CHAPTER SEVEN

                 I crossed the intersection and just as I passed in front of the bank, I heard footsteps behind me. A hand grabbed my shoulder, spun me toward the brick building and shoved me against it. I raised my hands to catch myself and keep my face from hitting the wall. A voice behind me commanded, "This is the law. Don't you move."

                 With a hand in the middle of my back shoving me against the wall, he kicked my feet apart and away from the wall until I was leaning at a forty-five degree angle. Hands felt around my waist and down my legs. My backpack was stripped off as my arms were jerked behind me and I felt handcuffs being ratcheted shut around my wrists. I was then allowed to turn around to see who was behind me. One man was short, fat and fifty. He had red hair and a red face. His belly bulged out over his belt. He was dressed in khaki pants and shirt, and wore a western hat. On his chest was a large gold star, bearing the word, Sheriff. Behind him was a rather skinny kid with lots of pimples. He looked barely old enough to vote. He was dressed in the same manner as the sheriff except that he wore a silver star. Both of the men wore pistols in leather holsters.

                 "What is going on here, Sheriff?" I asked.

                 "I'll ask the questions," he replied as he propelled me along the sidewalk beside the bank. I was helpless to do anything except to go where they wanted because the sheriff had a firm grip on one of my arms and the deputy had the other. They guided me toward the front of the courthouse. It was a depressing gray brick building of a design which could best be described as early courthouse, or a mixture of just about every type of architecture known to man. There is a saying that if a committee set out to design a horse, they would come up with a camel. It also seems that this same committee designed most courthouses. With the tall, narrow windows, the basic building could be called modern. However, those lines were ruined by the Gothic towers on each corner. Sticking out from the front of the building was a huge Greek arch supported by four tall columns. It looked like something added as an afterthought. Engraved across the front of the arch was HVLSEY COVNTY COVRT HOVSE. For the life of me, I have never been able to see any reason why people who design courthouses insist on using the letter V instead of a U. Perhaps they feel that this makes the building seem more judicial or something.

                 A small replica of the statue of liberty stood to the right of the sidewalk leading to the building and an old field cannon which dated to somewhere around World War One sat on a concrete slab on the other. The wheels on the cannon were secured in place by a large chain which emerged from the concrete, ran between the spokes and back into the slab. Evidently someone had done this as a precaution to keep kids rolling it away.

                 They propelled me along the sidewalk toward the front of the courthouse, but instead of taking me up the steps and between the tall columns, they guided me around to one side of the portico, down a half-flight of steps which led under it and through a door leading into the basement. The sheriff inserted a key in the lock of a thick oak door and swung it open. Inside was a huge roll top desk with an oak chair with arms on it. There was a stout oak table with a chair on either side. Along one end of the room, iron bars and a steel door enclosed a small cell which contained nothing except a white toilet bowl without a seat and an iron cot with a bare cotton mattress. The whole place reeked of Pine Sol and stale cigarettes. This was obviously the room where the sheriff interrogated prisoners and its location suggested that he could interrogate as vigorously as he wished without anyone hearing what was going on. I suddenly remembered stories about confessions which had been extracted by the enthusiastic use of a rubber hose.

                 The sheriff closed the door, removed the handcuffs and told me to empty my pockets onto a table. I had a pocket knife, a comb, a ring of keys, some nail clippers and about twelve dollars in change, mostly quarters, in my pants pockets, as well as a handkerchief and my wallet in my back pockets. I put them on the table.

                 The sheriff sorted through the things which I had removed from my pockets then he opened my backpack and began to dig through it. He pulled out my shaving kit followed by a pair of pants, two shirts, three pairs of socks and three changes of underwear. After inspecting each item, he placed it on the table. Then he opened my shaving kit and went through the contents. One of the items which seemed to interest him the most was a plastic disposable razor. The last thing that he looked at was my portable radio. He turned it over in his hands, looked at the knobs and read the FCC notice on the back. "What is this?" he asked.

                 "That's a radio, Sheriff."

                 "Little thing like this can't pick up much," he said. "How does it work?"

                 I reached over and took it from his hand and turned it on. I knew that there wasn't a chance that anyone was going to hear it in 1946 because they did start using VHF frequencies for civilian aviation until around 1950. However, since the military did earlier, I thought that there might be a chance that some military pilot would hear me and respond. I switched it to 122.5, the universal emergency frequency, and pressed the talk button. The red transmit light came on and a small beep came from the speaker. I continued to hold it down as I talked. "It's used just for emergencies. If I simply said Mayday, Mayday into it, everyone would know that I had an emergency here in Sanger, Nebraska."

