Fair Trade: An Alien Invasion Story
Date: 2021-09-21T18:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: Most of my writing is in a series people seem to enjoy but there is a constant small crowd who say: I'd really like your take on an alien invasion story. Well this is for them. The bulk of the aliens come to Earth stories assume their vast superiority, sometimes invincibility. Sometimes they suddenly appear on the white house lawn dictating terms. I have yet to see one with them appearing at the Kremlin or Canberra which seems rather parochial. Other times they are so advanced they quarantine the Earth or Solar System without discussion because we are such barbarian slime-balls. They may alter

Fair Trade

An Alien Invasion Story

Mackey Chandler

Cover Image by Luca Oleastri

Chapter 1

"What are the numbers?" Commander Three Fingers of the Protector demanded.

"Oxygen is about one part in five, maybe a little low, gravity is high, eight parts per hundred above standard. Spin is about seven-eighths of a standard day. The planet must have a huge iron core," the navigator/astrophysicist, and second in command, Blue, mused.

"Temperature?" The commander asked gruffly. He wasn't interested in abstract knowledge yet.

"Well below the zero point of water freezing at the axis ends, all over the scale elsewhere. I'm seeing some areas at near half the scale to boiling, the terrain is rugged with large mountains and active volcanism on several continents. Temperature varies with altitude and proximity to large bodies of water. It has a big tilt to its axis too. There's more water than land, and it seems to be deeper than we can measure on passive scan out this far. Once we get well inside the orbit of that big moon, I'll get a better reading."

"Why don't you have them sweep it with low-frequency radar then?" Three Fingers asked, irritated.

"There is a technological presence on the planet. They may easily detect us if I go to active scan."

"Shit."

"Worse than that, I detect point neutrino emissions and artificial satellites," Blue said, quietly.

"People?" Three Fingers asked, tense.

"Not our kind, nor Tigers, nor Bugs," Blue assured him. "But whatever they are there's a lot of them. I can already see surface artifacts."

"Set for stealth running, no emissions, not even internal wireless," Three Fingers ordered. The flight deck sounded with a brief buzz, as a dozen belt communicators vibrated, and displayed a notice that all com was restricted to hard-wired.

"There are no electronic emissions from other planets in the system," Blue added. "I'd be surprised if they are advanced enough to detect such low-powered emissions."

"So would I," Three Fingers agreed. "And the last thing I need right now is another surprise. I wish we could just pass on to the next few systems, and not have to deal with them. This is a job for an exploration team, not an assault carrier.”

"Chances of a planet on which we could survive are so low it would be suicide. We have limited life support, several critical systems without redundancy, leaks that are impossible to evaluate without going EV, and a lot of our spare parts were blown to hell in the beam hole shot through decks twenty-six and twenty-seven by that Bug cruiser. Most folks would say we are unbelievably lucky to take a straight-through beam hit and not break up. Have you ever heard of it happening before?" Blue asked.

"No, but odds were pretty slim the Protector would come out of jump fifty man-lengths from the Bugs. They were so close the beam didn't have enough range to spread. And the bridge record shows they fired faster than any biological reaction time, so it was an automated response. They probably never saw any need to program their systems to hold fire if the target was too close."

"And we jumped back out on automatic too," Blue reminded him needlessly. Their problem then had been that they couldn't turn the faster than light drive off, and nobody had ever proposed such a problem occurring, much less a fix. They had finally cut the power panel to the whole ship, to let it drift, allowing someone to disassemble the drive controls, coasting dark and without any gravity. "The beam was probably still on when we disappeared. I imagine none of them saw us until later when they reviewed their cameras as to why their weapon fired, and why there was a sudden debris field expanding away from them. We appeared and left faster than your brain could register it. I just wish our weapons had been programmed to fire automatically too."

"It doesn't matter," Three Fingers assured him. "The tidal forces from jumping out that close will have warped and damaged the Bug cruiser badly.”

"Pilot, ease us into an orbit around the metastable point between the planet and the giant moon, with as little observable drive use as possible. Make it a big enough loop we are not silhouetted against the bright face of the satellite. Oh, and put a surveillance module on the back of their moon and a relay to listen for anyone entering the system. We want to hail our own or be warned if Tigers or Bugs show up.

“I want to know some basics before we go in any closer, how many natives, some idea what they look like, and the level of their technology. Start accumulating data about their language, and if it has an acoustical component we can hear or speak. I'm exhausted. I'm taking a rest period, as should any of the prime team who have been up so long. I'll examine your reports when rested, and we change shifts."

* * *

"How many languages?" Three Fingers asked. Blue wasn't sure he believed him.

"I'm pretty sure I've identified seventeen, but I fully expect to find more."

"This is insane. We don't have the assets to deal with that many languages. They have worldwide travel, why would they retain isolated languages?"

"I have no idea, but here is something interesting. They use one language for air traffic control. It’s the same language that is used at several large but widely separated, areas on the planet. We're concentrating on it because we can record their instructions to an aircraft, and then watch how it maneuvers."

"That has promise," Three Fingers agreed. He put his inside thumb along his jaw and his three remaining fingers cupped across his chin, deep in thought. The maimed hand still bothered Blue, after serving with him for years, but he forced himself not to look away.

"They have image transmission. It’s sequence video, which gives us a good idea of how fast their nervous systems work and how fast they can react," Blue boasted. "They are very similar to us. Upright bipeds with a similar face, but only one thumb, thinner, and the young feeding glands are weird, up near their armpits instead of down on their hips. I'll put a couple on the screen."

After a few minutes of study Three Fingers asked to make sure, "These are all the same race?"

"Yes, there is quite a wide range of physical size, pigmentation, and hair patterns."

"I'd have said they are dainty compared to us, except for that fellow," He pointed out a screen capture of a Sumo wrestler, scowling with greased hair tied back tightly.

"Yes, he reminds me disturbingly of my mother-in-law," Blue revealed, "the same hair too."

"No wonder you signed up for the Deep Sky Services," Three Fingers understood at last.

"We have an approximation of their basic unit of length. Their man length is about two of their units called meters. They run an extra one part in ten taller than us – mostly," Blue hedged. “We have their numerals with some certainty, which are base ten, and enough videos had time counters we found their common short time unit is very close to ours. But it appears they count time in increments of sixty instead of a hundred. Don't ask me why."

"If it looks like they have never had contact with another race, that's to the good," Three Fingers said, "because they won't have technological weapons. By this cultural stage territorial disputes should be historic, and military weapons a curiosity in museums, if they've never faced anything like the Bugs."

"Maybe…I've already seen some strange things I can't explain," Blue admitted.

"Like what?" Three Fingers demanded.

"We saw several groups of ships like this," Blue explained, putting an overhead view on the screen. It showed several surface vessels clustered around a big ship. "Look at the big ship closer," he invited and zoomed in on it.

"Aircraft? Fixed-wing aircraft on an ocean-going vessel? Do they need them for refueling stations? Do they use very low energy density fuels? I can't see this being economically viable. How big is that vessel?" he demanded.

"Half the length of the Protector," Blue told him. "Greater than half our volume though."

Three Fingers contemplated that silently a bit.

"However, they don't store them all on deck, like we grapple our combat shuttles. They take them below decks on elevators and carry a variety of aircraft. Most of them seem to loiter around the ship awhile and then land again. They will fly a big oval above the group at about three hundred man-lengths per kip. A few times they would sprint off at thousand man-lengths per kip. The thermal signature indicates they use air-breathing reaction engines."

"That's mighty expensive technology," Three Fingers protested. "Back on Home I, there were only a couple of hundred fast couriers using that sort of engine."

"They have thousands of aircraft using that sort of propulsion," Blue assured him. "Oh, and while we were watching, an aircraft left this small island here," he drew a circle on the screen with his pointer, "and landed on the big ship deck. It flew at over twenty-six hundred man-lengths per kip. As close as we can see it doesn't have any wings. It must derive all its lift and control from the body shape."

"There have been proposals to build such a thing from time to time," Three Fingers acknowledged. "In theory, it could be done, with exotic materials, but it would cost hundreds of times what a conventional aircraft would. The Bugs and the Tigers certainly have never made one, so we have no incentive to make one to match them. It seems like if you are going to that much expense, you might as well go ahead and build an orbital shuttle."

“It did go ballistic briefly. One wonders if it might be capable of orbiting with a very slight boost to help the air-breathing engine. Oh, the neutrino emissions I spoke of? It is hard to localize, but it appears some of the ships are nuclear-powered. It is an odd pattern, as if it is not just one fuzzy dot localized on the big ship but several nodes in the neutrino detector nearby. You know it doesn't give a super sharp image," Blue said. The energy spectrum doesn’t make any sense either. I have no idea what fusion reaction they’re using. It may be exotic.”

"Nuclear-powered ocean vessels?” Three Fingers asked. “It just keeps getting stranger and stranger. We need to send some drones, maybe even a manned shuttle down to collect data. Draw up a list of things that caught your interest. Oh, Shiny, send a long-range disk drone to get a close look at that big ship. If we ever make it back home, they won't believe that without good pictures."

* * *

Well away from land in the Indian Ocean, the battle group around the CVN 147 George W. Bush looked for hazards to come to them from the north and west, from the Indian subcontinent or Africa. That didn't mean they didn't watch the entire horizon. The Bush was the last built of the three carriers still in service of the double-hulled Clinton class and getting rather long in the tooth. All the new ones were submersibles. It had three times the deck area of the old Ford class. It could launch most of its aircraft in fifteen minutes, since few of them needed catapult assistance, and it could recover the ones not capable of vertical landing or land based aircraft on four capture lanes, staggered at three-minute intervals. The elevators took the recovered aircraft down on the inside, in the sheltered space between the two hulls, to access three hanger decks.

"CAP three, turn to one-seven-three and go to FMP. Climb to 28k meters. We have a radar return that does not fit any known aircraft or missile closing at eleven hundred kilometers an hour. We wish you to make a visual of the bogey in passing.”

Alan Davison acknowledged and eased his throttle from a fuel-sipping forty percent to the next full stop. He did an easy turning climb to the correct heading and wondered if they would tell his wingman Hank in CAP four to intercept or put a missile into this tango from one of the escort ships.

"CAP four, go to 30k meters on one-seven-four, and loiter for possible intercept. We are broadcasting the standard warning to turn aside before the three-hundred-kilometer limit."

Battle Group Commander Higgins had splashed three intruders in the last two years, who tried to see how close they could get. Two were unmarked, which was disturbing, and one Mig 51 had Pakistani marking which he flat out didn't believe. Three hundred kilometers was way too close to allow something to approach so aggressively on a direct line for his carrier, but it was published doctrine for peacetime, whatever silly fiction that was. If he had an ongoing attack, he'd open his exclusion zone to a thousand kilometers, and if that happened to overlap the tip of India or Sri Lanka, too bad. He had eight thousand lives and a couple of trillion dollars in his battle group, and he intended to return home safely with all of them intact.

CAP three leveled out at 28k meters and his speed climbed past Mach 3 once he stopped climbing. He glanced down at the throttle. Past the full military power stop, there was a final power range that would reconfigure his intakes, cut his bypass, and propel him past Mach 5 if pushed to the end. He was kind of disappointed they hadn’t ordered him to hurry.

* * *

“Can you evade that missile aimed at you?” Three Fingers asked.

“I’m pretty sure that’s a manned aircraft. It wasn’t launched in response to us. It was already loitering with a similar craft before we were detected. It maneuvered after they talked to it. Also, it isn’t on a collision course but offset slightly. I think they just want to look at us closer,” Shiny said. “I stand a better chance of evading anything he fires head-on rather than showing my side to him early.”

“Alright. Try not to collide with him evading,” Three Fingers instructed. “I’d rather not start hostilities with the natives if it can be avoided. Even if they only had spears and arrows, they outnumber us millions to one.”

* * *

"CAP three, come left slightly. You will pass at five hundred meters on your current heading. We'd like to get that down to two hundred. Activate your sight camera, but do not go hot on weapons. You may back off FMP after passing and come around."

CAP three, Alan Davison, touched his screen twice to lock his present course line on the display, put a little pressure on his stick to the left, and then eased off to come back in parallel three hundred meters to the left of his old line. He swiped twice to set it instead of the old course, then flipped the switches for the gun camera.

"Passing in twenty seconds from…mark!"

At a combined speed of over four thousand kilometers an hour, Alan wasn't going to read any nose art on what went past, but he was very unhappy at what he saw. At his silence the CDC prompted him. "Can you identify the intruder, Captain?"

"It's an anomalous circular aircraft, sir, very thin in cross-section, and silvery metallic, sir."

"What?"

"It's a frigging flying saucer!" he blurted out. Crap, it might be a flying saucer but if it didn't turn aside pretty quickly, it was going to be confetti raining down on the ocean. He reduced power back to seventy percent and started a long easy turn to the west, getting well away from behind what he was pretty sure would soon be a target.

"Splash him as soon as he is a centimeter inside the limit," the Director ordered. "I don't give a damn if he is waving at us, green-skinned with deely boppers, he doesn't get a shot at the carrier."

"CAP four, turn to one-seven-one and descend to 29k meters. You are weapons hot, repeat, weapons hot, fire upon target lock. You should have him in range already."

"Roger, hot and descending," Hank Roberts acknowledged.

From when he activated the targeting radar until it acquired and locked on the incoming craft was only about three seconds. He selected a missile that was designed for head-on shots, but once it was released to his designated target it homed on its own radar with optical guidance supplementing that in the terminal intercept. His display showed agreement that it was synced with both the carrier and its AWAC plane. He very carefully noted where his wingman was and that he was properly designated green as friendly, and the dot on his screen that was the bogey was tango orange.

A gentle squeeze of the trigger on his stick sent the missile on its way. It popped from his weapons bay with a lurch, and a slight shudder of the airframe as the port opened and closed to allow it not to drop, but be thrown out. It launched inactive and wobbled briefly but stabilized once away from his aircraft and the motor started. It passed ahead of him in less than a half-second. It was a measure of his confidence in the weapon that he hadn't asked to fire two of them. In the time it took him to blink there was an exhaust contrail to infinity from his viewpoint, the actual missile out of sight. In another two seconds, there was a hot white spark of light at the end of the white thread. "Splash one," he announced.

"AWACS confirms debris falling. That's a definite kill," CDC told him.

Does that mean I get to paint a little saucer on my kill marks? Hank wondered.

* * *

"Shiny, you've slicked drones around Bug missiles before. What happened?" Three Fingers asked. He didn't seem angry, just genuinely curious.

"Oh, I jinked hard," Shiny said, nervously wiping the bald top of his head that gave him his name. "I have to say that missile could really turn, and I think it had its own radar on the missile."

The commander looked at the weapons operator, still sitting at the drone controls, digesting that. "Who the hell could afford to throw away an expensive radar set, on every individual missile?"

He didn't expect an answer, but the tech answered very literally, "Maybe they're all filthy rich."

"They were repeatedly transmitting the same audio sequence on several different frequencies," Blue said behind him. "I think we need to prioritize the words in that transmission in building the dictionary."

"Sure, go ahead," Three Fingers allowed. "But I think you can eliminate, 'Welcome Galactic Travelers' from your phrase list."

Chapter 2

"What a mess. How can they stand to live like this? It's chaos," Three Finger said. "Even the Tigers and the Bugs have a central authority. Otherwise, there is constant conflict and a drain on both effort and resources. Why aren't they all impoverished and living in mud huts?"

"May one speak freely, sir?" Blue asked his captain.

"Of course. When have I ever censured my crew for expressing ideas? Speak up, man."

"We’ve lived with constant conflict with the Tigers and Bugs for some time, yet we are stable and have achieved some progress and wealth. So, to a point, they deal with what we do across stars, but on one world. Perhaps they can do the same between their factions much as we have, by having safe areas and wide borders. Those huge oceans may serve that purpose. And quite a few of them do seem to live in mud huts or little better than that. So, your point has validity," Blue concluded. It didn't hurt to agree with the captain as much as possible.

"But among their own species? And yet, there it is," Three Fingers admitted, dismayed. “We simply have to deal with it, quickly. Ideally, we would loiter in orbit and study the situation. Create translation programs and send home for help and reinforcements. Instead, we need to have people on the ground within a few hands of the world’s rotations. We must either bring back a load of water to crack for air or take enough personnel down to relieve the burden on the environmental systems."

“Doing both sounds like an excellent idea," Blue agreed. "I think I have an approximate vector back to our part of the heavens, but our drive was stuck on longer than the service rating. We were due to be overhauled anyway. I have zero confidence it would carry us back to civilization, and if we don't nail it on the first try, we're certainly not going to survive casting about in a search pattern several times the size of our span of known worlds."

"You're saying we're stuck here, even after repairs?" Three Finger asked.

"We're stuck here until we can reproduce a hyper-mode generator, or until an explorer comes all this way and happens to find us," Blue said, not trying to sugar coat it at all.

"The fleet only has three shipyards capable of replacing an entire hyper-mode," Three Fingers reminded him. "You might say it is the defining gem of technology for our culture."

"We have exactly two people aboard who understand how it works," Blue said. "If I may suggest...Don't risk them outside the hull or in a landing. Until such a time as they have the materials and facilities to try to create a new drive, their time might be best spent training several others to understand drive theory. If we lose them, we truly are stuck.”

"Issue orders for that right now," Three Fingers agreed. "Our home sphere has been expanding much slower since we ran into the Bugs and the Tigers. Chances are we won't see any explorers out this far in our lifetimes, as long as they need to make each colony secure before proceeding on."

"And by then who knows?" Blue added. "It might be a Bug or Tiger explorer and us without any interceptors to keep him from reporting back." That made his commander look so unhappy he hastened to soften it. "But for now, I'm sure our troop shuttles are going to be much handier than interceptors. They can lift a decent mass of supplies back to us too."

“We have to go down there, and we have to make contact with someone but which? We have no idea of their differences and who will treat us best. We may even initiate hostilities if other groups see our contacting one of them as a threat to them. I’d never have imagined a civilization where it would matter who we contact because I’d have assumed they all report to one authority. Size doesn’t look to be a good criterion for contact. Most of the time we can’t see their borders from orbit. Relative wealth may be useful but no sure indication how they will regard people of another species.”

“Perhaps just a mission to gather artifacts and environmental samples, with no attempt at communications to imply we are forming any attachment. Someplace picked for our safety landing more than its future potential,” Blue said.

"OK, Blue, let’s pick a place to put one down. Someplace that has some native presence and natural resources, but not where there is a huge concentration of natives to deal with. That may be difficult, because they will have picked the best sites for their own use. We need to avoid confronting them now, but I'm sure we're going to need to deal with them soon. I can't imagine they will just ignore us, unless they have a very strange psychology."

"Perhaps just a quiet raid to a remote area with very little population?" Blue suggested. "Possibly we can gauge their technology and see how they communicate better. Enough we have at least some ideas about what we are dealing with?"

"Do it," Three Fingers agreed, "as stealthily as possible and with the unarmed courier shuttle, not a big armed troop carrier. But I want an exploratory mission, not a raid. Use a group of four crew to just reconnoiter. If you send armed troopers down, they’ll damn well find something they need to shoot. All they have ever had to deal with is Tigers or Bugs. They’ve never dealt with anything but a free-fire environment, so everything looks like a target. I’d rather not provoke the natives.”

“Do you want them to stay suited and do full decontamination protocols?”

“Blue, if we can’t live in this biosphere we’re screwed. Don’t bother,” Three Fingers said.

* * *

The radar cross-section of the fast courier boat was quite small. Not much bigger than an old first generation of stealth F117. Which for modern radar meant it might as well be a flying highway billboard with flashing navigation lights. It came down across the Arctic on a southeast course, well away from any human habitation. Low enough near Siberia to create interest, but not provoke a Russian response.

The North American Space Command likewise ignored it. Not because they didn't see it, but because a variety of incursions from not only the Russian Republic but several other nations toyed with them almost weekly. The crashed remains of two had been identified as Chinese and Korean. Were they submarine launches, or did the Russians conspire to allow them to pass? The public had no need to know how they tested each other, since probes went the other way regularly too. If anyone responded, it gave away valuable information about their capabilities, so they ignored any single incursion as a test, as if they didn't see it. A dozen incoming reentry sleds or hypersonics aimed at cities would be a different matter. Hopefully, the response to such a barrage would be a surprise to their enemies.

If the shuttle's course had plotted out straight to Seattle or even Anchorage somebody might have blinked. But it wasn't aimed at any national resource, just an isolated building that didn’t even show on their maps and charts, set in the middle of nowhere in the Alaskan wilderness.

* * *

The middle of nowhere was pleasantly quiet. So quiet you could hear the slight breeze flowing through the tops of the trees overhead like a sigh. Occasionally, there was the slap of a jumping fish falling back in the lake. This morning before he came out on the porch, he'd heard a loon across the lake. Jed appreciated the peacefulness of it. He's seen and heard too much uproar and conflict and was trying to balance that out now. Being far away from people suited him just fine. He had a bit of money, so he didn't need to hunt, though he did a little in late fall when it could be frozen. He was however an enthusiastic fisherman.

No ascetic, he pampered himself with a few luxuries. His feet were propped up on a low chair and he was enjoying a fine cup of Ethiopian coffee, Yirgacheffe, full-bodied stuff that he brewed strong. When he ran low on that he'd fire up the computer and order two four kilo bags of beans. There was a phased array antenna plate on a tree stump outside the cabin’s shadow. He subscribed to two services, and if he couldn't connect on an occasional day with heavy rain or snow, he wasn't particularly traumatized by it. At the worst, he had a sat phone and could use it to call or text to order.

The coffee came from a roaster in Pennsylvania to Fairbanks and was forwarded through Huslia. He was so used to shopping online now that walking around a store again would feel strange. For the coffee and a few other sturdy things, the bush pilot double bagged it and tossed it out on his front lawn without landing. That was a field of boulders and rocky flats, with some grass, but mostly gravel sloping from his porch to the end of a finger bay on the lake about a hundred forty meters east. The lake was big enough to have an occasional floatplane drop off heavier supplies, and he had a small dock for that and his open boat.

The lake had several small streams feeding it, and one outlet to the west, out of sight from his cabin around a short peninsula. There were also several sand flats big enough to land a small plane near the outlet. The other shores of the lake had gravel beaches or in a few places, trees right down to the edge. As far as Jed knew there wasn't another cabin within sixty kilometers of him.

The tranquility of the scene was shattered by a strange aircraft passing west to east in the distance. It hadn't made any noise when he saw it, but its sonic boom caught up with it and shook the cabin. That meant it was slowing. There was nothing around here for such a craft to be so low and slow unless it was in trouble or deliberately landing. Jed wasn't especially surprised when it reappeared from the east much lower. It dipped so low he thought it was going to ditch in the water. Instead, it pulled up hard using bow thrusters and fired its engine up once vertical, just before it vanished behind the trees on the peninsula.

The roar of the exhaust reached him just about the time it dropped from sight. Jed hadn't seen any wings, it was a lifting body, but not any with which he was familiar. The secondary jets it used to pitch it up and the vertical landing told him it was a true spacecraft, not merely a hypersonic. Those required a runway, usually a lot of runway.

The roar cut off and there was no sound of impact. Jed was pretty sure he'd have heard one. Unfortunately, he was very familiar with the sound a large airframe made kinetically disassembling itself on the landscape. The only unforested place flat enough to safely land was quite close, no more than two kilometers away where the water flowed faster at the outlet of the lake. So, he had new neighbors, something he desired not at all.

If they were Americans, he could expect a rescue effort. If they were anybody else, he could still expect a response, maybe a bigger one. At least he had the ridge of the peninsula running between his cabin and them if the response was quick and ballistic. The first thing he did was go around and close the storm shutters over the windows. No point in losing the glass if the response was hostile instead of a rescue operation. The shock wave might still be able to bust his windows out after rolling over the peninsula, more so if it was an airburst. The wind this morning was from almost due east which was to his benefit if the strike was a mini-nuke.

Jed latched the shutters securely and went back inside. He was nervous enough to get a rifle and two magazines which he laid on the porch by his chair. Then he refilled his mug, turned off the coffee maker, and sat back down on the porch again to think. No way did he intend to take his boat around the peninsula to look. If some swift retribution for an intrusion came, he didn't want to be any closer. If they needed to be rescued there was little he could do since he was sure it wasn't a crash. He had a few medical supplies, but far less than he was sure than any military craft would carry as a matter of course. Neither did he have any in-depth medical training.

No matter which way it turned out there would be a follow-up. The idea that sort of a craft could land without the authorities knowing exactly where never occurred to him. At the least, they knew where it dropped under the radar, and those sorts of lifting bodies had the glide ratio of a brick so a search area would be small. If they weren’t able to follow it all the way down on radar, a satellite would tell them exactly where it landed as soon as one made a pass over the area.

What irritated Jed was he didn't see any way this was anything but trouble for him. If he rushed over to offer aid, they probably would be upset he saw the damned thing up close. They'd want to go through his electronics to make sure he didn't have pix of it, because he was pretty sure it was still in the black. He hadn't been out of the service long enough for a whole new generation of secret vessels to be built, and he knew the last two generations that weren't public quite well.

If he didn't go offer aid, or call and report it, they'd fault his indifference and find some excuse to say he had an obligation to report even though he was discharged and inactive. He was so sure of the lose/lose certainty of it that he considered just putting a few things in his kayak and heading downstream. It was early summer and he could follow the stream from the lake through the confluence of two more rivers until he reached a town on the coast. He could yank the drive on his computer, close the cabin up like he hadn't been gone, and swear he hadn't been here.

He thought about it two minutes before he found major holes in that plan. The Feds would pull his e-mail and internet traffic log and see he'd been online from here just yesterday, and unless he made a horrid portage across the peninsula through heavy brush, he'd have to paddle past within plain sight of the ship to get to the outlet from the lake. Crap...

When Jed tossed down the last of his coffee he walked to the ends of his porch and surveyed the sky. There was an answer to one thing at least. A thin white line was being drawn very fast from the southwest horizon. Whatever it was, it was very high and very fast. If it was a strike, it would have been dropping already or have released a stand-off weapon and be turning away, so it was a surveillance flight. He was much happier to see that than the blazing meteor of a reentry vehicle.

It continued on an angle like it would pass by to the west and then turned abruptly and made a wide turn that took it almost overhead before it headed back the same way it came. The craft undoubtedly started from a point to his southeast, but cut out west over the Pacific to make a window-shattering speed run north over the Pacific.

Well, that meant his windows were safe and he could uncover them. If they were going to take the ship out it would be done by now. It should be safe to make the minimal gesture of appearing to give a damn and offer aid, as well as satisfy his natural curiosity. He'd avoid going closer if the crew had disembarked and looked fine. He could say they didn't seem to need any help, and that he'd seen the over-flight, and just returned to the cabin. His own experience with security matters was as good an excuse as any to explain that. He could say he knew how that would complicate matters for them if he got too nosey.

Jed took the rowboat, not the kayak. It took him three trips to carry his motors, fuel tank, and basics like the oars and a floatation vest. The rifle came along as well as a camera in a waterproof case. If he got intercepted on the way back, he could check his GPS and lose it overboard. He'd worry about recovering it later, next year even if the depth required diving gear he didn't have. He didn't bother with binoculars, the camera had more zoom than them anyway. The rifle was only a 5.56, and there were brown bears about, so he wore a Ruger Alaskan in .460 that he'd given an extra deep crimp on his hot hand loads, undercharged five grains from the maximum to make up for the extra pressure the deep crimp caused.

The small outboard was pretty quiet, but he cut it before he rounded the peninsula and used an electric trolling motor. It was new and expensive, so it carried its high-tech batteries internally instead of requiring a separate big battery. It was slow but he set it even slower than he would to troll. As soon as the black wedge of the ship came in sight he turned back to the shore and put the trees between it and him. He tried to not make too much noise dragging the boat high enough it was safe from drifting off. There was enough gravel along the shore to let him round the point of the peninsula on foot and view them from a distance. If there was a hostile response retreating into the woods was far safer than fleeing on the open water. The chances they had ground transport or a flyer were small, but not zero. They might reasonably have security drones, but he saw none orbiting their site.

When Jed came in the line of sight with the vessel he slipped in the trees, staying five or six meters back in from the edge, and using the trees for cover. When a fairly wide field around the ship was visible, he stopped and eased forward from tree to tree until they didn't obscure his view. The crew was out of the ship and taking samples. They were visible in some detail with his camera zoomed out to full telephoto.

They were such a shock Jed’s hands were trembling. He braced the camera against a tree to take a few shots. The lens had a stabilizer, but his hands were shaking so bad he didn't trust it. They were aliens. He hadn't expected that at all. Humanoid and approximately man-shaped and sized, but no doubt at all. The face was flatter, compact. More like a pug dog without the wrinkles, no... more like a boxer dog Jed decided, but with erect firm ears, not floppy ones. The neck was rather stout, not slender, and the hands had thumbs on both sides. That must be rather handy and give them a strong grip.

It amused Jed that they were black, so deeply black they looked like they were covered with black primer paint. He could just picture all the people that was going to offend, who'd have to smile and swallow it. There wasn't any variation either, and they also appeared to be about the same height. If they weren't two meters tall, they were pretty close. It surprised him a little they weren't in pressure suits. They exposed themselves to a new biosphere seemingly unafraid.

The aliens produced some sort of cable and attached it at the rear near the exhaust. Then they unrolled it and dropped the end in the lake. It was a hose, not a cable, Jed realized. He still had no idea if it was sucking up water or discharging waste.

After collecting samples of vegetation and scooping soil samples and water in bottles, they stowed them back in the ship. Two of the crew got long weapons from the vessel. They were carbine length with a heavy butt-stock that had bumps on both sides like a cheek rest but they were shaped wrong. Jed suspected they were battery packs. They all appeared to have a bit of gear on their belts, but none of them had an obvious grip like a pistol. They all clustered close and had a conversation. Jed could see their mouths working. The one made him smile because he consulted a small phone or computer and made gestures very much like Jed would expect of a human giving orders. The smile vanished when he realized the fellow was pointing straight at him and across the peninsula at his cabin.

When the two of the group with carbines started walking along the gravel bar towards him Jed scrambled to get back to his boat. He wasn't sure if they would foolishly try to cut straight across the ridge or follow the shoreline. If they followed the shore, they would turn south along the finger of land and it wouldn't be long at all before they would be able to see his boat leave the shore ahead of them. He regained the boat as fast as he could, pulled the prop up as high as it would go, and departed for home hugging the shore.

He scraped rocks a few times and his motor grated the prop a couple of times on the bottom. He probably screwed the prop up a bit, but it didn't stop pushing. He was just happy not to shear a pin and have to stop to push a new one in. When he'd got back around the curve of the point a bit he cut away from the shore and tilted the gasoline motor back deeper in the water. He put the throttle wide open headed down his little bay to the cabin. It wasn't that much louder than half throttle, and if the aliens heard it, they probably weren’t surprised. Since they knew where his cabin was, they could expect mechanical noises for any number of activities. He often fired up a chain saw or used a garden tiller.

Thinking about it, he expected the visitors to advance relatively slowly. They were on unfamiliar ground and looking at everything carefully. If he were in their shoes, he would stay as far away from the edge of the water as he could. Anything could be lurking beneath the surface. But once they broke through the woods or came around the point they’d come straight to his cabin. They must have seen it while landing or they wouldn’t be headed straight for him.

Jed lacked the resources to give the newcomers the kind of welcome he’d like. They might not be hostile. He’d want to be armed on a strange planet himself. But he’d much rather meet them from a position of superior strength. Putting the tea kettle on and hoping they would sit down and do a pleasant meet and greet seemed a bit too optimistic. He’d just love to have a half dozen Claymore mines to stake in an arch around the porch and sit in his chair with the clacker to greet them. On second thought they might not know what they were. However, he’d seen that they knew what a long gun looked like.

His own experience in foreign lands was such he knew it took two sides sincerely wanting a peaceful parley to make it work, and one side to ruin the party. If, as it appeared, they were collecting samples of everything he didn’t want to end up their prize specimen. Rather than wait inside or sit on his porch to greet them Jed decided the safest course would be to retreat to the nearby woods and observe.

Jed grimaced when his prop chewed gravel again but held the throttle on until it did so again hard before he cut the motor. He still had the presence of mind to turn the fuel off but left the motors tilted up on the transom and everything in the boat but his rifle and camera.

Inside the cabin, he didn’t have time to do much. If only he had a half-hour, it would have made so much difference. He could have prepared the cabin much better. He laid his rifle on the bed making no effort to hide it, tossed the magazines beside it, and grabbed his other heavier .308 rifle and four magazines. That was as much as he had pockets to hold. He opened his laptop and set the camera pointed at the door running and uploading the video via satellite to a cloud account.

There was a summer emergency ruck hanging on a hook prepared in case of a cabin fire. It had six meals and a minimal first aid kit, a space blanket, fire materials, and his satellite phone in an external pocket. He had to pull the charger wire on the phone. Jed shrugged on a hoodie jacket for later even though it was too hot for it right now, not zipping it up, and exited the cabin. Jed slung the rifle and grabbed a shovel and an ax from the end of the porch, walking double-time to the woods on the peninsula side of his clearing. Once in the woods, he walked in an arc towards the water.

