After some small talk, Carver recognizes Michael's interest in aliens and tells the story of the 1947 crash.

Things at the site were busy when Carver (played in flashback by Brendan "Michael" Fehr) and Richard Dody ("played" by Jason "Max" Behr) arrived. Soldiers are everywhere.

Colonel Cassidy (Sheriff Valenti) orders the newcomers to help but won't give any indication what is going on. Dody notes that the object that crashed was too small to be a plane they recognize, based on the size of the impact site.

Carver watches as soldiers load a Jeep. A bit of shiny material drops from one of the boxes, and Carver picks it up. It appears to be metal, but when he crumples it up, it unfolds itself.

He tells Dody that people would pay to see something like this.

Colonel Cassidy offers no comment about the crash. Since this is a restricted area, he asks the deputy to escort the reporter away.

Counterintelligence officer Captain Sheridan Cavett (Colin "Alex" Hanks) arrives and orders Carver and Dody to drive the troop transport out to Hangar Twenty. They are to stop for nothing and tell no one of their job.

Back in the present, Michael seems to know this story -- it was all a weather balloon, wasn't it?

But Carver shows the youth proof that it was something more. He kept the scrap of alien metal.

Back in flashback country, Dody wonders aloud if the reporter was on to something. He seems worried about the safety of his country.

Suddenly, the vehicle's speed drops. Carver, through voiceover, explains that it was as though someone else were controlling the transport.

A glowing person appears in front of the transport, forcing him to swerve off the road to avoid hitting it.

Dody checks on their cargo and is shocked to see what they've been transporting: a pulsing, glowing red object kept literally under wraps.

Pete the barkeep tells some locals that someone saw a flying disk. While he is concerned about what may happen should the soldiers ever leave town, a guest has the answer: "Roswell, New Mexico: Home of the Little Green Men."

Across the bar, Dody and Carver discuss what they saw over drinks. When Dody goes to the rest room, Carver heads to the bar for more alcohol, only to bump into Betty Osario, the reporter.

After some serious flirting, she asks what was in the truck. Mood ruined, he heads back to his table.

Cavett is there, sensing a security leak. He chides Carver for speaking with a reporter, reminding him that the object was only a weather balloon.

Carver drops in on his girlfriend, Rosemary (Katherine "Isabel" Heigl). She tosses him some socks which happen to be someone else's, and instead of wanting to know about his day, she just wants to kiss.

Carver hears a sound outside and discovers a man in a fedora watching them.

Back in the present, Carver and Michael are sitting at the counter of the Crashdown Cafe. Carver asks for a banana split -- his third -- but Maria hesitates.

"What are you, the Dairy Police?" Michael asks. "We're in the middle of a story here."

But Carver is not sure he wants to go on if there's no ice cream to lubricate the works. Michael offers to take him on a tour of town, but having no car he has to ask Maria if he can borrow the Jetta.

Maria explodes. She yells at him for not returning his messages, then she questions him about Courtney, letting him know that she saw them in the alley last episode.

For Michael, the matter is closed. Maria is human, and he is alien. Their lives don't mix. Except when he wants to borrow the Jetta.

Guilt gets Michael the car. She only agrees when she acknowledges that she never said good-bye to her own grandfather.

Back in the past, Carver has made a breakfast date with the reporter, but she shows up with Nurse Yvonne White (Shiri "Liz" Appleby), who has seen some things she cannot explain.

Carver recognizes the ambush, doubting the reporter's true intentions, thinking them to be financial only. Seeking comfort, he heads to Rosemary's, only to find her talking with Deputy Valenti.

She claims that he is there to help her clean up the mess the Military Police made while searching her place. He wonders if the socks belong to the deputy, then goes back to the base to demand why the colonel has searched the apartment of his girlfriend -- a civilian.

Cassidy is furious in his own right. He questions where Carver has been and why he visited that reporter again, threatening that he should stay on base and mind his own business if he wants to get flight privileges back.

In the meantime, there are two telegrams to be mailed: Privates Viper and McCarthy died in a Jeep accident.

Carver throws some desk equipment around, then arranges to meet Nurse White without the reporter present.

The two meet outside. Interestingly, she has been transferred to London.

As she remembers, bodies found at the crash site were recognizably Classic Alien to modern viewers: big heads and large, dark eyes. They were nothing like anything she'd ever seen, and the doctors were unfamiliar as well.