                 "What the hell are you doing?" shouted the sheriff as he snatched it away.

                 "Just trying to get some music for you," I replied. "But I guess that we are too far from a station.

                 He turned it off and laid it on top of my clothing.

                 "Would you please tell me what you are holding me for," I asked.

                 "I'm sure that you know why you are here. You may think that just because this is a small town, all of the people in it are stupid," he replied as he dug through my wallet.

                 "Well, I certainly haven't done anything wrong and know of no reason why you should cuff and search me. I want you to either tell me what your probable cause is for arresting me or else release me," I told him.

                 "What do you mean by probable cause? Are you a smart-asked lawyer or something, Mister Foreman?" he said as he read my name from my drivers license.

                 "No, I'm not a lawyer, but probable cause means that an officer has to have a good and valid reason for stopping a person, much less detaining him under arrest. I take it that since you placed handcuffs on me and brought me here, I am under arrest," I replied.

                 "You're damn sure right that you're under arrest and I have a damn good cause for doing it."

                 "What is that cause?"

                 "Passing counterfeit money is a good enough cause for a starter. No telling what else I can hold you for once we get into it," said the sheriff.

                 "That's crazy. I'm no counterfeiter. What gave you an idea like that?"

                 "It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. You have a whole pocket full of counterfeit quarters on you. You passed three of them over at the cafe and gave two more to the waitress. She also said that you gave her one which she put into the jute box. Anyone with any sense at all can see the copper showing through the edge of these coins and know that they are slugs. Not only are they easy to spot with the copper insides showing, but they even have the wrong dates on them. Look at this one, it is dated 1982. Everyone knows that this is 1946."

                 He opened my wallet and pulled out the money. He looked at the new twenty dollar bills and let out a low whistle as he counted them. "This guy has over five hundred dollars on him," he told his deputy. "Melvin, go around to the bank and get Lester Bales to come in here and have a look at all these counterfeit twenties."

                 "What do these keys fit?" asked the sheriff as he inspected each key on the ring.

                 "My car, my pickup and my house," I answered.

                 He paid particular attention to the key with the plastic covered head. He read the name on it and asked, "What's a Mazda."

                 "That's the key to my pickup truck, it's a Mazda," I replied.

                 "Don't get smart with me fellow, I happen to know that there's no such make of pickup. Now, I'm asking you once more to tell me what this key fits."

                 I knew that the answer wasn't going to satisfy him but couldn't think of anything else to say at the moment, "It fits a Mazda pickup which is made in Japan."

                 "I don't know what's going on here, but I can tell you one thing for damn sure. If this key fits a pickup which was made in Japan, then you are in a whole lot more trouble than you think. Those little yellow bellied bastards killed my only son and both of Melvin's brothers, so you'd better come up with some good answers in a hurry."                        

                 Before the conversation could go any further, the deputy returned with a little man who was wearing round glasses and one of those green eyeshades that looks like the bill on a baseball cap. He looked at the bills, felt the paper and rubbed them with his thumb. He finally said, "Sheriff, I never saw any bills like these before, counterfeit or otherwise. These bills are called Federal Reserve Notes, not Silver Certificates like all the other twenties that I've ever seen. I never heard of such a bill and look at the dates on them. However, I'd swear that the paper and printing is authentic. I wouldn't take one at the bank, but on the other hand, I wouldn't say that they are counterfeit either. If they are bogus, they are the best ones that I've ever seen."

                 Then Bales and the sheriff began to look at my credit cards. They read what was printed on them, felt the embossed numbers and ran their fingers over the magnetic strip on the back. "What are these?" asked the sheriff.

                 "Credit cards," I answered, trying not to open up any unnecessary areas for more questions.

                 "I recognize the names of Phillips, Mobil and Texaco, but these other cards say that they were issued by banks. I never heard of anything called Visa, MasterCard or Discover, what are they for?" asked Bales.

                 "They are also credit cards," I replied.

                 "Credit cards for what?" he asked.

                 "Where I come from, Mister Bales, a person can use those cards to charge merchandise at just about any store or they can use them to draw cash at a bank."

                 "How are they used?" he asked.

                 I wasn't about to try to explain about automatic tellers, so I told him, "You give the card to a teller and tell him how much money you want. He will use the card to stamp a form, you sign your name and he gives you the cash."

                 "How much money can you get on a card like this," he asked, holding up my Discover card.

                 "My credit limit on that card is five thousand dollars," I replied.

                 "And these," he said, holding up the Visa and MasterCard.

                 "I believe that the limit on them is the same as the Discover card," I answered.