He ended up looking back at his cabin so he could see the front and one side as well as his dock. It took a bit of jockeying back and forth to find a location where he could see both as well as have a mature tree to stand behind and a nearby rock tall enough to crawl behind if he needed cover. That didn’t let him look down the gravel beach of his inlet. Jed decided moving forward to check on their progress was an unnecessary risk; there was nowhere else they might go, and he hadn’t seen them using any optical gear like thermal imagers. He’d just sit tight.

The aliens walked close together. One had his weapon slung over his back and the other held his by the muzzle propped over his shoulder. Jed decided neither of them had any ground combat experience. They would cross about two hundred meters in front of him if they went to the boat first. Even if they had some sort of advanced alien body armor built in their clothing, their heads and necks were not protected. Not unless they had some shielding so exotic he didn’t recognize it. They didn’t seem to expect any threat at all. He took a brief video shot of them arriving at his boat.

* * *

The gravel underfoot crunched loudly in the absence of any other sound around them. The aliens jumped when a grasshopper fled noisily just before they stepped on it. Even the slight wind was becoming calmer the closer they got to midday.

“I don’t know why we landed in this gods-forsaken wilderness,” Pons said. “Look at that dwelling. It’s made from tree trunks stacked on top of each other. They are barely dressed and crude. Whoever lives there doesn’t have any fields planted and there isn’t any road leading here. How much can we learn from the most remote and primitive example we could choose?”

“I’m not sure,” Tel said, “but the Commander and my section leader both failed to ask me if I had a better plan. Please tell me you didn’t volunteer an opinion that this was pointless and stupid.”

“And get demoted from missile mate to cleaning enlisted toilets and endless prophylactic disinfecting of all touched surfaces?” Pons asked. “I wouldn’t have told them that if they’d asked.”

“I know you’re a city boy,” Tel said, “but our betters who get social bonus credits four or five grades over us love to spend them at wilderness hunting resorts that look not much more advanced than this dwelling. Maybe bigger and more stonework, but very similar.”

“How would you know? Pons demanded. “Did you used to keep such exalted company and you fell from favor somehow?

“I used to cook at such a lodge. That’s why I was recruited. I came in as a Food Prep 2. You don’t think the cooks for the officer’s mess are the same draftees heating slop for the crew, do you? We get all the officer’s leftovers, prepare our own meals, and eat them in the galley,” Tel said. “How did you come in?”

Pons looked particularly sour.

“My city section was over-populated and they picked the fifty single males with the lowest social harmony scores and told them to report for military service or agricultural labor. I didn’t want to be any kind of soldier, but I sure don’t want to be a mucking farmer.”

Tel decided he didn’t want to know any more. He had one grade of rank on Pons. If he volunteered any more complaints, he’d order him to keep them to himself. You had to be stubborn and stupid to accumulate enough social demerits to be conscripted. Tel didn’t need to hear how unfair it all was.

“The boat is metal, not something made from local materials. Scrape off a little to test back at the ship,” Tel ordered. At least Pons got his knife out and did that without being instructed how.

* * *

Jed watched the one alien doing something to his boat. When he got out one of the sample bottles like he’d seen the aliens at the ship use he figured out he was taking a sample. They’d be disappointed if they thought the boat’s aluminum was anything exotic. The other alien climbed into the boat and bent over examining everything. At the rear, he worked for a bit with his mate watching him instead of keeping a watch on the cabin or woods. Their situational awareness didn’t impress Jed at all. The one in the boat eventually held up another sample bottle and talked to the other. All Jed could figure was that he probably got a sample of gasoline. Jed kept waiting for him to feel the outboard motor to see if it was warm but the alien didn’t seem to understand that was worth checking. He held Jed’s bright orange life vest up for the other to see and then tossed it back down. That made him wonder if the aliens saw colors. Nothing they had on was bright, but neither did it have any camouflage pattern. Nothing was shiny either, not even on the odd guns.

When they decided to advance to the cabin the lead alien took the carbine off his back and held it at ready. The other one didn’t do that until the leader visibly ordered him. Then he cringed as the fellow swept his leader with the muzzle. The fellow called ahead to the cabin. It sounded like Wooo! Wooo! - repeated several times. Jed wondered what he’d do if someone had answered the door? Shoot them or try to talk? When he did get to the door, he fumbled around, unfamiliar with the latch, and appeared to be trying to pull it open. It wasn’t locked. He propped his gun against the cabin beside the door until he figured it out. When he discovered that it swung in, he recovered his gun but didn’t hold it like he was prepared to clear the room. Jed got another short video of them entering.

If these two worked for Jed, he’d disarm them. They didn’t appear eager to shoot the place up, but they looked a hazard to accidentally shoot something at random, including themselves.

* * *

The cabin was very confusing to the aliens. They had to stand and just look for a while and think about it. There were so many objects with no function obvious to them. It was cluttered and messy compared to a ship’s compartments. It took some time to identify a few objects that made sense to them. They took a few photographs from different angles before moving anything. The big black box dominating the room was a mystery to them. There was no firewood beside it in summer or they might have puzzled it out. Even Jed’s jackets and hats hanging on hooks were a mystery until examined, because they’d never have thought to store them that way. The deer head on the wall was just plain creepy as they had no cultural history of taxidermy.

The computer, open on the table facing them was shocking. It was obvious what it was. With a different keyboard, it might be one they could expect to see on any of their worlds. It didn’t fit the primitive cabin or their expectations of what they would find at all. They’d been told to collect anything that demonstrated the native’s technology, but Tel hadn’t expected anything this advanced.

The screen had a small window showing video and as he leaned closer to inspect it, he saw his own face contort in horror as he saw himself and the interior of the cabin with Pons behind him. This device might be recording them. He’d fix that by taking it with them so the owner couldn’t recover the images when he returned. It was exactly the sort of thing they wanted them to collect anyway. He gently twisted the cables each way to see if they locked in place before pulling them off. That seemed shoddy to him to depend on simple friction to secure your cables.

The one cable had a box on it and a thicker cable plugged in a box on the wall. That plug had the same cheap sort of friction retention but large exposed contacts so it might be for power. The other thinner round cable went to the window frame where it was caulked into a hole drilled through the frame. He’d have to investigate that. An odd little teardrop-shaped accessory was parked right against the device so he brought that too.

“Look, a projectile weapon,” Pons said, holding up the AR Jed left on the bed.

“Yes, and we’ll take that too, but it could still be quite dangerous. Keep your fingers away from the trigger and be careful where you point it.”

“These seem to be the projectiles and propellant canisters all integrated into one tiny little unit,” Pons said holding up a magazine. “They seem to have fairly advanced manufacturing.”

“Of course, they do,” Tel said, irritated. “They have satellites and decent aircraft. This is some sort of electronic device, either a terminal for communications or an actual computer. We’ll take both of them back to the ship.”

It looked like a hinge under the screen but he was assuming very little. There wasn’t any lock or release visible where he’d expect one. When he pushed on it gently the screen folded down on the keyboard without anything breaking, though it didn’t seem to lock shut.

“Anything else?” Pons asked. “I can carry more.”

Looking around Tel found a fabric bag with stout handles. He had no idea what to take. He picked a can of baked beans from an assortment of cans in the pantry, a package of ramen noodles, a paperback book, a flashlight, and a pair of needle-nose pliers. Because he had no idea at all what it was, he tossed a fancy corkscrew in the bag too.

“Oh sweet. This is some kind of leather. Do you have any idea what this would cost back home?” Pons asked. “The front seal is weird though. It has little teeth.”

When Tel turned around Pons had a short-waisted black leather jacket with a sheepskin collar on. It looked a full size too big to Tel, but he didn’t want to say anything to the idiot. Maybe their commander would tell him the difference between data collection and looting.

Chapter 3

They were taking a long time in the cabin. Jed sat his gear down and moved off a little bit to ease nature without them reappearing. He returned and had the camera in hand again to record them leaving. They had his canvas handle bag, with something inside, but he couldn’t tell what. He was unhappy to see they were taking his lighter rifle and his laptop too. The alien who he’d decided was a minion had on one of his jackets. At least he’d picked the one he’d bought online that was too tight on Jed, and the sleeves a tad short. It was just too much trouble to return it.

The lead alien went to the side of the cabin and followed the cable to Jed’s flat plate satellite antenna mounted on a tree stump. He removed the rocks holding the base in place against being blown over by the wind and took it with them too. There went Jed’s five-hundred-dollar deposit.

He briefly considered shooting them. They were stealing property that was obviously among the most valuable items in the cabin. The way they handled themselves he had no doubt he could take the second one after a clean headshot on the first. On the other hand, they hadn’t needed to break in at all. He hadn’t thought to lock up the cabin. They might have some weird culture where you are welcome to walk off with any unattended goods.

Besides being unlocked, there was nothing about the cabin to convey the idea entering would be a trespass. If the US was at war with these creatures Jed was pretty sure the ship over there would be a smoking crater already. So, he watched them walk away with his stuff. He suspected his government wouldn’t appreciate him initiating hostilities with a civilization capable of star flight. For some reason, the fact they left the door hanging wide open irritated him almost as much as the thefts.

* * *

Jed resisted the urge to return to the cabin. He found a dry spot to sit and exercised patience. If he had a .50 caliber, he’d be tempted to put a few rounds through the bottom section of the ship to disable it and trap it here. Trying that with a thirty-caliber seemed chancy Then it would still be chancy if it turned into a race to see if government forces or a rescue by other aliens could get here faster. He didn’t believe for a moment this was a starship. It had to be just a landing shuttle. It might even be their only one.

That course of action would also likely result in no personal benefit. The agencies involved might condemn him for doing it. He certainly wouldn’t expect any thanks. It’s not like anyone had ever informed him of the ROE for interstellar invaders. On the other hand, if he did things carefully, he might make some serious change and buy himself insurance against being disappeared as part of a cover-up.

If the alien ship left, as he expected, he’d tidy up the boat and cabin and call for a plane to pick him up tomorrow. He was betting it would leave before dark. If it didn’t, he’d recover his kayak after dark and portage it around the ship. He could put it in the water downstream from the outlet of the lake. That would mean a careful three-day journey to the first settlement where he could get transportation to the south forty-nine states. He wasn’t going to use his sat phone as long as the alien vessel remained. They might detect it. Nor was he going to access his remote storage images from the laptop until he was sure he had very secure access. It amazed him the aliens hadn’t holed his boat or disabled the motors. The kayak was upside down on sawhorses beside the cabin and they hadn’t even looked at it. Didn’t they wonder where the owner of the cabin was?

* * *

“Sweet, we have better images from the over-flight,” Martha, the NRO photo analyst said. “This has five-millimeter resolution versus a centimeter off the satellite.”

“And by the time they got there, the aliens were outside their shuttle,” her supervisor, Willy, said. That made him very happy. He’d had concerns about communicating with something possessing tentacles or an insectoid with faceted eyes. “But we still don’t have any tracking data to tie this shuttle to the anomalous object near the Moon.”

“Oh please. What are the chances of two alien invasions at once?” Martha scoffed.

“I’ve already been directed from higher-ups in our agency, Space, Homeland, FBI, Health, and Immigration not to characterize it as an invasion,” Willy warned her.

“Well, that explains why they haven’t installed a fresh crater where they landed. Let’s just call it uninvited guests marching around on our territory carrying weapons. I’ll grant you we couldn’t reasonably expect them to call ARTCC and politely ask to have their flight path approved,” Martha admitted. “If you asked nicely maybe Russia would give us the elements of their ballistic approach before they dropped into terrestrial airspace.”

“They might think it’s ours and we’re asking to see how closely they can describe its known path compared to our own data. We’d likely get accused of another provocation,” Willy said.

“Show them pix of the dog faces and they’ll believe,” Martha teased.

“You mean those doctored pix of Space Force crew with Boxer head masks? A clumsy attempt at misdirection. You can’t take video as proof of anything now, not even real-time,” Willy said. “I’d also drop the dog face description. It’s far too early to know what our esteemed leaders will decide is an inoffensive description of our visitors. For God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t say anything to allude to their pigmentation. That’s going to be a nuclear level hot potato.”

She thought it was hilarious that Willy was worried about that, because he was as black as the aliens. He wasn’t sensitive about it, but Martha could predict already that when their existence went public there would be all kinds of tasteless videos of the aliens doing early rap in full costume with excessive gold chains, and every other stupid stereotype to try even Willy’s considerable patience.

* * *

The shuttled lifted suddenly, appearing above the treetops before the sound even reached him. There was no gradual throttle up or slow initial rise characteristic of chemical rockets with a full load of fuel. The exhaust was too bright to look at directly. Jed had to shift his gaze to the side and wait for the purple blobby in his vision to fade away. Neither was it as loud as he expected. It was quite high before it angled off to the north away from civilization. Jed went back to the cabin confident they wouldn’t be back soon. Probably not to this location again at all.

He hung up his summer bugout bag and laid his rifle on the table. Looking around the only thing he saw missing besides the rifle and computer was the paperback he was rereading. It was a science fiction novel and he had an Anchorage bank deposit slip in it as a bookmark. Jed had to wonder what they would make of it.

The boat also seemed to have nothing missing. The gas line was detached and a little bit spilled from the alien taking a sample. Not enough to worry about. Jed took the outboard motor and fuel back to the little shed he kept just inside the tree-line to store it. Someone might take it for a dog house or a pump cover, but he was extremely careful about anything that could start or sustain a cabin fire. That was a very difficult thing to survive in the deep winter.

The oars, life jacket, and trolling motor went back in the cabin and he took a two-wheeled dolly down to the boat. Clamped on above the transom, it let him flip the boat over and walk it up to the cabin by the bow. The flashlight that should be standing back in the corner by the dry sink was missing. He figured a few other small items would be missing before he found them all.

Jed was starved having neglected to eat anything. Not even one of the dozen protein bars he kept in his cabin bugout bag. He’d simply been too wound up and freaked out by the ship and aliens to notice being hungry. He dumped a can of maple-baked beans with onions and a tin of Vienna sausages in a pan. He frowned at the shelf and tried to remember if he had three cans or four left before. There was no way he could remember for sure but he thought he had one more. What would aliens do with baked beans? They’d probably poison them if they tried them. Maybe give them terminal gas. He put his meal on the butane burner that he favored for the summer when it was too hot to fire up the wood-burning stove and he didn’t want to cook outside.

The shadows were long outside now and Jed fired up the sat phone to call Franz Flight Services in Anchorage to see if he could get a pickup tomorrow. This late he might just have to leave a message because the crusty old owner Herbert Franz was as likely to turn his cell off after hours as leave it on. He insisted the phone served him, not the other way around, and it wasn’t his electronic leash.

For a wonder, he answered on the second ring.

“Franz here. What the hell do you want?” he growled.

Jed was amazed he had any customers at all when he answered the phone that way.

“A bag of gold and an egg in my beer,” Jed answered.

“Oh, it’s you, Jed. Do you know eggs were nine-seventy-five a dozen when I went shopping yesterday? If you bought eggs, I doubt you can afford the luxury of beer,” he concluded.

“Probably not, considering what I have to pay for air freight,” Jed agreed.

“You could live in Chicago,” Franz suggested.

“I could die in Chicago real cheap too,” Jed pointed out. “How about you hustle out here first thing in the morning and I’ll pay civilization a little visit?”

“No can do. You are smack in the middle of the no-fly zone they just posted about a half-hour ago. If somebody didn’t put a missile up my butt, they’d make sure I never flew so much as a kite again.”

“Shit,” Jed said, heartfelt.

“You wouldn’t know anything about that, being on the scene so to speak?” Franz asked.

“You’re on your cell, right?” Jed thought about it briefly. “I can’t say,” he decided.

“Oh hooo!” Franz replied, considering everything that implied.

“There’s a lake downstream from mine about thirty or forty kilometers. Would you pull a map up and look and see if that is outside your TFR?” Jed requested.

“Boomerang Lake, though it looks fatter, more like a kidney on the map. Twenty-seven kilometers center of zone to the far side of the lake. So close I’d want to land to the northeast going in and turn around to leave no matter which way the wind favors me, or I might breach the zone climbing out.”

“Could you pick me up there Thursday morning?” Jed asked. “I’ll have my yellow kayak so you should see me easily.”

“Thursday? I can do that if you don’t mind a mail drop on the way back, but I can’t fit your kayak,” Franz said. “I’m old school. If you weren’t coming back to the city, I’d just strap it on a float. But if I do that now the FAA inspector will be sitting on the dock waiting to write me up, sure as anything.”

“I’ll just leave it. It doesn’t matter,” Jed said.

“We could pick it up when you go back if you can leave it somewhere safe near a handy sandbar for me to taxi up to for your pickup.

“Franz, I’m not even sure I’ll be coming back.”

There was some dead air time that normally would have bothered Jed, eating up minutes on the satellite phone while Franz digested that.

“I’m going to fly in the evening before, anchor near the inlet, and fish until you show. I’ll take you aboard whenever you show up and fly back. Do you need me to bring you anything? Are you bringing much gear?”

“Ten or twelve kilos. I’m not comfortable carrying much more and the kayak. I have to paddle around to the outlet tonight and do a short portage because the outlet is rocky.

“You can’t wait for the morning?” Franz made it sound more like a suggestion than a question.

“I’m expecting visitors by morning,” Jed said.

“Ummm,” Franz said neutrally. “I’ll be there,” he promised.

“It’s a date sweetheart,” Jed said, because Franz expected him to crack wise.

Besides his summer bugout bag, Jed got a roll of cash from a hiding place, some coins, jewelry, and a very few important papers. That all went in a floatable pouch. He tried to remove everything that might freeze and burst if he didn’t come back, to a galvanized trash can he used for his stove ashes in the winter. That went outside and under the boat leaning against the cabin. If he did come back, it wouldn’t be to a mess. He took a few extra photos just in case this was forever and he was packed.

* * *

“I should have liberated something that would fit in my pocket,” Pods complained when his new jacket was confiscated.

“You stole it,” Tel said. “Trying to excuse it after they called you on it didn’t win you any bonus points. You were trying to steal it from the fleet the second time.”

* * *

The head of the People’s Marine contingent aboard, Malto, looked distressed when he reported to his commander. He brought the alien weapon along to show, along with a magazine.

“We test-fired this alien weapon. Out of an abundance of caution, we shot at a target in the open hatch of the maintenance airlock, so no backstop was needed. Since the data might be useful, we draped a suit of drop-trooper armor over some foam board and fired at it. The projectile not only penetrated the front but went through the back layer as well. After that unexpected result, we disassembled one of the ammunition units,” He held up one they had removed. “When we sectioned the projectile portion, it turns out there is a hard penetrator encased in the softer body.”

“You paused like that is supposed to mean something to me. This is too far outside my area of expertise so you need to explain it,” Three Fingers said.

“We thought this might be a hunting weapon because of the wilderness location. There was also a strange preserved head of a large herbivore mounted on the wall inside the cabin. Some thought it was a religious item, but several people thought it might relate to hunting. Perhaps with different ammunition one could hunt with this weapon, but a soft bullet that expands would work better for that purpose.”

“It wouldn’t be appropriate for the herbivore you mentioned?” Three Fingers asked.

“Not unless the herbivore makes a habit of wearing very effective thick armor. More the sort we’d use on a ground vehicle than worn,” Malto said.

“Oh, then it’s a weapon of war?” Three Fingers asked.

Malto did the fist clutch of thumbs over fingers that was the affirmative gesture for their race.

“One of my insightful leaders pointed out that the native or natives apparently fled when our vessel landed nearby, yet this weapon they discarded and left behind. Not even hiding it. It’s worth noting that the fabrication standards seem to be high quality and the tolerances on the projectile units indicate they are capable of maintaining very narrow tolerances. It wasn’t abandoned for being junk.”

“Ouch, you don’t have to interpret that for me,” Three Fingers said. “One can assume they took the best stuff with them. If I’d sent a combat shuttle with a heavily armed squad to take samples and they found that cabin, what would they have done?”

“There are no roads so the boat at the scene seems the only transport. They’d have made sure it was secure or rendered unusable and secured as wide a perimeter as they had troopers to cover to maintain control of the area while they did a much more detailed inventory of the building,”

Three Fingers did the same grasping gesture.

“That’s what I figured. Since there are no roads, and they couldn’t openly leave by their boat, the natives would be lurking in the woods nearby, waiting for you to leave. Does that sound reasonable to you?” he asked Malto.

“Indeed, I see no other place they could be.”

“With combat sensors, you probably would have found them. Or as I told my second, you’d find something that needed shooting, because that’s what you do.”

Malto looked unhappy because he couldn’t deny it at all. Not because he wouldn’t contradict his commander but because it was true.

“Then, most likely, you’d have gotten us some data on how effective the weapons they did take with them are. How many troopers in a small squad?” Three Fingers asked although he knew.

“Ten and the leader, plus two to run the shuttle who would have stayed with it,” Malto said.

“And how many of these projectiles and charges that can blow a hole through both front and back of your armor did the abandoned weapon hold?”

“We ascertained after firing it that the detachable container held thirty shots and once it was empty another could be inserted quite swiftly,” Malto said. He didn’t like where this was going.

“Yes, we could have learned a lot if you pressed the natives who had no line of retreat. How fast they could fire and their range and accuracy. How quickly they could reload. Assuming you had any troopers left after the first thirty shots so they had any need of reloading. That’s supposing the shuttle crew lifted and survived to inform us of what happened. I know shuttles are hardened at critical points, but one supposes a superior weapon to this one might damage it.”

“I’d put my money on my boys still,” Malto insisted. “A small squad has a grenade shooter and the shuttle could lift and bring its weapons to bear.”

“Indeed, they might prevail. I wanted some basic information without exactly that sort of drama. Now, when I want to take control of an area and keep it, I’ll send a combat shuttle or two and you’ll be weapons-free from the start. I’m sure you’ll be much more comfortable with those conditions.”

“Yes, that’s true.” Malto looked concerned. “If I may ask. This implies you were willing to lose the fast courier and four crew if the natives greeted them with hostility. Do I read that correctly?”

“Quite right. Weighing the value of that sort of risk falls under my prerogative of command,” Three Fingers reminded him. “Take that as a measure of how very much I’d rather avoid initiating hostilities with the natives. I’ll point out that it worked. We got significant data and established the natives are not recklessly hostile or unthinking. If I’d sent you, I’d have only discovered if they were willing to defend themselves,” Three Fingers laid his maimed hand on the alien weapon. “I think by its properties, this little toy answers that question too, even without them using it.”

Three Fingers watched his response closely. The three instances of mutiny they were taught about at the Deep Sky Forces academy were all instigated by the commanders of ground troops. Being cut off in the deep sky with little chance of return was exactly the sort of stress that made people do crazy things.

“I am instructed,” Malto admitted.

“Other specialists are examining the other items brought back. See if your armorer can disassemble this and learn a little more, won’t you?”

“Certainly, sir.” He took that for his dismissal.

Chapter 4

At least there was some moonlight. Jed paddled slowly at a pace he could maintain all day long. He resisted the urge to hurry past the landing site. Soon enough, he could hear the water tumbling over the natural spillway where it exited the main body of his lake. Getting sucked into the current there in the dark would be a disaster so he steered to one side and approached carefully, hugging the shore. When the trees thinned out from seasonal flooding and the sound grew louder, he eased up on the bank

His things were divided into two bundles and he transferred the front one to the rear. The bottom of his kayak in the rear had a panel of the tough plastic used to protect truck fenders from stone chips applied so he could drag it without damage. Jed also had a hard pull handle on a short line to attach to the front pull eyelet on the kayak. He’d learned the hard way that a long drag was too hard on the wrist and arm grasping a rope, leaving the hand numb.

Jed put on wrap-around safety glasses to protect his eyes from branches. Besides a light on a headband, he put one around a knee and one around the opposite ankle. When he pushed off downhill through the brush, he grinned at how successful this strategy worked. He could see where he needed to step without the confusing dark shadows a single light threw. It was still slow going but that would have been true in daylight too. When the breeze he’d been enjoying died down Jed had to turn on the mosquito repellant evaporator he wore on a lanyard around his neck. The battery was only good for one night without a recharge, but unless Franz didn’t show up that’s all he’d need.

When he felt he’d had a good workout and the stream to his left had settled down to a flow he could navigate he stopped. On-shore he could stop if he wasn’t sure where to step next. On the water, his lights didn’t have anywhere near the reach to let him read the water ahead and the current wouldn’t let him stop until he figured it out. He found a good place to brace the kayak on its side, made sure his pistol was free and clear to draw, and leaned back against the boat. He set his phone to allow a two-hour nap. If there wasn’t enough light to launch the kayak then it would be pretty close.

A drumming sound awakened him before his alarm. Off to the south in the steel gray predawn sky, three tilt-rotor aircraft were making the transition from forward to vertical mode. They were dropping as he watched undoubtedly aimed for where the alien shuttle landed. That was exactly what Jed expected and why he went to such lengths to get past the site in the dark. He was just glad they didn’t pass directly over him. Their systems might have alerted them to his body heat. They would certainly have a satellite overwatch or launch a drone to orbit their operational area. He thought they would be watching for air traffic or much larger action than one lone man in a kayak, several kilometers away. If not, he’d find out soon.

* * *

Two techs and Tel stood hovering behind the lead techie seated with the laptop.

“It didn’t click or snap or anything when you closed it?” he asked Tel.

“No, and I looked for lock buttons to depress before I tried to close it. It seems they just let it flop around. The cables don’t lock in place either. I can’t imagine using it without gravity.”

“If they are mostly planet-bound maybe they never have to concern themselves with that,” one of the techies volunteered.

“Navigation confirmed there are artifacts transmitting data on the near side of their moon. Three sizable stations in orbit appear to have living modules. So, they have manned flight. One of them just had a docked vessel return to the planet shortly after our disk drone was shot down. One has to wonder if they are associated with the responsible party and expected retaliation,” the other standee countered.

“Still, space travel may be so rare for them it doesn’t make sense to generally build their computers to work in the absence of gravity. If they need ten or twelve a year that work well without gravity it makes more sense to build them special,” the first tech said in rebuttal.

“Nothing about this world makes any sense,” the lead techie growled. He put his outside thumbs on the corners of the device and his inside thumbs gently probed the crack across the front of the device. It didn’t look that fragile and the idiot crewman had managed to close it up without destroying it. The crew has a reputation with the techs of being able to destroy just about anything.

It didn’t take much force at all to lift the top part. He took it slow, not using any more force than necessary, and stopped when the screen was just past vertical, safely short of the angle of repose it showed in the photos they took of the cabin. The screen was blank.

“The screen had an image on it when you closed it?” The leader asked Tel.

“Yes, it had a small running video showing me looking at the screen, the interior of the little house behind me, and some symbols I couldn’t read. I think the little lens on top there is a camera.”

The lead techie examined the photos Tel took again, showing the way the cables attached and the little teardrop device sitting next to it. However, the resolution wasn’t sufficient to blow up to see the images on the screen.

“I think the cable and box on the left are its power supply,” Tel volunteered. “The cable to the outside and that flat plate I brought back may be a radio transmitter.”

The techs all gave Tel disapproving looks for his presumption at having any opinions.

“I have a repair tech working on that flat plate device right now. Do you have a theory about this thing?” the lead tech asked snidely, poking the mouse with a finger.

The screen came alive with a thumbnail showing all of them peering at it. A banner across the thumbnail said, “Internet connection lost: reconnect?”

“Yeah, I think that is some kind of remote control,” Tel said with great pleasure.

* * *

“The site team on loan from the Marines reports three depressions in the gravel from landing pads, a scorched spot in the middle, and no traces of any lingering radioactivity or exotic chemicals. If they hadn’t known where to look within three meters, they wouldn’t have found anything.

“They had sufficient velocity to return to their mothership from their initial burn, so they never displayed their drive to us when they returned. The Russians might have got some spectroscopic data if they were looking the right way.

“There’s a single cabin nearby, on a little bay of the lake, but nobody in residence. We found documents with a name and are running that down. There is a boat still there so they didn’t leave that way. We’re checking if any air service flew them out.”

“Thanks, copy Homeland Security and State on this,” the Head of Spaces Forces instructed. We don’t need an interservice screw up like what blew up on the Air Force with the Persian affair.”

* * *

Franz Flight Services didn’t answer Homeland’s call because Franz left his cell phone at home turned off. He had a sat phone but it was off too and he didn’t have his cell forwarded to it either. He didn’t want any record of this flight or association with whatever Jed was doing. It sounded risky.

The agent making the calls didn’t think anything of a dead number. Businesses ended operations all the time and he was charged with calling all the active air services in the area, not running down a history of closed services or absent owners. There were more of them listed than he’d expected anyway. It was going to eat up most of his day. Not a few wasted his time demanding why there was an active advisory making them detour around an area, or just complaining about it. In the lower forty-nine citizens didn’t grill federal agents calling them for information, much less yell at them. These Alaskans were difficult.

Franz had eight fat trout in the cooler, after releasing two as unworthy, and had stowed his gear because that was all he could use or give away fresh. He was sitting in the door of his airplane, legs dangling, listening to the shortwave. Something was going on. You could tell as much by what they weren’t saying as by any positive statements. Suddenly nothing was a huge crisis that had inspired anchors to panic or tears just a couple of days ago. There was an abundance of human-interest stories and educational nonsense.

Jed’s yellow kayak emerged from the stream feeding into the east end of the lake and turned toward him. Franz got down on the float and helped him tie up and unload carefully. Jed handed a camera case to him like it was a carton of eggs. That even though it was a floater case. The rifle didn’t surprise Franz but the general lack of any other gear but a small light pack was no way to face the Alaskan wilderness. Of course, if he continued downstream another three or four days, he’d reach some cabins near the coast, and eventually a settlement with a store that was at the end of a dirt track they called a road.

“If you’d taxi to a bar, I’ll drag this up in the trees and make a GPS waymark for it,” Jed said.

“Put some branches over it even back under the trees,” Franz instructed.

“Why, you know something?” Jed asked.

“The news on the short wave is weird,” Franz said. “Like when your kid is suddenly chatty when you come home, instead of the usual grunting, because he’s avoiding telling you something.”

“Give me the hand ax from my short pack,” Zed said.

“No need,” Franz said and stretched back inside and got the needed tool from a box behind the pilot’s seat. “We’re starting to get some breeze. Pull the anchor in and when it starts to lift give me a yell. I’ll start the engine and taxi before we blow away.”

Jed called out when the line was near vertical and stowed the anchor in a float compartment while Franz taxied. He gently turned and pulled up to a gravel bar facing the lake, with the breeze pushing them towards the bar. Jed untied his bow line and hurried into the woods, dragging the kayak. Franz left the engine idling. It would be fully warmed when they took off.

Jed scampered back wet to the knees, stowed the hand ax, and buckled up. Franz turned the rudder to put them into the wind and gave it some throttle without any conversation, coming off the bar easily with hardly an audible scrape of pontoon on gravel. He taxied for some distance before he made his run to lift. When he exited the far end of the lake, he only cleared the trees by seven or eight meters and stayed that low for a long way. Zed didn’t ask why.

* * *

“The computer has a fairly substantial battery, but we’re going to run it down before we complete learning the symbols and command interface on it. There is an indicator along the bottom edge that looks like a pile of plates battery that is slowly growing shorter. We’re also noting the symbols over it as they change. We’re recording everything we do so it can be watched again to pick up things we learned the first time,” the head techie said.

“Get together with the cultural liaison who would deal with any Tiger prisoners we’d take. He has a Tiger translation program. It may have some parallels we can apply to the native’s language. Do that right away, before the battery is exhausted so he can make suggestions with a live machine. Is there any possibility of plugging the power supply back into it before it is drained? Three Fingers asked.

“The box on the power line was imaged non-destructively and it appears to be a transformer. The big risk is if we apply too much voltage, we may damage it. Also, since it needs alternating current, we have no idea at what frequency. At least the third prong on the line seems to be a ground. So, we are confident the two flat blades are for a simple single-phase supply.”

“Ask some of the electronic repair people for what range of frequencies a transformer of that design might function. We know from deciphering their air traffic control dialog what their numbers symbols are. Also, their time units, altitude units, and how they order their compass headings. If you look at the transformer housing, I’d bet my ears they have a number that corresponds to the number of cycles per short unit of time. We can’t name it yet, but know it’s close to our kip,” Three Fingers said.

“And then what?” the techie asked.

“Well, you set a power supply to feed it the guessed frequency and slowly increase the voltage until the battery indicator starts going the other way. Maybe add five parts per hundred as you will be on the low end of it working. Do I have to tell you everything?” Three Fingers asked, irritated.

“Apparently,” the techie admitted, embarrassed past any defense. “May I ask how you could possibly have learned their number symbols from just listening?”

“They paint the number of their runways on the end four or sometimes six man-lengths high, and call out to the plane which one to use. You could read the damn things from their moon. The airplanes have identifying numbers written on the tail and we’re making progress with their phonetic symbols because the craft have the owner’s names written down the side in huge letters.”

“I’m on it,” his techie said and practically ran from the room. Ran from his commander more like it. The man was scary. He supposed that that was why the man was issued the lofty credits.

“The stuff in the little clear packet with all the printing was food,” the medical officer reported. “The little vermin nibbled on it but then went crazy drinking water. They got all bloated and got lethargic but recovered. The grain bugs like it just fine and burrowed in a piece broken off. The other stuff in the steel container is some sort of seeds cooked and in a sauce of some sort. The vermin ate it readily too, but they quickly developed a horrid rash, their tongues visibly swelled and they choked to death unable to breathe in short order. We’re keeping the remaining sample isolated as a biohazard.”

