Carol Ferris glanced at her watch again—8:47 AM. Hal was now officially forty-seven minutes late for the most important test flight of the quarter. The Pentagon observers had been stationed in the observation deck since 8:15, their polite small talk growing increasingly strained as the minutes ticked by. General Sam Lane, who had just flown in from Metropolis specifically for this demonstration, was checking his own watch with growing impatience.
"Ms. Ferris," he called across the hangar bay, his voice carrying the distinctive authority of a career military man. "I was under the impression that Jordan was your most reliable test pilot."
Carol forced a professional smile. "He is, General. This is... unusual."
It wasn't entirely true. Hal Jordan was many things—brilliant, fearless, infuriating—but "reliable" had never made the list. Still, he'd never missed a major test flight, especially not one he'd lobbied so hard to schedule.
She turned to her assistant. "Try his cell again."
"Straight to voicemail, just like the last three times," the young woman replied, concern evident in her voice. Everyone at Ferris Aircraft knew how important the FF-6 prototype was to the company's future.
Carol excused herself from the observers and stepped outside the hangar, dialing Hal's number herself. The call went immediately to voicemail, just as her assistant had said.
"Hal, it's me. Again. The Pentagon delegation is here, the FF-6's fueled up, and you're nowhere to be found. If this is some kind of protest about the safety modifications, we can discuss them after the demonstration. Just... call me back. Immediately."
She ended the call, frustration and worry battling for dominance. Yesterday's phone call replayed in her mind—Hal's excited, almost frantic voice talking about an alien crash and some kind of ring before being cut off by a strange green flash.
At the time, she'd written it off as another of Hal's elaborate excuses, possibly the result of a few too many drinks. But now, with him missing the biggest test flight of the year?
"Trouble with our star pilot?" Thomas Kalmaku's voice broke through her thoughts. Hal's closest friend at Ferris Aircraft stood behind her, clipboard in hand, his normally cheerful expression clouded with concern.
"He's not answering his phone," Carol admitted. "And General Lane is running out of patience."
Thomas's frown deepened. "That's not like him. Not for this test flight. He's been obsessing over the FF-6's thrust vectoring modifications for months."
"I know." Carol ran a hand through her hair, a rare breach of her carefully maintained professional composure. "I was on the phone with him last night when—" She stopped, realizing how absurd it would sound.
"When what?" Thomas prompted.
Carol hesitated. "He was talking about... finding some kind of crashed alien spacecraft. Then there was this strange green flash, and the call disconnected."
She expected Thomas to laugh or offer a more reasonable explanation—Hal pulling a prank, or having one too many at the desert bar where test pilots gathered. Instead, his expression grew more troubled.
"Did you try his apartment?"
"My assistant drove by on her way in. His car wasn't there."
Thomas checked his own phone. "He's not responding to my texts either." He looked up at the cloudless blue California sky, squinting slightly. "You know, a couple of Coast Guard buddies mentioned they picked up some unusual atmospheric readings last night. Out in the test range area."
Carol followed his gaze skyward, an uneasy feeling settling in her stomach. "You don't actually think—"
Her phone rang, cutting off the question. She answered immediately, hoping to hear Hal's voice with some outlandish but fixable explanation.
Instead, she heard the concerned voice of Jessica Jordan, Hal's mother.
"Carol? I'm sorry to bother you at work, but... is Hal with you? He was supposed to call me last night, and he always calls on this day, you know, because of Martin."
Carol closed her eyes briefly. Of course. March 14th—the anniversary of Martin Jordan's fatal crash. How could she have forgotten? Hal always marked the date, usually with a silent vigil at the aviation museum where parts of his father's aircraft were displayed.
"Mrs. Jordan, I'm afraid Hal hasn't come in today. We're trying to locate him now."
The silence on the other end spoke volumes. Carol could almost see Jessica's expression—the carefully controlled worry of a woman who had spent decades expecting the worst phone call about her daredevil son.
"I've tried calling him several times," Jessica finally said, her voice tight. "It goes straight to voicemail. Jim's tried too."
"We'll find him," Carol promised, injecting more confidence into her voice than she felt. "He probably got caught up in something and lost track of time."
"Carol," Jessica's voice dropped lower, "he never misses his call after visiting the museum. Not once in twenty-two years. Something's wrong."
