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PROLOGUE remarked. road. highway. "They want to find out if we've had any previous warning," Bob "What kind of outfit is this, anyway?" asked Tracy. "They're not wearing Air Force uniforms." "They're not really military." Bob answered. "They're the Air Force version of Rent-A-Cop. Guard services, contractors. I've hired guys like that to watch over movie sets in Hollywood. Here they come." A guard walked toward us, carrying a clipboard. Pieces of paper with carbon underneath were flapping in the desert wind. We read the citation by the glare of the map light. It contained a warning not to set foot inside the perimeter of Nellis Air Force Base again. I took one look at the guy's machine gun and signed my copy. My friends did the same. We turned around. Two of the guards climbed into a Blazer and followed us all the way to the main road, staying some distance back of the cloud of dust we were raising on the long, straight, unsurfaced They made sure we turned left toward Rachel. Any attempt to sneak into the network of smaller trails that led into the hills would have been futile. Besides, our Oldsmobile, although brand new, would never have made it. As it was, it had trouble dragging us uphill on the main "Why do they make engines with two and a half cylinders?" Bob joked, eager to put some distance between us and the Blazer. There were no strange lights in the sky that night. And when we stopped at a place that overlooked part of the northern section of the base, all we heard were the muffled sounds of the desert, and all we saw were the familiar constellations being obscured by drifting clouds. If there were flying saucers in the process of being tested at Dreamland, the secret was being kept very well.