The lanky young man leaned against his board and wriggled his bare feet deeper in the hot sand, down to a cooler layer not blistered by the hot July sun. The skin of his bare, bony shoulders was hot–fair warning of a sunburn to come. Ragged cutoff jeans hung low on his thin hips, a hint of soft, white skin showed above the beltless pants. He ran a hand up his chest, through a thick growth of curly black hair, and scratched carefully around the edges of a large sand burn acquired the day before in a major wipe out. He shaded his eyes and peered back along the path he had traveled just minutes ago, watching a lone figure trudge up the dune.
“It’s about time you caught up, Chet,” he yelled to the approaching figure. “I thought maybe you were lost.”
“Nope. Conserving my energy, Henry. You know that. Going for the long haul–not the short spurt.” Chet grinned widely, a row of perfect white teeth splitting his broad, dark face, and walked on past. Henry shouldered his stubby board, swung around, and joined his friend in paralleling the crest of the huge dune. Small grains of sand peppered their ankles as gentle puffs of wind played over the rippled surface.
Chet slapped Henry on the back. “I see you’re getting a sunburn already.”
Henry winced and shied away. “Yep, but I still can’t see wearing a white T-shirt all the time like you do. Your belly looks like the bottom of a dead fish. Besides, skin has to breath.”
“And peal, and itch, and develop cancer,” Chet intoned.
“Realist,” Henry spouted. “Say–I hope the southern slope of this dune is as high and steep as it was last year.”
“Should be. Probably a good twenty feet higher than those back near the van. The damp sand below the surface and this hot, dry wind ought to make for fast surfing.”
“Hot damn,” Henry chortled. “I may get the ride of my life. This new frictionless laminate bottom on my board ought to let me fly like a bird.”
“Yeah,” Chet readily agreed. “Like a gooney bird.”
“No kidding. I’ll hurtle down the dune like a chicken hawk after a crippled pack rat.”
“Yep. And crash on the hard alkali at the bottom like you did yesterday. A crumpled heap of man and board. Maybe we could burn the remains–have a wiener roast, or–,” Chet laughed, “if you go down fast enough you’ll catch on fire like that shooting star last night.”
Henry started. “Hell, I thought you were asleep when it came down. Burned in the atmosphere a long time though, maybe all the way down. There might be a little meteorite–about the size of a grain of sand–buried in one of these dunes now.”
Chet nodded. “Really weird the way it came in–slow, moderate angle, then straight down. Almost like it was a controlled descent. Seemed to hit just over this dune.”
“Huh? I didn’t see it that way. Came in like any other shooting star, I thought. That imagination of yours is acting up again. I’ll never forget the speech you gave in speech class about how the human brain sucks oxygen in through hair and that’s why bald people have trouble thinking.”
“I got an A for that speech.”
“I don’t see how since Professor Simmons is bald as an egg.”
“He has a sense of humor. Remember when I told little Bobby Beldon that as long as he kept his hair out of the water in the pool he didn’t really have to breathe?”
“Yeah.” Henry laughed. “He almost drowned trying to suck oxygen in with his hair. You have a weird imagination! Just imagine–a shooting star landing on the other side of this dune.”
Chet grinned and nodded. “I don’t know if it is all imagination, though, Henry. There are a lot of unexplained UFO sightings every year. And another thing I’ve always thought is that anybody smart enough to travel millions of light years through outer space is certainly smart enough to camouflage or disguise what they are doing–to some extent at least. Maybe mass hypnosis or something like that. Anyway–some people do see UFOs.”
“I know what you mean. About three times a year I start seeing little golden, saucer shaped ships bringing in little scoops of green cheese from the moon.” Henry laughed. “And then I have to check in at the local alien hypnosis center to be reconditioned.”
“You’re a sacrilegious joker, Henry. You know that? Come on, let’s go surfing.” four steps later they stood at a high point of the dune and looked down the southern slope.
“Good God,” Chet yelled excitedly. He pointed. “Look at that!”