The knot in Carol's stomach tightened. That was true. Whatever else could be said about Hal's reliability, his rituals around his father's death were sacred and unchanging.
"I'll call you as soon as I hear anything," Carol promised. "And please let me know if you hear from him first."
After ending the call, she turned to Thomas. "That was Hal's mother. He visited the museum last night as expected, but never called her afterward. That's never happened before."
Thomas's expression shifted from concern to genuine alarm. "Okay, now I'm worried. Hal would never break that pattern, no matter what."
Carol made a decision. "I need you to cover for me with General Lane. Tell him there was a minor issue with the FF-6's fuel system that requires immediate attention. We'll reschedule the demonstration for Thursday."
"What are you going to do?"
"Find our missing pilot." Carol was already heading for her car. "Starting with his last known location."
By noon, Carol had visited Hal's apartment (empty, bed unslept in), checked with the bartenders at his usual haunts (no sightings since the previous afternoon), and even stopped by the aviation museum again. Frank, the night guard who'd seen Hal the previous evening, confirmed he'd arrived at his usual time but hadn't stayed long.
"He wasn't here more than twenty minutes," Frank told her, concern evident in his weathered face. "Usually stays for hours on the anniversary. Just sat in front of Martin's display, then left around 8:30. Never seen him leave so quickly before."
Her concern evolved into genuine worry when her phone rang as she was leaving the museum.
"Carol Ferris."
"Ms. Ferris, this is Jim Jordan, Hal's brother." The voice was formal, controlled—the military attorney rather than the concerned sibling. "I understand from my mother that Hal is missing."
"We're still looking," Carol assured him, sliding into her car. "It's possible he just needed some time alone. The guard at the museum said he left unusually early last night."
"That's what concerns me." Jim's voice carried a weight of experience. "Hal has a pattern on the anniversary. Museum visit, then the call to Mom. Never breaks it. Not once in twenty-two years, not even when he was deployed."
Carol navigated through Coast City traffic, heading toward the desert test range where Ferris Aircraft conducted their more experimental flights. "I'm heading out to the test range now. Hal mentioned something about a crash site when I spoke to him last night."
There was a pause on the line. "A crash site? Was there an incident with one of your prototypes?"
"No, nothing like that." Carol hesitated, then decided Jim deserved the full story, no matter how bizarre. "Hal called me around 9:30 PM, right after he left the museum. He was excited, talking very fast. He mentioned finding some kind of crash in the desert, but not an aircraft. He said something about aliens and a ring before the call cut out."
The silence that followed was heavy. Then: "Carol, has my brother been under unusual stress lately?"
"No more than usual. He aced the Starjumper test flight yesterday morning. He was in good spirits, if a bit cocky about breaking the test parameters."
"I see." Jim's tone shifted slightly. "I've taken some leave. I'll be in Coast City by tonight to help with the search."
"That's not necessary—" Carol began.
"It is." Jim's tone brooked no argument. "My brother might be in trouble. I'll meet you at Ferris Aircraft around 8 PM."
After ending the call, Carol continued toward the desert test range, a growing sense of dread building within her. Two members of Hal's family—both pragmatic, levelheaded people—were concerned enough to drop everything. That alone told her this wasn't another of Hal's impulsive adventures.
Thomas was waiting for her at the security checkpoint to the test range, his truck loaded with equipment.
"General Lane was not happy about the postponement," he informed her as she pulled up alongside. "I think the words 'unreliable contractor' and 'reconsidering our arrangement' were used."
"We'll deal with the Pentagon later," Carol replied, climbing out of her car, trying to push away the mental image of millions in defense contracts evaporating. Right now, finding Hal was the only priority. "Did you bring the equipment?"
Thomas nodded toward his truck. "Ground-penetrating radar, electromagnetic sensors, thermal imaging—basically everything I could borrow from the engineering lab without filing paperwork. If there's anything unusual out there, we'll find it."
The bed of his pickup was filled with an impressive array of detection equipment, most of it technically the property of Ferris Aircraft's R division. Under normal circumstances, Carol would have insisted on proper requisition forms and safety protocols. Today was anything but normal.
"Let's start with Hal's last known location." Carol pulled out her phone and opened a tracking app. "I installed this on the company phones after the Henderson incident." She referenced a previous occasion when another test pilot had crashed in the desert and spent eighteen hours waiting for rescue, suffering severe dehydration before they'd located him. "It should show us Hal's last movements before his phone went offline."
