Close Encounters of the Third Kind Read Online Free PDF

Gilroy once. Remember?”
    “Me and two backup computers say Tolono’s as dark as the inside of your head, Neary,” Harris shouted.
    Earl Johnson affected not to have heard this slur.
    “See the complainants at Tolono South Reservoir,” the police dispatcher suddenly called. “Christmas lights have started a minor brush fire.”
    “Did you hear that? They’re saying Christmas lights now.”
    “This is May, not December,” Harris said, suddenly his old cheerful self. “There is no Christmas during a blackout. Only Halloween.” And he hung up before Roy could respond.
    Neary turned to Earl Johnson. “What’s wrong with that guy? This is how Jordie Christopher bought it, replacing shot-out insulators in Gilroy.”
    “You heard the man, Roy,” Earl said. “He told you to fix the line.”
    “Right.”
    Neary stood there, humming softly for a moment. Then he turned back to Earl Johnson and said conspiratorially to him, “Say, Earl, how’d you like to sign on this operation for about an hour?”
    He was climbing in the car, closing the door and starting the engine before Johnson began to respond.
    “Me? Run this show? Who’s gonna listen to me? I’m not even seniority. I’m not even white. Don’t turn your back on a good thing, Roy. They made you boss cow.”
    “Earl, if he’s wrong, some of our Tolono people could get killed.”
    “If he’s right, they’ll suspend your ass so high even the job-placement corps won’t find it.”
    Neary started easing the car forward. “Tolono is what?” he asked out the window. “Sixty-six alternate to seventy?”
    Roy drove away.
    Johnson held his head in agony over Neary and his sense of direction. “You gonna wind up in Cincinnati,” he yelled after him. “It’s seventy to sixty-six.”
    Neary waved back at Johnson. Seventy to sixty-six.
    A moment later, the night swallowed up the shape and sound of his vehicle.
    Earl Johnson watched the taillight grow dim and then disappear. He heaved a heavy sigh and walked slowly back to the gang of linemen, watching him with a mixture of suspicion and amused malice.
    Earl stood before the veteran repairmen, wondering what on earth to tell them to do. He took a deep breath and pointed toward the tower overhead. “Fix it.”

7  

    A ireast Flight 31 touched down on the tarmac at 11:40 P.M. The Indianapolis tower issued routine taxiing instructions to the A.E. Concourse, a short three-minute dogleg from the east-west runway.
    A brace of airport security police waited curbside, their walkie-talkies gargling squelch while a futzed voice told the public that the white zones were for the immediate unloading of passengers only.
    A black Ford LTD carved a trail through the mild late night congestion, smoking its tires inches away from the fleet of the airport security patrol. One tire actually lurched up over the white curbside with enough noise and danger to make any cop grab for his citation pad.
    Instead, one of the security officers reached for the rear door and held it open. Three men got out. Were they pro football players diguised as Sperry-Rand accounting executives? Their Brooks Brothers pinstripes looked as if they had been ironed right onto their six-foot sinewy frames. Two of the men wore sunglasses, and the other had a gray mustache that didn’t quite match his short blond hair.
    A fourth CPA type, nearly resembling Fran Tarkenton, came running, out of breath, through the electric terminal doors.
    “It’s down!”
    “When?”
    “Just about a minute ago. Where have you been? She’s on the taxi to gate 55A.”
    The front four ran into the terminal annex, shouldering open the electric doors when they wouldn’t move fast enough.
    They charged the Up escalator, taking it two steps at a time. At the top, the first of them bounced off a woman who did not see them coming, and the other three almost piled into them. Instead, they dodged around their colleague and the woman, who was somewhat pregnant and was sprawled