The Mysterious Objects of Herman Roberts

Lee: As of last Saturday, I knew little more than rumors concernng the odd old man who lived up the road from my childhood home of Edwards.

     I had just handed in a story to my editor that morning and was on my way out of the building when the guard called after me and said I had a call.

     "Morton?" the old voice croaked.

     Foreboding filled me, so long had a deep fear been instilled in me from that voice. I sputtered, "Mr. Roberts?"

     Mr. Roberts was one of those infinitesimally aged coots who threatened young boys with "a butt full of buck shot if (he) ever caught 'em on his property again!" Rumors about Old Mr. Roberts ran the spectrum of canabalism in the basement to zombies in his attic. None were ever true, but curiously enough, no one ever seemed to notice the fact that he was always old. He never seemed to age beyond what appeared to be that of 65-70. All through the '60's and though the '70's the man chugged on, chasing kids off his lawn with a rusty double-barreled weapon, bellowing his threat of butts and buckshot.

     "Morton, I need you to come up here. I've gotta problem that just can't wait to be sorted out," he said.

     "J-just what sort of thing?" I stuttered just like when I was ten and he caught me pitching mudballs against the side of his house.

     "One o'clock, sharp, Charnel," he snapped and hung up.

     I arrived punctually and nervous outside the old foreboding house on the corner of Rose and Walnut. As I mounted the steps, I half expected him to burst out the door onto his front porch roaring about my butt and buck shot. But all was quiet. When I knocked on the front door, a small, white haired man answered.

     It was Old Mr. Roberts. No longer the towering giant that breathed fire and smoke at me and friends. This was a tired, shuffling troll of a man. He had a sudden coughing fit, and waved me inside.

     Still coughing , he closed the door and pressed past me towards the back of the house. "Well, c'mon," he called and heard him clomp down stairs into the basement. I followed after and shortly found him standing at a battered old work table holding one of a pair of thick silver tubes.

     "You remember these, Charnel? I think they've started leaking and that means they've got to go."

     "No. What are they?"

     "What d'you mean? Didn't you and that pack of rats you ran with twenty years ago learn anything while you was snooping around in here?" he demanded.

     "We never snooped in here," I protested.

     "The devil you did!" he shouted. "March 14, 1966! I came home from and found that window kicked-in and everything-"

     He abruptly stopped shouting, and leaned against the bench. "So it was them," he muttered aloud. "Now it all makes sense-the letters, that phone call in '70. Of course it couldn't have been your gang, you were all too small!"

     "What are you talking about?"

     "Charnel, we have to get moving fast. In the spring of 1947, I was a Major in the Army Air Force."

     "I think my dad may have mentioned that." I nodded.

     He held up both of the tubes in his hands. "Roswell," he spat.

     He ignored my look of amazement and shoved the two cylinders into a duffle bag. "C'mon!" he barked as he rushed past me and made his way upstairs, "I'll tell you on the way.

     I sputtered something.

     "Well, hurry up, we're taking your car!" he yelled.

     We piled in, the duffle bag laying across his lap. We started off out of town and he told me to get on 218 to Meirotto. As we headed out of town, he kept scanning the road for pursuers. Finally, he sank into his seat.

     "I worked on the wrecked ship at Rosewell, New Mexico. I was only 25 at the time, but because I had an engineering degree and stayed on after the war, they made me a Major. The wreckage was initially brought to hanger at Los Alamos to be cataloged and shipped. That was my job. Some parts were to be left at Los Alamos for further study by engineers and scientists at the labs, there. Mostly, they were interested in the metal that you could crinkle up into a ball and that would then unfold itself without any marks. It turned out to be a metallic co-polymer. But these tubes were supposed to go to a facility in Nitro, West Virginia with some other pieces. But the OSS and Army Intelligence brought in a man to look over my shoulder. He was a former Luftwaffe engineer named Heinrich Barnjager. He'd worked with Willy Messerschimdt on the Me262 and a few other planes. The man was a genius and a number of people died getting him out of Berlin and away from the Ruskies.