“Sounds like an allergy,” Three fingers concluded.

“The Father of all allergies,” the medic agreed. “I’d issue a warning to all personnel going to the planet to be very cautious about touching native plants. It might even be a hazard to touch the crushed plants on one’s shoes or in extreme cases just stand down-wind of some.”

“Thanks, that’s good to know. We lucked out with the survey crew this time.”

* * *

“We ID’d the cabin owner. He’s one Jedediah Wallace Murphy. Here are his service records, his school records, and everything we have on his financial history. A list of people connected to him, and also cross-connections between them, ranked by the number of cross-connections, his shopping history and social contacts. There’s a summary on top,” the Homeland analyst said.

“Does the Army know we pulled his records?” the head of Homeland Security, Jason asked.

“They do. This is an active case for the FBI and State is demanding all agency traffic on him.

“Then they think he is significant?”

“I think he is significant,” his analyst volunteered.

“I’ll read this but summarize your impressions and tell me why.”

“The primary reason is that he has two satellite internet accounts. He was actively uploading after the alien vessel landed near his cabin. He has three storage services to which sizable files were uploaded in that period. They were all encrypted. Two were seized and removed to our possession, but one is in Switzerland. A request for access to that one was refused with language I won’t repeat. The shutters were closed and the door locked, but it was a cheap easy to defeat lock. There was no computer in the cabin and only an older .22 rifle, although four calibers of ammunition were found. There is a small open boat by the cabin that was covering mostly canned food stored in a trash can. We have no idea why it was outside. There was an outboard and trolling motor on site, but he left by some other means. We’re going back through his purchase history to see if he ever owned an ultralight or any other likely means of transportation. But frankly, given his military record, he could simply walk out within the time frame that will be seasonally possible in Alaska.”

“How old?” Jason asked.

“Forty- three. He isn’t rich, but he’s comfortable. His parents’ estate left him that way without his twenty and out service.”

“They’re both dead and he’s only forty-three?”

“They took the first-round vaccine for the mouse flu out of Africa,” the analyst said. “He got their life insurance money before they stopped paying out for the vaccine or they would have gone under. They didn’t get to claw it back either. Besides that, they left him a decent estate and double dipped the settlement money since Congress voted to bail out the life insurance companies too.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. My grandparents got caught in that,” his boss said. “Is the FBI looking to pick him up or do I need to instruct them?”

His analyst looked alarmed and then cautious.

“I’m neither a sworn officer nor a lawyer. I wouldn’t presume to advise you on that. I’m not at all sure exactly what he’s done that is a crime to issue a warrant for his arrest.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll find something if needed. We’ll start with having him issued a recall to active service. Sent by postal mail to his legal address, I suspect he may fail to answer it in a timely fashion. If he’s still on the planet.” Jason said.

“You think they might have abducted him?” The analyst was shocked at the idea.

“Wouldn’t aliens want to know about the dominant species on the planet? What better way than to collect a specimen from a remote location to examine? The only reason I don’t assign that a higher probability is the man’s service record. If they tried to kidnap this fellow, I’d expect signs of a struggle,” the head of HLS said. More like a battle, he thought to himself.

* * *

“Are they buying the file on Murphy?” the head of Special Operations Group Three asked.

“It’s the only one that exists,” his assistant assured him. “The only thing to contradict it is what exists in living memory. That means us and about twenty living people. Nobody is going to file sunshine requests on any of their files because they don’t exist. The fake file is graphic enough to give pause to anybody who might mess with him. If we dictated a true account and posted it nobody would believe it.”

“So, you don’t think he’s a hazard that needs to be cleaned up?” his boss asked.

His assistant laughed nervously. “Since that’s exactly the kind of shit he used to do, I’d be worried it would be more likely to blow up on us than leaving him alone. If you put out an order on him, I respectfully request duty that will keep me in a different state than you.”

“He shouldn’t have any idea who we are,” his boss insisted.

“Tell that to about a dozen Persian mullahs and Elite Guard bosses who thought they were anonymously directing things from behind the scene. And they were tracked down and eliminated immersed in a foreign culture and language that is rather opaque to most people just trying to do normal business with them.”

“Hmmm…Your point is well taken,” his boss admitted.

* * *

The ship historian, journalist, librarian, and scholar, Xilo, reported to Three Fingers.

“We decided to disassemble this codex and scan the individual pages to establish word frequency. The construction was flimsy. I can’t believe this was intended to last for more than a few readings. Perhaps they have some taboo about that or ritually burn it after one use if it is a religious manual. There is some agreement among several familiar with historic documents that predate linguistic unity that the punctuation marks here, and different prime font, show the end and start of a spoken phrase. Combining that with word frequency we are making a start on understanding their grammar. That’s a direct handle on understanding how they think.”

Three Fingers had his doubts about that but kept his face pleasant and attentive.

“By the way, the page numbers absolutely agree with your analysis of their digits by the air traffic control system. They also followed a convention of displaying even and odd numbers by handedness. The entire document was divided into numbered sections with the same scheme. The lettering on the aircraft also made us certain we weren’t looking at the thing upside down.”

“What about the image on the cover?” Three fingers demanded.

“There is no consensus on that,” Xilo admitted. He looked uncomfortable.

Three Fingers took that outer folder on thicker paper and examined it again. The printing was of very good quality with brilliant colors. There were unknown symbols and some sort of machine code.

A Tyrannosaurus rex in plumage to shame a parrot towered over a man standing his ground. It was amazing how an alien drawing could convey that. He was standing braced with no intention of running. The T-rex had his jaws spread wide, displaying awesome dentition and his little forearms were already reaching in anticipation of his meal. The man appeared to be protecting another member of his species cowering on the ground behind him. The improbably large energy rifle he was using must be of very light construction to be wielded as he was doing. The image caught the scene at the instant of discharge, the yellow beam aimed right down the gullet of the advancing monster.

“The idiot is about to have fifty or sixty pon of dead meat squash him like a bug when that thing falls dead on him,” Three Fingers observed.

“One believes it is a dramatization,” the scholar offered. “But yes, I had the same thought when I observed the dynamics of the scene. We know several worlds that harbor similar life forms, but I can’t see how they could coexist with a large population of humanoids in an advanced technological civilization. Maybe if they had their own continental preserve.”

“Sweet little dancing gods,” Three Fingers said, pinching the bone in his nose with closed eyes. “Could the natives be a lost colony of a greater star-spanning civilization who prevailed over such life forms here and hunted them to extinction? Or could they have star traveled and lost the ability but retained stories of their travels?” Three Fingers wondered.

“The theories it provoked with my people were somewhat less… expansive,” Xilo noted. “I’d conclude energy weapons are not unknown. Another of my people speculated that the weapon size indicates this is a light gravity world.” There are those pathetic little furry fellows the Tigers found who had outposts on six of their system’s worlds. They got smashed on the home planet with an asteroid and lost all the outposts. They’ve been ten thousand years coming back, but the artifacts they left off-world indicate they were very near to star flight themselves. Even the Tigers took pity on them and made it a law not to bother them.

“But it could very well be something as bizarre as you suggested. At this point, I’d believe just about anything you told me. The bigger news today is that we have an electronics tech and a computer tech who have decoded their video transmissions and got them to display properly. Within a couple of hours, they promise we’ll have an audio channel to go with the images. We’ll be able to tie words to the action and advance much faster.”

“And that,” Three Fingers said, pointing at the flashlight. “What have you discovered about that?”

“This is perhaps the most disturbing thing brought back,” Xilo admitted. “It is a hand light but nothing like we manufacture. The principles of the device are well known from research. We use similar components to operate our short-range ship-to-ship and suit communicators. They are much harder to spy on than radio. Semiconductor diodes can emit light, but watch the power and versatility.”

Xilo pointed the light at the adjacent bulkhead and pressed the soft raised switch. The small circle of light could be seen easily Xilo shifted his finger to the rear of the switch and held it down. The intensity climbed until it was dazzling even in the lighted compartment. He ran the level back down and grasped the larger end of the device and pulled. The circle of light spread wide as he adjusted it.

“Then there is this control at the rear,” Xilo said. He pressed something back there and the light started strobing at a very fast rate. Pressing it again produced a sequence of short and long pulses.

“Now watch.” He turned the beam back to a spot focus. “There is a detent here to keep you from doing this accidentally.” He forced it past the detent and the beam spread out again on the wall. However, he produced a sheet of paper and held it in front of the lens. As he moved it away from the lens at about three hands widths distant the spot of light grew smaller until you couldn’t tell the actual size because it was too bright. Then it burned a hole through the paper. He turned it off and handed it to Three Fingers.

That bright flickering was very disturbing,” Three Fingers said. “I just wanted to close my eyes or look away.” He handed it back without trying the controls himself.

“This technology at a higher level was deemed too expensive to pursue,” Xilo admitted. “My technicians said this is what they would expect if it was not only developed, but the sort of advanced device you’d expect after a century or two of incremental advances. We’d never need enough of them to warrant the building of the needed manufacturing capacity.”

“So, we’ve found another area where the natives are ahead of us?” Three Fingers asked.

“That was our inescapable conclusion,” Xilo admitted. “I just wonder how many thousands of years their civilization has been perfecting these science-based technologies? Don’t forget the superior missile that took down our drone and the very fast lifting body aircraft. I suspect we’ll find other niches where they are further ahead.”

“Mmmm,” Any theories on this?” he asked picking up the corkscrew. It was a very nice one of stainless steel with geared levers on both sides.

“We’ve been showing it to crew without any information to corrupt their first impression. That’s coming to an end because they are discussing it with others before we can poll them. They are nearly evenly divided between a surgical instrument or an item to inflict torture.”

Three Fingers held it in one hand and idly spun the helix with a fingertip of the opposite hand.

“I suppose it might be both, depending on who is using it,” Three Fingers mused.

* * *

Franz never was very chatty but even less so today. He fiddled with his GPS, a hand-held unit in an upright holder, not integrated with his instrument panel. The heading they were on wasn’t for Anchorage.

Was Franz upset with him? He couldn’t have any idea what was going on, but he knew Jed was involved, the government was involved if there were flight restrictions, and he was evading the spirit of them if not the letter of the law. It wouldn’t look very good for him if he was discovered.

“Franz…” Jed began awkwardly.

He found himself staring at Franz’s palm.

“I’ve heard confession is good for a soul, but I’m not a priest. If you’ve committed a crime, no matter how minor, I don’t want to know. I don’t care if it was jaywalking at two am with no traffic in sight and the traffic lights not working. What I don’t know I can’t tell. They can drop a cap on you now and sit and read questions and read yes and no directly off your brain. Worse, it’s admissible in court.”

“To the best of my knowledge I haven’t committed a crime,” Jed said.

“You’re probably wrong. If you aren’t, they will probably correct that. I’ve had you pegged as a classic Boy Scout from the very first day I met you. My take on it is they are probably looking for you already and if you play fair and square, they’ll have you sitting in a jail cell before you even get out of Anchorage. How were you planning on leaving?”

“Just buying airfare to Seattle. I have nothing to hide.”

Franz made a rude noise.

“You have nothing to hide but skulked off through the bush in the middle of the night with hardly anything of your possessions and aren’t sure you will ever go back.” He sounded skeptical.

“It’s temporary,” Jed said. “I have to get some information out. Once it is beyond recall they won’t have any reason to bother with me.”

“No, I’m sure they’ll give you a merit badge,” Franz said. “Nobody would ever be vindictive over you releasing something they obviously want to be kept secret.”

“It’s important enough I’d have to accept it if it harms me personally,” Jed decided.

“I can see me doing that because I’m sixty-seven, and it’s a miracle I’ve managed to pass my flight physical this long. Once they clip my wings, there isn’t really much else I want to do. I’ll be sitting around sucking my gums and counting the days until they stick my butt in a nursing home.”

“If I had you release it for me, one of the first things they’d do is pull your license,” Jed said.

“That wasn’t a veiled offer to do it for you,” Franz said.

“I have friends in the lower forty-nine who can show me how to do it. I’m pretty sure they can do it anonymously. I’m not computer savvy enough to be sure I won’t bungle it. My buddy in Seattle is in both computers and the media. He’ll know what to do.”

“Are you sure you need to create a big fuss and screw up your life? If you regard it historically, the government has dozens of secrets, hell, probably hundreds of secrets, for any one of which you could find people who think life as we know it will end if it is or isn’t revealed. Truth is, most folks wouldn’t remember the big revelation next week, being consumed with something really important, like who is going to win the Yankee - Orioles game.”

Franz eased the throttle back and started a slow turn.

“Go back and clip on a safety line first, and then slide the door open. There are two fish in a plastic zip-seal bag in the cooler. Add them to the bucket, and lower it between the float struts to my customer. It’s heavy, so don’t let it get away from you. You’ll smash the poor guy’s whiskey.”

It was heavy. However, it seemed to be well packed. Jed had to brace his foot against the opening with one leg hanging out to get the bucket over the edge. After it was too late to do, he wished he’d put his gloves on. Seconds after the bucket touched down the man stood back and made an emphatic lifting gesture with both arms. The bucket that came back up was orange instead of white. It was much lighter too, which Jed appreciated. He couldn’t imagine how Franz could fly and lower the bucket out his pilot’s door. He closed the door and checked it carefully before he called ‘Done!’ to Franz. He was climbing away level before he regained his seat.

“He sent some stuff back up in a different bucket,” Jed told Franz.

Franz nodded. “He usually has outbound packages and gives me some moose jerky. He often has packages for UPS. No idea what he sends out in them. None of my business, just like your stuff.

“I’ve been thinking,” Franz said, his voice changing. “You need to get to Seattle and you can handle it after that. Am I right?”

“I’ve got a big enough ego to think I can handle it after that,” Jed agreed, “with help.”

“I know a guy from Juneau, John Burns, who just recently bought a fishing boat,” Franz said. “One of the bigger boats that takes the catch at sea from a bunch of smaller ones.”

Jed kept quiet. Franz could ramble and he’d get to the point faster by himself than peppering him with questions.

“It’s old enough he’s going to have a lot of the gear updated and some things overhauled.”

When Franz looked over at him Jed just nodded.

“He’s going to take it down to a Seattle boatyard within the week. Ever been on a fishing boat?”

“A commercial fishing boat? No. I’ve never been on any sort of big commercial boat.”

“He’s just delivering it to be worked on. I imagine he’ll only have five or six aboard. It would be an educational experience. He owes me a couple of favors and I’d ask him to take you, unofficial-like.”

“That would be wonderful. I don’t know anything about boats, but he can work me if there’s anything I can do,” Jed offered.

“I’ll introduce you as John Doe if that’s OK with you.”

“That won’t put him off?” Jed asked.

“Not if I’m vouching for you, which I’m doing by presenting you at all. He is not obsessively given to following every rule and regulation. Neither am I when flying, so I understand that.”

Jed thought about it a bit. Franz waited, seeing his furrowed brow.

“Make sure he expects us to be in communication after I arrive.”

“Why is that?” Franz asked.

“If he’s willing to do shady stuff, he might tip me over the rail halfway there if he sees any advantage in it. It might be well to pay him instead of relying on owed favors alone. People have a different ethic about paid business than favors.”

“I’ll make sure he expects communication,” Franz agreed. “You have a satellite phone. Make sure he sees you using it early in the voyage. Do you have a suggestion how much to pay him?”

“Give this to him,” Jed suggested. He handed Franz a one-ounce gold Maple. “That’s illegal for him to accept, so it binds him to us in a conspiracy. If he refuses it, I’ll take that as a sign he intends to betray me and I won’t board.”

“Indeed, I know he would be loath to do anything to endanger keeping it,” Franz agreed. “It’s not cheap refurbishing his boat and I’m sure he can use the funds. Turning you in and keeping a bribe starts to be the sort of complicated action that fails too easily.”

“Do you know a disreputable motel nearby that will let me pay cash?” Jed asked.

“Yeah, but they make too much by the hour to want to let rooms by the day, and the cops watch them far too closely. You’ll stay at my place,” Franz said.

“That’s very kind of you,” Jed said.

“More like unaccountably stupid, but you’re welcome.”

Chapter 5

“This is marvelous!” Three Finger’s scholar told him. “There is not only an audio track on all the video transmissions but many of them have captions on the screen of the dialog.”

“Nice work,” Three Fingers commended him. “How long until we have someone who can speak a few hundred words of the language and ask for active instruction? The shuttle brought back enough water to let us generate about six days of oxygen. That bought us some time. I’d rather ask permission to land somewhere than risk another unauthorized landing to get more water.”

“I had no idea that was your goal,” the scholar said. He looked distressed. “We’ll alter our search to find the specific words that would be most useful for that discussion.”

“What were you going for?” Three Fingers asked.

“I assumed you would seize territory and assert your authority to hold it. Perhaps demand the surrender or removal of any natives who were residing in the area you picked. If there was a suitable island somewhere, that might be more readily defended.”

Three Fingers used his good hand to make the finger-spreading gesture of release that indicated a strong negative. It disturbed people too much to do that with his maimed hand.

“We don’t have the numbers or resources to impose our will on the natives,” Three Fingers said. “If you look at our numbers, once we are committed to a location on the surface, we will be limited to a very tight perimeter. We’ve already seen the natives have advanced aircraft and interception capabilities. A limited base would be susceptible to aerial bombardment. We’re going to have to limit the hours on our shuttles to stretch their lives until we can reproduce them if we want to maintain access to the Protector. If you consider the range of materials and facilities needed to do that, we probably could not build a useful shuttle on our own before late into a second or a third-generation from our landing. Our numbers will also be reduced in the next generation because we have a minority of females.

“The natives already have orbital assets and Survey has informed me they see artifacts on the surface of their moon. They might even lift the burden of maintaining traffic from the world to the Protector for us. We can leverage our knowledge to maintain our level of technology much faster with their cooperation. That indeed is our primary asset to bargain with them – our superior technology. One just hopes it is enough. We’ve never seen a species this technologically advanced without star flight. They are very close to being on a par with us. I will not be surprised if they are ahead in several areas. That’s another mystery to unravel.”

“I’m aware of that, but the difference between those with star flight and the system bound is profound. Numbers aside we are their betters,” the scholar insisted.

His face betrayed nothing but Three Fingers decided right then to keep his scholar far away from any negotiations with the natives. This man could say the wrong thing and kill them all.

“If the world was uninhabited it would be challenge enough to find and extract the resources we’d need to rebuild a technological society,” Three Fingers patiently explained. “The present situation with a very large population makes it much more difficult. You may assume all the easily found deposits of ores and such we’d need are already being exploited by the natives. They would certainly contest our taking them. Doing so from a limited base to far-flung locations would fail. A combat shuttle is formidable but they could afford to lose a thousand of their aircraft to destroy one shuttle and we’d still lose in the end. The math just doesn’t allow any other conclusion no matter how superior our shuttles.

“In truth, you have to come to the same conclusion about their ground forces. They could be armed with rocks and sticks and wear us down by frontal assault until we were buried under the mass of their dead bodies. Energy rifles only cycle so many times before they have to cool off. Other weapons have limited numbers of rounds until such a time as we can manufacture them. You don’t waste the hours of a general-purpose fabber to make those sorts of supplies and they are too slow anyway.”

The scholar considered that silently. Accepting it required a large adjustment in his thinking.

“The Bugs will fight like that,” he admitted. He was interrupted by the door signal.

“What is it? I’m in conference with the scholar,” Three Fingers said irritated.

“Your pardon, sir. This is the scholar’s assistant. We are still on limited emissions and he neglected to plug in his communicator. We have news we thought he should have that he’d want to tell you.”

“Well, out with it then man,” Three Fingers encouraged.

“The sensor module you had parked on the backside of the big moon has detected emissions. It isn’t anything from out-system. The natives have several devices returning video and data from the next planet in the system.”

“Next in or out?” Three Fingers demanded. “I thought there was no other radio noise?”

“Out. It is smaller, red in appearance, has very little atmosphere, and with no active magnetic field. A very inhospitable chill desert planet. The video it shows is being sent from vehicles but there is no speech being transmitted or any indication it is manned. In each case, it seems to be showing the area around a wheeled vehicle, and the tracks it made to get there are sometimes visible. They seem to be robotic devices,” the underling speculated. “We missed them at first because the power level being used is very low for planetary distances. What the interest could be in such a desolate rock is beyond me.”

“Thank you, Beelus. We’ll tap the feed if we want to see more,” the scholar said, dismissing him.

The man didn’t immediately leave.

“There is news about the other devices recovered if you want to hear it.”

“Certainly, go ahead,” Three Fingers invited.

“The large flat device that was attached to the computer turns out to be a very specialized antenna. We know how to make them but they are only used for long range radar installations at a fixed ground site. Those are purpose-built, but the technicians insist this has all the hallmarks of a mass-produced consumer product like a music player. It has several very high-density semiconductor devices we don’t understand, and contains tiny servo motors to aim it.”

“To aim it at what?” Three Fingers asked pointedly.

“It was in an open area pointed at the sky. There is very little air traffic in that remote area of their planet for it to connect to aircraft. The only theory advanced by one person was that it tracks and communicates with satellites, but nobody else agrees. They are all holding out for an alternative explanation. Oh, and the skinny pliers? They were shown to the head of maintenance without telling him their source. He tried them out bending some wire and removing some lock clips and declared them of very good quality. So good we had a hard time getting him to release them back to us.”

“Very close to our level of technology,” Three Fingers told his scholar.

“Yes, that is becoming disturbingly evident. I’ll have more to report soon, I’m sure.”

* * *

Jed didn’t expect an old man with a foul weather hat and Yankee rain slicker, but John Burns was far younger than he expected to own a multi-million-dollar fishing boat. He also didn’t have the weathered outdoor look he expected of a fisherman and he wore a golf shirt and khakis. If you’d asked him from a photo, he’d have pegged the guy as a lower-level corporate executive or a real estate broker.

The booth they met in had almost as much privacy as a separate room. If there were any security cameras, they were well hidden. The only vantage from which you could look into the booth was from the center of the bar, and the lone bartender was busy and absent from their view frequently.

Franz and he got burgers and fries, and a local beer that didn’t impress Jed. When John showed up, he got the same but a soda instead of beer.

“Nice to see you, Franz. I have to be back at the boat in about an hour. They are lifting some heavy gear off with a crane. I want to be standing there and have a man taking video from the catwalk in case anything goes wrong. I’ve seen too many optimistic idiots with cranes. I don’t want to be in another viral internet video of heavy equipment disasters.”

“I know you’re busy,” Franz said. “That’s why we picked a spot close to the water to meet so we didn’t waste your time. The owner here is also a friend and won’t remember seeing me or my friends. I was hoping you would do me a small favor. My friend here, John Doe, needs to get back to the lower forty-nine discreetly. I was hoping you could take him when you take your new vessel to the boatyard. He doesn’t have any experience but you are welcome to use him as unskilled labor along the way.”

John looked expectantly at Jed but that didn’t move him to say anything. He just looked back at him neither friendly nor particularly hopeful.

“Does Mr. Doe have the police actively looking for him?” John asked Franz, skeptically.

“If anybody is looking for him it’s not a public matter,” Franz said. “There shouldn’t be any warrants extant. You aren’t going to see his face in a post office or agency website. Besides asking a favor for old time’s sake we thought a small gift would be in order for your efforts.”

Franz set the gold Maple Jed gave him tight behind John’s soda where it couldn’t be seen looking into the booth. John was so slick his eyes slid over it without pausing to visibly stare at it.

“We have plenty of room. I’ll have two tiny officer’s cabins unoccupied. I suggest Mr. Doe spend his time in his assigned cabin or the wheelhouse with me during the day. There’s no need for him to mix with the crew. He can ask for me upon boarding and I’ll come to escort him. The ship is still marked the Abigail on the stern. That will get changed in Seattle too. I take lunch and sometimes supper on the bridge, and I’ll see he eats with me as well as something he can take to his cabin rather than eat with the crew. It might be smart to toss some snacks in your bag. If anyone asks, I’ll say he’s a potential investor and to leave it to me to talk with him.” John looked at Jed. “If you aren’t chatty with me and scowl a lot, that can’t help but cut off any interest.”

“Right, just be myself,” Jed said. “That sounds easy enough.”

That got a slight smile. “I think this might work out,” John agreed. He took a sip of his soda and when he sat it back down the coin was gone as slick as could be. Jed didn’t see him palm it.

“Stay close and the day after tomorrow I’ll call your cell,” John instructed Franz. “I won’t tell you directly to come board when I call, but that is the message to you in getting any call. You aren’t going to show up with a bunch of crap to bring aboard, are you?”

“One soft bag that it wouldn’t matter if anyone searched it,” Jed said. “I’ll toss a few protein bars in it in case I don’t get something from the galley. Anyway, I could fast that long if I had to.”

“That should take care of you,” Franz said looking at Jed. “You call me when you make contact in Seattle,” he instructed. “I’m not going to do anything here until then.”

Franz put four twenties on the table for lunch and set the salt shaker on them. When he nodded at Jed, he got up to let Franz out of the booth and followed him without looking back.

* * *

“Do they really think we don’t see them?” The early warning radar operator asked.

The watch commander didn’t answer right away, seeming to think on it.

“I know. I always expected if we saw aliens, they’d be so advanced they could suddenly materialize on the Whitehouse lawn and that would be our first clue they arrived. If they intended to provoke us to say something they would have progressively moved in closer or transmitted something themselves until we acknowledged them. Maybe even flash lights at us. The shuttle that landed in Alaska wasn’t terribly stealthy either. Besides that, the Russians, Australians, and the Indians have all asked us what the hell we think that thing is. Even the asteroid watch contacted us about it. I don’t think anybody wants to be the first to say alien, but what the hell else could it be? Certainly, none of us have lifted anything that big. Nobody even suggested it might be ours. They probably wouldn’t have inquired if that was a realistic possibility. The Chinese haven’t said boo, but then they wouldn’t mention it to us foreign devils if the Moon floated away.”

“One hopes nobody does anything stupid,” the radar man said.

“Including the aliens,” his superior agreed. This may be no different than Russia or China testing us. They may have formed false impressions of our abilities from our lack of reaction. The delay could be in trying to collect enough information to be able to talk to us.”

He was aware they’d already shot down an alien craft over the Indian Ocean. With a little luck that hadn’t been a manned aircraft but just a drone. There weren’t any organic remains recovered but there wasn’t all that much left to recover at all. He had no idea if that was shared with other nations. He certainly wasn’t free to share that with this subordinate. It was a worry how the aliens regarded the shootdown, but he found it personally heartening that they could down it.

“The patterns of air traffic have changed subtly,” the radar tech said. “I think we are quietly dispersing assets to safety.”

“I’d be shocked if they didn’t,” his commander agreed. “I’m not in the loop on that, but I’d expect the same of ground forces and for vital people to be removed from the cities and disaster bunkers to be activated. I don’t think you are going to see any joint sessions of Congress televised or big meetings of foreign leaders either. It will get difficult to maintain that status indefinitely.”

“If they want to talk to us, I guess it will depend on how different they are and how complicated the message they need to send,” the radar man said.

“If they need to speak us in full diplomatic obfuscation it may take a decade of study,” his supervisor said. “A simple surrender demand should be much easier.”

* * *

“I thought this would make things clearer,” Xilo said. His voice had an edge of desperation.

“We do have a lot more words,” his assistant, Beelus, pointed out. “Now it’s true, the captioning lags from the events on the screen. Sometimes the last phrase shown stays on well into the next presentation. Just figuring that out helped us a great deal. My personal opinion is that it also simply isn’t very accurate. I showed you those instances where something was spelled out and then retracted and a new word or expression typed in. The fact that it has the cadence of somebody keying it in live says it is a person instead of a computer generating it. Then there is the occasional person who is doing complex gestures while another person speaks. The workers who go EV in vacuum suits assure me it looks very much like what they do to communicate with gestures rather than everyone babbling over each other on the same channel.”

“There are far too many feeds of video for us to monitor,” Xilo said.

“If one may be so bold, I’d make a suggestion,” Beelus said.

“Suggest anything you please,” Xilo said. “I’m overwhelmed. I stand aside from protocol.”

“We don’t have anyone who primarily deals with language. Even the communications specialist who can speak basic Tiger has another primary job. I mean, we don’t get a lot of prisoners to have it as a full-time specialty. And nobody can speak with the Bugs. Just about anybody aboard has as much ability with alien languages as another. Ask for volunteers. Half to watch the videos when not on duty, and report what they think are word associations, and a half to validate what the others report. Let them do it singly or in groups, the less we structure it the more likely something will work. Just ignore the feeds for things like athletic competitions and selling things.”

“You realize that is insane and totally against all my training?” Xilo asked. “You don’t put intellectual puzzles to the common crew, as if these things can be decided by consensus.”

Beelus looked a little crazed himself.

“This world is more than a little insane and never had the benefit of your training! Try it. If it doesn’t work lay the blame on me. What can they do to me? We’re never going home anyway. I have no hope of a nice retirement with decent social credits.”

That rattled Xilo. He still was thinking he’d have a comfortable retirement in the not-too-distant future. He had even less chance of seeing that than this pup now.

“Get permission from the commander and have him instruct the leaders not to interfere with it,” Xilo instructed. “If it isn’t by his direct order, you’ll get far too much resistance. It’s too radical for a lot of the leaders to accept easily.”

“You don’t want to present it?” Beelus asked surprised.

“It’s your idea. You can best defend it if he wants to argue. I’ll go along and stand beside you so he knows it has my blessing. I suggest if he doesn’t like it, you ask for an alternative plan. I really doubt he can articulate one any more than I can.”

* * *

When John called, Franz drove Jed to the docks and dropped him off. He left his rifle, camera, and most of his gear with Franz. Franz had his cell phone with instructions on how he’d like it used. Franz also checked his rented mailbox periodically and delivered it when he had online orders. Jed told him to stop checking it. If it got too full, they could put it in will-call. The authorities might start watching it and see Franz check it. His satellite phone he kept as a prop, but didn’t intend to use it. Even though it worked fairly well for text using a VPN he didn’t trust it being secure. When Franz returned home, he’d find another Maple like he gave John Burns on his kitchen table.

Jed reported to the ship and told the watchman who came to the gangway that the owner was expecting him. When he asked for a name, Jed informed him he’d had lunch with the owner, and he’d be recognized. He could tell that put the man off but that was too bad. It wasn’t any of his business.

The tiny cabin was in the superstructure behind the bridge. It was as lacking in personality as he expected. This wasn’t a cruise ship after all, but it smelled fine and the bed when he checked it seemed decent. Jed checked for bed bugs like he would at any hotel, even a fancy one. There was a locker with shelves but he was going to live straight out of his bag for the short time the trip to Seattle would take. The head pointed out to him was behind the bridge and separate from a shower room at the opposite end of the hall.

Jed stretched out on the bed and tried to relax, but laid there thinking. When he got to Seattle, he needed to buy a computer and a phone. Nothing fancy, a pawn shop laptop, and a big box phone would suffice. Transportation was going to be a more difficult issue and he gave it some thought.

* * *

“Your idea of dividing the crew into those examining video and those filtering their interpretations has worked fairly well to reduce the wild unsupported speculations of some. I’m going to refine that system somewhat,” Xilo told Beelus. “I’m going to pick four of those who have demonstrated the best use of logic in refuting false assumptions and make them a separate filter over the larger group. I’m also slowly marking certain crew members who get unduly excited about certain images as less useful and segregating their responses to be examined by the most critical of our second-tier judges.

“The natives have a rich catalog of video every bit as fanciful as the cover of the recovered codex. That wouldn’t be as great a problem if the images were as obviously drawn as the folio cover, but it seems the natives are better than us at creating realistic false images. Not just altering them, but making them up from scratch. They create entire fake worlds, and just to confuse things, they create realities just slightly altered of things that really exist.

“Quite a few of our people got excited over what have to be entertainments of starships visiting other planets, dealing with species that don’t exist, and waging war with impossible weapons in defiance of known science. They show ships doing swooping maneuvers in defiance of orbital mechanics and weapons with explosive powers beyond what you could stuff in an entire freighter. They show invisible shields that defy every known law of physics. I’m embarrassed that some of these fictions fooled any of our crew. But examining a still frame of those videos it’s impossible to tell it from a recording.”

Beelus looked dismayed. “Then video is useless for them as evidence in a court of justice. If we send them a video, they will look at it with the same critical eye. They may not believe we are actually aliens, and not the sort of fake aliens created by some jokester of their own species.”

“Your point is well taken,” Xilo admitted. “I’ll have to advise the commander that we can’t make contact from a shuttle or any other way of cloaking our real presence near their moon. They’ll have to see our location to affirm the veracity of our transmission.”

“I just hope they don’t regard that as targeting data,” Beelus said.

* * *

“Even if we don’t publish it, we need a policy and to act on it consistently,” the head of NASA, Durkin said. “Others will observe what we do. It’s not like you can hide civilian launches from well-known sites. The Chinese and the Russians both brought their space station crews back to earth about the same time we became aware of the alien ship. That’s a pretty good indication they have about the same quality of sensors and radar as us. So far, we’ve delayed the launch of three commercial satellites. The Space Force has delayed a training launch and an unmanned shuttle launch that were announced, but they don’t care to tell civilians why.”