The app displayed a map with a dotted line showing Hal's journey the previous evening—from Ferris Aircraft to the aviation museum, then out toward the desert test range, following the old mining access road that hadn't been used since Ferris Aircraft purchased the adjacent land.
"He went off-road here," Carol noted, pointing to where the digital trail veered from the access road into untouched desert. "About thirty miles from the main gate."
Thomas leaned over to examine the route. "That's nowhere near any of our test sites," he confirmed, his expression growing increasingly concerned. "Nothing out there but sand, rocks, and the occasional rattlesnake."
"No reason for him to be there," Carol added quietly, "unless he saw something."
They followed the digital trail in Thomas's truck, the rugged vehicle handling the increasingly difficult terrain better than Carol's executive sedan would have. The journey was slow—the unmarked desert path requiring careful navigation to avoid the deeper gullies and unstable patches of sand. Each passing mile increased Carol's unease. This wasn't a joyride or a shortcut. Hal had deliberately sought out one of the most remote areas of the property.
After nearly an hour of slow, careful navigation through the desert landscape, Thomas stopped the truck at the base of a ridge.
"This is as far as we can drive," he said, squinting up at the rocky incline ahead. "The trail leads up over that ridge."
They gathered essential equipment—the thermal imaging camera, sample collection kits, and a pair of heavy-duty flashlights that could double as weapons if necessary, though neither voiced that particular consideration. The afternoon sun beat down mercilessly as they climbed the ridge, loose rocks skittering away beneath their boots.
At the crest, both stopped in stunned silence.
Below them lay a crater approximately fifty yards in diameter, its edges smooth as if melted rather than gouged from the earth. At the center was an indentation that looked nothing like a typical impact site—it had geometric precision, almost architectural in its symmetry. Most striking of all was the damaged spacecraft resting at the crater's center—a craft unlike anything terrestrial engineering could produce.
The vessel's hull was a peculiar purplish-green, but severely damaged, with sections torn away to reveal complex internal components that defied human understanding. Its crystalline structure appeared to have been designed to channel energy in patterns that suggested propulsion systems far beyond current technological comprehension. Now, those systems lay dark and dormant, the craft a lifeless husk of what it had been.
Small wisps of smoke still rose from components that had likely overheated during the crash, but the fires had mostly burned out. The air around the crater carried a faint ozone smell, mixed with something alien and indefinable.
"That's not a meteor strike," Thomas stated the obvious, his voice hushed with awe.
"No," Carol agreed. "It's not."
They stood transfixed for several moments, minds struggling to process the reality before them. This wasn't merely unusual—it was paradigm-shifting. Proof of technology beyond anything humanity had achieved. Proof they weren't alone in the universe.
"Superman must have come from something like this," Carol found herself saying, the connection forming unbidden in her mind. "A ship, a spacecraft, carrying him to Earth."
Thomas nodded slowly. "The difference is, whoever came in this one isn't here anymore."
After the initial shock subsided, professional curiosity took over. They carefully made their way down to the crater, each step cautious as they approached the alien craft. The sand around the perimeter had been transformed into smooth, glass-like surfaces—temperatures far beyond what any conventional aircraft crash would generate. Thomas reached out a hand, holding it several feet above the vitrified sand.
"Still radiating heat," he noted with amazement. "Hours later, and it's like standing near a furnace."
Near the center, Thomas knelt to examine a peculiar residue scattered across a section of the crater floor. He pulled a specimen container from his pack, carefully collecting samples with tools designed for hazardous material handling.
"This looks like... I don't know what this looks like," he admitted, holding up a vial containing glittering particles that seemed to pulse with their own inner light. "Some kind of conductive material, but nothing I've ever seen before."
Carol circled the perimeter, maintaining a respectful distance from the craft itself. Despite its damaged state, there was an architectural elegance to the vessel, suggesting intelligence and purpose in its design. Each curve and angle seemed to serve both aesthetic and functional purposes, though she couldn't begin to fathom what those functions might be.
Her attention was drawn to something glinting in the sunlight at the crater's edge. Moving closer, she found what she'd been both hoping and dreading to discover—Hal's motorcycle, parked neatly as if its rider had simply stopped for a closer look at the crater.
"Thomas!" she called. "Over here!"
