws. After a tense moment, he grunted noncommittally and passed the thing to Nolan Brice.
He knew nothing of Russian, Chinese or Arabic, but he knew what Chinese characters looked like. The imprinted marks on the metal bore a certain resemblance to the Chinese language, but yet were not the same. It consisted of strange marks that were like nothing Brice had ever seen before.
"There are similar markings on the control panel," Dickson said into the silence.
"Crap," Sam Morgan snorted. "I say Russian. How about you, partner?"
Cartwell furled his blond brows. "I think I'd rather let an expert look this piece over before I make any kind of guess as to where that wreck flew from." He turned to Nolan. "Where can we find an expert, Brice?"
"Everett College would be the only place I know of."
"Okay, we'll give them a try. Where's Lieutenant Peters?"
Morgan jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the other side of the clearing. "Over there," he said, "dressing down one of his Weekend Warriors."
"Sam. How about going over and remind him to keep any characters off the site. I have a horror of having the news boys scoop us on this."
Sam nodded and took off to talk with the Army. Dickson looked at Cartwell.