He looked a question at John Gott, the head of Space Forces, and got a poker face back. So much for getting any cooperation from him.

“India stopped and defueled a launch vehicle already on the pad. The Chinese haven’t sent up anything since recovering their crew and there has been nothing launched by France, Israel, Pakistan, Australia, Canada, Japan, Persia, or Argentina.

“If we don’t send a supply mission to the Freedom Station pretty soon, we’re going to need to have the crew start shutting down systems and getting ready to moth-ball the station. They’ll use their remaining fuel to loft it into as high an orbit as they can. That will give us about a two-year extension of its orbital life before we have to refuel and man it again or lose it.”

“You send up supply rockets without a crew, don’t you?” President Garvin asked.

“Yes, more often unmanned,” Durkin said. “The crewed versions can’t carry near as much.”

“Send one then,” Garvin said. “If they interfere with it that will tell us a great deal about them. Just don’t risk a crew or put anything aboard the mission that would be a tragedy to lose.”

“We’ll do that,” Durkin agreed. “We’ll also send the station crew a written explanation of what is going on. We have no idea how secure our encryption is now with the aliens. Most of our encryption seems to last only a few years before it is cracked, and we have no idea how many years ahead of us they are.

“The astronauts onboard are not stupid people. Commander Perez has already said they see something is going down and asked what it was. He wasn’t happy to be told it wasn’t to be discussed. The crew has responded to that by refusing all calls and text messages from their families.

“They are fulfilling every official and professional communication but we never anticipated the effects of them cutting off personal calls. When told their family would like to hear from them commander Perez said that parched souls in hell would like a shipment of snow cones too. It’s becoming difficult to keep their families from going to the press and raising an alarm that something is wrong.”

“Give them the option to come home if they wish,” President Garvin ordered.

Chapter 6

“We have several hundred words,” Xilo said. “Some are closely related. For example, we have descending and down as well and ascending and up, hold and go, from aircraft instructions and confirmed in video. Oh, and go to. To was an important combination. A lot of common phrases could be deduced by repeated use and then observing what happened. For example, we are certain of the words or phrases coming up and lastly or finally from news programs.

“We’ve seen maps and know some words for water such as pond, lake, ocean, and sea. A lot of words are related to images. They have several words for cyclonic storms shown both at ground level and in overhead views from satellites. They have hurricanes, tornadoes, and typhoons. We were already having difficulty understanding the reasons for naming them but just to make it even more confusing they name them individually as if they were people.”

“That sounds religious,” Three Fingers suggested. “Maybe they are animists and regard the forces of nature like aboriginals, addressing the sun and wind like people. Our language persists in doing that for poetic expression. It seems odd for people who can launch satellites.”

“Perhaps they are doing it on the same basis,” Xilo said. “A linguistic holdover, not a literal belief. We also have the words for rain and clouds, hail, and snow from weather reporting and graphics. We rather wondered why they have such an obsession with the weather, but it became apparent they have a great deal of trouble operating ground cars if the roadways are made slick from ice or sometimes just wet. They have storms of such severity they do heavy damage. No wonder they are interested.

“Their programs are constantly interrupted by short segments urging the purchase or use of various consumer goods. Several of my people suggest they are so prevalent that they are the basis of financing the production and transmission of video services. But they are among the easiest things understood for their brevity. Medicines are shown incessantly. They often represent the digestive tract in very simplistic two-dimensional diagrams and show the medication being promoted passing along.

“There is also an array of specialized cleaning products demonstrated. Some of these are so fanciful it’s hard to discern the intended message. They portray inanimate objects as alive and make heavy use of animals shown as intelligent beings. That’s so common a lot of our observers got all excited thinking they had multiple intelligent species on the planet. But we’ve seen so many images of the real animals that display none of these behaviors that we must disbelieve that. It’s simple fiction.

“Also, we have seen none of the huge reptiles such as was on the cover of the cheap codex I showed you. But they are firmly embedded in their stories and as fanciful cartoon characters. They have far more land animals than our people retained in modern times and they all seem of the same general biological pattern as the natives. There are reptiles but not the huge ones depicted. Indeed, there seems to be an endless parade of videos about wild animals. The more savage and ferocious they are with tooth and talon the more interest shown. Though not aquatic, the natives are shown invading the world’s oceans with artificial breathing equipment and fake fins on their feet. Given some of the creatures they encounter there, I’ve determined I’ll never get my feet wet in this world’s oceans much less swim.”

“Can you build expressions from those words with meaning?” Three Fingers asked.

“Simple ones,” Xilo said. “We’re going to make mistakes. You are commander, but if one may suggest, it would be good to start with simple things that won’t provoke aggression if they are wrong. Surely, there are basic objects and acts we can label in their language and then in ours. They can then add to the mutual dictionary if they wish. If they refuse communication then they may be isolationist in inclination. Such a lack of cooperation would slow us considerably.”

“I don’t want to write them love letters,” Three Fingers explained. “I’d be delighted to ask if we may land in a particular spot by showing a map location. Our landing party brought back as much water as they could lift, but even after sealing off damaged compartments, we have more than the normal leakage. We need to drop a shuttle and get a larger load of water to crack for oxygen. We’re probably also going to need to set a shuttle down and compress a load of nitrogen before we make any significant transfers to the surface.”

“I believe it would be far better to use what we’ve studied and know best rather than try to get fancy right now,” Xilo said.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” Three Fingers said.

“We know how aircraft ask permission to land. We can even make a list of common responses in case they tell them to hold or go around. Just ask to land on a particular runway and permission to taxi to a nearby lake. I don’t suggest you bring back ocean water. It will have a lot of salts to remove.”

“Why not?” Three Fingers asked. “It’s polite and it would be rude beyond measure to shoot them down just for asking. If they refuse, we’ll go off in a remote area again. This solves my other problem. How to reveal ourselves to them. However, every day we delay will let us speak to them better. I’ll continue to do everything I can to slow leakage and stretch our supplies until we have to approach them.

Xilo looked uncomfortable.

“The more of their communications I watch, the more I am inclined to believe they know we are here by now and are rather patiently waiting on us to reveal ourselves publicly.”

“I hope you are right,” Three Fingers shocked him by saying. “If that’s what they have been doing I don’t expect them to be hostile to us. They’d have lost patience and made the first move by now.”

* * *

Jed stayed in his cabin while the boat left Anchorage and started its journey. He didn’t come out until they were several hours out of sight of the town. The door to the bridge had a glass in it and he saw John Burns sitting to one side in a large chair on a sturdy pedestal. He suddenly realized that sort of chairs sold in motor homes were called captain’s chairs, but he’d never connected the name with this reality. The man who he’d spoken to coming on the ship was standing operating the controls under Burn’s supervision. There was another chair to the opposite side unused.

Nothing seemed to be requiring their attention so Jed cracked the door open.

“I didn’t want to be in the way while you were busy. May I come on the bridge and watch?”

“Sure, everything is under control and boring, just the way we like it,” Burns said.

“Thanks. I’m going to go outside and make a call first,” Jed said, nodding at the exit to the railed walk outside.

“There’s no cell service. We only get a little sketchy service along the way a couple of times while passing a town,” Burns informed him.

“It’s a satellite phone. If I can see a big swath of sky, I’m golden,” Jed said.

“Take your time. I’m going to the head,” Burns said getting up to use the same door Jed exited.

Jed hurried to go out on the catwalk. He didn’t especially want to be with the crewman alone. He hadn’t got off to a good start with him earlier. He wasn’t going to actually make a call. He still felt creating the impression he was in contact with someone could only enhance his safety.

The view east from the catwalk with snowcapped mountains was beautiful. Jed had to wonder if he’d ever be able to come back to Alaska. Jed put his back against the rail to hide the small screen on the phone and went through the motions of making a call without powering it up. Once it was against his face, he turned to look at the mountains again. It felt a little silly but he maintained the farce for a full two minutes and then lowered the phone to his chest as if he was turning it off.

When Jed turned around, he was looking at the helmsman taking his photo or perhaps a video with his cell phone. He lowered it as soon as he was caught, but not before Burns emerging from the door behind him saw what he was doing. Burns crossed to the man and took the phone out of his hand. Without a word of explanation, he joined Jed at the rail and threw the phone into the water with uncommon vigor. Jed followed him back in, worried how this would impact him.

“You don’t distract yourself at the wheel with electronic toys,” Burns informed his crewman. “I don’t care if you are playing games or gazing upon an image of your true love. Your eyes are on your surroundings and instruments. That’s strike one. You also do not intrude upon the privacy of my guests and business associates. That was strike two. You’ve used up two strikes. If I have another problem with you this voyage, it won’t be a matter of dismissing you in Seattle. I’ll put into the next town and put you ashore even if it’s someplace without suitable dockage. I’ll have you taken ashore in the launch.” He didn’t ask if the man understood or agreed. He simply resumed his seat. The man didn’t say a word and looked straight ahead intent on his course.

Jed didn’t see how his presence contributed to easing the tension filling the bridge so he nodded at Burns and got a nod back he took for dismissal. So much for using the bridge to ease the boredom of a slow trip. He returned to the calm and safety of his cabin.

* * *

“Commander, you wanted to be told if the natives launched a space vehicle. There’s one lifting right now if you want to watch it,” the officer of the watch on the bridge informed him.

“I’m splitting my screen and will watch and listen if you have any comments on the command channel,” Three Fingers said. “I was starting to wonder if they are aware of us and decided to pause all their launches over us.”

“The natives are broadcasting video of the launch,” the officer said. “We’re switching to their feed because they have better images and cameras on the vehicle as well.”

On the screen, the first stage stopped its burn and dropped away. The camera watched it go and then showed the bell of the second stage motor glow progressively hotter as it fired up.

“It just dropped off a segment!” Three fingers said surprised. “Why would they do that? Is there anyone in engineering who understands this?”

“Rollo in Engineering, sir. That was something our early rocket vehicles did too. You do get a slight increase in performance by dropping some of the fuel-carrying structure you have emptied. You can bet those cylinders were mostly empty fuel tanks and they have no idea how to stabilize metallic hydrogen. But I’d bet the primary consideration is they are still using motors that are configured statically. They are shaped to be more efficient at lower levels in the atmosphere or differently for later in vacuum. That doesn’t look like a nozzle that has variable geometry to me. Assuming the video is color calibrated the fuel seems to be limited to plain combustion. If they used our propellant the motor would be white-hot. Within those limitations, the native’s technology is rather well designed and effective. Of course, just like our fast boat, it doesn’t scale up for something like a combat shuttle. It doesn’t have enough mass for that sort of drive. I doubt if any of the native’s vessels are heavy enough.”

“That’s something we can sell the natives then,” Three Fingers said with satisfaction. “Navigation, that isn’t coming out anywhere near us, is it?”

“No, sir. It’s assuming a much lower orbit.”

“Good. I don’t think we’re ready to talk effectively just yet. What’s this?” Three fingers asked.

Nobody answered because the feed answered that itself. It split the screen being transmitted and showed the first stage returning to a vertical landing on a standard SpaceX target.

“Well, that’s rather nicely done,” the fellow from Engineering said.

* * *

Franz picked a sandwich shop across the street from a small park. He put in his order then powered up Jed’s cell phone while he was waiting and called up a schedule for the ferries. Once that was displayed, he powered it down and just to be certain slipped it in a pouch he’d folded up from aluminum foil. He folded the top over carefully by feel inside his pocket and paid cash for his sandwich.

Sitting on a park bench across the street, he took his time enjoying his sandwich and wondered if Jed was being silly. None of the other customers he’d seen go in and out aroused his suspicions. It was a full twenty minutes before a white Suburban arrived in a bit of a hurry. Finding no parking spot by the sandwich shop a man got out of the passenger side and hurried in the shop. The Suburban continued past Franz. As it passed, he could see a flat rectenna stuck on the roof and a pair of stick-on film antennas barely visible in both dark tinted rear windows. The license plate was a normal civilian license plate, not an agency plate, but Franz had no doubt it was a government car. The agent dropped off was stealthy too. He had on jeans and a polo shirt. Franz was impressed with their subtlety. Jed definitely wasn’t being silly. Somebody was interested in him enough to find out if he had a cellphone and watch for it even after a period of inactivity.

The Suburban turned around somewhere and returned on his side of the street. The driver took the closest open parking spot along the park, across from a business several doors down from the sandwich shop. Franz expected him to join his buddy but instead, he pulled back out before he even turned off his engine. This time he turned in the next street. Franz was betting he turned down the alley behind the row of shops. Sure enough, he circled around and came out the opposite street, then stopped and talked to his partner in front of the sandwich shop. That likely meant the agent didn’t want to create a fuss by displaying ID and demanding to go through to the back door. Perhaps they thought this was somewhere Jed would return and they didn’t want to scare him away. Twenty minutes was a fairly slow response. Franz wondered where they were coming from. That seemed more than the driving time from downtown. Maybe he’d do this at another location and see if he could localize where they are headquartered and what agency. The agent in the Suburban drove off to search the nearby streets and the one on foot came across to search the park. He was looking for a much younger and fitter man and didn’t give the old guy sitting on the bench a glance.

Chapter 7

“We figured out the flat antenna,” Xilo said.

He looked so embarrassed Three Fingers thought this was going to be an epic admission.

“Was it talking to a satellite like you said one fellow proposed?”

“Oh, it’s much worse than that,” Xilo said, actually wringing his hands in distress.

Three Fingers had a lot of training about drawing out reticent subordinates and getting the most from the personnel one has instead of what one might wish to have. At the moment he couldn’t think of a positive thing to say. Worse, he was starting to take his scholar in dislike, and that was a dangerous thing. Enjoying him squirming wasn’t good for his command. He tried to shape his face into an expression of neutral interest. He might not have been entirely successful.

“We sent a couple of drones to pass inside the orbit of their geostationary satellites. The same sort we are accustomed to using. It’s remarkable how many of them there are. One of the technicians didn’t understand our instructions and made his drone pass much lower. Much lower than we were comfortable approaching their atmosphere, because we haven’t mapped the variable limits at which we’d get significant drag.” He took a deep breath.

“We underestimated the number of satellites the natives have by two orders of magnitude. There is a huge population of smaller satellites in lower short-lived orbits. It must be a significant expense to replace them continually.”

“Do you have any idea what these lower satellites do,” Three Fingers inquired.

“They communicate with the flat antennas. It’s just a torrent of data packets from thousands of these satellites to thousands of these ground stations. It’s also difficult because they are optically rather stealthy. They appear to be made deliberately non-reflective. Why would they bother to do that? They are unusually small for communications satellites. Equally disturbing is there is another ring of fewer satellites further out continually making different emissions towards the planet.”

“You aren’t telling me something,” Three Fingers stated as a fact. Xilo was having trouble maintaining eye contact and he slowed to carefully consider his words twice.

“I’ve told you every relevant detail,” Xilo objected.

“Tell me a few irrelevant details,” Three Fingers invited.

Xilo looked distressed and wasn’t forthcoming with anything. Three Fingers thought back over previous conversations and entertained the idea of having the scholar interrogated under drugs. That would probably destroy his usefulness but he was starting to doubt his utility in any case.

“Ah… the fellow who nobody believed, but was the only one to have an idea what the flat antennas did, where does he fit in this? Omit nothing,” he ordered Xilo.

“He’s the technician who ordered the drone to make the dangerous low pass. We only have so many drones and he could have lost one needlessly. I’ve disciplined him for that and other infractions.”

“Very well, we’re getting closer to the core of the matter,” Three Fingers decided. “What else did he do that merited discipline?”

“He was insubordinate and disrespectful,” Xilo said.

“Describe in painful detail how this was displayed,” Three Fingers demanded. He was getting tired of forcing the man to reveal the whole mess piece by piece.

“When chastised about his carelessness he made a dismissive gesture and asked which was more important, the risk that turned out to be nothing or the fact we now understand that this whole massive system exists now?” I can’t prove it but I suspect he keyed in the wrong instructions just to prove his earlier suppositions were correct.”

“No,” Three Fingers said, feigning shock. “What else did he do? You mentioned disrespect.”

“Our discussion of the second layer of satellites came up and he advanced a theory about them.”

“Did anyone else have a theory this time or was he alone again?” Three Fingers asked.

“One fellow suggested the data form suggested they were a time broadcasting system,” Xilo said.

“Were there any arguments against that?”

“Well, the fact that we see three separate systems. It seems terribly expensive to deploy that much redundancy to have accurate timekeeping,” Xilo admitted.

“And what idea did the disrespectful fellow advance?” Three Fingers wondered.

“He agreed they were time signals but said they could be compared on the planet’s surface to give very accurate position fixes,” Xilo said. “Nobody agreed with that after I pointed out that to do that the natives would have to have more accurate clocks than we do.”

Three Fingers waited for him to add some technical reason explaining why such clocks were impossible, but he added nothing, sitting looking very pleased with himself.

“Do you think that you might have gotten a more robust discussion of the merits and negatives of the idea if you hadn’t immediately positioned it outside consideration by your subordinates as their leader? They are aware of your ability to reward or punish them. It could stifle debate.”

“I certainly hope so. We do not need empty contentious debate over issues already discredited by authority. If you allow that, the credulous start questioning anything they please,” Xilo said.

“Like the crazy idea that the flat antenna talked to satellites?” Three Fingers inquired.

“That would have been discovered in the fullness of time by correct methods put forward by the proper authorities. I don’t need to be schooled by a second-grade technician who is the first generation removed from dirt grubbing farmers,” Xilo said. He was getting a little hot and forgetting he was talking to his commander.

“While we are at it, where did the disrespectful part come in?” Three Fingers asked.

“The little snip said I’d sit on it a year or three scratching my butt until everybody forgot the meeting and I’d suddenly have an epiphany with the idea springing from no known source as my own.”

“Hmmm…Have such things ever happened in your profession?” Three Fingers mused.

“Certainly not among credible researchers,” Xilo said. “One might come back to an idea rejected before if you postulate new details about the mechanisms involved and fit it into the existing understanding. That is certainly not bare theft. Anyone can throw out a list of wild possibilities without detail and hope one sticks.”

“I’ve heard enough to understand, but I’m curious how you disciplined this fellow. Does he have a name by the way? Do farmers bother to name their sons?”

“He’s Mohr, and the customs of farmers aren’t well known to me. I need all my technicians so I didn’t remove him from the work schedule, but I ordered his leader-of-three to review all his work before letting it be logged, and I took away a social credit so he can’t enjoy the same purchase privileges from the ship stores as his peers.

“That must thrill his leader to have to take the time to review him. So, he can’t buy snacks or new entertainments?” Three Fingers asked. “Not that they were going to last forever anyway.”

“Indeed, perhaps it will teach him a little respect.”

“I’m not certain you understand the difference between respect and fear,” Three Fingers said. “Perhaps back home in a sheltered academic environment, we could wait on discoveries to be delivered in the fullness of time. Delaying them that way so the proper authorities are credited makes me wonder why the Bugs and Tigers haven’t killed us all. Perhaps they have their own inefficiencies over similar layers of class and privilege. I do know that this ship isn’t a microcosm of our larger society. We don’t have the luxury of surviving while waiting on the fullness of time for anything. By playing dominance games you endanger all of us to elevate yourself.”

Xilo looked shocked by such an assertion. Three Fingers didn’t care and his expression cut off any objection Xilo was tempted to voice.

“I’m disciplining you. Somewhat more severely than you did Mohr. You are demoted to be an assistant scholar at the same social credit level as Beelus, who will take over as lead scholar. You will switch cabins and other accommodations with him. If you damage anything out of spite in the transfer, I’ll bunk you with the common crew and you’ll live out of a locker. Your principal duty now will be as ship historian and archivist. Beelus has to authorize all your system entries and you will find the next time you sit at a computer you have no erasure privileges. I no longer trust you. I’m sending this conversation to Beelus and you can both regard it as an explicit order in its entirety and undo Mohr’s punishment for being right.

“Just to gift you the benefit of an educational experience, you will first be assigned to replace Mohr as a technician for three ten days before assuming your new duties. I realize that is probably punishing his leader of three also, but I’m crediting him without checking that he can find something you can do. I’d have you in a field with a hoe if that was available as an educational experience. Once we are down on the planet that will remain a possibility. I’m hoping this entire experience will put a little nick in your exalted opinion of yourself. Mohr is going to be promoted to leader of the group evaluating the ideas advanced by the crew from watching the native’s video. So far, he seems way ahead of everyone else at understanding what we are seeing, and I desperately need a winner right now.

“If you have any sense, you will get up and leave to follow those orders without provoking me further,” Three Fingers said.

For a wonder, he did.

* * *

“He wasn’t abducted,” the head of the FBI, Taggert, informed the other agencies in a conference call. “His cell phone was briefly activated in Anchorage and used to look at the ferry schedules. One sincerely doubts the aliens have it and are planning a boat ride.”

“I assume you are covering the ferries?” his over-boss, Jason, at Homeland asked.

“I’m bringing in extra bodies and covering everything. Overland, airlines, private air charter, and auto sales. We’re even keeping a check on boat sales, in case he buys something capable of reaching the lower states. If he taps his bank accounts we’ll know.”

“You haven’t frozen them?” Jason asked.

“I’d have to assert they were used in a crime. If you want to ask for a seizure warrant on your authority, be my guest,” Taggert invited. “We were more interested in finding his location if he tapped them or even a lead on others who might help him.”

“Make sure the border watch has his picture and watches for him to be with others,” Jason said and ignored his statement about seizing his bank accounts.

“You think he might hitchhike out?” one of the others asked.

“Yes, that’s possible, or he might pay an independent trucker for a ride,” Jason said. “I’ve read the man’s file. He’s smart. He’s seen action, and reading between the lines he may not have gotten along that well in the service. His awards and rank don’t seem to match his time in service in my opinion. He may have trust issues and expect us to treat him badly.”

He paused just enough to let the uniformed member of their conference call respond to that if he wished. The man shifted in his seat and ground his teeth in a grim smile but said nothing.

“I’d very much like to know if he saw the aliens or interacted with them. Fuzzy images from a high-altitude spy plane are rather unsatisfying. We have the files he uploaded after they landed near him. The size of them suggests there is video but they are well encrypted. He hasn’t tried to access them. Also, the Russians saw our photo mission and are quietly asking for copies of anything we have.”

“Has he been recalled to active duty?” someone asked.

“Yes, but the letter has been sitting in his post office box uncollected. He has other mail weeks older and it is a larger box suggesting it collects a lot between times he empties it. There is after all no regulation about how often one must check it.” the Homeland head pointed out.

Though somebody will probably propose one now, Jason thought.

* * *

“Commander, we recorded and studied the emissions between the low-level satellites and the ground stations the drone pass recorded. Our techs were able to fabricate a cable to hook between the computer and the flat antenna. They did so, cursing the crewman who brought both back and yet neglected to bring the item connecting them. Once connected, the computer displays very complex graphics and text when shown portions of the captured transmissions. The computer language to render them is very complex. It’s going to take us some time with a much larger sample to understand it well. In my opinion, it’s going to be a much richer source of information than the public transmissions,” Beelus said.

“Does crewman Mohr agree with that?” Three fingers asked.

“Technical Leader Mohr was the principal researcher getting the computer to display those signals,” Beelus admitted. “He sat and worked like an equal with the four you put him to supervise. There is one technician in particular, Portz, who can write computer instructions. Leader Mohr assigned him to decipher their coding. He’s a lower rank technician because he has a very low social affinity ranking and accumulates demerits, but he has the odd sort of a mind suited to that work.”

The way he said it left the commander certain Beelus was a little scandalized by Mohr’s egalitarian attitude. Still, Three Fingers was satisfied. Beelus hadn’t volunteered who made the breakthrough, but he didn’t call him names and try to steal his credit. He even acknowledged his specialty by politely correcting his use of crewman instead of leader. Overall, this was progress from how Xilo ran things.

“We’re also making progress because a couple of the crew identified educational broadcasts meant for the instruction of very young children. They are simple, short, and fanciful but have opened a flood of understanding of verbs and tense. We even have a name for the language now, English.”

“Can you position a drone under this vast cloud of lower satellites to give us a relay so we can use the computer to access them?” Three Fingers suggested, demonstrating with his hands.

“No, commander. The differential in speed will make us keep losing the connection and the antenna and computer are too difficult to install in a drone and too valuable to risk. The light speed lag from there to here becomes difficult too. One is fairly certain the device would see the delay as an error. But this has enabled us to see that there are many satellites at the geostationary level that handle similar traffic. We are preparing a drone that can loiter very near one of these and relay the signal at a different frequency to and from the Protector. We think we can hook our antenna to the computer.”

“That sounds marvelous. Keep me appraised,” Three Fingers ordered him.

* * *

“His cell phone was active again for a whole twenty seconds at the other end of town.”

“Don’t respond to it,” Jason, head of Homeland security said.

“No?”

“No. The son of a bitch is playing with us. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s timing our response and taking pix of our agents so he can identify them. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction. He has to know there are so few ways in and out of Alaska that he’s stuck. Start collecting data on anybody he does business with in town and see if any of them have suddenly had large bank deposits or taken vacation time. Don’t contact them or interview them. It’s a small-town attitude up there with the usual distrust of outsiders. Somebody may be actively aiding and hiding him for friendship or money.”

“If he’s staying with somebody, they will be buying more groceries. I’ll assign somebody to check his known associates for a sudden increase in household spending,” the FBI man said.

“Good thinking. Plain old detailed police work might crack this yet,” Jason said.

* * *

Jed stayed in his tiny cabin the rest of the voyage. Burns brought him two breakfast sandwiches or two breakfast burritos every morning and two coffees. Lunch was a cold sandwich and chips. Supper was whatever crew had for a hot meal in a foam box. There must be crew on duty who had to receive their meal the same way or the cook wouldn’t even have the carryout boxes. It wasn’t all that bad. When he passed a couple of different crewmen going down the corridor to the head or the shower over the next four days, they ignored him or just nodded.

He had no idea if that was because Burns ordered them to leave him alone or the crewman who tried to photograph him had told his story and they were all too scared to say boo to him. Burns didn’t seem disposed to discuss it or anything else when he dropped the food off.

After thinking about it, Jed decided he was isolated on Burns' orders or a crewman would be delivering his meals, not the owner. Perhaps Burns regretted bringing him since it caused an incident with a crewman. The man might be a valuable employee and now their relationship was damaged. It might be his fault for neglecting his duty to take Jed’s picture, but it still wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t along. It wasn’t fair to blame him for the crewman’s error, but the outsider was always easier to blame when there was friction.

When they docked, Burns came by and said the crew would all be off within the hour and he should wait to let them leave and then walk off himself before too much later. He wasn’t going to be around and he could exit the port area without any problem.

Jed thanked him and said he’d do that. It seemed pointless to try to iron things out and he didn’t feel like apologizing. Once their business was done, he never expected to see the man again.

Nobody looked twice at him leaving. Somebody must be watching to keep just anybody from boarding but he couldn’t see them. Jed walked north to NW Market and there was a sign for a burger bar to the west. He hadn’t had lunch on the boat so he went in there looking forward to a hot burger, fries, and a beer. It wasn’t half bad, much better than cold salami with Day-Glo orange cheese on white bread, and the boat had been dry. He asked the waitress where he could buy a cell phone nearby.

“Cross the street, half a block east there’s a little shop with pretty much anything you need. Ask for Bernard and tell him Sally sent you. He needs the commission.”

“I’ll do that, thanks.”

It was a cloudy day threatening to rain but still refreshing after being trapped in the cramped cabin for days. Jed decided a compact umbrella might be a wise purchase when he got the cell phone. A police car passed coming into sight too quickly for him to change direction or turn in a shop without being obvious. Jed forced nonchalance and waited to see if the scanner on the car alerted on his face. When he made it to the convenience store without them circling back, he was relieved. He’d never have deliberately tested the system but now he was fairly confident there wasn’t a general watch out for him to local law enforcement.

The older man at the front had a name tag on that said ‘RED’ though his hair was long gone white.

“Is Bernard working today?” Jed asked.

“Bernie! Live one for you,” he called out. “He’s at the phone counter, all the way to the back.”

“Exactly what I need,” Jed confirmed.

The trip through the store was educational. Everything worth more than about twenty dollars was in a locked case. They appeared to cater to several ethnic groups Jed would have expected to have separate stores. He gave up trying to count the surveillance cameras and quite a few were at eye level or below. A door off to the side had a sign announcing that room had fine used and reconditioned goods. Everything was divided, a deli in one corner, a smoke shop in another. If you weren’t fussy, you could live out of this place for months before you’d need something they didn’t have.

Bernard had on a big bandana for a head wrap with skulls and crossbones, and a leather vest. For a wonder, his bare arms didn’t have any tats to go with that outfit. He didn’t have any other customers.

“I’d like two unlocked Linux phones and rugged cases for them. I’m not picky about cameras or any exact size. Just not some weird brand I’ve never heard of. Sally sent me over.”

Bernie hesitated one eye blink sizing him up and decided Jed knew what he wanted and wouldn’t appreciate a hard sell.

“Do you want to buy service and get sims in them?”

“It’s been a while since I bought a phone. I haven’t followed the market. Do you have a reseller who caters to old folks?”

That got a smile.

“Key Cellular has a Simple Service plan for seniors. Outside the US, it’s only good in Canada and Mexico, not overseas, and it’s data capped at a half-terabyte a month. You can only get you the senior discount if you are fifty-five plus.”

“Not yet, but I’ll take it. The old folks have to watch their money and they have been around the barn a time or two and aren’t given to taking any crap. A service that caters to them should be aware of that to survive any time at all.”

Bernie nodded. “They are supposed to have decent customer service. No phone trees if you call and twenty-four-hour chat help online.”

“What are the choices pre-paid?” Jed asked.

“They rip you for that. A hundred a month single, eighty a month for three months, and seventy-five a month for six months. It’s a lot cheaper if you auto-pay from your bank.”

“Sell me three months for both,” Jed said ignoring the bank suggestion. He had his cash divided into four bundles so he didn’t flash too much. He pulled out the smallest one that the transaction would mostly use up. “I don’t trust banks,” he quipped.

“Shit man. I don’t trust nobody,” Bernie agreed.

* * *

Franz got up even earlier than usual. He wanted to be down by the ferry dock before sunrise. That was extra early in the long days of summer. Jed’s phone was scrubbed of all his information and contacts. The applications were all set back to the factory versions. The last time he’d turned it on he’d put it in airplane mode. Now the battery was run down to five percent. The next time it was fired up it would present a setup screen to log onto the network the sim used.

He stopped at his favorite breakfast place, had a leisurely breakfast with all the early risers, and got to the docks when the sky was at that steely gray stage just before you see colors.

He had a hook of thin shim attached to his drone and hung the phone with that inserted into the crack between the phone and soft case. The drone was loud in the quiet morning even though it had shrouded props and was supposed to be stealthy. He intended to make one pass across the top deck and drop the phone on a table in the solarium. It should be long gone before any of the tent campers out on the open deck came out to investigate the buzz.

Once he cleared the rail he slowed way down, crashed the drone into a tabletop that lifted the phone off its hook, and then flew out the bay side of the solarium. The drone rose from the load being removed and he clipped the overhead exiting before he could correct it. The tone of the drone changed and the camera was showing there was some vibration now. He didn’t take time to see where the phone ended up and concentrated on getting the machine back and quieted.

When he got it landed, one of the foam shrouds was chipped and the ends of one prop ragged and showing fiber. At least if it went down, it would have hit the water. He slipped it in a shopping bag and headed back to his truck. He was smiling and enjoying playing the trickster. When somebody found the phone and turned it on, it would be on a west-bound ferry just about to leave and the phone would run out of juice pretty fast. There weren’t all that many places to plug in and charge up on a ferry. People had to wait for their turns and they had their own devices to keep charged. With a little luck, the boat would leave the dock before anybody could board to look for Jed and his phone.

The phone slid off the table and it was a couple of hours past sailing before anyone noticed it on the deck. The tourist was an honest soul and turned the phone into the purser. The phone rode all the way to the end of the line at Dutch Harbor without anyone claiming it. The purser turned it on to see if he could identify who owned it. Maybe he could check the passenger lists and return it to somebody on the return voyage. First, he had to charge it, the sign-up screen and lack of user information surprised him. It wasn’t a new phone or an expensive one, and had visible wear. He tapped the next button a couple of times to see that it really was bare, It did connect to a tower in that process. It was at a three percent charge by then. He tossed it in the lost-and-found box as a lost cause.

“Chief, the FBI says Mr. Murphy’s cell phone logged on briefly at Dutch Harbor.”

“Where the hell is Dutch Harbor?” Jason asked. His assistant brought the map up for him.

“Do you want to fly a couple of agents up there and search the ferry? Even if he went ashore, it’s a really small community and any outsiders will be easy to find.”

“He’s not there,” Jason said with confidence. “He’s just messing with our minds now. If he’s doing this he may be anywhere. The guy is smarter than I thought, but if he was really smart, he wouldn’t be tweaking our noses like this. If the Feebers thought he was there they’d already have agents on the way. It would just amuse them to see us suckered into believing this.”

His assistant looked thoughtful.

“If you believe this is a distraction, perhaps we should drop a team in to keep his cabin under surveillance in case he returns.”

Jason was visibly irked.

