It struck awe. A falling sun illuminating its sideways stretched elliptical surfaces, a burble of pure cream against the bright blue dome arching over gritty canyon country. A perfect whitish flying saucer, although a couple black dots toward the bottom could have been cameras or weird alien eyes. Minoa and Ireni stood up from where they’d been sitting on rocks in the canyon bottom, looked above shadowy cliff walls to a sky deepening to turquoise.
“What the hell…”
“Is that…”
They watched it long enough to run an internal check of their senses, sobriety, wakefulness. All in order, more or less. So it must be…
* * *
For a while they heard nothing but occasional rocks skipping down the far side of the canyon, the clatter muffled at the canyon bottom. Minoa squinted into the night, peering in every direction. Steve looked at his phone. Another couple rocks ricocheted and then Wassail’s yell rebounded up the canyon to the otherworldly landscape on top.
“Found her. Dammit.”
They jumped to their feet.
“Is she injured?”
“I think… I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”
New Mexico Curiosities
Straddling a southern portion of the San Mateo Mountains of southwestern Socorro County, the Apache Kid Wilderness is characterized by rugged, narrow, steep canyons bisecting high mountain peaks exceeding 10,000 feet. Bands of Apache effectively controlled the Magdalena-Datil region from the seventeenth century until they were defeated in the Apache Wars in the late nineteenth century. Apache Kid Wilderness is named for a Native American called the Apache Kid, said to have carried out many raids. Supposedly local ranchers hunted him down in the wilderness, killed him and blazed a tree to mark the spot. The haunting remains of the hacked tree are said to still be there. Other famous Apaches like Cochise and Geronimo and outlaws like Butch Cassidy also spent time in the area.The Mogollon–Datil volcanic field is made up of lavas that erupted from volcanoes 24 to 40 million years ago. Monument Rock and other hoodoo formations in the vicinity are eroded pillars of that debris.New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, known as New Mexico Tech, was founded in 1889 by the territorial legislature. Today it is a small but highly rated STEM college. It provides the inspiration, but not an exact model, for the college in Death at Apache Kid.The Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research is a scientific laboratory studying the cloud processes that produce lightning, hail, and rain, located in the Magdalena Mountains of central New Mexico. The laboratory is located just south of South Baldy, the highest peak of the Magdalena mountains, at the southern end of the range, at an elevation of 10,679 ft.Magdalena Ridge Observatory is located on the same mountaintop as Langmuir Laboratory. The first design for the observatory was commissioned in 2000, and in July 2004 the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge agreed to participate. The MRO consists of two major facilities: an operational 2.4-meter fast-tracking telescope and a ten-element optical/infrared interferometer. The Very Large Array is a radio astronomy observatory located in central New Mexico on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, west of Socorro. The VLA comprises twenty-eight 25-meter radio telescopes in a Y-shaped array. Each of the massive telescopes is mounted on double parallel railroad tracks so the radius and density of the array can be adjusted. Astronomers using the VLA have made key observations of black holes, magnetic and gas phenomena at the Milky Way’s center and planet formation around young stars.The VLA is where Jodie Foster heard an alien signal in the 1997 movie Contact. Now the facility will be used in a massive search by the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). The project will observe about 40 million galactic star systems in two years’ time. It will be the most comprehensive SETI observing program ever undertaken. Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is located in San Antonio, Socorro County. Situated between the Chupadera Mountains to the west and the San Pascual Mountains to the east, the 57,331 acre Bosque del Apache was established in 1939 to provide a critical stopover site for migrating waterfowl.There have been 374 different bird species observed since 1981, making it one of the most diverse areas for bird species in the United States. The wetlands attract huge flocks of wintering cranes and geese. Many other species, including waterfowl, shorebirds, and birds of prey, winter in the refuge.In the Chihuahuan desert terrain outside of the Rio Grande riparian zone, the refuge hosts three federally designated Wilderness areas (Chupadera, Little San Pascual, and Indian Well).The 640-acre Box Recreation Area is a scenic, rugged area popular for rock climbing and bouldering. The five cliffs on either side of this box canyon provide rock climbing challenges for even skilled technical climbers.