                 "You mean to say that you can take these three cards into a bank and get fifteen thousand dollars in cash, just like that, no notes, no mortgages or anything," he asked.

                 "That's right, and the Discover card is also good at any Sears store."

                 "You carry over five hundred dollars in cash in your pocket and claim that you can get another fifteen thousand dollars just by handing these cards to a bank, I don't believe it. Hells Fire, Mister J. D. Rockefeller couldn't even do that," said Bales.

                 "And I don't believe it either. This guy has to be either the smartest man on earth or else the dumbest," said the sheriff. "Thanks for the help, Lester. You can go on back to the bank."

                 The sheriff picked up my drivers license, looked at my photo on it and asked, "When were you born?"

                 November Third, 1928," I replied.

                 He counted up on his fingers and said, "That would make you seventeen years old. Hell, you look older than I am."

                 "I probably am. Look at the date the license was issued."

                 The sheriff wrote my name on a small blackboard with chalk, handed it to me to hold and told me to stand against the wall. Painted on the wall were marks and numbers indicating height. He got out a brownie camera, inserted a bulb in the flash and snapped my photo. "Now turn sideways," he said, then he snapped another from that view.

                 He cranked the rest of the film through the camera, removed the roll and handed it to the deputy. "Take this down to the drug store and tell them that I need three prints of each one and that I need them back as quick as possible."

                 By the time that the sheriff had finished finger printing me, the deputy had returned. "The pictures will be back in about a week," he said.

                 I doubted that the sheriff was going to buy any story about my being from someplace 40 years in his future, but I had to try something. "Sheriff, I know that you are going to find this awfully hard to believe, but I am actually from the year 1986. Strictly by some sort of accident, I am trapped here in 1946. The credit cards, money and everything else that you see there is authentic."

                 I should have known that this question would be the next one as the sheriff asked, "You say that you are from 1986, then tell me how in hell did you get back here?"

                 I didn't know myself how I had gotten there and it was going to be even harder trying to come up with something that the sheriff might believe. Before I could answer, Melvin saved the day, "I'll bet that he's one of them alien things and came in on that flying saucer that I was chasing last night!"

                 "You know, Sheriff, your deputy is a lot smarter than you'd think. He is absolutely right, I came on that flying saucer, only we don't call them that. We have had both space and time travel for several years and that's how I came here. I was away from the ship last night when your deputy almost discovered us and they had to move without me."

                 "See, I told you that I almost caught that flying saucer. I got real close and all of a sudden, Zoom! it was gone. How does it go that fast? " Melvin asked excitedly.

                 "It didn't actually go anywhere, it simply stayed where it was and moved into another time element."

                 "What do you mean another time element?" asked the sheriff.

                 This story was going a lot better than I had expected. Perhaps I could convince this man to let me go and I could try to work myself out of this mess. "I'll use a very simple example to show you how I got to this point in time. Suppose that you arrived in front of the bank at exactly ten in the morning and saw a car drive by. Had that car driven been going twice as fast from the time he left home until he passed in front of the bank, would you have seen it?

                 "Why, hell no I wouldn't because he had already gone by."

                 "Correct, and suppose that he had been driving only half as fast and you left the bank at ten, would have been there to see it when it did come by."

                 "I still don't see what you are talking about," said the sheriff.

                 "That's the way that time travel works. Melvin could no longer see the ship because it was no longer there at the time when he was looking."  

                 "Sounds like a bunch of Buck Rogers stuff to me. What were you doing here?" asked the sheriff.

                 "Agricultural research," I replied. "We were taking soil samples to see what changes in mineral content have taken place over the past 40 years and how they have effected crop production. With that knowledge, we will be able to predict what will happen to food production in this area in years to come."

                 "Was anyone else left here except you?"

                 "No, I was the only one."

                 "How are you going to get back?"

                 "No problem, they know where I am and the precise time element when I was left. They will be back after me. Leaving someone on the ground is not unusual. Occasionally, people will be left in a time element for an extended length of time for one reason or another. We prepare people who will remain in another time element but in my case we didn't anticipate Melvin nearly catching the ship on the ground. If they had, I would have had money and papers from this time element so something like this wouldn't happen. I didn't think anyone would notice if I spent nothing but coins."

                 "What does the flying saucer look like?" asked Melvin.

                 I started to tell him that it was round with windows but remembered my watch. I raised my sleeve and showed them the picture of the Space Shuttle. "This is what it looks like."

                 "That doesn't look like what I saw last night. It was more like a bowl or hubcap," said Melvin.