“He’s never going back there. He might not even realize it yet but the sort of training and service he had teaches you never to establish patterns where someone can find you. If he starts thinking about going back a little voice in the back of his mind will start nagging him that it is foolish.”

“Do you want to alert other agencies then? Maybe bring in local police?”

“And issue warrants for what? Just say we want him for questioning? No, anything we said would prejudice a real complaint later and anything that isn’t plain vanilla and uninteresting will invite a leak and press inquiries. He’s the sort who’d know the value of establishing a relationship with local officers including game and park people. They might very well warn him. We’ll keep it in-house.”

* * *

There was a bar a few doors further east from the variety store. It was old-fashioned and nobody had ruined it by modernizing it. Jed was relieved that the local cops ignored him once already. He didn’t want to stand out on the street talking on his phone, looking like a drug dealer.

Jed picked a really small table tucked in a corner near an outlet. The phones only had a sixty percent charge and he wanted to run that up. He ordered a Negra Modelo and chicken tenders to anchor his rights to the table. After plugging in he set up a Swiss VPN on the phone added an encrypted voice and text app his friend in Seattle used before calling him.

“Hi, if you recognize my voice don’t say my name. Don’t say yours for that matter. I’m on a burner phone and don’t want to trigger any interest.”

“This service should be safe,” Arnold insisted.

“Yes, I know this is supposed to be encrypted end to end, and it’s through a VPN. I’m paranoid.”

“Of course, you are,” Arnold agreed.

“I’m in a bar up in Ballard and it’s conceivable there could be an audio pick up somewhere here.”

“Oh, down here slumming. How very nice.”

“I need some help and it’s your area of expertise. I think you’d find some information I have very interesting and advantageous to know.”

“How very mysterious. Just how dangerous is it, given how you are acting?” Arnold asked.

“When has that ever bothered you? If you help me sell it, I can give you a cut too.”

“I’m not terribly desperate for funds. I’m still, however, fond of breathing.”

“I’m not poor either, but money is useful. It isn’t my primary motivation in this,” Jed insisted. “Why don’t I take a cab and meet you nearby after you get off work?”

“You’re lucky you caught me on my office day for the week. I’m already downtown.”

“OK, name a restaurant near you and I’ll wait for you there.”

Arnold named a place with a pretentious French name.

“Thanks, I’ll see you there.”

Jed checked out the restaurant online, keyed in a slightly different street number, and found an insurance agency a couple of doors away. He called for a cab to pick him up back at the nearby convenience store and gave the agency as his destination. The site informed him it would be ten to fifteen minutes and his driver would be Fred. That let him finish his beer and he left a tip under the empty bottle. He hadn’t meant to finish the chicken tenders but the stupid things were really good. He beat the cab to the curb by two minutes.

His driver was a turban-wearing Sikh and Jed laughed out loud. “I don’t believe for a minute you are Fred.”

The driver seeing that he was amused, not upset, smiled. “Some folks are prejudiced and ask for a different driver if they are told Armaan is picking them up. But they hardly ever want to wait for another cab once I’m sitting right there ready to go.”

“Better you than me,” Jed said. “I’d never last a week dealing with the public.”

“And that’s how I feel about medicine,” Armaan said. “My brother is a doctor and I don’t know how he can do it. I close my eyes and hold my breath just to get an injection.”

He punched start and destination into his screen and asked Jed to confirm it.

“That’s right.” He was surprised Armaan didn’t ask to be prepaid.

“Anyway,” Jed told him after they pulled away, “I think it must be a lot easier to jab others than get one yourself.”

“I’m never going to find out,” Armaan told him.

Jed enjoyed bantering with him, but shut up, realizing it was a bad idea to give Armaan reason to remember him. He found Armaan didn’t force conversation if he didn’t initiate it. He gave him a proper tip in town, neither too much nor too little to be memorable. It was a short walk to the restaurant.

If I keep this up, I’m going to be fat, Jed thought ordering a corned beef sandwich and coffee. The menu wasn’t nearly as French or pretentious as the name suggested. It seemed aimed at business luncheons with deli fare. His phones still weren’t charged all the way and there were no outlets to be seen. That probably kept people from parking at a table with their computer. The restaurant wasn’t busy. It was the lull between lunch and supper so nobody was upset he was lingering over his sandwich. The waiter gave his soft bag a lingering look when he sat down. It wasn’t the sort of place where customers had luggage with them. There was no help for standing out that way. He had nowhere to leave it. He asked the waiter to box the half he didn’t eat when the man refilled his coffee, and told him he was waiting for a friend. But Jed put his hand over his cup and turned down a second refill later. He went ahead and paid then, and when the waiter brought his change, he waved it away. It was generous enough to ensure he wouldn’t try to rush him off.

When his friend Arnold came in, he headed straight for Jed’s table before they could seat him.

“I could have just rung you up to come out. I just didn’t think of it. You’ve eaten?” Arnold asked, nodding at the sandwich box.

“I’ve been eating at every stop all day long. You aren’t welcome to tie up a table if you don’t buy something. If you need supper, go ahead and order something.”

“No thanks, I have stuff at home and my car is circling the block on auto piling up in-town mileage fees. I didn’t see any parking open down the whole block.”

“Something else… Could I possibly crash on your couch for a couple of days? I’m traveling on cash and staying in a hotel will eat it up pretty fast. Do you have anybody living with you?”

“Just my cat. I gave up on live-in girlfriends after the last one. They never stop digging for your life story bit by bit and can’t accept you don’t want to talk about it. I don’t care to create a cover story just to have some peace. I’d have to write a script to keep it all straight and update it. They especially can’t accept you have a safe they can’t open. The cat is demanding enough. No names still?” Arnold asked.

“Not even the cat,” Jed confirmed. “You aren’t into anything now to worry about your place being clean? Or your car for that matter.”

Arnold lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not into anything hinky since… we were… together. That doesn’t mean I’ve gone soft in the head. I make sure my place is secure. I’d know if somebody came in while I was gone. I’m getting the impression I’m going to be back in it again though. If I had any sense, I’d tell you to keep moving along.”

“Good. We’ll talk in the car then,” Jed said. He didn’t address Arnold having any sense.

* * *

“I can’t get an image of it, but I’m fairly certain the aliens have parked a remote of some sort right in front of a Hughes bird that provides commercial data and internet to most of the mid-latitude Americas.” The technical advisor seemed put out by that.

“That’s good. They must be trying to figure out how to talk to us. Even better if they are fixed on us instead of working to be able to chat with the Chinese or the Indians,” Jason, head of Homeland, said. “So why the cross face? It’s getting hard maintaining a quiet alert and this is progress.”

“Because the Hughes sat can’t move very far. There are other com sats close to each side and we have a lot of old fixed dishes on banks and stores aimed at it. Whatever is in front of it puts a dead spot on its coverage of northern Colorado with very low signal strength. They are wondering why.”

“Is that all?” Jason asked. “We’ll put a few high-altitude drones as repeaters over your null spot and broadcast with enough power to fill in from fringe reception, even if it isn’t perfectly in line.”

“You think they will cooperate to keep it quiet?” his techie asked.

“Why say anything to them?” Jason asked. “Make the problem go away in the next couple of hours and they aren’t going to spend a cent to find out why there was a problem that has disappeared.”

Chapter 8

Powel James was a retired astrophysicist and a keen amateur astronomer from when he was eight years old. The single line on the asteroid watch that was removed and replaced with a note that it was a camera artifact and deleted bothered him. He still had the daily download with the sighting coordinates. The fact it was just barely to the side of a full moon almost convinced him it was some sort of lens flare. But not quite. He read the postings every day and knew the project was designed to avoid such false sightings. He’d had never once seen a similar erratum.

He sent an email to Edward Barney, an old colleague still on the project who was British.

“Ed, would you explain the removal as an artifact error of line twenty-seven in the report of the new object on June tenth? It doesn’t make any sense to me. – Powel”

Ed didn’t respond. It was late in the day for him. Maybe he had a life outside work and would respond tomorrow after he came back to his office.

But then the strangest thing happened. He got a text message on his phone from Germany.

“P – this is relayed as a favor, from a student’s borrowed phone, through a trusted family member. Please do not use this # or reply. Delete after reading. Consider the retraction a corrigendum, not an error. My bad. I am constrained by offal seek rats ax here. Please drop it. – E.”

It surprised him it could involve the Official Secrets Act and Ed would go to that much trouble to obscure it phonetically from being harvested by keyword watchers. That was something out of a spy novel and utterly unlike Ed. The reply suggested it was an author error rather than a publishing error. He certainly wouldn’t cause his friend any more trouble if he thought the publication put him at risk.

Now the question was – what were they hiding? Did they finally find a planet killer and were keeping it hidden? The sort of activity that would generate would be hard to cover up. He would have to go back through news reports he usually ignored if he wanted to prove that to himself. That would be a bother. It would have to be done on the sly, and he wasn’t set up to doing that. Better to use the skill sets he already possessed to address the question directly.

If he examined the sky near where the original sighting was could he find anything? If an object was on a terminal collision course it wouldn’t be deviating much from its original position. On second thought, there were at least half a dozen people familiar with the program who would check out that possibility to keep them honest. But what if it was something else? Could being that near the Moon possibly be a coincidence? What if it was instead something in lunar orbit? Then too… it could be an object in a stable halo orbit behind or in front of the Moon. The fact he was the sort of person who didn’t fixate on his first assumption was remarkable. He would check every possible explanation without the normal automatic confirmation bias. That sort of mind was unusual and dangerous.

He had to think about which of those possibilities was more likely and the most efficient way to check them. He just hoped it was clear and good viewing tonight. But Arizona was usually excellent that way. The moon would rise at eight twenty-two which would give him lots of time to do a systematic search around the moon. He’d write a program today to direct his telescope. Using his comet search software, he’d find out tonight if something was moving near the Moon.

* * *

“We’re making tremendous progress,” Beelus said. “We have the words for rocket and shuttle. Those are different than the word missile that is applied strictly to weapons. So, we won’t inadvertently tell them we are unleashing a weapon at them when we mean we’re sending a manned vehicle. The study of aircraft operations has continued until we are now certain we can land a shuttle without violating their traffic safety rules.

“It’s amazing, but they allow aircraft to fly freely between a hundred and fifty, and fifteen-hundred-double man lengths. They do so without direction except in the most crowded areas around the big cities. They even land and take off in a set pattern. They talk to each other instead of being controlled. That is another useful word of which we’re certain. We’re still learning from their chatter but making progress.

“We are also compiling a catalog of gestures. For example, they make a repeated rocking motion of their head to indicate yes,” he illustrated it, “or a repeated rotation in the horizontal as a negative.”

“Very good,” Three Fingers said. “I want you to pick two of the crew who have displayed the most interest and aptitude at this work and start drilling them to memorize as much as they can absorb and work at directing it towards each other. We’ll print them cheat sheets to take along but the more they can respond extemporaneously without the delay of consulting their list the better. Make clear to them they will be the first of us allowed to leave a shuttle where the natives may approach them, and that they will go unarmed and avoid any sort of conflict. Even at the risk of personal bodily harm or death.”

“Some of the gestures we are compiling will be useful,” Beelus said. “It is a standard gesture of submission in their videos to show your hands are empty of weapons by displaying your palms to someone with a weapon.”

“Amazing. Does that obligate the person to respect your surrender?” Three Fingers asked.

“Not…always,” Beelus admitted. “But we also are not always sure which of these videos are real and which of them portray fiction.”

“I’m starting to wonder if they can tell the difference,” Three Fingers admitted.

* * *

Arnold’s car put on its turn signal and started slowing down just past the last cross street. When it got nearly stopped it switched over to four-way flashers and came to a halt in front of the restaurant. Most of the traffic behind it moved over to the left lane smoothly, but some idiot on manual was right on its rear bumper and came to a stop with it. Or his collision avoidance did. At least he didn’t plow into it. He backed up but sat there because there was no opening in the flow of traffic around them.

“I swear they shouldn’t allow you to drive on manual inside the city limits,” Arnold complained. “Every time you read about a nasty accident it was started because somebody on manual did something stupid and nothing could prevent a collision. Now watch, if he gets a break in the left lane, he’ll whip around us even if it gets him a ticket for too many lane changes or over speed.”

They stepped between the parked cars and ignored the driver’s glare. Their car turned at the very next corner so they never got to test Arnold’s prediction.

“What are you smiling about?” Arnold asked suspiciously.

“Just that this is a refresher course on why I live in the God-forsaken middle of nowhere instead of in the city,” Jed said. “There are endless minor irritations to keep you upset.”

“And yet, here you are,” Arnold pointed out.

“Alas, even trying so hard, I got visitors. My remoteness may have even worked against me. That’s what this is all about. I took video of them and left my computer running streaming video from inside my cabin to the cloud while I slunk off to the woods. They stole my computer but it will have uploaded a video of them approaching it and disconnecting it. I need to access those files safely and add what’s on my camera to make a release.”

“Is that why me? Did you pick me because I work for an affiliate station and can present your material as a story? I do know who to talk to, but you should know I have zero pull to determine if something gets on the air. That’s true both locally and for the network. You do know the burglary of a remote cabin out of state isn’t going to excite my editors? And it’s an embarrassment to parties they consider partners they may very well refuse to run a story. If it hurts a big advertiser or politicians who regulate them, they may kill it. I have no illusions they serve the public over their own interests, and I don’t even know the full range of parties to whom they are beholden.”

Jed shook his head no. “That was a very minor consideration. Mostly I want your IT security knowledge to make sure my release is not blocked or traced to me instantly. Once the images are out there, I’m going to be outed. You’ll see, there are surprising things in it to make it newsworthy. I’m sure my place will be recognized, but I’d like to make sure it isn’t for nothing. If we just released it to your station there’s far too much chance it could still be covered up as you say. I’d like to release it to print and internet sites too. If you want a short lead for your station and people that’s fine, but I want it to get out to other news bureaus too.”

“I’m trying to understand what could get you this worked up. Certainly not just having a laptop stolen. You’ve always been realistic about trying to reform the world.”

“When you see the video, you’ll see why,” Jed promised. “If you want to stop at a pawn somewhere, I’ll buy a cheap laptop. We don’t need anything exotic and we don’t want this to touch one of your machines. But don’t punch that into your car as a destination. Stop at something nearby and we’ll walk over to it.”

“Don’t worry that I’ll do something stupid. I’m back in player mode,” Arnold told him.

* * *

“It’s going to leak somewhere. I can see all the signs of it building up,” Jason said. “Congress is quietly asking the administration what the hell is going on, even members of the President’s party. We had to arrest three of the people involved in the Asteroid Watch who were conspiring to release the story, even after being informed it was a national security issue. The people on the space station still aren’t talking to us even though they did finally call their families. They haven’t acknowledged the printed explanation we sent them and haven’t taken us up on the offer to return. We’ve no idea what they are thinking but I can’t see how it can be good.

“There is unusually heavy encrypted traffic flying back and forth in the Space Force. I suspect they may be preparing a launch to examine it closer and feel no need to inform us. All this activity with no public announcements smells so bad a couple of the big banks have removed their top officers to safe rural locations for sudden special workshops when such things are usually scheduled months ahead.

Key people have suddenly dropped out of sight in other countries and others are still communicating with their people but have foregone presiding over the usual parades and events in big cities. I wouldn’t doubt a lot of people have suddenly sent their families to visit grandma in rural Idaho, but checking to see how heavily that is happening could itself bust everything wide open.”

“Are you afraid of a ‘War of the Worlds’ style panic?” his Associate Director, Walters, asked.

“I’m not. Science Fiction has gone too mainstream with movies and TV shows. Half the population would welcome them and expect them to be no more than Humans with funny ears. But the President is terrified of it and the military is seriously worried it won’t require massive new funding. The longer they don’t do something aggressive, the more certain I feel that they won’t in the end.”

* * *

“Before we deal with retrieving my stored images, I’d like to copy the video I have from my camera,” Jed said. “That will satisfy your curiosity, and I hope to recruit you to continue.”

“Yes, if it doesn’t impress me enough to stay involved, I’ll advise you how to do it yourself and wash my hands of the matter,” Arnold said. “So far, I’m only in based on your personal credit with me.”

“Do you want to set up the new machine so you don’t have to view it on one of your machines?”

Arnold shook his head no. “I can copy it and view it leaving no trace. There won’t even be a log entry showing the camera memory was accessed.”

“This is why I came to you. I wouldn’t be confident of that,” Jed admitted.

Arnold took the camera memory. “Note, we’re not connected to anything,” he told Jed, pointing at the icons along the bottom of the screen. “I turned my network router entirely off.”

Jed looked at them carefully and nodded his agreement.

Arnold inserted the camera memory and a fresh thumb drive in another port.

“There’s some video of a moose at the start. You can fast forward past that and erase it later.”

“No, I’ll leave that as evidence of the provenance of the recording,” Arnold insisted.

“Big file,” he commented after a few moments.

“Background info,” Jed said as it copied. “I was sitting on my porch and saw a black lifting body cross in the distance. Its shock wave caught up to it as it passed out of sight to the east. Then it came back and landed across a wooded peninsula from me. I didn’t record any of that. After I saw a surveillance flight come up from the southwest and turn back overhead. I took my boat over to sneak a look. This starts when I filmed the crew who had exited the vehicle.”

Arnold pulled the camera memory and set the machine to show them the transferred files.

The moose didn’t do anything very surprising, but Arnold didn’t rush through it.

“That’s no vehicle I’ve ever seen,” Arnold said as soon as it appeared. Then Jed zoomed in on them and the fact they weren’t Human became obvious. Arnold didn’t gasp, but he leaned forward and his mouth was hanging open. He reached up and touched two fingers to the screen and pulled a bigger magnified spot open to see them in detail. The camera was recording in 8K and the screen was a quarter of that so it helped quite a bit.

“Those aren’t costumes,” Arnold said.

Jed didn’t see any need to acknowledge that.

When the one in command pointed right at the camera, Arnold understood as fast as Jed had.

“Oh shit, go over there, guys,” Arnold interpreted the gesture.

“And they did. I rushed back ahead of them,” Jed said.

By the time he said that the video was showing them walking around Jed’s little cove.”

“These idiots are not soldiers,” Arnold said in disgust.

“One hopes not,” Jed agreed. “Unless they picked a cherry lieutenant to lead the platoon sad sack.”

Arnold watched the aliens examine Jed’s boat. He managed to limit himself to an amused snort at the alien pulling on the inward opening cabin door. As a former door kicker, he was not impressed with their entry technique.

The video made an obvious scene break then and showed the aliens leaving with their loot and collecting the satellite antenna.

“Why didn’t he take the cable?” Arnold asked.

Jed just shrugged.

“I’m kind of surprised you didn’t pop them,” Arnold said. “They did an armed home invasion and grand theft.”

“I’m already going to piss people off enough releasing the video,” Jed said. “I think it would take it to a whole different level if I start an interstellar war. If I shot them, the others would hear for sure. I have no confidence at all I could disable that ship with a thirty caliber. I doubt their weapons make a similar noise so they’d know their guys were in trouble. They might have mounted a rescue too.

“Yeah, I noticed those long weapons were different. Lasers, masers, or plasma maybe.”

“Some kind of energy weapon for sure,” Jed agreed.

“Are you sure you want to put your ass in a sling to reveal this?” Arnold asked him. “If you wait a little bit, they may go public with it without you involving yourself. I’m not sure I would.”

“It’s been over a week. How long should I wait? I have no idea if they have known about these guys for years. I assume they are actively looking for me while I wait.”

“OK, let’s talk about that while we go ahead and retrieve your other files,” Arnold suggested. “We need to do that whether we are going to release them or hold them for now. “I’m going to pull the network card out and rip out all the antennas from this hunk of junk. There’ll be no doubt we’re isolated unless we deliberately plug a WiFi adaptor in a port. Then we’ll put an operating system and install files for a VPN on this from a thumb drive I already have, and go somewhere with public WiFi to get updates,” Arnold said. “We’ll go to a different place to download your data.

“I don’t want to try to access either of your archives in the US. I’m assuming they will be watched. I don’t know that they could locate us, but just the fact you are accessing it is more than we should tell them. I always assume they are a step or two ahead of what I know they can do. We’ll just use the Swiss account and figure out what to do if that doesn’t work for any reason.”

The updating was done at a McDonald's after buying two coffees for cash at the drive-through. They backed up to the edge of the lot and kept the laptop below window level in the passenger footwell, safe from security cameras, even potential ones in the parking lot lights. They still were able to get a good connection. A drive on manual to the public library for their wireless several towns removed saw them download Jed’s files there. They’d already agreed to view them back home.

* * *

Dr. James rolled his telescope out of the garage on a modified golf cart. Not a motorized riding cart, just a two-wheeled pushcart. He only had to go from his garage to the end of his deck. There was a concrete pad toward the back of the property for when he needed to view the full southern sky, but no need for that tonight. There were three ten-millimeter holes drilled in the deck to facilitate fast set up, and a power outlet right next to it on the deck railing so he didn’t have to depend on fickle batteries.

The feet of his tripod fit in the holes and he laid a piece of plywood on the center brace between the legs and added several solid concrete blocks stored below the deck rail to pin it down. A firm grasp of the tripod and a wiggle made sure it was seated. He attached his laptop cable and picked his reference star from the program. The telescope turned on servo motors to point approximately where it should. He checked the display and carefully got the reticle exactly centered on the star. He gently wiggled the scope and it returned to zero. He told it to move off ten degrees on both axis and it returned to a good zero again.

The Moon was just coming up and James would wait until it was a bit higher before running his program. He’d be looking through too much atmosphere this near the horizon. He rolled a chair over from the other end of the deck and admired the Moonrise. There were a few hazy streaks near the northern horizon that might be high-altitude ice clouds but nothing near him or to the west. It looked to be good viewing. Somewhere out in the Arizona night, a coyote expressed his appreciation too.

Someone less experienced might have needed help or days to create a program to examine the areas needed. James was familiar with the proper sky surveys and how to access them for data to compare. He was going to photograph a ring of overlapping circles around the moon based on the offset in the supposedly erroneous report. Comparing his image with historic examples any new object would show. By the time he ran that data set and found any outliers he could go back and find one that deviated slightly from the time of his first observation. He was fairly sure, considering everything dispassionately, that would be a comet, an asteroid, or a humongous alien spaceship. If you gasped in astonishment that he could consider all three it would amuse him. If it turned out to be something totally beyond his imagination, he’d be delighted.

* * *

In China, it was early morning and their scientists were poring over their data, very similar to that Dr. James intended to collect, but without the focus of his clear narrow vision. They would get the same results from searching a much larger body of data. Their instruments were above the atmosphere, and advised where to point by both their sky survey and radar. It was of considerably larger aperture, three peers working as an interferometer array.

Their efforts to surreptitiously hail the aliens with a directional radio transmission failed. They didn’t want to broadcast a message anyone could listen to at high power. The idea they might not respond to Chinese would have been considered insulting, and any suggestion they try English would have been an instant career killer.

While the Chinese wouldn’t quite be able to read the airlock control symbols on the Protector, the images they obtained would leave no doubt of its advanced alien nature. Dr. James in contrast would need some help beyond the simplest verification that there was an object.

The People’s Liberation Army was close to revealing a new class of spaceship. Going to meet these visitors seemed a sure way to show they were the most advanced nation on Earth for them to deal with. Work on the ship went to a twenty-four-hour schedule with inspection and testing doubled to make sure hurrying didn’t produce fatal errors in the project.

In India a satellite launch on hold suddenly had its final stage and payload removed by a crane on the pad rather than return it to an assembly facility. A different third stage and payload were installed without explanation. There was no hiding that from distant cameras, but any discussion of it wasn’t allowed on local media.

Chapter 9

“We’re under optimum oxygen partial pressure already if you haven’t noticed when you exert yourself. Are your men ready to get us a load of water?” Three Fingers asked.

“They have lists and the common words memorized. These are two brave men,” Beelus said. “They both admit they are terrified and still willing to go.”

Three Finger made a gesture that acknowledged that.

“Where have you decided to try it?”

“This is a large English-speaking country with the highest density of technology.” Beelus brought up an image to show him. “It has very heavy air traffic, but also the densest network of controls speaking to that traffic. We haven’t seen any violence associated with air operations there. You saw the recording of the aircraft fighting over the eastern end of that small ocean?”

“Yes, that was scary,” Three Fingers agreed. “The range their aircraft-mounted missiles can travel shocked me. A missile might destroy you from an aircraft that is itself already shot down. I’m not confident a combat shuttle could survive a swarm of those aircraft.”

“That’s pretty much on the other side of this world. We’ll stay far away from there. That did give us a few new words from when they were speaking in the clear that will be useful. We have the word for friendly now. One of their aircraft said another had no IFF, and asked if the other was a friendly. When told the negative it immediately launched a missile and destroyed it. The constant use of acronyms as abbreviations to condense their dialog was very hard to figure out. Even now, we figure friendly is one of the F sounds in IFF but have no idea what the other one is yet. It’s maddening.

“This nation has a large peninsula jutting out into the ocean along its southern shore where we will attempt to land. It will be possible to approach and leave without passing over much of their territory.” He demonstrated the route with his finger. “We’ll follow what they call VFR. We’re pretty sure that means visual flight rules. We have two instances of the entire expression being vocalized and the subsequent actions agreed with that.”

“That means what it implies? They fly just looking out the ports?” Three Fingers asked.

“I know. It seems reckless but we’re very confident that is the case. The fact it seems to predominate in the actions of much smaller slower planes supports that understanding.”

“No crazier than other things we’ve seen,” Three Fingers allowed.

“We have identified a small landing strip that has hardly any traffic using it and never large aircraft. Indeed, it seems to be surrounded by private residences. Can you imagine having the social credits to not only own a private aircraft but the land and materials to share a private airport with a few hands of other owners?” Beelus asked.

“Shiny said something the first day we were in this system,” Three Fingers told him. “When I couldn’t understand how they could afford a radar set on an expendable missile, he said, ‘Maybe they are all filthy rich.’ These natives have recalled that offhand remark to me more than once in the days since. I suspect the world itself is what makes them rich. It is balanced between being geologically active enough that they have easy access to metals and being so active it’s hard to keep cities and agriculture active without constant disasters. The people who live in that cluster of homes are probably wealthy even by their standards. Be sure your two have that explained to them and are encouraged to treat them kindly and refrain from appearing threatening if any are brave enough to approach them.”

“I will do that. Just to make sure your orders about engaging the natives aren’t circumvented in the heat of the moment, all the control cables have been disengaged to the combat shuttle’s missile launchers,” Beelus said. “They know that. The automated close-in defenses will still be operational.”

“I didn’t want to order that,” Three Fingers said. “I was afraid it implied I didn’t trust them.”

“I’m happy to be the bad guy on that,” Beelus said. “I’m used to playing that role.”

* * *

Dr. James found his anomaly upon reexamining the fourth area he’d programmed into his search. He was confident enough the displaced point of light was an object in a near side lunar halo orbit to spend the time until he could get another confirming image writing up his finding to release.

No stranger to writing papers, he kept it short and factual, with sufficient information for any advanced amateur astronomer to find the object. He promised to continue observing and refine the period of its orbit. Only after stating the bare facts, did he speculate that the object could be a spacecraft. With the disclaimer that unless some Earth agency was capable of lifting a larger vessel that was commonly known, he speculated that there was no alternative to it being an alien ship. The fact it was looping in an orbit large enough to keep it from transiting the face of the Moon supported his supposition that they did not wish to be easily found.

When James was done, he examined the critical region again and was gratified to see the object continuing its expected track. He added the final image and time stamp to the summary and sent it to his list of over five hundred amateur astronomy clubs and associations in every state and fourteen countries. His opinion of everyone else he might inform was that they wouldn’t care or would be so terrified of damaging their professional standing and funding that they wouldn’t investigate. The vast majority of them now picked areas of investigation that simply verified some detail of the community consensus. It made for insipid research. Never once did he mention the asteroid watch being his inspiration nor implicate his British friend and colleague. His last sighting established both an arch and the timing to complete a full orbit He could find it with some accuracy over the next couple of weeks. Longer predictive periods would require more data. As dawn approached, he rolled his ‘scope back inside and went to bed exhausted. It had been years since he pulled an all-nighter.

* * *

“Well, somebody broke the story,” Jason informed his HLS Associate Director, Henry Walters. Usually, the information flowed the other way so the man didn’t look pleased.

“Who released it?” Henry asked. “A foreign news service? We have a tight lid on our own.”

“An online humor site,” Jason said. “Come down the hall and I’ll play it for you. It’s not as terrible as it could be, the response was favorable, but a few people will question it.”

Henry came without being announced and with his coffee mug in hand. That was the kind of a close informal working relationship they had.

“If you haven’t heard of him, this is a webcaster who goes by his first name, Doug. He has about twenty thousand subscribers, but a couple of hundred thousand followers who may only check what he is doing a time or two a week. His thing is cute variations on his name. Some casts he’s Dubious Doug, some he may be Dauntless Doug. He’s even been Despondent Doug and people still watch. He has a variety of hats he wears and it’s a big deal when he introduces a new one.”

“What is he today?” Henry growled.

“Deranged,” Jason said, “Watch.”

Doug appeared wearing a jeweled turban and closed some previous remarks by saying – “That’s what the Swami predicts.” He lifted the turban off with a serious demeanor and his facial expression shifted abruptly once it was set off-camera.

“This little gem just came in with which to finish out our show today.” He reached off-camera to the other side and produced a helmet fashioned out of crinkled aluminum foil. It sported a pair of springy deely-boppers tipped with foil balls. By the time he had it on and pressed into place on the sides he did look deranged. The man was a genius of humorous facial transformations. He even did a slow paranoid eye scan to each side that was marvelous theater.

“Retired scientist Dr. Powel James sent out a message to others who peer at the heavens last night. He claims he has discovered a UFO orbiting out by the Moon.” After an eye roll that should have strained something, Doug gestured at a large screen behind him that displayed a starfield. “Of course, the details are kind of hazy, because the UFO is just a point of light. It might be anything shiny,” Doug insisted. Just then a Ford hub cap on a string bobbing up and down swooped past behind him, completely unacknowledged.

“Dr. James, while having an illustrious history, is retired at eighty-one years old now. If there is someone who cares for the doctor it would be a kindness to send someone to do a wellness check and an evaluation on him. Good-bye until tomorrow Dougites.” He contorted his face more as he faded out.

“He sent the release to this sarcastic jackass?” Henry asked.

“No indeed. He didn’t send it to any news outlet, nor did he send it to the sort of academic publications to which he sent many serious papers over the years. It’s rather smart actually. He’s not asking anybody with an actual career in the sciences to put themselves at risk. Yet the word is out now to several thousand hobbyists, many of whom own decent instruments, to check his work. I was directly informed of his posting this morning from three different sources within the agency that are exactly the sorts of hobbyists he contacted. I got those reports even before the show you just saw aired. If anyone submitted it via the proper chain of command, I’ll probably see that report in a month or so, if any of their supervisors decide to forward it. If Dr. James had wanted to get a quick reaction and publicity there are plenty of online sites dedicated to UFO sightings. They cover a broad spectrum of connections with reality from serious to hysterical.”

“Would it help to repudiate him?” Henry asked. “We could pressure his old university.”

“Henry, the trend for the last five decades has been for the public to regard any official denial as a hard confirmation. I can show you the polls if you like. And they are subtle polls, not the garbage networks do to confirm their own biases. Deprecating humor like Doug did is much more effective.”

“Then his treatment may buy us a little time,” Henry decided.

“With the public, yes. However, I expect there will still be a couple of dozen citizens who drag their telescopes out tonight and examine the area he identified for them to view. They won’t talk openly about it for fear of being mocked like Dr. James, but they’ll privately compare notes with friends who won’t judge them. So, the hidden pressures forcing us towards eventual disclosure builds,” Jason said.

“What can we do about that?” Henry asked.

“Pray for clouds,” Jason suggested.

* * *

Dr. James didn’t give a damn what some fool in a tin foil beanie thought of him. He was well past that stage of life where he could feel self-conscious about much of anything. He wore suspenders because they let him wear his pants baggy and comfortable, and he liked them. If they weren’t in style and shouted old man, well, he was an old man. He hadn’t worn a tie in over a decade and had tossed all but three in the box for a local charity years ago.

The people he did care about tended to be as eccentric as he was or more so. If they liked viewing the heavens, he didn’t much care about their ethnic origins, taste in things outside astronomy, or other habits as long as they seemed to bathe on a semi-regular basis. One of the nice things about the amateur astronomy community was it sported a lot of people capable of doing the math associated with advanced viewing. It was not uncommon for them to be able to design and fabricate the physical tracking hardware to aim their telescopes, write the software to run it, and in extreme cases grind the mirrors and align the optics of the instruments themselves. It wasn’t a pastime for dummies. What few people realized was there were also amateurs radio telescope enthusiasts, some of whom were accomplished ham radio aficionados.

After sleeping in until almost noon, Dr. James brewed coffee that was becoming an expensive luxury, made a breakfast of bacon and eggs, and enjoyed them before exposing himself to a search of the net that might spoil his enjoyment of them. Doug’s jab at him he easily dismissed and he found nothing else posted online yet that addressed his theory. Time to enlist some help, he thought.