     He saw right away that some smaller pieces fit together and formed a weapon of some kind-it looked just like the electron gun out of a TV set but was bigger and made out of some flexible white ceramic. He told somebody because the order to ship them was cancelled. Then, OSS gave him a workshop in the building next door and he started working on the pieces.

     "Well, I got to thinkin' that they had to power it somehow. One night, I began to look for pieces that had a connecting plate similar to that on the weapon. That's when I found these.

     "Barnjager stopped by to chat. When I showed them to him, he was so delighted that he brought me into his workshop. We hooked up the tubes to the weapon and it started purring. Bjarnjager touched pair of wires together and the thing flashed out a purple beam that vaporized the building's wall, the hanger wall next door, and half of a P-51 Mustang sitting inside the hanger!

     "I don't remember what happened next- Barnjager cold-cocked me and kept me drugged in a hypnotic state. I woke up a five days later handcuffed to a bed in a hot, stuffy room. The windows were open and I could see a jungle-covered valley.

     "Barnjager entered the room with a sun-burned younger man; I shut my eyes pretending to sleep. They argued in rapid German; I understood very little but I soon discovered we were on a coffee plantation in the Yucatan peninsula which served as a way-station for the ODESSA. Barnjager was taking me with him to Argentina. The other man called me excess baggage but Barnjager said they needed me because I was a skilled engineer.

     "Barnjager uncuffed me; I was still pretending to be drugged. As he pulled me up to sit on the bed, I swung my fist into his jaw as hard as I could. Then I dove at the other man's stomach, knocking him back so that he fortunately smashed his head on a heavy mahogony dresser. A pistol spilled out of his pocket which I grabbed. Just as I turned around, I had only a moment to shoot Barnjager before he would have shot me.

     "I waited. Everything was quiet. It was early afternoon and I supposed it was siesta time. I searched Barnjager who carried an amazing amount of American Dollars. Then I searched the other rooms. I soon found Barnjager's room; his Nazi party pin meticulously laid upon the dresser next to a small photo of his Führer and a telegram from Buenos Aries in German. I searched the room and found a suitcase under the bed containing the tubes-but never found any trace of the weapon. I later learned from the telegram that it had been sent south.

     The next month took an enourmous amount of time and patience and most to the money I'd taken from Barnjager but I managed to secretly make my way to Mexico City and lie low. I also had time enough to think about the incredible power of the weapon Barnjager had discovered and having seen some of the most viscious fighting in World War Two, I decided no one should know of it. I sent the suitcase with the tubes to my parents here in Iowa telling them never to open it and leave it under my bed in my old room. I then went to our Embassy and eventually arrived back in the States expecting a disciplinary hearing to decide charges of being AWOL or desertion and possible espionage for the missing parts of the ship. Instead, I was sent to Fort Pickett, Virginia and interrogated. I told them everything except about the weapon and the tubes, maintaining that Barnjager had discovered a propulsion system instead.

     "One year later, I chose to reitire. I went home to my parents and recovered the tubes. There is little else you need to know. Our government has only recently discovered the plausibility of a weapon having been recovered by Barnjager and myself. However, the threat lies in those Nazi bastards who escaped through the ODESSA. Not only are they trying to rebuild their precious Reich, but through their horrid experiments at the concentration camps they have discovered how to slow their aging. We are not talking about 80 or 90 year-olds gasping for breath; they have the bodies of 30 and 40 year olds! They are the same men who built and designed some of the most ingenious weapons on the face of the planet! And they know about the tubes!

     "When we get to the place outside Meirotto, I will get out. Do not wait for me. Turn around and go home. I've got other plans."

     I asked him a dozen questions, he shook his head and refused to answer, saying it was too dangerous. At last he indicated a gravel road to turn into. We drove a short distance and he told me to stop. Without another word, he got out with the duffle bag slung over his shoulder and walked down the road. I lingered for a moment and then managed to turn the car around and left.

     Last night, I heard on the news that his body had been discovered in a field just outside Meirotto. He'd been shot in the temple once and a pistol placed at his side. The Police labeled it a suicide. I suspect differently---but dare not say more---just now.