Pandora's Eyes. The Alex Cave Series Book 5.

Pandora's Eyes

PANDORA'S EYES

Published by James M. Corkill.

Copyright 2016 James M. Corkill. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

Manufactured in the United States of America

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Edition 1

Chapter 1

GROOM LAKE, NEVADA:

Alex Cave set the last of his clothes into the wooden dresser drawer and took a moment to look around the sparsely furnished apartment. After selling his house in Montana, it had taken three-weeks to pack all his belongings into storage, and now this was his new home.

Since the discovery of an alien spacecraft here on planet earth, his world had turned upside-down and was never going to be the same. It had taken two-years to get over the death of his wife, and when he finally fell in love again, she too was nearly murdered. He realized that as long as he was in this dangerous line of work, celibacy was his only option. At least things have settled down for now, he thought.

His phone rang, and he recognized the image of a man with curly gray hair, Doctor Henry Heinz, his good friend and boss here at the base. "Hey, Doc."

"I think you had better come down here right away," he said with a slight German accent.

"I'll be right there."

He hurried from the room, down the hall to the stairs, and moments later, stepped into his friend's office. "What's going on?"

Henry looked up at the tall man with wavy-black hair and blue eyes. "I have recently received a copy of a recording from the International Space Station. It was taken yesterday afternoon, shortly after the launch of a new satellite called the SV1, for Space Vacuum One. I looked through their permits, and they claim it is a way to efficiently collect the space debris currently in orbit."

Alex moved around to see the image on the monitor. His eyes went wide as he stared at the strange looking contraption as seen from the ISS. A ten-foot-long orange octagonal cylinder with solar panels floated among the stars, but what got his attention was the twenty-foot-long, pewter-colored torpedo protruding from the center. "I see why you called me down here."

"That looks like one of your devices, Alex."

"I think you're correct, Doc. The other three should already be here."

Alex thought about his best friend, Okana, who was searching for the last alien device in the Bering Sea. He was the engineer and submarine driver onboard the high-tech research ship Mystic. He and Okana were special agents and partners in the CIA, and his best friend had gotten him out of Russia in one piece after his wife's murder. Like him, Okana retired from the CIA and was now working for millionaire Mike Tanner, a private researcher, and owner of the Mystic.

Henry entered a command into his computer. "The inventory shows we have three of them. One from the Pacific Ocean, one from the island, and one from the spacecraft in Hangar 5. According to this, they arrived nine months ago."

Alex stood. "Let's go, Doc. I need to see for myself."

He led Henry to the elevator, and once inside, waited for him to insert his key into the control panel.