Dr. James’ friend Barnard was somewhat younger, bald as could be, and of obvious Japanese heritage despite the name. When he appeared in video chat there was a solid bank behind him of stacked radio receivers and transmitters, scopes, screens, switches, and secondary apparatus like antenna matching gear that most people wouldn’t even recognize much less understand.

“Barney, I want to talk like this, video and audio, to somebody out near the moon. If I tell you where to point your antenna can you set me up to have a conference with them tonight starting about twenty-one-thirty local?”

To Barney’s credit, he only blinked twice before answering.

“Do they know you are going to call? If they aren’t listening on the right frequency, we might not get any response. I’m assuming you know who you are calling?”

“They have no idea I’m going to call. If you were on an alien ship checking out the Earth, wouldn’t you be scanning the hell out of every frequency you could handle looking for any change in the transmissions? If you started getting a strong signal beamed right at you it should get your attention pretty quickly,” James suggested.

Barney looked thoughtful. What he didn’t do was doubt James or demand proof. In a couple of decades of dealing with him, Barney had yet to find James in error on anything he stated as a fact without qualification or explanation. Historically, doubting him seemed a very bad bet.

“They might take some time to recognize it as a video format and configure their receiver to it. Assuming they use video. Likewise, you are assuming they use audio communications. Two assumptions in combination like that are much less probable than either one alone. Don’t be surprised if we transmit at them all night and never get a response. If you do establish a video link with a side-channel, they aren’t going to speak English. Even if they have been listening, how do you think they would pick a language? There is such a babble of languages transmitted they may be hopelessly lost trying to fit all of them into one framework,” Barney said. “The possibility of finding alien signals is something most radio astronomers think about. But not necessarily sending them.”

“They’ve been there since sometime before June ten,” James said. “If they don’t have eyeballs, ears, and some decent cognitive ability, I’ll leave it up to somebody else to contact them. Even if they have tentacles and talk in sonar, they might have experience from elsewhere out there talking to others. They may have a whole library of translation software.

“Maybe somebody else is already talking to them. How would I know? But as long as they have been listening, if they haven’t figured out our video system, I’ll be severely disappointed in them. How could they be that dense and have made it to the stars? If you can connect me, leave the talking up to me. I already have some ideas on it. Consider what they may already be listening to and contact them on the same frequency. Can you do that?”

“I can try,” Barney said. “I have a big old dish in the junk pile that should be able to hear them respond with the right receiver. It will take me most of the afternoon to drag it out on the deck and make sure it moves freely. I have several receivers to try, but they can be swapped out on the boom with a quick wrap of duct tape.”

“See? You have most of it figured out. Do you need me to come to help you set up?” James offered.

“Nah, I have a kid coming to weed and rake my yard. I’ll just use him and he’ll be happy to come an extra day. Hang on a second, let me check something.” Barney could be seen looking off to the side.

“I was just checking the weather. Some of my gear couldn’t deal with rain or high wind. The forecast says no problem with wind or thundershowers for forty-eight hours. There will be high clouds, but of course, that won’t matter at the frequencies we’ll be using.”

“You’ll do it then?” James didn’t like leaving any uncertainties.

“Sure. Is this confidential?” Barney asked.

“I sent it out to every astronomy club I have on my contacts list, but if you report it to any sort of authority that’s on you. Don’t be surprised if they come to haul you away for a seventy-two-hour psych evaluation,” James warned.

“I’m going to keep it to myself,” Barney decided. “The only people I’d want to tell are the other radio astronomers. If I do that, we may have a dozen competing with us for their attention tonight.”

“Good thinking. You’re about an hour's drive across town for me. I’ll start about 1800 hours but be aware my phone will be off. I don’t want to be tracked to you and involve you that way.”

“They’ll track your car anyway,” Barney said.

“Would they track your car?” James asked.

“Well, no, but I do, you know, electronics stuff,” Barney said, and winked.

“Then you understand. They won’t track mine either,” James promised. “It’s not that complicated.”

* * *

“Who are you going to peddle this thing to, and how do you intend to get paid?” Arnold asked.

“Not to any government agency,” Jed said. “I don’t trust them to pay up and not find a way to seize it, classify it, or claw it back later, even if they did pay me initially. I’d definitely want to be paid through an escrow service no matter who is buying.”

“How about a foreign government?” Arnold asked. From his expression, Jed figured he was just jerking his chain for the fun of it.

“They’d have the same mentality, and ours would probably find some regulation against exporting it. I don’t see any real market for it but the networks or very wealthy individuals.”

Arnold looked shocked. The latter never occurred to him.

“Why would… how wealthy?” he asked befuddled.

“Certainly, several hundred million. More likely a billionaire.”

“And such a person would buy it, why exactly?” Arnold wondered.

“People with that sort of money can buy an exotic car or a yacht. They can build a mansion or buy an island. But there will always be a new better car next year or somebody will build a bigger yacht, a bigger mansion or buy a bigger island. They come to crave unique objects that aren’t subject to being surpassed. They buy old master’s paintings, important diamonds, and even postage stamps. An important historic video will give them that kind of satisfaction, income, and possible appreciation if they wish to sell it in the future. Offering it as a non-fungible token would enhance that.”

“Yes, an NFT can digitally establish ownership forever, but wouldn’t it still enter the public domain under copyright law and be freely available to use eventually?” Arnold asked.

“Like the Mouse?” Jed asked.

“Ouch. Good point,” Arnold admitted. “Sometimes, the value is in how much you were publicly seen to pay for it.”

“Yep, for the bragging rights,” Jed agreed. “You can get perfect copies of important paintings or sculptures, but it still matters who owns the original and how much it cost. Tomorrow, we need to find out who is the most expensive intellectual property lawyer in town and hire him. He may have some ideas on marketing it too.”

* * *

It wasn’t near moonrise yet but Dr. James was at Barney’s place getting ready.

“That’s a massive mount,” James said of the base with servo motors he helped Barney roll out to his patio. Rather than lift it he rolled it on meter-long pieces of pipe, moving them from behind it to in front and changing the angle when he placed them to direct it.

“I bought it surplus. It’s an old gun mount off a military vehicle. The sort that aims the gun at incoming mortar rounds and such to shoot them down. I had to slow it way down or it would shake my dish and equipment to pieces. What frequency do you want to try?” Barney asked.

“What will they have noted our satellites use?” James asked. “They’re probably listening and recording them already, trying to figure us out.”

“I’d bet on K band like the big birds in geosynchronous orbit use,” Barney suggested. “If that doesn’t fly maybe X band as a second choice.”

“You know better than me. What resolution do you want to send?”

“Plain old 1k seems sufficient. You aren’t trying for an immersive reality,” Bernie said. “You are probably a scary enough old alien to them without showing them every nose hair. I’ll get a cart with a laptop and a couple of soft lights on each side to illuminate your face. Do you want a green screen behind you? I have one I can rig.”

“Don’t bother, unless you don’t want them to see your garage wall behind me,” James said.

“Nah, that a pretty generic brick wall. Nobody is going to locate me from it.”

Once Barney had the cart set up James laid out his props, an art tablet with a black marker, an electronic tablet with a collection of images he’d picked in advance.

Barney appeared to be thinking, brow scrunched up. “Don’t smile,” he suggested, “at least not enough to show teeth. That might be seen as aggressive.”

“Good point,” James agreed. “It’s hard waiting now that we’re ready.

“I’ll set it to track on the coordinates you specified as it rises,” Barney said. “Let it get five degrees above the horizon so we don’t paint somebody on the ground with our signal.”

“OK, now we wait,” James said.

Chapter 10

“We’re going to send a probe past the alien,” John Gott informed his NASA counterpart. He paused as if he expected some strong response. Ben Durkin was so unused to being informed what the military intended to do that he wasn’t prepared to say anything. He was a cautious man, who wouldn’t just blurt out whatever came to mind. Neither was he stupid enough to complain of past treatment to make the man regret his new inclusiveness. Surprise flashed over his face but when he didn’t instantly respond, Gott plowed on ahead.

“Don’t be too concerned it may appear hostile. We’re going to a great deal of trouble to set up for a slow cross-orbit pass with some separation. The unmanned space plane will be emitting on several frequencies so it is obvious we’re not trying to make a stealthy intercept. If they direct a strong signal at our vehicle, it will relay it back through our orbital assets.”

“Where will you be launching? Vandenberg?” Durkin asked.

“We’d rather it isn’t associated with us geographically. Just in case they do interpret it as a hostile gesture to approach at all. We’ll be launching it off a hypersonic, an ultra actually, that could orbit itself if it grappled a booster pack instead of the mini-shuttle. That plane will then be recovered by a carrier. Not a submersible. It’s too big and comes in too hot for that. It will launch the mini-shuttle and land on one of the older surface carriers. All that will be happening while the Moon is on the opposite side of the Earth. We’ve seen no evidence they have deployed a constellation of satellites so they should be blind to it. It’s kind of surprising they haven’t done that. If nothing else you’d think they would want to map us better than they can from that distance.”

“Maybe they aren’t set up as an explorer with all the things you’d expect that sort of an outfit to carry,” Durkin said. “Or maybe they can map us just fine from that far away. Look how far we’ve come in the last twenty years. We have no idea how far ahead of us they are.”

“I was told you are aware of the disk the Bush shot down. Our conclusion is it isn’t a military vessel or its drone wouldn’t have been so easy to bring down,” Gott said. “One assumes their technology advances comparably across the board as ours does.”

“I’ve no way to refute that because I don’t have an alternative model to offer,” Durkin said. “What are you going to be transmitting as you go past? Elevator music?”

“That would be a hostile act, wouldn’t it?” Gott quipped.

* * *

Dr. James and Barney both expected they would have a better chance of contact at higher frequencies. Not so much from the alien side but for their equipment restrictions. He spoke briefly and waited until there was no reply before Barney adjusted the frequency and he’d try again. He mentioned his club and gave both their URL and his email address. He even sent his cell phone number in case they could hack into that system. There was no reply.

“Any ideas?” James asked.

“You’d think they would be set up to listen to just about anything and watch the whole spectrum.”

“You’d think,” James agreed.

“If you were an alien visiting a planet with crazy natives like us, what would you want to listen to? Voice of America?” James asked.

“Well, if I could identify the ground stations used for communicating with space stations or space ships, I’d be interested in anything that might be launched out where they are,” Barney said. “I’m not sure how hard they would be to identify. They can be silent if they aren’t in an active launch and they use highly directional stuff that won’t be pointed at the aliens.”

“What is active all the time they would notice?”

“Air traffic and air traffic control for sure. It’s busy night and day, worldwide. I’d be interested in that big time if I intended to come down and fly around with the native’s aircraft or land.”

“It’s all in English too, isn’t it?” James asked.

“I think the Russians skip it for internal flights. Or at least they used to. Otherwise, yeah.”

“Do you have anything that works near air traffic frequencies?”

“Oh sure,” Barney said. “I have a crap ton of two-meter junk. But it won’t work with this dish and we’re running out of time to do it tonight. Let’s put this away and tomorrow I’ll have a very directional yagi antenna rigged we can aim at them. Later in the evening, two-meter traffic will quiet down and we can try it.”

“That works for moonrise anyway. You’ll invest another evening on me?” James asked.

“My evenings are far less booked up or exciting than you may imagine.”

* * *

In India, Jatin Singh, an amateur astronomer using Dr. James’ data found the ship. It wasn’t exactly where predicted. Dr. James didn’t observe long enough to have established the orbital period very precisely. It wasn’t all that difficult to find looking along the predicted arc. He watched it long enough to be sure it was tracking as predicted before he rotated the eyepiece turret to the next station and then back. It didn’t lose zero. His telescope was homemade but well made, with elaborate accessories from spectroscope to solar shields. He rotated the turret back to the station with a twelve-watt green laser attached and started transmitting a voice message interspaced with a digital signal presenting a simplified version of their astronomy club web page.

His friend with a lesser three-hundred-millimeter scope was set up nearby to receive. The complexities of doing both through one instrument made them go for the dual setup. If the aliens used lasers at all, they figured they would be able to produce enough power for the lesser instrument to detect. Indeed, his friend joked that he hoped their reply didn’t produce a smoking crater. When fifteen minutes went by with no response, he switched to their backup signal of morse code. Sadly, nothing got any response. They started the long process of packing up and taking their gear back home, but not before sending Dr. James an email detailing their failure.

On the Defender the communications officer reported to Three Fingers.

“The oddest thing just happened. We received a signal and an attempt at communication on the ship to ship and ship to suit system.”

“But we have no shuttles or suited personnel away,” Three fingers objected. “Did the natives sneak up that close to us somehow?” He looked worried.

“No. Our light communicators are not only low-powered but the emitters have a very narrow spread. Both keep it private and undetectable past a few hundred man-lengths. The receivers are sensitive over a wide angle, so it’s the emitters that are aimed. When we started seeing this signal, we weren’t sure where it was coming from. It was quickly apparent only the sensors on the planet side of the ship were getting it. By slowly rolling the ship until specific sensor sites were shadowed by the hull, we were sure the light beam was coming from the planet. I was about to send a drone off in each direction to find out how wide the light beam was but it stopped. I do have a recording of it for our people to analyze.”

“The beam has to be very narrow,” Three Fingers said, leaving it hanging unfinished by his tone.

“Or the power level beyond anything we have any idea how to do,” his officer finished for him.

“And we have no way to answer,” Three Fingers concluded.

His com officer just laughed. “My instructors would have assured you such a device is impossible.”

“Did you read Xilo’s report on the hand light recovered from the planet?”

“Honestly the man could make reports about your execution in the morning boring. I try to avoid all his long obtuse missives,” his com officer confessed.

“Stay a little longer and I’ll have them fetch it to be demonstrated as it was for me. I don’t think you will find it boring. It’s quite pertinent to understanding this event.”

* * *

“It sounds to me like you need an agent more than an attorney,” Bell Martin said. “Large media companies and studios will retain an IP attorney and any sort of company doing original research. But individuals rarely think of our services until they have a problem. An agent would frankly be cheaper. I’ve seen patents restricted as secret that prevented their commercial use but never plain media recordings. The courts have always given news videos a great deal of protection.”

“I expect to have a problem,” Jed admitted. “I can almost assure you they will automatically label it a national security matter. When that happens, they seem to be offended if you don’t feel it your patriotic duty to just donate it to them. That’s why I’d rather have you than an agent but I’m not willing to pay full contingency fees for a little phone work. I’ll offer thirty percent unless you have to go in a courtroom. They have a handle on me because I can be recalled to active service. It also complicates matters that my service was such I’m not free to discuss it. They can say anything they wish about my status and I’m not free to set the record straight.”

“Are you telling me you were in some kind of special forces?” Martin asked. His expression said he had his doubts. He wouldn’t take kindly to being bullshitted.

“Yeah, some kind. The kind that doesn’t have public recruitment or make promotional movies. The kind that if they made it a movie, the soccer moms would barf, and run screaming from the theater.”

Martin looked at Arnold who had only been introduced by his first name. Jed hadn’t described their relationship and he hadn’t contributed anything to the conversation until that statement.

“Do not inquire about our service record for either of us,” Arnold continued. “Just asking by name would bring all kinds of unwanted attention to both of us and you.”

“I haven’t even been told your full name to make any inquiries,” Martin said.

“Arnold is my real name. We intend to deal honestly with you and to start with names of convenience would sour that relationship immediately. If you don’t have security cameras, I’d be shocked. Since you know Jed is from Alaska you would be pretty safe in assuming I’m a local. You have my face, my voice, and probably my car and plate if you have cameras on the building parking lot. If you were too stupid to find out who I am you wouldn’t be of any use to us.”

“OK, you’re smart and you know I’m smart. That should speed things up since we won’t have to simplify matters or use little words if it doesn’t become a contest. I’ll assume the same of Mr. Murphy by the company he keeps. What is the nature of this video? If it’s something like pictures of a secret aircraft the government hasn’t made public, you’ll find I’m rather sympathetic to them not wanting such things revealed.”

“We’re quite comfortable with those sorts of restrictions,” Jed assured him. “I think the easiest way to explain this would be to let you watch it. It’s the only file on the memory card if you want to watch it,” Jed said offering the phone.

“I do have cameras active behind me,” Martin warned him.

“You can let them run,” Jed allowed. “They can’t capture a usable image off a screen that small.”

Martin allowed his face to show skepticism again but took the phone. Jed figured that a courtroom lawyer only allowed you to see what he wanted you to see on his face. That was fine. Jed understood he had only taken the dollar still on his desk as a token fee to establish confidentiality and was far from accepting this as a case he should pursue.

Most people would have stopped and demanded information at some point in the video but Martin confirmed his intelligence by not only watching it all the way through but repeating it at a slower rate before he posed questions.

“This will hold up to a thorough analysis? It can be proven to not be CGI?”

“As much as any video can be confirmed today. A nation-state might be able to fake it given enough time on a super-computer. That was taken in 8k. If you examine every area in detail all the way through you can establish the randomness of a natural scene. You could impose the ship and figures on a recorded scene but the level of blend needed to make the boundary around the layers perfect is beyond most studios or media companies. Consider how much would it cost to do that,” Jed invited. “Certainly, far more than we could get paid for it.”

“Beyond that, I’m familiar with the level of scrutiny Jed is talking about,” Arnold said. “I work for a network station. Even if an object is integrated flawlessly there are other tells. For example, very few people would think to analyze the image of the gravel where the…. beings involved are walking to his cabin. Even if there are not distinct footprints the pattern of the gravel will be altered where they stepped.”

“You’ve analyzed it that deeply?” Martin asked.

“No, I don’t need to, I’m just aware it is possible. I know Jed and that he’s a straight shooter. I have confidence it will check out if you have it analyzed in that depth. If anything, he’s too honest to a fault,” Arnold said.

“You might think they are rare, but as a lawyer, I’ve had the experience of too many people like that,” Martin said. “If you ask them for a simple yes or no on the stand, they want to take a half-hour to say they can’t ever be sure enough of what they saw to say yes or no without endless disclaimers. I hate those for whichever side of the case they are called. Juries think in binary. If the expert says I am ninety-nine point nine, nine percent certain they only hear – I’m not a hundred percent certain.”

“Be aware this has the potential to paint a target on your back,” Jed warned him.

“I see what you mean,” Martin told Arnold, then turned to Jed.

“That isn’t what you tell me to persuade me to pursue this matter for you,” he said.

Arnold jumped back in before Jed could do too much damage.

“I have things I can do to mitigate any problems with the authorities not respecting your client-attorney privilege,” Arnold offered.

“Such as?” Martin inquired.

“I can set up a device for you to work Jed’s case with a simplified operating system. When asked for the password you can comply with no fear. All that will do is give you access to a browser. All your data will reside in a distant server beyond their ability to demand. The device will have plenty of RAM and hold your files while you are working on them, but they vanish from any persistent memory every time you shut it down. It will also shut down on whatever delay you set or a voice command.”

“That just means they ask for the password to the distant server,” Martin objected.

“No. You have to memorize both the address where your files are kept and the password. They can’t even get a warrant for that which they only suspect exists and can’t describe to a judge. If they write an overly broad warrant, such as all files and documents about Jedediah Murphy, this gives you time to object and take defensive action. Once the horse is out of the barn you are never going to recover your files if they have them. I’m sure you have seen cases with tainted evidence where the court decided the police obtained it in ignorance of how improper it was, so they magically get to keep it due to their state of mind. You don’t want to allow that to happen.”

Martin considered that silently for a moment.

“Would you have any objection to my employing such a system for all my files?” Martin asked.

“Not at all. But in that case, I suggest you have two repositories with separate providers. I can have that ready for you the next time we meet,” Arnold offered.

“I will consider that part of my compensation,” Martin said.

“Then you will act on this for me? For us,” Jed corrected. “I promised Arnold some pay too.”

“Subject to my accepting my fee arrangement. I will want a substantial retainer. By your own word, this is the sort of an action where it is common for the government to seize all of a person’s assets so they don’t have the means to defend themselves. I’ll accept a hundred-thousand-dollar advance towards my hours.”

“I’d propose a different structure,” Jed said. “I have a Seattle account with a bit more than a quarter-million in it. I’ll offer you two hundred fifty-thousand upfront. That gets those funds where they can’t claw them back from you. Then you earn the rest of your fee contingent on making a paid sale.”

“How much did you expect to get for this?” Martin asked.

“I’d like you to ask ten but I’ll erase the damn thing before I let it go for any less than three.”

“Million?” Martin asked.

“Of course, and cheap at ten if they buy all the rights. For three million all they should get is a three-day exclusive and our rights revert after three days. If it drops to three million call your cut a full third. If it isn’t worth a million for each of us, it isn’t worth the hassle. This is a one-time historic event not somebody’s kitty pix. How much does a news anchor make in a year? They have the funds when you examine what they are willing to spend for other things like that. This isn’t a one-time curiosity that is entertainment. It matters. They don’t get to examine the whole thing until we have a contract contingent on authenticity.”

“How long are you willing to allow them to take to verify it?” Martin asked.

Jed pointedly looked at Arnold with a raised eyebrow.

“The programs to check it will run fast. Manual examination at the pixel level doesn’t have to look at the whole image. A spot check of several points is sufficient. Any delay would be in the delivery of the originating camera to their labs. I can’t see any reason they need more than twenty-four hours. This is perishable information. If an event happens to provide similar video from somebody else before this can be sold then it will no longer have that much value.”

Jed just nodded to show he concurred.

“You don’t have a preference who gets this? No platform that is kinder to your personal ideology?”

Arnold put a hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh.

Jed gave him a scathing glance. “I’ve served my time supporting other’s ideologies. If I have one of my own you probably wouldn’t recognize it as such. Be mercenary. Whoever can pay.”

“It may be a foreign entity,” Martin warned. “Would a letter of credit work for you?”

“Banks can be pressured,” Jed worried. “An escrow service is cheaper and less beholden to their government than heavily regulated banks. Look for one that has worked for controversial clients.”

“I know such a firm associated with an offshore bank I use,” Martin said. “All I need now is your fee and how to contact you,”

“I keep my accounts here not up in Alaska. I’ll go in to fill out the form and have them do a wire transfer wherever you wish,” Jed said. “This has one contact in the list,” he said pushing a cell phone across the desk. “Use it to contact me.”

* * *

“You wanted Jedediah Murphy’s bank accounts watched for activity,” his assistant told Taggert. “His Seattle bank just wired almost the full amount, a quarter million, to an account in Grand Turk. We of course have no handle to find out who the account owner is. Do you think he’s leaving the country?”

“Not a chance in hell,” the FBI head said. “But what could he possibly be buying?”

Chapter 11

The combat shuttle crossed Mexico well above any commercial air traffic. They dropped low over the Gulf and were watched by US systems as they adjusted course slightly to cross well north of Tampa. When their rate of descent indicated an intercept would be possible, fighters were readied at Elgin AFB, and a tanker set to pre-launch for them.

There wasn’t any difficult pursuit needed. The combat shuttle went subsonic and dropped to five hundred meters well away from the coast, then three hundred meters and even slower. The leader of the intercept reported they could see two figures in the flight cabin. Their only response to motions to set down was to display bare palms against their windows to the flight leader. As the man reported, it would be very hard to interpret that as a hostile gesture. The interceptors each took a turn at refueling while one paced the alien craft taking pictures. It was about the size of a big city bus and just about as sleek and attractive.

After ignoring attempts at contact on multiple frequencies the aliens surprised everyone by calling Tampa control on the proper frequency.

“Tampa control. This is an alien shuttle approaching from your west. Our English not very good. Sorry. We are proceeding to landing VFR. We need water. If you direct us, we can declare an emergency. We will load water and proceed east out of your control area before climbing above your controlled air space. Please say yes or no. English not very good. Yes, or no?”

“Yes, shuttle. Proceed to land. Can you name your intended landing place?”

“No Tampa Control. We see from above not know name. By water. We think the word is lake.”

“Shuttle, can you turn briefly and come back on course? That will let us positively identify you.”

“Turn then back? Yes, will turn away south. I see a plane on my north.”

“Shuttle, turn if safe. We do not see any other traffic near you.”

“Tampa Control this is B-Cat, flight eleven out of Elgin. We are escorting your bogey. He has turned away and we are maintaining a safe distance. You will not be able to paint us with civilian radar.”

“Thank you, B-Cat. Shuttle, we see your turn and have a positive ID on you. You may come back on course.”

“Thank you, Tampa Control.”

“B-Cat and flight eleven departing our escort mission. We have an Air National Guard unit arriving out of MacDill that can fly a lot slower than us.”

“Thank you for advising us B-Cat.”

* * *

Jared Fleming was a fairly successful auto dealer with stores handling five different makes. That gave him sufficient income to not only fly a private plane but to buy a home in a gated subdivision that shared a private landing strip. His home was the last at the end of the strip where it ran up against the edge of a lake. Most pilots landed from over the lake since the other end of the strip had trees close enough to make it the more difficult approach. That meant he had to taxi back a kilometer every time he landed. On the other hand, homes at the other end of the thousand-meter paved strip ran another hundred thousand dollars. Being next to the lake wasn’t any big attraction because the edge was all marshy and the state wouldn’t issue permits to build an extended dock.

He was in his back yard relaxing in his shaded cabana and reading about the new Brazilian sports car that rumor said would be available late next year. Something caught his eye and made him look up. To his credit, he didn’t think UFO. The craft wasn’t doing any of the strange things one expects of a UFO. There were no flashing lights, crazy impossible maneuvers, or ill-defined hazy images. It was visibly a very real solid aircraft of some sort, though not at all attractive. The dull finish and odd projections all said military to him, but there was no jet roar or spinning rotors, just a very low-frequency rumble. It wasn’t going any faster than his neighbor’s ancient Cessna but it was circling the field left like it had every intention of landing.

Any doubts of its reality were dispersed by the F41 Firebird fighter in Air National Guard livery making a straight pass outside the craft’s circle with his flaps down going as slow as he could without falling out of the sky. As he climbed away another Air Guard plane passed in the same manner.

The big ugly aircraft continued its slow turn disappearing behind his house. Jared ran through the kitchen and out the garage. By this time, he had his phone out and was taking video. The craft dropped even lower until it was just a few meters above the lake. Whatever was holding it up disturbed the water below it into a fine chop. It came in over the end of the runway but it was obviously capable of a vertical landing. It turned in the air and he saw there were lines of hatches down the side but no windows. There were, however, wrap-around windows to a flight cabin. With the angle and the lighting, he couldn’t see anyone inside.

Six big landing pads folded down as it dropped to the ground off the end of the pavement. The pads nearest the lake pushed into the ground a bit but held the fuselage out of contact. The Air National Guard made one more low pass and climbed away to the west.

Caution kept Jared in the mouth of his garage waiting to see what was going to happen. If it looked wise, he’d hop in his UTE and head out of the subdivision. The dull gray vehicle sat silently for a little. There wasn’t anything venting or indications the hull was hot. When a hatch opened under the front end with the flight deck, it was a smaller one than the rows of hatches down the side. Two black guys came out in uniforms as dark and dull as their aircraft. From a bit over a hundred meters away, he couldn’t make out any details of their insignia or faces.

The two opened another smaller hatch and started dragging a hose towards the lake. The hose appeared to be just small enough to get a grip on it. They appeared to have identical clothing. That suggested uniforms but they carried no weapons. Jared wondered if they were going to pollute the lake with a black water dump like an RV owner too cheap to use an approved dumping station?

Interest and caution turned to horror. As one of the fliers went back in the other started carefully dragging the hose out into the water through the reeds and other vegetation. The lake was not somewhere you wanted to wade, not even dangle your toes in the water. Jarod yelled loudly enough he turned to look. He made an emphatic sweep of his arm through the air to stay away but all the man did was hold his palm up to him without waving.

Jared ran back in the house, palmed the lock plate on his gun safe, took the heavier rifle, the .308 out, jammed a magazine in it, and stuffed two more in his back pockets. He had visions of the headlines and attention their very private community didn’t need if that fellow got pulled under by a gator. There were lots of them in the lake and no few big ones.

Jared jumped in his UTE, a blatant knockoff in style for an older Land Rover but with modern internals. He flipped the recessed switch to put it in four-wheel drive. It was soft near the lake. As soon as it felt mushy under his wheels he turned sideways and jumped out.

“It isn’t safe there!” He called to the man’s back. His hair was really odd…

When the fellow turned, he was shocked to find he was looking at a black face resembling a boxer dog more than a human. The fellow dropped the hose long enough to show both palms to him, obviously trying to show he was peaceful. He looked at the rifle Jared was carrying and his face contorted with an expression Jared guessed was fear. He wasn’t, however, at all deterred by Jared. He turned away, picked the hose up again, and, already knee-deep he went in deeper, taking a step and tugging on the hose, then repeating that. The bottom was soft but he seemed to be dealing with it. Jared realized he intended to suck water not discharge it, and he’d have to hold it up or they’d just be sucking muck.

This person was unlikely to understand English. Jared tried to think how to tell him the danger.

“Hey! Look at me!” Jared called. The person was only about fifteen meters away and he was upset and shouting louder than he needed to.

When the fellow looked back Jared laid down his rifle and pointed at the lake. He made an expansive gesture with his arms to show big and made biting gestures with his hands.

“Not good English,” the fellow called back. “Water. Need water.”

That was more than Jared expected.

“You know gator? You know English for gator?” Jared called.

“No. No gator,” the fellow confessed and kept inching forward. He finally stopped with water up to his crouch but not yet to his waist and waved a hand overhead. That must be a signal to his partner in the vessel because another mechanical sound started and the hose moved slightly as the suction started drawing in water.

What could he do? He wasn’t about to try to bodily drag the man out of the lake. All he could do was stand guard which was why he’d grabbed the rifle. The thought of assaulting the crew was never in his thoughts. He just hoped the state wouldn’t charge him if he did have to shoot one. The crazy thought occurred to him that the law read he could do so to protect human life. If they decided to read that law literally, he was screwed. It was so insane he laughed out loud and the alien looked over his shoulder wide-eyed. Jared wondered if they laughed?

The hose kept drawing water. Water is heavy. Jared wondered how much they could lift? After five minutes went by, Jared started hoping they would be done soon. He relaxed enough to pull out his phone and shoot a little more video of the hose tender and sweep the view back to the aircraft. Spacecraft, he corrected himself in his thinking. It had to be. He put away the phone and watched the water carefully.

His heart sank when he looked to the left at open smooth water and swept his gaze back to the right to find a pair of eyeballs sticking out of the water about twenty meters out. The alligator turned and moved slowly parallel to the shore. Maybe the mechanical noise was making it cautious. When it dropped out of sight Jared worried. He’d seen them do that and try to come back up under the water birds. Most of the birds knew that game and didn’t fall for it. This fellow was oblivious. At least he wasn’t out swimming where it could come up from below, unseen.

When the gator resurfaced, he was closer and pointed right at the hose tender. That wasn’t good.

The water behind the alligator swirled slightly as it fanned its tail slowly to glide forward. Jared shouldered the rifle and aimed between the gator and the alien. His heart was pounding and things went to slow motion. He had no doubt it was in attack mode. He didn’t have a decent shot to take with just the nostrils and eyes showing. At such a shallow angle his fire might just skip off the water.

“Gator!” he called out again to him, but this time he didn’t even look back at Jared. That didn’t matter because he wasn’t going to put the rifle down to gesture at this point. The distance between the gator’s eyes told him it was pretty good-sized.

When it made the final rush. the alien finally saw it and turned to run. He wouldn’t have made three full steps before it had him. Jared fired, sweeping the weapon, trying to stay ahead of the gator’s violent lunge. He wasn’t sure he was hitting it or where exactly. He just pointed right down the thing’s open jaws and kept pulling the trigger.

It was a huge friggin’ gator, an eight-footer easily. It was thrashing and flipping in the shallow water in agony from its wounds but didn’t die quickly. Jared pulled the trigger three times without response before he realized he was empty. Could he have possibly run through thirty rounds already? He slapped in a new magazine and the break made him slow down and aim more precisely. He carefully put another ten rounds right in the creature’s head. Even now, belly up and mostly submerged, it was still all twitchy, the tail jerking and the claws flexing. When he was sure it wasn’t a danger, he took out his phone and took a couple of still pix of the monster.

When he turned, the other crewman had come out. The one who barely escaped was deeply rattled. Jared didn’t need any translation to see that. He was hunched and shaky with his arms pulled in front of him in a classic defensive position. His companion, his superior officer Jared guessed, had his arm around his shoulders speaking low and soothingly in their language. He turned the distraught crew towards their hatch and sent him inside. Jared caught it all on his phone.

“Thank you, thank you. No words. Thank you,” the alien said. He turned to put the hose away.

Jared had watched them deploy it so he knew it was a two-man job. He laid his rifle down on a clean grassy area and joined in pulling the hose while the alien fed it into the hatch with a coiling motion. When the alien was done, he surprised Jared by bowing when he gave his final thank you.

“I go with you,” Jared proposed. Making a sweeping motion away from himself with one finger. It was crazy and dangerous but when would he ever get a chance like this again?

The alien looked at him, uncertain of his meaning.

“I go up!” Jared said. he pointed up if that wasn’t clear. “You two come down,” Jared said, holding up two fingers and pointing down. “We three go up,” he insisted holding up three fingers, pointing at the alien, the other alien unseen in the craft, and himself before pointing up.

“No. Thank you. No. Uh, no clearance to flight level,” the alien improvised. “Hold,” he commanded holding his palm up like the other alien had but adding a slight pushing motion. That was clear enough.