Now she wants to get away, to forget everything. She leaves, and then Carver hears a scream. She's gone.

The colonel's secretary, Dixie (Emilie "Tess" deRavin), is straightening papers when Carver enters, looking for help locating someone on a military plane.

Dixie tells him, "Look, whatever you're after, I think you should drop it." As Carver flirts with her, we discover that these two have a history.

When she leaves, he opens a file marked "Confidential." Inside is the report on the crash, as well as some photos. One is of a body with a silver hand print.

Out at Hangar 20, Carver tries to get inside, but Dody -- now wearing a badge with clearance from Military Intelligence -- stops him.

Carver meets Betty by the roadside to trade information. The reporter goes first, telling him that the local funeral home has sent child-sized coffins to the base.

He tells her that he was ordered to falsify death notices for the two privates, who were attacked -- according to the confidential report -- by two figures at the crash site as they approached the red sacs.

When other officers arrived, they were blinded by a flash of light.

Carver wants the truth to be known. Giving Osario the classified files, he tells her, "Those privates deserve more. Their families deserve the truth."

She makes sure that he is willing to go on record with this information. He will be either a hero or a traitor.

At a similar roadside place in the present, Michael and Carver talk. Using his powers, Michael changes a soda into a beer and offers it to Carver, musing that his "friend" likes to drink.

Carver infers that Michael is talking about Maria, as well as the history between them. Michael denies everything, just like Max denied Sheriff Valenti's comments about Tess last episode.

Carver urges Michael to act -- he himself should have kissed Betty Osario.

Back in memory, Dody is drinking heavily with Carver at Parker's Bar. He calls himself a coward.

"I saw stuff," he says. "I was a good soldier. I went along with it." He wonders if he is on the right side.

Carver says things will be different tomorrow. The whole world will know. He tells his friend to check the paper in the morning.

Soon after, Carver leaves. Dody, suddenly not drunk, turns to a disguised Cavett, who leaves the bar with his men, off to make things right.

The next day, Carver sees nothing in the papers. He calls the Fort Worth newspaper, but Betty is not there.

Back at his desk, he finds a letter of resignation already typed for him. It cites insubordination but offers an honorable discharge.

Carver goes in to see the colonel, but Dody is there instead. Dody sold Carver out. Dody explains, "I had orders. I didn't have a choice."

Out of friendship, Dody convinced the others to treat Carver well -- an honorable discharge instead of something worse. He implies that it might go badly for Rosemary if Carver does not sign.

The bartender at Parker's has a letter for Carver. It is from Betty, a note with a key "for safe keeping."

When Carver calls Betty's home, he speaks with her sister instead. Betty died the night before in a car accident on Highway 70.

The key opens the door to Building 7354 on base, the morgue. Carver sneaks in with a camera. There, he finds the glowing red sacs which he had seen in the back of the transport.

He snaps pictures of the pods, which are dripping gray fluid. He sees two doctors lying dead on the floor, with glowing hand prints on their chests. Again, he snaps pictures.

Across the room, he sees four little coffins.

Carver spies movement behind the curtain, glimpsing two glowing figures in the mirror -- in voiceover, he compares their behavior to a mother bear protecting her cubs.

"I realize that I had been afraid of the wrong thing," he tells Michael. "It wasn't us they wanted."

The Carver in the past backs away from the pods. When he sees MPs in the hallway, he pulls a fire alarm and runs, distracting the guards to allow the glowing figures to open the sacs.

Michael asks about the sacs. Inside were what "looked like human fetuses, four to a sac, eight total."

Carver left Roswell that night and never returned until now. His only moment of heroism did nothing. No one was saved.

Michael destroys some bottles with his powers, then turns to Carver and says, "You saved me." The two men hug.

Later, Michael stops by the now-dead Congresswoman Whittaker's office to see if Liz has seen Max. He offers to help Liz figure the Whittaker thing out and even apologizes for his behavior in the morning.

Initially, Liz thinks that Max put his friend up to this, but Michael denies it.

As he turns to leave, Liz says, "I like it."

Still later, Michael introduces Maria to the granolith, which he describes as "the reason I haven't been returning your phone calls."

She is awestruck. When Michael says that they will figure it out, she says, "We? You didn't even choke on that."

He tells her that he has learned an important lesson: that he has lots of humans to thank for his life. He thanks Maria personally. They hold hands.

But things get ominous when he wonders about the other four aliens in the other sac.