                 "You were probably seeing it from the front," I replied. It would look something like what you describe, especially when seen in the dark."

                 "What does NASA stand for?" asked the sheriff.

                 "NASA stand for National Agricultural Science Administration. I work for them," I replied, figuring that he could understand agriculture and science better than space.

                 "Wow, that is some watch. Look at all the buttons," said Melvin. "How does it work?"

                 "It's an atomic powered watch which will run for at least a thousand years. NASA furnishes them to all of their employees who time travel. With an atomic watch, we can adjust time to a millionth of a second."

                 "It doesn't have any hands, just numbers, and keeps flashing back and forth. What does TH-8-24-86 mean?" he asked.

                 "That means that today is Thursday, August 24th, 1986, or at least it is 1986 in the time element where I come from."

                 The sheriff pulled out a large gold pocket watch and compared the time on it against my watch. "It doesn't keep very good time, it's an hour fast," he said.

                 "The watch is set for Daylight Savings Time, or what you called War Time. Let me correct it," I said as I changed it back to standard time. The watch instantly switched to the correct time.

                 "Wow!" said Melvin as he looked at the watch. "You didn't have to turn a knob or do anything except press a button and it changed just like that."        

                 "What are all those other buttons for?" asked the sheriff.

                 "In addition to being a watch, it is an electronic calculator which will do all of the normal mathematical functions plus a lot more."

                 "When are you supposed to be picked up and how will they find you?" asked the sheriff.

                 I could see where he was going so I thought that I'd give him a reason for letting me go. "I don't know the exact time that they will be here to pick me up but I assure you that they not only know where I am at this moment but that I'm behind held prisoner. That means that they will send their forced recovery team to get me."

                 "What's a forced recovery team?" asked Melvin.

                 "That is part of the security force on the ship and they are trained to use whatever force is necessary to recover one of their people."

                 "They'd have to go past me if you're in my jail," said the sheriff as he patted the pistol on his hip.

                 "Sheriff, if we have the technology to build time travel shuttles and atomic watches, do you think that mere guns or jail bars would pose the slightest problem to the recovery team? Remember the atomic bombs we used on Japan, well today those are as obsolete as firecrackers. The recovery team tries to avoid direct conflict in another time element if at all possible, but as I said, they come prepared to use whatever force necessary to complete their mission. So, why don't you release me and avoid placing you and your deputy in jeopardy. When I walk out that door, you will never see me again."

                 He sat there and thought about what I had said for several minutes. "I've been a sheriff for twenty years and I've heard all sorts of stories, but I have never heard such a bunch of bullshit in all my days. I'm not about to let you walk out of here and since this involves counterfeiting, I'm going to turn this over to the FBI and the Treasury Department."

                 He gave the phone a crank, picked it and said, "Lillie, this is the Sheriff. Get me the FBI in Omaha."

                 Damn, if the FBI get involved in this, I might never get out. I have to get away from this place some way, but how.

                 After telling the FBI what he knew about me, he hung up the phone and said, "The FBI will be here to pick you tomorrow. In the meantime, you are going to be a guest of Hulsey County."

                 "Want me to take him up stairs and book him?" asked Melvin.

                 "No, we'll keep him down here in the holding cell. The FBI said that since he claims to have come in a flying saucer, this might be something top secret and they don't want him to see or talk to anyone until they have a chance to interrogate him."

                 "Sheriff, under the Miranda Decision, I have the right to an attorney and I want to see one right now."

                 "You don't have any rights of any kind while you are in my jail unless I say so. I'll decide if and when you can see a lawyer, and what the hell is all this bull about a Miranda Decision anyway?"

                 It suddenly occurred to me that the Miranda Decision didn't come down until a number of years after 1946. "I forgot that the Miranda case wasn't heard by the Supreme Court until several years from now, so it's not surprising that you haven't heard of it."

                 "You seem to know all this legal stuff, just what is this decision that you are talking about?" he asked.

                 "The Supreme Court issued a decision in a landmark case concerning a man by the name of Miranda and that is why it is called the Miranda Decision. They ruled that if a person is placed under arrest, the arresting officer must inform him of his constitutional rights. He has to inform the prisoner that he has the right to remain silent and that anything that he says can be used against him in a court or law. He also has the right to have an attorney present while he is being questioned and if he can't afford an attorney, one has to be provided for him."

                 "Bullshit! The Supreme Court would never do such a thing to the law officers of the nation. That would tie their hands and the criminals would take over. Lock him up Melvin, and you stay here with him, I'm going home to get something to eat. I'll have the cafe send something over for you and him."

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