“Oh well, it was worth trying,” Jared said out loud. Then he had an inspiration. He got in his wallet and got one of his business cards. It had his holo-picture, his email address, phone, and a line of auto company logos along the edge showing what he sold. Jared offered it to the alien, who looked at it dubiously. He presented it with repeated thrusting motions and told him. “Take, take.” He finally did accept it.

Jared left his hand extended and the alien regarded it uncertainly. He had no card to exchange. Jarod reached slowly and took the alien’s hand in his, firmly but not too aggressively. He gave it one careful dip, not hanging on too long, and released it. The extra thumb was odd but it worked once the alien decided with which thumb to clasp. It was precisely the handshake his father taught him years ago, and had served him without fail in his business dealings. Then he added a bow the same as the alien had granted him. The alien looked amused. He actually smiled a little. Jared figured that was better communication than the few words they’d exchanged. Pleased with himself, he gave a goodbye wave and picked up his rifle. The alien copied his gesture awkwardly before boarding the spaceship.

When Jared walked away from in front of the ship, he could see a kilometer away down the runway. There were easily a dozen cop cars and fire trucks blocking the sub entry, as well as a few ambulances. They all left their roof lights flashing which seemed sort of pointless once the road was blocked several vehicles deep. And wasn’t it going to be interesting talking to them? That made him think. He stopped and got his phone out, right where he stood, and made sure he had his video backed up to remote storage before he got in his vehicle.

The alien shuttle eased up above tree level with a rumble Jared felt in his guts more than heard. It turned to the east in no particular hurry. The fighter planes were gone, but Jared could hear helicopter rotors in the distance. Way too late boys, he thought.

* * *

“I got a lot of rejections this morning, some quite rude. Nobody was even willing to view a limited excerpt,” Martin informed Jed. “I got quite a few snippy comments, such as asking if Big Foot was in the video too. I’m done. I didn’t want to call you until I felt it was hopeless.”

“Have you been watching the news?” Jed asked.

“Been too busy,” Martin assured him.

“That’s why I called. About fifteen minutes ago some car dealer down in Florida had the same guys land right in his front yard. Same aliens but a completely different ship. Damned if he didn’t use the free TV time to slip a plug in for his dealerships about every third sentence. The man was cool and complained the Sheriffs stole his cell phone, but he released pix of the aliens. He was smart enough to back his video up where he didn’t need the phone to get to it. Seeing he was smart about that and using the free air time to plug his business I’d be shocked if he didn’t get paid for the video too. He had some pretty dramatic pix. Seems he saved one of the idiot aliens that went in wading where there are alligators. He shot the shit out of a big one. The Sheriffs took his rifle too.”

“Oh, somebody beat us to it, paid or not.” Martin sounded disappointed. “He might have just rushed to release it before somebody disappeared him. Now there’s not much reason left to do that.”

“Yeah, I pretty much figure that drops the worth of our video to about what you would get for video of a car wreck or a local fire as a stringer. Sorry, after you put so much effort into it,” Jed said.

“Hang on, my secretary is waving frantically at me to take another call,” Martin said. “That’s unusual and she’s no dummy, so I better see what is going on.”

Martin was gone several minutes, and Jed was starting to wonder if he should just hang up when he came back on the line.

“Jed,” Martin said. “I just sold it for the full ten million to BBC. You were wrong. The story going public is what made him buy. He wanted to know if the Florida story was the same aliens. The key thing to him was that the NBC affiliate has the rights to the Florida footage and they had zip to run on a hot breaking story except talking heads repeating WFLA’s story. When I said yes, the same aliens but I’m on the other line about it right now, he went nuts thinking I was selling it to somebody else.”

“Go figure,” Jed said.

“I know,” Martin agreed.

* * *

“Jeb, look at this news article,” Arnold said back home. He just passed his tablet to him to read.

“The University of California, Los Angeles, wishes to disassociate itself from the wild assertations put forward by Dr. Powel James. Though an alumni Dr. James is no longer staff or associated in any official way with the University. His claims of observing an alien spacecraft near the Moon fall in the furthest fringes of speculation and conspiracy theory. We can only speculate Dr. James’ abilities have deteriorated with his advanced age and hope others don’t take advantage of that to draw him into the sort of cultish beliefs associated with online videos promoting pseudo-science. We note for you that no government agency or responsible institution with far better instrumentation has reported any artifact such as he observed.”

“Oh dear, he made a reply,” Jed said, and read.

“Regarding the UCLA’s unsolicited review of my research and the state of my health: I’m happy to be disassociated from this congregation of dullards, devoted to political orthodoxy above actual learning. I’d like to point out that I never published my observations in any public venue. It was released to several astronomy clubs for any who wished to observe the object themselves. I never mentioned my history with the University, and I labeled my speculation it was an alien spacecraft as exactly that – speculation. I am unable to image the object I detected in any detail. I would welcome anyone having superior instruments to examine it. The University has access to such equipment but they are not reporting they have examined the location and found nothing. I speculate from their other habitual behavior that they rejected the idea without applying eyeball to lens piece before engaging their mouths. Call me when you can report differently.”

“I suspect I’d like the old boy,” Jed said. “Let’s send him an email and tell him to watch BBC news over the next couple of hours. They can’t take all that long to compose a video piece and get it released.”

“The University is going to have to eat those words,” Arnold said. “Between The Tampa story and yours coming on the BBC, I can see a defamation action against them. They didn’t say senile but made it clear they thought he was of diminished capacity. It’s dangerous to your reputation and legal standing to make medical claims if you aren’t a specialist in the area in which you are making assertations. It’s their bad luck he was justified in the next news cycle after them shooting their mouths off. Everyone will remember when they go to select a jury.”

* * *

“Is this a personal identification document?” Three Fingers asked. He had a Fleet ID that was very similar, with his rank and a portrait picture. His, however, was encased in a sapphire plate and had his service number, medical information, and com address. He couldn’t imagine a situation where he’d ever give it to a stranger.

“I don’t think so,” Beelus said. “It’s plain paper and would get soiled and wear out quickly. Do you see the symbols running down the left side?”

“Yes, I took those for commands served or special honors.”

“A reasonable guess. However, they are all symbols we have repeatedly seen in their videos promoting various makes of ground cars. Indeed, in some of them, you can see the same symbol attached to the outside of the vehicle as a badge.”

“So, this is a business document?” Three Fingers asked, surprised.

“We think so,” Beelus agreed. “My interpretation is that it is a sort of private identification document, but the fellow is involved in making or selling the kinds of ground cars identified by those symbols. Notice the portrait. If you roll the card, it shifts the view of the face over about an eighth turn of a circle, but only in the horizontal. The vertical axis is fixed.”

Three Fingers did so several times and his face showed amazement.

“This is another way they are ahead of us. I have no idea how they do that.”

“I know. And when you turn it, the eyes track you even though the face turns.”

“That’s a little creepy,” Three Fingers decided. “I suppose if one isn’t in service like us, but works at some commercial endeavor, that becomes a large part of how you identify yourself.”

Beelus made the affirmative gesture. “I have an uncle who sells bets against unacceptable levels of risk for your business or even your personal life if you are wealthy. I can see him handing these out like holiday sweet treats. He’s always quick to share his com code and let people know the service he offers. If I ever see him again, I may suggest he print up something similar. I can see him making a pest of himself with them but it might be very effective to have hundreds of these little cards passed out. Especially before others copy you and it’s still a novelty.”

“If that’s the purpose, there must be a com code on the card,” Three Fingers reasoned.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Beelus asked, embarrassed.

“One can’t think of everything. That’s why I have the big social credits waiting for me at home. They might as well be at the core of a star for all my hopes of ever enjoying them,” Three Fingers said bitterly.

“And now, none of us can even resign,” Beelus remarked ruefully. “I will see if I can find out which of these symbols could be a com address. We haven’t been trying to send information into their data net yet. But the drone sitting sampling their data stream could do that. We just have to be confident we wouldn’t be polluting the net with packets of noise and error. They could cut off a source for that.”

“I’m very interested in that,” Three Fingers said. “If you figure out his com address it may be the key to understanding other addresses in their net. Pull somebody off other duty to pursue that if you need to. There are things like corridor cleaning that won’t mean much in a few hands of days if we don’t solve these mysteries.”

“Then we can order meat pies delivered to our door just like back home,” Beelus quipped.

“Right, but mind the delivery fee,” his commander warned.

* * *

“Well, there’s why the quarter-million-dollar withdrawal,” Jason’s office assistant said. He tossed a printed sheet on the desk. It showed a three and three-quarter million-dollar deposit back into the account.

“Not a bad return on investment,” Jason said. “In payment for what I wonder?”

“I bet we’ll know before the day is done,” his man predicted.

Chapter 12

“Commander, our landing to acquire a bigger load of water has been seen in the feeds we are watching. Also, a brief time later another news outlet started showing video of the courier boat landing that gathered artifacts. Both of them are receiving heavy usage in the news channels, though some are just excerpts or stills,” Beelus reported.

“I’ve already seen our recording of the combat shuttle landing. Show me this new footage of our first landing. I wonder why it took them so long to release that?”

“It was a remote area. Perhaps it took that long to get to the responsible parties.”

Three Fingers just grunted a reply and started watching the file Beelus offered.

The first impression Three Fingers got from the native’s video was his crew came across more like tourists on holiday than members of a disciplined organization. He hadn’t wanted a military invasion and the mentality to shoot first when in doubt. But the four when they emerged from the shuttle looked like they were surveying a potential picnic site, not a new strange world and biosphere.

When they finished taking preliminary samples and the leader instructed them to go check out the nearby dwelling Three Fingers grew unhappy.

“Who told these comedians to go armed?” he demanded. “The whole point of not sending the military was to avoid a shoot ‘em up. Arming untrained crew doesn’t improve on that intent.”

“I can inquire, but the fast courier does have an arms locker. I assume the leader decided to arm them,” Beelus said. “Do you wish me to ask?”

“No, I recognize the fellow. I’ll just avoid using him in anything that requires good judgment.”

Beelus made a mental note that if he did something incredibly stupid, he might never know. The Commander would just quietly stop using him for things he decided were beyond his abilities.

“The subordinate assigned to go to the building, I will put a note in his file,” Three Fingers said, further educating Beelus on his management style. “I know he has never been trained on small arms, but anybody who treats a long gun like that should never be trusted with a power saw or soldering gun.”

He watched the man sweep his leader with the muzzle.

“Or possibly a screwdriver.”

“I should have sent something valuable to leave for anything we took,” Three Fingers decided after he watched his men take the laptop and rifle. “It just didn’t occur to me. We look like looters more than explorers. If we ever find out who lives there, we must reimburse them. That’s on me.”

“I’ll make a note to include the offer in our early messages,” Beelus said.

Three fingers sighed. “The fact those two are alive speaks to great restraint on the part of the person who took the video. If he could take these images, he could have just as easily put a projectile through the heads of the fellows robbing his residence. Certainly, their situational awareness wasn’t contributing to their safety. Any of our courts would have ruined their social credit for life and maybe exiled them from society for committing armed home invasion instead of simple burglary. I’m rather encouraged by their moderation. I was starting to think them intrinsically violent from how they treat each other. I want to talk to your man about sending some messages into their data net.”

“As you wish. May I speak off the record?” Beelus asked.

“Certainly, but if you want to be critical of me no need to hide it. I’m not so timid and dainty my ego can’t let a subordinate advise me and leave it on the record. I am occasionally as stupid as anyone else and need to learn by committing errors.”

“No, rather I’m wishing to shield my subordinate from having detrimental remarks in his record. I understand the value of a military organization and discipline. But not every talent and personality type is compatible with a regimented lifestyle. Sometimes the two can’t be found in combination easily. My man is a wizard with computers but frankly unsuited to our lifestyle. He has only retained rank and been kept in service by overlooking those faults. I’m telling you all those things so you don’t get upset with him too easily. I’d like to retain him as an asset and if you punish him for being what he is that can’t be rescinded later and maintain your authority.”

“Well, that’s quite the prelude. Would you care to sing the rest of the tune?” Three Fingers asked.

“He’s, different,” Beelus admitted, embarrassed.

“Should I expect him to dig in his nose or inquire about my family?”

“Never the nose. He’s a bit of a germaphobe. The man keeps a packet of sanitary wipes in his pocket. I’ve seen him unplug a keyboard and wipe it before he’ll use it.”

“Why doesn’t he just talk to it?” Three Fingers asked. “I can’t remember the last time I used a keyboard. I don’t even keep one in my cabin. There’s an on-screen keyboard in the unlikely chance I know a word the computer doesn’t.”

“He complains it’s too slow. He inputs commands directly in the machine language. I never put it in that mode because they never made us learn that in training. Now the other… I’m more worried he’d hit it off with you and feel comfortable with you than be terrified of speaking with the commander and stay formal. If he feels comfortable, he’s likely to relax and speak with you like a favorite uncle instead of his superior officer,” Beelus revealed.

“I will make every effort not to ruin your asset or laugh out loud at him,” Three Fingers promised.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now, how have you replied to that vehicle that passed by us and transmitted a huge file?”

“It seems to be mostly numbers, sir. I have several crew members with advanced mathematical training who said they started with prime numbers and progressed through arithmetic and on into algebra, trigonometry, and beyond. I don’t know why the dancing devils of deepest hades they think we’d be interested in that. We made as polite a neutral response as we could.

“That was from the very advanced nation where we got the water. The other probe we are fairly certain we saw launched from the opposite side of their world. It didn’t say anything but I imagine it took photos and analyzed everything about us that could be remotely sensed.”

“Good. I should have assigned somebody to wave out the ports. I see from the water mission that is one of their gestures in common with us.”

* * *

“Did you get some response?” The NASA director asked his Space Force peer.

“Yes, we passed by fairly close, a hundred and fifty kilometers away. We wanted to make sure it was obvious it wasn’t on a direct line approach like a weapon strike. We had time to repeat a long string of math at them several times. The package our people put together started with prime numbers as a universal common point and got progressively more complex. The hope was after establishing that as a common ground, we could in the future build language from the operations such as addition and subtraction leading to plus and minus, more and less, greater than and less than.”

“Did they respond with strings of numbers that showed they understood?” Durkin asked.

“Not exactly,” Gott said. “Here, I’ll let you listen to their brief response.”

The voice was odd but perfectly understandable English.

“Yes, yes, we count too. Please be patient. Your call is important to us.”

“They put us on hold?” Durkin asked, incredulous.

“Hey,” Gott said, trying to put a positive spin on it, “at least we didn’t have to work down a message tree to get that.”

* * *

“Commander, this is Dorton,” Beelus said leading the tech in. “He can explain what he is doing with far less confusion than me repeating it.”

“Have a seat, Dorton,” Three Fingers invited. He saw Beelus blink at his easy familiarity with a crewman four ranks below him. If it got him what he needed he’d serve the technophile tea. Why not?

“I’m coming off some busy time and going to take tea. Would you care for some?”

Beelus fairly gaped. Tea with the Commander wasn’t for tech ratings.

“Please, I like it sweet,” Dorton said. He leaned back with his hands in his lap, ankles crossed in front of him. It was obvious he wasn’t intimidated by meeting the Commander. It was kind of refreshing. After all, following all the little protocols of rank and privilege was stressful from both sides. Three Fingers refined his opinion a little. He suspected Dorton felt at his core he was Three Fingers peer. Truth was, he might very well be smarter. For sure he wouldn’t brag on being cozy with the Commander and undermine morale, because it wouldn’t occur to him to name drop.

Three Fingers spoke to the com for a steward to bring tea for three and some munchies. The kid was rail thin and he looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. How hard was Beelus pushing him?

“Now I understand you are very good with computers. I’m also an intelligent man,” Three Fingers told him in case he thought he bought his command or was some politician’s son. “My talents just run on a different line. I understand people and am trained in getting the best out of them. That can be rather challenging in groups. You never have brilliant people of natural talent in every position. So, you have to get the job done with what you have instead of a hand-picked team of all-stars. You need to explain to me what you are doing without diving into specialized jargon, or at least I may have to stop you and get some terms defined. Are you up to doing that?”

“I think so, sir,” Dorton at least looked interested. “Most people just tell me to make it work and their eyes cloud over at the details, but I’ve some experience at explaining computers to the few who are curious. I’ve heard several specialists exclaim that the natives, who call themselves humans, have a crazy irrational society. Is that your experience too?”

“Indeed, the very first day I told my second officer I don’t know how they live like that,” Three Fingers said with an expansive gesture.

“It isn’t any better with their computers,” Dorton said with the most woeful expression.

The tea arrived just then and Three Fingers dismissed the steward who looked askance at Dorton. Three Fingers poured himself. He covered his revulsion at the long squirt of sweetener Dorton put in his tea. It takes all kinds, he reminded himself firmly.

Dolton took a long draw of tea and emitted a weary sigh.

“Is Beelus here pushing you too hard?” Three Fingers asked.

Beelus looked alarmed until Three Fingers shot him a brief grin that said he was toying with him.

Dorton laughed out loud.

“Mohr and Beelus order me to go climb in my bunk and that I can’t use a screen, not even a tablet. I still wake up from dreaming about the human’s computer systems and dictate my thoughts to the system before I lose them.” He didn’t bother with honorifics for either superior.

Three fingers refilled the cup he near emptied at one go. If he was working at it that hard he probably needed the sugar.

“I used to complain about the intervals between system changes and how they are propagated,” Dolton confessed. “Never again! The humans have multiple revision levels scattered all over the planet and make them backward compatible until they are ancient!” It scandalized him.

“They don’t even have one operating system any more than they have one spoken language. I see five common ones and endless variations. The old versions are not automatically withdrawn when a new one is introduced. A major part of their effort in maintaining all this is protecting themselves from malicious actors, rival political systems, and outright criminals.”

Beelus perked up. That appeared to be new to him.

“Are you near being able to send messages into their system then without crashing it?”

Dolton laughed again.

‘I doubt I could crash it on purpose. What I’m scared of, is that if I build a bridge between our networks their invasive programs will assess our systems and take over. Whatever I do end up using to touch their systems needs to be isolated from ours. The radio connection has to be physically disabled and no wired connection allowed on it once it has been intimate with theirs.”

When Beelus looked at him with a questioning expression, he added. “Ever. I’d never trust it again until it was scrubbed to the zero state.”

“How would you assess our chances of sending a successful message right now, and receiving a reply?” Three Fingers asked.

“Fifty-fifty for a first try. Almost certainly within a few days,” Dolton said.

“Are their systems much different than ours?” Three fingers asked.

“They both use sets. I think their word is packets. You have to do that if you don’t want to do a long transmission only to find there was an error and you wasted all that effort.”

“They use a fixed size preamble. I think I know what the parts of them are, but we’ll find out, won’t we? There is a fixed-length field. It has to be the same to test them. And of course, an address. Now for all of the chaos and complexity, we have better encryption, although I’ll admit we stole it from the Tigers. We don’t have an address so if we want to talk to the fellow who helped the shuttle crewman, we would have to ask him to send a message to somebody that we can spy on. Fortunately, in their system, you can send a message from your address to yourself. So, he can send self-messages. We can spoof those and we can read them all without involving a third party. Our net will always reject that. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was thought a waste of resources on lazy note-takers. So, he can talk to himself and let us listen and we break in when we want to talk. Most of what we are showing crew to learn from is what they call the web. That is more complex and I am not ready to send web messages. The things they see there are not just from one location like our system,” Dolton said.

“What do you mean?” Three Fingers asked.

“This is quite literally a World Wide Web. If the item you wish to view is halfway around the world it takes too long to ask for it and establish a route to get it. They seem very demanding about performance and low latency. On the Home World, if I want a file on the other continent away from us, I wouldn’t think it a problem if I request it and have time to go get a cup of tea before it shows up.”

It made him aware again and he drained his cup. Three Fingers filled it without comment.

“When the humans put out a request it is perishable. If it can’t be found it tells you so. I’ve seen the error messages. But they have the commonly asked for items you might want distributed all over so you don’t have to reach halfway around the world to get it. The amount of memory they have on the planet must be awesome,” he declared.

“This is really enjoyable,” Dolton said. Three Fingers thought he meant the tea, and almost said he was welcome, but then he elaborated.

“I’ve explained bits and pieces of this to people, but nobody has had the patience to let me run on and on explaining it. It clarifies the thing in your mind to explain it.”

He was looking at Three Fingers strangely, and the Commander had no idea why.

“I knew you are called Three Fingers but I never realized it was literal. That had to hurt.”

Beelus just choked on his tea and was horrified. It was taboo to notice a disfigurement.

“Indeed, it smarted a bit,” Three Fingers said shamelessly. “That’s why I assumed the name so people didn’t have to pretend it doesn’t exist and struggle not to look at it. But, alas, the cultural bias is so strong it never helped much. It got nipped off by a Tiger bullet and I got a big shiny medal for surviving the action. I’d trade the damn thing in an instant for the finger back.”

Beelus looked ready to swoon over this breach of social graces. That amused Three Fingers.

“Well damn, you’re the real deal,” Dolton said. He balled a fist and smacked his shoulder. A salute that nobody ever demanded in a ship underway. “I’ve never seen a Tiger but in video and will be just as happy if I never have the experience.”

“An eminently practical attitude I applaud,” Three Fingers said. Some might regard Dolton as above his station to assume his salute had value, but Three Fingers smacked his shoulder back.

Beelus had a slight off color to his skin, which was rare with their dark pigmentation.

“Are you entirely well Beelus?” Three Fingers asked. “Do you need me to fortify your tea?”

“No sir, thank you, sir.” The idea of drinking on duty bothered him almost as much as the tasteless exchange between Dolton and his Commander.

I think you should allow Dolton to try contacting that friendly native who protected our man from the gator. He seemed the sort who would not begrudge a few hours of his time to improve our understanding and communications. If there is any way we could repay him don’t hesitate to offer.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll get right on it.” He looked at Dolton to make sure he understood that was a dismissal. Dolton got it, but drained his last cup of tea before standing.

* * *

“On the plus side, he didn’t pop the idiots stealing his stuff,” Jason credited him after watching the BBC video.

“I can’t believe he got these pix,” Taggert from the FBI told his over-boss. “They must not have been using any thermal imaging. Our soldiers all carry gear that would have seen him recording them. Even hidden in the woods. They can see your warm footprints for crying out loud.”

“Those weren’t soldiers,” Jason informed him. “Carrying a rifle doesn’t make you a soldier. They were idiots and the way they handled those weapons I’m shocked one of them didn’t manage to shoot the other the way they were handling them.”

“They had on uniforms,” Taggert objected.

“So did the fellow who served me lunch today,” Jason told him.

“I am irritated beyond belief Mr. Murphy acted selfishly and to his profit instead of contacting the proper authorities.” He ignored the crack about lunch. “I can’t believe the BBC paid three and a half million for a short video.”

Jason wondered how selfless Taggert would have been if the aliens landed in his yard?

“Considerably more than that,” Jason insisted. “He didn’t pull this off alone. That was just his cut and I’m sure several others got paid well for helping him.”

“Worse then. The whole affair is simply unconscionable.”

“You aren’t going to let this go, are you?” Jason asked Taggert.

“Not unless you directly order me to as head over my sub-agency.”

Jason considered that. If he issued that order, it could be used as a weapon against him. It could be played as an act of corruption. On the other hand, if he let Taggert go ahead the man might end up destroying his career. If some of the things whispered to him in private were true the man might just end up mysteriously dead. Then he’d never have to deal with the stupid ass again.

“Knock yourself out,” Jason invited. “I can’t for the life of me figure out what you are going to say the man did that violated any law.”

“Not law exactly. He ignored his call to duty letter. I’ll get the military to act for me on it.”

Jason wondered exactly how often one was legally required to check his mailbox, but he said nothing. He just nodded, which wasn’t any real affirmation.

“That’s up to you then. I have no further interest in the matter,” Jason said. Except to pop some corn and watch you implode your credibility from the sidelines. Jason thought to himself.

* * *

To: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

From: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

Subject: Aliens Request Help Please (again? correct word?)

Thank you for help gator and help water.

Advise please Fleming control.

Request direction. Request course.

Request Fleming help Aliens say good English and copy good please Fleming control?

We progress (but? correct word?) need help proceed.

Permission please pay help gator and water please say. Say how.

Reply please to self. You reply self we see traffic We copy

We have no address. Copy Fleming address. Good we see reply. Bad we not see reply.

Thank you for big big help.

Yes? No?

We hold now.

Aliens.

To: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

From: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

Subject: HELP

Yes. Fleming help.

Fleming=I

Yes. I help

Yes. Again correct word. Again=repeat

You are on correct course for again. Repeat. You are on correct course for again.

But correct word.

□ □ + □ □ = □ □ □ □

2+2 = 4

2+2 = 5 no=bad= wrong=no good=error

2+2 =4 yes=good=right=yes good=correct

Advise / say / alien copy

Yes? No?

Fleming.

To: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

From: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

Subject: HELP

Aliens copy. Yes.

Advise please Fleming.

Word = equal?

Yes? No?

Aliens.

Fleming could feel a headache coming on. This wasn’t going to be easy. He got another cup of coffee and two Aleve tablets before sitting back down. He’d just have to visualize this problem as explaining to a child who had no experience but decent native intelligence.

To: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

From: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

Subject: HELP

Word = equal?

Yes=good=right=correct

New course / new heading

English word PLUS = +

Number 1 = English word one = □

Number 2 = English word two = □ □

Number 3 = English word three = □ □ □

Yes? No?

Aliens copy?

Fleming.

To: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

From: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

Subject: HELP

We copy. Yes.

4=four

Repeat 4=four

5=five

6=six

1+1=2

1 PLUS 1 = 2

1+2=3

1+2=3=three

1+3=4

4+5=9

5+5=10

10=ten

5+6=11

Yes? No?

Aliens.

“Showoffs,” Fleming said aloud. “You already have some kind of a dictionary or list started. You aren’t so stupid you need to count little boxes or fingers and toes to understand numbers. We use base ten and you’d like to move right along. Fine. I get it. We’ll come back to binary and hexadecimal later. I’ll be damned if we won’t be discussing poetry by next week at this rate.”

* * *

“Barney? Powel here. Yes, Dr. James to you. Before you drag all your equipment out and set up, I want to try something. Have you seen the video the fellow in Florida took?”

“Yes, I’m evil enough I laughed like hell at the alien teleporting out of the lake. I thought he was going to fly. I bet they’re a lot more cautious exploring the rest of the planet. I can only hope somebody with a cell phone catches their first meeting with a skunk or big bear,” Barney said.

“You are evil. It’s one of those things that endear you to me. I looked up the fellow and his business contacts. I’d like to ask him if he has any way to contact them. He’s no idiot even if he did get a bit of buck fever shooting that gator.”

“I saw that. I didn’t call you because I was sure you’d be watching for any alien news too. I’m surprised they don’t have the guy in custody. I’d like to watch when you contact him. Why don’t you come over anyway? I planned to invite you to brisket that is already started slow cooking on the grill. Then, if your contact doesn’t work, we’ll still have time to drag out the yagi out and set up.”

* * *

“Mr. Taggert, the civilian control of the military descends from the Office of the President. Not from any civilian police agency,” The Army Chief of Staff explained. “The recall order for Mr. Murphy has already been rescinded and notice mailed to him. For reasons I have no obligation to explain to you, we find it in our own best interest and that of the nation to do so. I can already see from your expression that you are thinking furiously about how to interfere with that. If you do something petty, such as remove the physical notice from the man’s mail box that doesn’t change the man’s status at all. I’m not stupid. The only reason you are here to propose this is that you know it isn’t proper and didn’t want to suggest the idea in a form such as an email that would permanently document it happened. My aide will be waiting in the outer office to escort you from the building and I’m issuing a notice to security that you are not on my list to be received in the future. Goodbye.”

Chapter 13

“We seem very popular all of a sudden,” Beelus told Three Fingers. “If you thought the natives were possessed of surprising wealth before, you would be shocked how many seem to own radio transmitters. Some are very powerful, and some are surprisingly directional. Their lack of power or range isn’t keeping anybody who hopes to catch our attention from just talking away on everything from public broadcasting stations down to handheld radios only good for a thousand man-lengths or so.

“The English speakers seem amused at the anguish and insult taken by the speakers of other languages that we are only trying to understand one language. We had no idea, but apparently, it is an issue and English is hated in some quarters. The Chinese are upset, claiming their language is used by more people, and the French describe English in a bunch of terms we haven’t come to understand yet, but I suspect are both vulgar and derogatory.”

“Have any of them figured out why we picked English?” Three Fingers asked.

“Not that they have said publicly. Those like the auto dealer who saw that we use the terms of aviation probably can figure it out. It only speaks to their wisdom if they don’t waste time and effort trying to correct all the silly ideas. I will say this. We now know more English than we’ve learned Tiger in three generations of fighting them.”

“The more I see the less I want to add these people to the list of those we need to fight,” Three Fingers told him. “I saw some of those video games you learned to capture. I can see why a few of the crew assumed they were for training. It’s hard to find a line between fiction and reality in their videos. I was searching through them, trying to figure out if one futuristic game was based on real spacecraft or imagined and then the next game showed open cockpit biplanes dueling with each other slower than a decent ground car can go. I know my time is too valuable to be evaluating their computer games but the damn things just suck you in. You could waste your whole day trying to shoot down that evil bastard in the red plane.”

“I know, some of the men want us to make games with Tigers and Bugs as adversaries. I can’t argue against that. It might be good for morale. But we don’t have the time or talent to write them right now and our system would be overloaded with too many of the crew off duty running them.”

“We’ll need tech to sell to them if we’re going to pay our way,” Three Fingers said. “I was hoping computer tech was the easiest thing we could offer but that isn’t looking good. We have some software that they don’t seem to have developed, but in the hardware itself, they may be ahead. The laptop we got was impressive but it turns out it is several years old. Their cycle to obsolescence in computers seems to be about a hand of years. I’m sure what they will demand is our hyperdrive. Once they have that, what is left to sell them they can’t go get themselves?”

“Their help to reproduce our drive might be worth letting them have it. I’m hoping some of our drugs are unknown and act on them too,” Beelus said. “Also, we have tissue and plants in the food tanks that may be of value to them. If we are confident that we can maintain and replace our shuttles, we can mine some of the small moons or bodies in the outer system. They haven’t exploited them at all, so what they call platinum-group metals for example are valuable to them.”

“They may object that the entire system associated with this star is their property,” Three Fingers told him. “Never having met the Tigers, who feel they own everything and them. If all else fails I can sing for them,” Three Fingers joked.

* * *

“You brought a computer?” Barney said surprised.

“If there is any blow-back from this I’d rather not have one of your machines tagged,” James said.

“Do your magic,” Barney invited.

“This is the website for his Fiat dealership that sells Brazilian made Fiats. The big seller is the Ideal which is the middle tier vehicle in Brazil but considered an economy car here.”

“They’re OK if you aren’t stuck riding in one all day for a long trip,” Barney said.

“He uses the same address for all five franchises,” James said pointing it out. “I’m surprised he puts an addy out in public. Most people with his resources hire some sort of secretary or buffer to screen their calls. Let’s see if he’ll talk to us and if he has any means of contact.”

To: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

From: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

Subject: Alien contact/address inquiry

Mr. Fleming, I am Dr. Powel James. Like you, I have been in the news recently because I observed the alien ship in a halo orbit this side of our Moon. I deduced its location after seeing a notice in the Asteroid Watch removed.

I commend your actions to protect our visitors. I’ve received strongly negative reactions to my observations and hope you are still at liberty to receive this message.

I wonder if you have set up some means to keep in contact with them if they have been back in contact with you? I’d very much like to discuss matters with them. I’m a retired Astrophysicist and lifelong astronomer. I’m sure they can answer many questions we have about the heavens from actually transversing them instead of observing them from a fixed location.

I am aware all sorts of people are trying to contact them now. A fellow astronomer in India informs me he tried to contact them with a high-powered green laser and failed. I’m partnered with a Ham radio enthusiast and we’ve spent an evening trying to contact them at the higher amateur radio bands. We may try doing so again this evening in the two-meter band.

P. James.

Powel tapped send with a dramatic flourish.

“Straight into his spam filter,” Bernard said. “You should have asked about leasing a new car. That would get past his filters for sure. It might not have hurt to mention some of your high-powered degrees and cite some publications. Maybe your curriculum vitae and honors with the university.”

“Screw the University,” Powel said heartfelt.

They had a return message very quickly, which hardly seemed possible.

To: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

From: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

Subject: Alien contact

Dr. James. I am conversing with the aliens as much as keeping my business from disaster and eating and sleeping allow. They eavesdrop on me sending messages to myself and spoof the same as they have no addy. My mail is supposed to be fully encrypted end to end but they appear to be able to defeat that. It is awkward but works. At least they have not been interfering with my other messages received. When we can speak better, I’ll walk them through getting an account of their own. I suggest you use encrypted mail for other observers, not the aliens, if you have not already applied an appropriate program. We have basic arithmetic and a few hundred common verbs and nouns established. I believe the first words they got were used in civil aviation. Using words a pilot would choose may help speed things along. I will append my file. I’ll suggest they talk to you too. I can probably get that across now. I’d welcome the help if you will maintain and share a vocabulary too.

Fleming.

