Down in the basin, waiting for them beside a weathered fence post, was a solitary figure in a faded blue denim jacket and a sweat-stained Stetson, a scarred Winchester .30-30 carbine resting loosely in the crook of his arm. William E. "Red" Brawley had not waited for the law. "Took your sweet time, Frank," Brawley drawled as Caldwell stumbled down the loose embankment. The old rancher tilted his chin toward the bottom of the gravel slope. "Thought you boys might like to see what the Army dropped in my heifer pasture." The group stepped onto the rim of the depression and stopped dead in their tracks. "Mother of God," Kincaid muttered, letting the heavy steel pry bar slip in his leather grasp. Resting thirty yards below, canted hard on its port side on a bed of loose, pea-sized brownish-red volcanic beads, was the craft. Up close, the machine was even more alien than it had appeared through Harlan’s binoculars. It was broad and hexagonal, its seamless aluminum hull gleaming under the high desert sun without a single visible rivet, weld bead, or seam.