Henry looked, awed. “Tallest, steepest sand dune I ever saw,” he said.
“No, No. Over there!”
Henry looked at his friend, then in the direction of the pointed finger. He shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, another sand dune.”
“No! It’s a space ship–it looks like a space ship! Can’t you see it?”
“A space ship?” Henry rolled his eyes upward and laughed. “Oh, I get it. And I guess you’ve been cruising around Mars and Venus in your converter powered sand box, too, huh.”
“Damn it! I’m not kidding. Look–there, right on top– that funny gray hump near those black tubes. Some kind of antenna or sensory grid is folded out and sticking up. Might be for analyzing the atmosphere or something.”
Henry stepped behind Chet and sighted down the outstretched arm and finger. He shook his head.
“Hell, Chet. All I see is a big creosote bush.”
“Wait! There’s a rabbit. Do you see it?”
Henry wiped beads of sweat from his brow. He laughed, a hoarse, strangled bark. “You had me worried for a little while there. Yeah, I do see the rabbit.”
“Good. Now, look off to the left about ten feet, near the top of the ship, sneaking up on the rabbit–what do you see?”
“I see a coyote–on top of a sand dune.”
“Quit funning with me Henry. You know damn well that’s an alien–a being from outer space–stalking the rabbit.”
Henry blinked. “An alien….?”
Chet nodded excitedly. “Must not be an oxygen breather. Notice the canister on the being’s–chest, I guess you could say, and the tubes leading to valves protruding from the side of his mouth–that dripping frontal orifice.”
“Looks like a coyote’s nose and a mouth full of teeth to me. Are you sure you don’t need a salt pill, maybe get in out of the sun for a while?” Henry chewed his bottom lip as Chet glared at him.
“The rabbit hasn’t got a chance,” Chet breathed. “Look–hardly a grain of sand is being disturbed as the alien undulates closer to the rabbit. I can’t make out what that is trailing behind the alien–can you?”
“That, my friend, is a tail. A bushy, dirty, tick infested coyote tail.”
Chet groaned. “How can you joke at a time like this? The most important thing we’ve….” His mouth remained open, his eyes widened. “It got him, it got the rabbit! God, what if that had been one of us.”
“Coyotes avoid people like the plague, Chet. You know that.”
Chet continued talking, paying no attention to what his friend said. “The tentacles of the alien must be very powerful! The way it ripped the rabbit in half was horrible. It stuffed half the rabbit in a bag, must be a specimen bag, and threw the other half away. I wonder why.”
Henry shook his head, a faintly exasperated gesture. “All I saw was a mangy old gray coyote leap out, chomp on the rabbit, eat half, and leave half. Now, for a hungry coyote to leave half a rabbit, that is unusual–I admit that.”
“The alien really can cover the ground with those weird undulations. It’s headed for a stock tank now.”
“Probably for a drink of water to wash down half a rabbit,” Henry grunted.
“More like for a sample of water. It seems to be quite proficient with those stubby tentacles. It’s headed back to the ship now.”
“The coyote will be out of sight as soon as it tops the dune and goes over,” said Henry.
“It opened a hatch and dropped into the ship!”
Henry shook his head. “No, Chet,” he said softly, “the coyote simply ran over the dune and out of view.”
“Wait–feel that–the vibration. The ship’s taking off!”
Henry watched and said nothing–could say nothing. His face paled, mouth flopped open, his eyes widened. Both men struggled to maintain balance on the trembling dune before falling to their knees.
“Did you see it? Tell me what you saw,” Chet pleaded. “Did you see the space ship take off?”
“I sure as hell did not,” retorted a shaken Henry, “and, by God, if you tell anybody that I stood here and watched a sand dune leap up in the air and take off I swear I’ll tell them you are loonier than a bed bug. I didn’t see nothing! Nosir! N-o-s-i-r! Nothing! We just been out in the sun too long. Come on, let’s find some shade.