He joined her quickly, his expression growing increasingly concerned as they examined the scene. Hal's helmet rested on the motorcycle's seat, his phone lying in the sand nearby. Carol picked it up—dead battery, but otherwise intact. The missed calls from her, Jessica, and Jim still displayed on the lock screen.
"He wouldn't leave these behind," Thomas said, carefully picking up the helmet. His fingers traced the worn leather, the scratches that told of decades of use—first by Martin Jordan, then by his son. "This was his father's. And leaving his bike out here? No way."
Carol scanned the area, noting footprints leading from the motorcycle toward the crater. Just one set, Hal's size and stride, easily recognizable from the distinctive boots he always wore when riding. The prints walked calmly to the crater's edge, then down toward the center—where they simply stopped.
"He wasn't dragged," Carol observed, following the trail with her eyes. "He walked right up to it. Voluntarily."
"Look at this," Thomas called from a few feet away. He was examining a patch of sand with a peculiar crystalline pattern, similar to the glassy surfaces around the crater but more structured, almost like circuitry. "This isn't natural. And there's some kind of residue here too, but different from the other sample."
Carol crouched beside him, noticing with a chill that the strange pattern intersected directly with where Hal's footprints ended. Within the crystalline formation was a small dark stain. Thomas carefully collected a sample, his movements precise despite his obvious concern.
"Is that... blood?" Carol asked quietly.
"I don't know," Thomas admitted, his voice tight with worry. "But we'll find out."
They spent the next two hours conducting a methodical search of the entire site. Carol documented everything with hundreds of photographs, while Thomas collected samples from different areas of the crater. The spacecraft seemed entirely abandoned, with no sign of any pilot or occupant. Most peculiar of all was a second set of indentations in the sand beside where Hal's footprints ended—shaped almost like a body had lain there—but no footprints leading away from that spot.
"So he gets to the center," Carol said, thinking aloud as they worked. "He approaches the craft, meets whoever was piloting it, and then... what? They both just vanish?"
"No blood trail, no signs of struggle," Thomas replied, his voice low as he glanced at the alien craft. "Where could they have gone?"
A more thorough search of the area revealed no other signs of Hal—no struggle, no additional footprints, no evidence of where he might have gone after reaching the crater. It was as if he had simply vanished into thin air precisely at the spot where the crystalline pattern formed.
The sun was beginning to set when they finally packed up their samples and equipment. The desert would be dangerously cold soon, and they had gathered all the evidence they could.
"We should contact the authorities," Thomas suggested, closing the truck's tailgate. "Military, NASA, someone. This is way beyond us."
Carol hesitated. "And tell them what? That Hal disappeared at the site of what looks like an alien landing? They'll think we're cracked."
"Carol, this is serious. Hal is missing, and whatever happened here is way beyond normal." Thomas gestured back toward the crater. "That's a spacecraft. An actual alien spacecraft. We can't just pretend we didn't see it."
She nodded reluctantly. "You're right. But let's be strategic. We take these samples back to the lab first, see what we're dealing with. Then we file a proper missing person's report with enough evidence that they can't dismiss it."
She didn't voice her deeper fear—that the moment they reported this, it would no longer be their investigation. Hal would become a case file, the craft would be swarmed by government agents, and whatever happened to him would disappear behind classified reports and national security protocols. They might never learn the truth.
"We'll start with the Coast City Police," she decided. "File the missing person's report there. We need a paper trail before we escalate to federal agencies."
As they drove back toward Coast City, the setting sun cast long shadows across the desert landscape. Carol found herself watching the darkening sky, thinking of Hal's final words before the call had disconnected—excited, disbelieving, yet somehow thrilled.
"You don't think he was serious, do you?" she asked finally. "About finding an alien crash. About being given some kind of ring."
Thomas didn't immediately dismiss the notion as she half-expected. Instead, he looked troubled. "Two weeks ago, I would have said Hal was just being Hal—making excuses for missing work." He gestured toward the sample containers in the back seat. "But this isn't normal. The authorities are going to call that crater a 'geological anomaly,' but I've seen meteor impacts. This is different."
He tapped the helmet settled carefully on the seat between them. "And Hal would never willingly leave this behind. This was his father's, from his Air Force days. He values it more than anything he owns."
Carol felt a chill that had nothing to do with the desert evening. "So what are we saying? That Hal was actually... taken? By aliens?"
