True Alien - Chapter 3

I saw my first UFO when I was 17 years old. I was an airman crewing a C-130 cargo plane in Alaska, making long runs of food and supplies for both military and civilian use. In remote, difficult places like Alaska the military and the civilian worlds depend on one another, and often overlap in unexpected ways. We dropped off a lot of canned meat to a lot of hungry trappers in those days. It was the rare good side of the US government.  The sky is big over that territory, and on a clear day it feels like you can see the other side of the world. As the crew’s weather-spotter I had a little window to look out of during flights and my job was to alert the pilot of any ominous cloud formations that might endanger our journey. It was routine duty, but not as tedious as it sounds. I saw a lot of beauty out that little oval window. So many of those skies are burned into my memory as vividly and brilliantly as any man-made masterpiece hanging in a great museum. The colors of orange and teal, burning reds and deep blues fading into the midnight black of outer space, different every time but always spectacular. Staring into these endless vistas taught me to see clearly and accurately, the crew’s survival dependent on my ability to notice details in a blank sky––a change in air pressure the instruments couldn’t pick up, caught by my eye in a wisp of cloud three miles off, a curly cue of vapor that would grow into a maelstrom waiting to devour us on our return. Usually it was nothing, and I learned quickly to tell the difference between empty air and looming danger. This is how I know what I saw was real. My eyes were trained by the US Air Force to see the truth.  And I saw it, floating off the starboard wing, a bell-shape of pale light dancing in quick, impossible movements. Two others saw it. Henry Gore and Albert Stenovich saw it and confirmed it. I remember Stenovich’s breathless cuss crackling over the headset, “The fuck is that shit?” Before the others could look, the object flipped over and speed upwards and out of sight. The pilot demanded an explanation of what we had seen, but no one spoke. We couldn’t define it, none of us knew how, but instinctively we knew what we had seen. That was my first sighting.  It was far from my last.   

TRUE ALIEN CHAPTER ONE: https://steemit.com/writing/@senderos/true-alien-chapter-1

TRUE ALIEN CHAPTER TWO: https://steemit.com/funny/@senderos/true-alien-chapter-2

Copyright 2017, Daniel Capuzzi