"I'm saying something happened out there that defies conventional explanation." Thomas nodded toward the equipment in the back. "I've got everything we need to analyze those samples. If there's any evidence of what really happened, we'll find it."
Carol stared out at the darkening desert, her mind racing with possibilities, each more unsettling than the last. The successful, driven part of her—the CEO who had taken over her father's company and guided it to new heights—wanted to dismiss the whole thing as another of Hal's impulsive adventures. But the woman who had known Hal Jordan since childhood, who had watched him transform his grief into reckless courage, knew better.
"His mother's worried sick," she said quietly. "Jim's flying in tonight. Jack's been calling everyone they know in Coast City. This isn't like other times he's disappeared."
"No," Thomas agreed, his expression grim in the fading light. "It's not."
They drove in silence for several miles, each lost in their own thoughts. The samples in the back seat might contain answers, might provide some rational explanation for what they'd witnessed. But Carol couldn't shake the image of those footprints simply ending at the center of the crater, at the base of that strange, damaged craft.
The Coast City Police Department's missing persons unit was housed in a drab, beige-walled section of the main precinct building. Detective Marla Gonzalez had been working the unit for seven years, long enough to recognize the patterns in most disappearances. When Carol and Thomas walked in at 9:30 PM, carrying Hal's helmet and a folder of evidence, she immediately recognized the mixture of concern and determination that characterized people reporting a genuinely mysterious absence rather than the panicked overreaction of those whose loved ones were simply running late.
"You're here about Hal Jordan," she said, not a question but a statement. At their surprised expressions, she added, "His brother called ahead. Military lawyer types are thorough that way."
"Yes," Carol confirmed, setting the helmet carefully on the detective's desk. "He's been missing since last night. This isn't like him."
Detective Gonzalez raised an eyebrow, tapping a few keys on her computer. "According to his file, Mr. Jordan has a history of... unpredictable behavior. Three spontaneous trips to Edwards Air Force Base without notice, an unscheduled detour to Alaska during a routine aircraft delivery, and..." she scrolled down, "a two-day disappearance last year that ended with him being discovered asleep in the aviation museum. His own family reported that one."
"That was different," Thomas interjected. "This time he missed a Pentagon demonstration, left his father's helmet—which he's treasured for decades—and disappeared in the middle of the desert."
The detective's expression remained professionally skeptical. "Ms. Ferris, Mr. Kalmaku, I understand your concern. But Mr. Jordan's personnel file reads like someone who regularly makes impulsive decisions. Just last week he took a prototype aircraft to Mach 3.2 against explicit test parameters. The man clearly has a taste for risk."
"He's a test pilot," Carol said defensively. "They all push boundaries."
"And sometimes they push right out of town when the pressure gets too much," Gonzalez replied. She pulled out a formal report form nonetheless. "Start from the beginning. When did you last have contact with him?"
Carol described the strange phone call the previous evening, trying to frame Hal's comments about an alien crash in a way that wouldn't immediately discredit their concerns. She emphasized his excitement, the abrupt disconnection, and the unusual green flash she'd witnessed through the phone.
"After he didn't show up for work this morning, we tracked his phone's last location to the desert test range," she continued, sliding forward printed maps showing the GPS data. "We found his motorcycle abandoned near what appears to be an impact crater, but with unusual characteristics."
"Unusual how?" Gonzalez asked, her pen poised over the form.
Thomas opened the folder they'd brought, laying out photographs of the crater alongside preliminary analysis of the samples. "The sand was vitrified—turned to glass—by temperatures exceeding 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. There are material deposits unlike anything in our database, including traces of an alloy containing elements not found on the periodic table."
"And this substance," he added, passing her a sealed evidence bag containing a small vial of sparkling green particles, "shows energy patterns that defy conventional physics. It's still emitting radiation in a wavelength we can't properly measure with our equipment."
Detective Gonzalez examined the evidence with a neutral expression that betrayed neither belief nor dismissal. Twenty years on the force had taught her that strange cases sometimes had the most mundane explanations, while seemingly simple disappearances could hide the most bizarre truths.
"And you found blood?" she asked, referring to Carol's earlier mention.
"We don't know if it's blood," Carol admitted. "The lab's still processing it. But it was found exactly where Hal's footprints stopped in the center of the crater."
The detective set down her pen and leaned back in her chair, studying them both. "Ms. Ferris, Mr. Kalmaku, I've been doing this job long enough to recognize when people genuinely believe what they're telling me. I can see you're both sincerely concerned about Mr. Jordan."
She paused, choosing her next words carefully. "But you understand how this sounds. A man with a documented history of impulsive behavior disappears after telling his boss he found an alien spacecraft. The day after he broke flight test protocols and the same day he was supposed to face Pentagon officials potentially unhappy about that breach."
"You think he ran?" Carol asked incredulously. "Left his father's helmet, his phone, his motorcycle—everything that matters to him—just to avoid a meeting?"
"People under stress make decisions that don't always make logical sense," Gonzalez replied evenly. "And from his file, Mr. Jordan has a complicated relationship with authority figures. It wouldn't be the first time someone staged a disappearance to avoid consequences."
Thomas shook his head firmly. "If someone had told me this story yesterday, I'd have suggested they cut back on the sci-fi movies. But we saw that crater. We found physical evidence. And Hal Jordan—a man who would sooner die than abandon his father's helmet—is nowhere to be found."
Detective Gonzalez nodded thoughtfully, then resumed filling out the report. "I'm opening a missing persons case. We'll send officers out to examine the site tomorrow morning at first light. In the meantime—" her gaze softened slightly, "—I'd recommend preparing yourselves for the possibility that there's a more conventional explanation. In my experience, even the most reliable people occasionally do unexpected things."
"What are you saying?" Carol asked, tension evident in her voice.
"I'm saying that stress, personal crises, even brief psychotic episodes can cause people to behave uncharacteristically. The anniversary of his father's death might have triggered something. He might have walked away from that site and caught a ride somewhere to clear his head."
"Without his phone? Without his helmet?" Thomas challenged. "That theory doesn't hold up, Detective."
"Perhaps not," Gonzalez conceded. "But our investigation will consider all possibilities—both conventional and, shall we say, more exotic." She handed Carol a case number card. "We'll be in touch as soon as we have anything concrete. In the meantime, if Mr. Jordan contacts you or returns, call us immediately."
As they left the precinct, Carol felt a hollow resignation settling in her chest. The police would go through the motions, but she'd seen the skepticism in Gonzalez's eyes. They would search for rational explanations, for evidence that Hal had simply taken off on another of his impulsive adventures. They wouldn't be looking skyward, wouldn't be considering the impossible.
"They don't believe us," she said as they reached Thomas's truck.
"No," he agreed, "but they don't need to. The evidence will speak for itself once they see that crater." He checked his watch. "Jim's plane should be landing soon. Want me to pick him up on the way to the lab?"
Carol nodded. "I need to check in at the office first. The Pentagon delegation left a mess of paperwork that can't wait, even with..." she trailed off, the mundane concerns of business suddenly seeming trivial compared to Hal's disappearance.
"I understand. Meet us at the lab when you're done." Thomas started the engine. "And Carol? We're going to find him. Whatever happened out there, whatever that green flash was—we'll figure it out."
She mustered a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I know. And when we do find him, I'm going to kill him myself for putting us through this."
The joke fell flat, the worry behind it too real to be disguised. As Thomas drove away, Carol found herself once again scanning the night sky, the stars seeming both more distant and more significant than they ever had before.
Finally, Carol made a decision.
"Whatever happened out there, we're going to figure it out. I'll handle the authorities, the Pentagon, Hal's family—everything. You focus on the samples. If there's anything unusual about them—anything at all—I want to know immediately."
Thomas nodded, his expression resolute. "We'll find him, Carol. One way or another."
As darkness fell completely, the stars emerged in the clear desert sky, countless points of light stretching into infinity. Carol found herself scanning the heavens, wondering if somewhere among those distant stars, Hal Jordan was looking back toward Earth, thinking of the life—and the people—he'd left behind.
She took the helmet from the seat beside her, running her fingers over its scratched surface. Hal had worn it on every motorcycle ride since his father's death, a talisman of protection and remembrance. He would never have abandoned it willingly.
"Then we keep looking," she said, determination hardening her voice. "We find answers." Her gaze turned skyward again, where the first stars were becoming visible through the truck's windshield. "Wherever you are, Hal Jordan, you'd better have one hell of an explanation when you get back."