To: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

From: Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME / CC: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

Subject: Alien contact

Aliens: Add Yes. I help

Add Dr_PJ destination.

Maintain Fleming Motor Group@PM.ME

Fleming directing alien words to Dr_PJ

Fleming advice Dr_PJ to address self = Fleming

Dr_PJ help.

Fleming.

“Oh, that’s going to be lots of fun,” Bernard said.

From: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

To: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

Subject: Permission?

From: Aliens

You allow aliens proceed this route?

Message back = address = Fleming.

Say again.

Yes? No?

Aliens.

“They expanded the header with a subset,” Bernard noted. “That will be easier to sort them out re-reading them again. You should follow their style.”

Dr. James typed in a message without stopping to study the attachment.

From: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

To: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

Subject: Permission?

From Dr_PJ

Yes. Permission

Dr_PJ send to aliens.

Aliens send to Dr_PJ.

Yes.

Permission GRANTED = Yes.

Permission DENIED = No.

2 NEW words. Thank you.

Dr_PJ.

“Whoa! Nothing like diving straight into its first message, Doc.”

From: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

To: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

Subject: Permission?

From: Aliens.

Thank you. Help.

Thank you. 2NEW words.

Advise please. No new = ?

Advise please 1 new word.

Aliens.

From: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

To: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

Subject: 1 new word

From Dr_PJ

No new = old.

Old =1 new word.

Dr_PJ.

“Damn, that works but it’s going to take forever,” Bernard said.

“Nah, they have the whole torrent of broadcast from the planet. Once they have a word, they’ll go see how it is used and build a list of associated words. It’s a big ship. I bet they have several people working on learning the language. By this time next year, they’ll be writing love letters.”

“I didn’t know you were an optimist, Doc. If they have that many people, perhaps they could use another contact or two. Not me,” he said quickly when James looked at him. “Someone who speaks English, obviously. Maybe somebody a little different than Fleming or you.”

“I’ll think on that,” James allowed.

James copied Fleming’s file to a word processor and searched for list. It wasn’t found.

“Watch this. I’m going to teach them what a list is.” Dr. J was grinning.

* * *

From: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

To: JSingh372@gmail.com

Subject: Alien contact

Jatin, I can show you how to contact the aliens by email instead of radio or laser. Do you have the time to help them develop English skills and answer cultural questions? So far both contacts of which I am aware are here in the US. It might be good to give them other perspectives. Both of us are male also and you might ask your lovely wife if she’d converse with them.”

Dr. James.

* * *

From: Dr_PJ@ ArizonaSkyGazers.net

To: BellMartinLegal@ Gmail.com

Subject: Forward to your client JWM

Jed, I have to thank you again for pointing out the BBC report to me. I’ve been helping the aliens develop a vocabulary via email. The fellow who was in contact with them in Florida is doing that also and we share the new updates daily. I have another colleague who is going to communicate with them too. Since I haven’t seen any public news about you since the release of your video, I suspect you may have issues requiring anonymity. If you wish to communicate with the aliens, I can direct you how to do so. They are coming along in their ability to communicate quite well. If they were humans, I’d place them at about the level of very bright children ready to start kindergarten. They have expressed a desire to reward Mr. Fleming for his protection and ongoing help. They have said the same regarding your possessions they took and your restraint. Whatever that means. It took a bit to make sure they understood the word and were using it correctly. It was useful because we associated patience in the same session. Now, an offer. I’ve been asked to sit for an interview and declined. I see no advantage in submitting myself to that and don’t wish to share our ongoing activities. If you as an actual eyewitness wish to offer an interview to the media let me know and I’ll tell you who is interested.

Dr. PJ

Chapter 14

All the agency heads looked around the table at their counterparts with suspicion and in some cases undisguised hostility. The leader of a foreign service might have been regarded more kindly. Of course, he more likely might have unique intelligence to share and let go of it easier.

After some indecisive mumbling by an agreed-upon chair, the Head of Homeland spoke up.

“The primary thing we need to discuss is how to get the aliens to talk to us,” Jason said.

“They haven’t refused,” Space Force said. “They just put us off for a bit.”

“If they aren’t speaking to us at least they aren’t speaking with other countries,” FCC said. “We know they have radio and replied to our passing probe. Everybody in the world that has a steerable antenna is pointing it at them with no reported transmissions.”

“And everybody with any sort of transmitter is babbling at them,” Jason said.

“Yes, ineffectively,” FCC said. “It must make a terrible impression on them. We look so divided and unregulated instead of answering systematically. I’d be put off by it.”

“We’ve waited two weeks since our probe flew past. How long do they need?” NASA asked.

“The Chinese are slapped in the face they won’t reply to Chinese,” the CIA said, amused.

“Mandarin that is,” State said. “The in factions hate it so much that Cantonese is used in business.”

“We are sure they are talking to somebody through internet satellite,” State said.

“Do you know who the aliens are talking to through the Hughes bird?” Jason asked State. Adding the specific system told them he knew details as well as them.

“The Hughes sat carries too much volume to be sure of how many people they may be speaking with. The retired professor who sighted them has shown no increase in traffic. If he’s talking to them, he’s using a different account and not at his home.

“I inquired if the known accounts could be shut down until we found those being routed to where the two suspected users are. I was accused of wanting to destroy the Midwestern economy.”

“We’re pretty sure they are carrying on a dialog with Fleming, the Florida auto dealer. His home traffic is much heavier, and he’s away from the keyboard less often than a month ago,” the FCC said.

“Might he be acting as an unregistered foreign agent?” State asked. “That could be used as a threat to pressure him to reveal his communications.”

“His encryption is too good to know what is being said. Or even with who for that matter. I imagine he knows it too and would call you a liar to your face if you tried to bluff him,” the FCC admitted. “And trying to conduct surveillance on him with a van has proved difficult.”

That made the Director of the CIA perk up.

“He’s that sophisticated that you can’t read his computer’s emissions? Could that be something he has gotten from the aliens already?”

“When he saw our van, I suspect he had one of his kids sit and jab the keys on a couple of other computers at random, and possibly created interference with a makeshift spark gap. That’s surprisingly easy. The signals were corrupted. Of course, if he were the timid sort who stayed in his house peeking from behind the drapes the alligator would have eaten the alien and we’d never have gotten this opportunity.”

“That interference is a crime in itself,” Justice noted.

“Yes, but it would be awkward to have the surveillance unit enter the complaint. It would smell of entrapment. When an FCC enforcement unit was called it stopped before they got there. Then, the FAA showed up and informed us the street was officially a taxiway and they couldn’t park there, that nobody could park on it. When they returned later a couple of young children spray painted FBI all over the outside of the van and then painted the windows over.”

“But… It wasn’t us,” Taggert of the FBI objected.

Some of them exchanged glances. Taggert had a reputation for gaining his office by family influence rather than merit and not being overly bright.

“Accurate or not, local police and judges were very reluctant to act against minors who weren’t his children for graffiti,” the chair said. “When asked who bought them the paint and instigated them, they insisted it was the local city manager. Fleming is suing the locals for confiscating his phone and rifle. City police did that entering his home without a warrant. They’re trying to reach a settlement with him so they don’t want to be accused of continuing harassment. If they can be shown to have acted with malice it could turn it into a triple judgment.”

“Did it ever occur to anyone that him speaking to them might be to our advantage?” Jason asked.

They all looked at him like he was mad to suggest such a thing.

“Would you all rather they were chatting with the Chinese or Persians?” he asked. When they said nothing, he elaborated. “Here’s a bright fellow immersed in capitalism and so apple pie he belongs to two fraternal organizations and sponsors local sports teams. A natural-born citizen with no negative history. The only danger I see is if they learn language and culture from him, they are probably going to buy all their cars and trucks from him to the third generation. On the other hand, if they see you getting heavy-handed with the fellow who rushed out and saved their crew’s butt from the local monster, they may decide we aren’t very nice people. They may have decided to deal with us in English, but they could still switch to dealing with the planet through the United Kingdom or others large and small, who use it as an official language. Even India uses English so heavily as a common language they could step up to be their preferred contact.”

“But that’s so passive,” Taggert said.

Several of them squirmed in their seats. It’s uncomfortable when the dumbest guy in the room says what you were thinking out loud.

* * *

Meanwhile…Dr. James, Jed, Fleming, and Jatin were in a MeetThere conference with Three Fingers, Blue, Beelus, and Mohr. Things were progressing much faster with everybody responding vocally instead of through the slow filter of text. There was a definite synergistic effect, not just between humans and aliens but within the same species crews. They could pass notes on the side between each other in private messages while one person was speaking, setting up the next speaker. Barnard sat in with Powel James on occasion but refused to sit a separate feed. Jatin’s wife Kajol also insisted on an assisting role. They didn’t say much but when they did it was because they felt strongly about something. Blue wasn’t a big talker either, but nothing got past him.

“We for sure want to land where English is spoken. We have spent so much time and effort getting better with it,” Beelus said. “What else is important looking at it as natives?”

“There are lots of countries where English isn’t the official or first language but almost everybody can speak it,” Jed said, “but other things would be a deal-breaker.”

“Deal breaker meaning no contract?” Three fingers asked.

“Yes. Means it wouldn’t work. You couldn’t and shouldn’t agree. It just wouldn’t work.”

Beelus was looking down. He’d be typing a new entry into their dictionary and phrases database.

“Please, tell us some examples,” Mohr asked.

“There are very small countries and islands that speak English because of being colonized years ago. Back when people were exploring on sailing ships.”

“How many of your years?” Mohr said.

“A long time. Four or five hundred years ago,” Jed said.

“That would be fifteen thousand years for us,” Beelus said, “but say more please.”

“Small island nations won’t have the resources to take advantage of your tech. They lack the capacity to make things. They also don’t have enough land to share. If there are a lot more of you in a couple of your generations, they won’t have room for you. The ones in remote areas would add transportation expenses to everything you want to do and the small islands near bigger countries will be captive to their will either economically or militarily.”

“Yes, OK.” Three Fingers said awkwardly. The phrase was still not intuitive to him. “That seems logical. Let us set them aside as possible landing sites. Tell us what others you would reject.”

Jatin spoke up. “India has widespread use of English because of their colonial past. It also needs it as a common language because of so many regional languages. But we are past being a colony and can work past the regional differences. India launches their own satellites and has high-tech businesses. At least high tech for humans,” he qualified. “We are also strong enough militarily that others aren’t going to interfere if you are here under our protection, unlike a small country.”

“Are you selling India to us?” Three Fingers asked. “What’s another word or phrase for that?”

“Promoting, suggesting, advocating,” Dr. James supplied. That kept Beelus busy. “Here is a list I got off the net of what countries have what percent of English speakers.”

It appeared in a separate window.

“I’m not sure you should pick one country,” Kajol said. “You may not understand how competitive countries can be. If one is terrified the other will learn so much from you that they will be left powerless, it could lead to an immediate war. You told us you fight both Bugs and Tigers. How would you feel if they became allied to each other?”

“A poor example. Neither show any thinking like that. But I think I understand what you are saying as an idea.” Give me some more words to research related to idea.”

“In theory, or theoretically, as an example, the way you used it. As an abstract idea, a way of thinking, a concept, or a course of thought,” James supplied again.

“I’ll look up examples of those to be sure I use idea correctly,” Beelus promised.

“Yes, better to not favor one country. A war would undo any good for both of us. It only takes one fearful insane person to start one, and wreck civilization,” Jeb said.

“These humans do enjoy exaggerating,” Mohr said on the side to Beelus.

“I think love to exaggerate works too,” Beelus said. “That may be an idiom.”

“There are countries on that chart in Africa with heavy English usage,” Fleming said. “But none of them are stable politically and they don’t have the industry to make things at your tech level.”

“You see there, the Netherlands and Sweden have enough English speakers,” Jed said. “But they are in all kinds of complicated treaties and agreements with all the other European countries. I’d argue they are no longer sovereign, to deal with alone. As a group, they couldn’t agree about what to order for lunch much less how to treat you. Do you understand sovereign?”

“Yes, we have that nailed down, as you say. I do like that phrase. But the thing about lunch. Is that being funny? Beelus asked.

“Humor, yes, it is part humor. But sarcastic humor. Look up sarcastic. It is disapproving humor. A lot of humor is only funny because it has an unhappy core of truth.”

“That I understand. The same with us,” Beelus said. “Remember, we do laugh.”

“Indeed, some things one must choose to laugh or cry,” Three Fingers said. “We don’t cry wet, but we cry.” The humans nodded and the People all made affirmative grasps.

“What about the USA?” Three Fingers asked. “Three of you live there. Are you going to sell it to us like Jatin said why India is good?”

“India and the US do a lot of business,” Jed admitted. “The US gets along better with its neighbors. I’d never expect us to be at war with Canada or Mexico again. The US has more money for each person, but India has plenty of business and industry to work with the People. I think what Kajol said is good. If you are not in just one country it reduces the fear that one will get a big, unfair advantage. It will keep one from being possessive about you. If you are just in one, they may not want you to visit other countries or talk with them.”

“Notice, he said at war again,” Blue said to Three Fingers privately.

“Are you saying we’d be prisoners?” Beelus asked. “We have that word and understand jail too.”

“You can be limited where you go and what you do without a jail or bars of a cage,” Jed explained. “Once you are living here, they can offer help or withhold it. Surely you know you can give one of your crew rewards or punish them in small ways without locking them up.”

“I was punished once by not being allowed to buy things I wanted from ship’s stores that most crew expect. Special food or entertainments for fun like your videos. I understand,” Mohr said.

“It will be complicated and I can’t promise how you would be treated,” Jed said. “There is no way we can know or promise how you will be treated anywhere.”

“But we have no choice but to pick somewhere,” Three Fingers said. He was picking up the human habit of emphasizing a word by his inflection as well as gestures.

“We have lots of people who live here but are not citizens,” Barnard spoke up. “They need permission to work. Sometimes getting permission to drive or use a bank is difficult. There is even the question if you can become citizens. Laws about citizenship are complicated and can change. You will have to bargain for how you are treated in payment for your tech. I suggest where you land you hire a local lawyer who knows that country’s immigration law.”

“How their law treats not citizens? Beelus asked.

“Yes. They are all different. Some places it is very hard to be allowed to live there,” Barnard said.

“We are not used to laws changing,” Beelus said. It seemed to worry him.

“All seem like good reasons to ask to land in two countries,” Three Fingers decided.

“Or more,” Beelus said.

“Yes, but we are few,” Three Finger reminded him. “Each group must have the most important things if they are far apart. We have medical people for two groups but not three. We need both drive experts together to keep teaching their knowledge. Neither feels confident to do it alone.”

“Look up the word monopoly,” Dr. James said. “It means to have a thing and nobody else can have it. If you tell Earth governments you think it is bad for just one Earth nation to have a monopoly on your tech they may not like it but it is obviously good sense. Other nations will press them to accept it.”

“Press is push?” Beelus asked.

“Yes, press, push, put pressure on,” he said illustrating with the flat of his hand pushed towards the screen and then against the other hand.

“That is enough this time,” Three Fingers declared. “As much as my head will hold. Next time maybe we can say where we want to land and you can say who to talk to.”

“Until tomorrow,” Dr. James said. It was the middle of the night for Jatin and his wife, but he didn’t complain or remind them.

* * *

“How are we going to pay for anything like a lawyer, without waiting for our tech to be made and sold?” Mohr asked.

“Dr. James and I have been talking about that,” Beelus said. “There are ways to buy without selling first. They have what is called credit. You can borrow money if you promise to pay back extra for the use of it. Of course, they have to trust you can pay later. If you are a legally recognized group, you can issue promises to pay for sale. They call them bonds. Or you can sell partial ownership in a business. Not partners but something in little units called stock. It’s a lot more complicated than that but that’s a start. We will need to have a legal persona, a corporation of some sort in both countries. That, of course, is going to require hiring another set of lawyers. For now, Commander Three Fingers is sending a pair of shuttles to mine some metals out beyond the next planet. We are informed several metals are so valuable to them they are pretty much the same as money. They have a word for that but I can’t remember it at the moment.”

“Better you than me,” Mohr said. “A capacitor works the same for humans or People. That sort of thing I can figure out. People or Earth People either one, it will charge and discharge like the graph shows will happen every time. Do you know what I mean?”

“I hear you. But when machines get very complicated, like a computer, they can get very difficult to fix when they don’t do what you want. Isn’t that true?”

“True, but still a thousand times easier than predicting People,” Mohr insisted. “Technical Leader is higher than I ever aspired to be. I never want to be an officer.” Beelus just smiled at that.

* * *

The next meeting, the humans explained the structure of immigration agencies within both the US and Indian governments. They gave the aliens charts to sort it out.

“If you allow them,” Dr. James warned, “every agency in the government will say they need a voice in dealing with you to accomplish their mission. They will make rulings and try to set regulations just to show they have the power to do so and set a precedent that they have firm possession of that authority. You need to insist from the start that you will only deal through one agency and one spokesperson from that agency has the final say when you get a documented statement from him. That is a base for keeping it simple, but you also need to insist that there is no final agreement until the US Congress or the Indian Parliament confirms the agreement as a matter of law, not changeable agency regulation. I’d suggest you refer to it from the start as a treaty. There are already treaties with Indian nations within their borders so it isn’t an entirely new idea.”

“How did such a thing start?” Three Fingers asked.

“Basically, they never finished conquering them and it was easier to grant them some land reserved for them than to try to wipe them out. That’s a long complicated story,” Dr. James warned.

Jeb spoke up. “Like we touched on yesterday, you need to hire your attorneys, specializing in immigration law before calling the agency and approach them together. If the lawyers ask to speak first making the contact, I’d let them do that. But insist on at least watching the process to keep them honest, and because it’s such a historic event, both sides should have an accurate record of how it happened. The lawyers probably already have a contact higher up in the agency than you can get by email or calling a public live contact number.”

“Our shuttles haven’t returned with the monetary metals,” Three Fingers reminded him.

“The law firms will ask for a retainer. I can loan you whatever you need to hire them. If they won’t take the metal in payment directly for future work, we’ll help you sell it. I’ll see they are paid their retainer through my attorney. I don’t want to be seen as your agent. Not now, maybe never.”

“We already owe you. Thank you,” Three Fingers said.

‘I’m doing it for everybody,” Jed said. “This needs to be done right or it can make life difficult for everybody, including me. There is some self-interest involved.”

* * *

“Frankel, Loewry, and Goldberg. How may I help you?” The young woman’s voice was steady but her eyes reflected shock at seeing a dog-faced alien against a strange background.

“Hello. My name is Blue, the same as your color. Be aware when you reply the response will be what you humans call laggy. We are out by your moon and it takes a few seconds for the signal to make the round trip. I am second in charge of this vessel and wish to speak to a senior partner of your firm about representing the crew of our ship to land and be granted favorable immigration status in the United States of America.” He had that written out and read it carefully.

“Mr. Loewry is on call right now,” the receptionist said. “I will request he speak with you.”

“Mr. L, I have a new client call on line 3,” Cheryl said. “I think you should replay my video before answering the, uh, gentleman.”

Cheryl watched Loewry replay the call and his face turned red as he got angry.

“Cheryl, we pay you to screen calls precisely because we don’t wish to speak to every nut case and fraudster who can look up our contact info. Those supposed aliens were in the news about a month ago. If they were real, they’d be holding news conferences on the Whitehouse lawn by now. They thoroughly discredited the crank astronomer who started this. For crying out loud, they are selling rubber masks of the ‘aliens’ already. The kids will be wearing them for Halloween. The stories all over the internet have them landing in Idaho to steal potatoes, taking people for joy rides, and other utter foolishness. Just hang up on him. Don’t waste another word. And don’t bother me with other aliens of any flavor,” Loewry instructed her.

Blue couldn’t hear Loewry’s response. Cheryl simply looked distressed and the screen went blank.

“Communications failed?” Blue asked.

“Nahhh, she hung up on you,” Jed said. “Her boss probably made her.”

“Hung up is terminated?” Blue asked.

“Yeah, that’s an old expression from when the handset for a voice-only phone physically terminated the call by being replaced on the instrument.”

“What shall I do?” Blue wondered.

“Life is too short to try to fix stupid,” Jed advised him. “There’s too much of it in the world. That’s why I gave you four firms to call. I thought one or more might turn the work down.”

“What is the word for that particular kind of bad behavior?” Blue asked. “She did not treat me correctly. Am I wrong?”

“No, she was what we call rude. Don’t hold it against her. I’m sure she wouldn’t have done that on her own authority. Her boss undoubtedly ordered it.”

“That moves the rude to him, but it still doesn’t explain it,” Blue protested.

“I’m just guessing,” Jeb admitted, “but I’d bet he just doesn’t believe you exist.”

Jed had never seen one of the aliens blink in series, rendered speechless. He suspected this would only be the first time. He’d have to introduce flabbergasted to their vocabulary.

“Why don’t you take a break and maybe drink something refreshing?” Jed suggested. “Let the experience of witnessing that level of idiocy wear off a little before your next call.”

“Idiocy is stupid?” Blue asked.

“An idiot is a stupid person. Stupid and stupidity can be nouns but there is a subtle difference between the thing and the quality. Same with idiot and idiocy.”

“I think I have it,” Blue allowed. “Stupidity is, as stupid does.”

“Blue! You are approaching poetic,” Jeb complimented him.

“I read some poetry,” Blue said. “It made my head hurt. I’ll go drink some Krakk and tell Three Fingers about this. He’ll be amused. He’s like you that way.”

* * *

Three Finger’s call to India went a little better. He had three eager partners on a split-screen.

“I thank you for all the information,” Three Fingers said, “but most everything you are telling me we read on your website. We know you have forty associates and are an old established firm. We didn’t call you at random. I’d rather just speak through one person to your firm and we intend to ask the same of Immigration. What I want to know now is will you accept us as clients and where can I wire a retainer?”

“You have access to banking? Do you have legal representation in other countries?” one asked.

Three Fingers didn’t know how to respond. He just sent a question mark to Dr. James.

“Tell him that’s no more his business than what you had for breakfast. That you are hiring them to represent your crew in India, not make inquiries about your business elsewhere.”

“It might become pertinent in the future,” was the best same speaker could say to excuse it.

“We’ll talk about it then,” Three Fingers said without any help from Dr. James.

Chapter 15

“This isn’t an immigration issue,” Winston Porter, Director of USCIS insisted when his assistant brought in the legal firm’s letter. “Dealing with an alien race is a diplomatic issue. Their worlds or world will be sovereign entities. They should contact the State Department.”

He was a little surprised they were real though he didn’t share that with his aide. Since the initial news about them, nothing of substance had been revealed. There wasn’t even the usual unofficial chatter that flowed through all of DC. Winston desperately wanted to avoid any controversy. After surviving the first decade at his post with all sorts of changes in two administrations, things were finally settled down and he wasn’t faced with a partisan tug of war. He’d won begrudged respect by repeating at several uncomfortable Congressional hearings that he only administered the law Congress made. That if they wished for a better more rational immigration policy, they had to pass better more rational laws. Neither party liked to hear that, but had to admit he followed the letter of the law even when they wanted to change it and couldn’t gather the support to do so. He’d had eight years of relative calm and survived a party transition. With two and a half years until he expected to retire, he didn’t want anything upsetting the cart.

“Their attorneys addressed that. They are not sovereign and represent no alien political entity. They are military, but have no authority to engage in diplomatic affairs and are unable to communicate with home. They have no issues or orders regarding us since we are unknown to the command from which they are separated. Their real status is that of lost travelers in distress. They are effectively stateless and at risk the same as passengers on a ship at sea, needing to make the safety of a port. They wish an agreement about how we will treat them, not the nation of their origins.”

“But I’m supposed to believe they dropped from the heavens speaking English?”

“They have a team of a couple of hundred of their crew working on English proficiency. They seem to know that question would arise and explained how they broke our code, so to speak. They listened to air traffic control and observed what the planes did in turn. A Rosetta stone I’d have never imagined. I do know that when it means your survival one can pick up the rudiments of a language by immersion in just a few weeks.

“They are requesting our agency deal with them exclusively, and to assign a single primary contact through which to funnel everything so they aren’t constantly needing to reconcile different understandings and decisions. They also demand what we agree to must be ratified by Congress as a treaty. They seem to have been advised that regulations and rules are too ephemeral to trust. The application from their legal counsel had a very detailed demand that they be given permanent status as people equivalent to humans anywhere our legal code addresses rights and responsibilities of legal persons. It was typical legalese. I’m not a lawyer but from my training, it seemed like they nailed it down thoroughly.

“If they are clear on what they want, they are not being coy about what they offer. They realize their technology is what we will value most from them. They expect to get a fair trade for all of it but will share even their starship drive tech with us. They knew immediately that is what we would most desire.

“If we can’t accept those terms, they have made clear we aren’t the only English speakers with whom they could bargain.”

“Ah, those are reasonable requests. Brilliant really,” Winston said. One that left him a safe way off the hook. “They are of course a very important case, but as Director I can’t fixate on any one case to the exclusion of managing the whole agency. I will assign Associate Director Bradley to clear his desk of other concerns to his subordinates and take full charge of dealing with this matter. Have him come in at his earliest convenience and speak to me.”

* * *

“What are they asking?” Winston asked Alex Bradley before he could get into his prepared report.

“Less than I feared. They want to lease land somewhere they can set up a community and control who interacts with them until everyone is acclimated to our society. That’s just to prevent anyone from taking advantage of their crewmen. They’ll form a legal corporation to market their tech and see the income helps all the crew get settled. They’d prefer to build their own living quarters but were open to having us supply materials and whole buildings for things like manufacturing and warehousing. They aren’t picky about where we put them. They have dealt with worse extremes of temperature and weather than anything within our borders.

“I’m still sure somebody is advising them. They asked for things I wouldn’t expect them to pick up from just looking at TV and the web. They want to ease their people into meeting humans and dealing with us, but specifically said they want to be allowed in public places. They asked that their shuttles be granted airworthiness on the assumption they are more advanced and none of our people can judge how safe they are. How else would they know about things like airworthiness certifications unless somebody is helping them?”

“I’m glad they haven’t asked us for an advocate. Every piece of advice we gave them would be examined under a microscope by other agencies and fought over. As long as they are being advised and not manipulated,” Winston said.

“I can’t believe that would happen,” Alex said. “I’ve spoken enough with both Three Fingers and Blue now to get a taste of their personalities. Both are the strong-willed sort you’d expect in a human military commander. But they see that ending and their people being released from any military obligation. They will be forming one or more corporations in both countries to conduct business and they’ll wear two hats one military and one corporate for some time. Blue expected he and Three Fingers would be the last to stay in that original framework in case more of them find their way here and they must make an accounting of their command.

“They’re just thrilled to have air that doesn’t have to be filtered or compressed. I asked about what they needed to feed themselves and the idea they might farm right out in the open surprised him. They have the equipment to grow specialized plants and processes that run in tanks. Even if none of our food is suitable for them, they have not only the basics for survival but variety. He said it’s a major item in maintaining morale in a big ship. I can understand that. If they have water without needing to extract it from the air that would be a bonus. They’ve had to set up facilities in some pretty hostile places.”

“We can probably find a tract of semi-arid land far from any large town that they will think is paradise,” Winston said. “Someplace that doesn’t have local zoning or we can exclude it as a Federal site and let them build how they wish. If we have to, we’ll just call it a technology demonstrator and make sure it is granted a tax abatement and a ninety-nine-year lease for a buck.”

“They seem determined, however, to establish two locations in different countries,” Alex said. “I haven’t been able to come up with a solid argument against it. Security-wise it just makes too much sense for them. They haven’t enough knowledge of our societies to throw all their eggs in one basket.”

“That might not be all bad,” Winston decided. “If we get all of them everyone will be paranoid that they are showing us how to build every death-ray and nova-bomb of science fiction thrillers. They’ll be calls for inspections and sharing. Have they said who else they might befriend?”

“They weren’t shy at all to share that they are speaking with the Indians.”

“Uhhhh… Dot?” Wilson asked.

“Certainly. They do have a launch capacity and a huge economy. The first criterion is that they be English speaking. The British certainly left that legacy behind there,” Alex said.

“Good, the other would be awkward,” Winston admitted. “We can compete with them in what we offer. If we present an attractive package, we can hope they favor us with their A team and the techs that will be teaching the better technologies. There are only a few hundred of them. How much can it cost to set them up nicely?”

“That’s true,” Alex agreed. “They have mature fusion power tech. I think the last fusion generator they built cost almost two billion and still isn’t ready to run as a commercial power plant. That one technology alone will more than pay for giving them support.”

“The problem isn’t going to be foreign objections or demands,” Winston warned. “In the end, the most effective and robust opposition will be from other Federal agencies insisting that their mandates cover dealing with the aliens. We can only hope the aliens will stand firmly true to their stated demand to deal with one agency and one spokesperson rather than be pulled a hundred directions trying to satisfy conflicting demands from a literal mob. We aren’t going to be able to enforce our decisions if those above us issue direct orders contrary to our charter.”

“I’ve spoken with both Blue and his superior Three Fingers,” Alex said. “They both indicated they knew that any government large enough and wealthy enough to give them the help and protection they need will have internal power struggles over who gives the orders and who reaps the benefits from sheltering them. I find it hard to believe they have such a deep and realistic view of politics unless they are being coached by humans. I only hope they are just being guided and not controlled.

“When I tried to gently warn them that we’d have some strong internal debate on who should properly deal with them, there was no need to be subtle, he seemed fully aware of what a problem it could be. Three Fingers responded much too quickly for someone to be feeding him responses. I’m not sure of all their gestures and facial responses yet, but I did see his nostrils dilate and mouth change shape. There was a reaction, and he simply said, “Well, there’s always the UK or even a couple of the European nations if your agencies cut off their nose to spite their face.” That’s not the first time he’s used English idioms, and if you think about how their faces are shaped it wasn’t already an expression they would have ever used. Their noses don’t stick out enough for that usage to arise.”

“They certainly would have no trouble finding alternative state sponsors,” Winston said. “I’ve seen all sorts of public broadcasts from other countries that seem more aimed at the aliens than their own population. I think a few smart boys figured out they are mining our public broadcasts for language instruction and to understand our differences.”

“The DOD browbeat their lawyers into asking Blue to speak to the military,” Alex said.

“Oh really? How did that work out?” Winston asked.

“John Gott of the Space Force wanted to explain how they could work with another military organization easier than civilian agencies. They had a three-way screen open and the lawyers made the pitch they had been coerced to present, asking him to speak with Gott. Blue told them that Three Fingers never intended to try to maintain military discipline and structure once the majority of the People are safe on the planet. He said a core of military would exist as long as they needed to run the Protector and its shuttles, but in their species experience, and that of the other races they have observed, the military is great at its core mission of killing people and destroying infrastructure, but those tools don’t do much for a healthy society without external enemies. That rather than switch missions, the military will find new internal enemies to which it can apply its core skills. He told their lawyers, with Gott looking on, that not only were they not locked down to any one particular country yet, but they could find a different legal firm if they kept wasting his time with unsolicited communications. He never did speak directly to Gott. I’d expect that bruised his extra-large ego.”

“Blue doesn’t seem to understand the finer points of diplomacy,” Winston said.

“Yeah, he doesn’t negotiate worth a damn,” Alex agreed. “But I suspect that’s a quality he wasn’t recently taught by any human friends. I think as second in command of a large warship he has a pretty tough personality. If anything, he’s less gracious about saying no than Three Fingers.”

* * *

“How is it going with the Indians?” Jeb and Dr. James joined Jatin already in conference with Three Fingers and Blue.

“You may be surprised to know things are going smoothly,” Three Fingers said. “They had a bit of internal debate about who should handle this or that with us, but direct it at each other and only put it to us through their designated spokesman, Uday Shankar, once it is settled. None of them have been leaking their internal squabbles to the press, and I’ve had to restrain myself from violating my own policy and jumping in to support one side or the other listening to them, instead of waiting for the consensus to be put to us by Uday. I’m surprised they let us listen to their internal debate.”

“It’s likely a matter of time,” Dr. James speculated. “If they had to break off and go into private consultations every time something had to be settled the whole process would take months.”

“It’s a different style,” Jatin admitted. “Do not suppose the tiniest statement will be forgotten if it profits them to bring it back up in the future.”

“At least you appear to have some hope of a resolution,” Blue said. “The US Congress is not nearly as civil. Everything is public, if you can stomach endless hours of watching C-SPAN and digest statement after statement that make no sense or says nothing. Barnard was very helpful in confirming it wasn’t my lack of understanding of English. He confirmed one long speech I didn’t understand was completely null in meaning. I asked how stupid somebody has to be to speak for fifteen minutes and say nothing? He corrected me that it takes a great deal of skill to speak that long and make no clear positive statement. But he admitted the tone suggested that the Senator didn’t like us.

“I’m losing hope they will come to any agreement. We have a Congressman from Alabama arguing whether we have souls. The Congresswoman from Minnesota challenged him to prove he had a soul. Neither of them asked us our opinion or if we even have the concept. I’m just as glad. I’d hate to have to explain the old religion to them. I think the only shared concept is of a hell with stratified tiers. I’d be happy to assign both of them to the lowest regions. Others say allowing a military force to land is equivalent to an invasion if not a surrender. Then we have people like the Senator from Louisiana who worries that if we provide advanced technology, it will destroy important industries.”

“I suggest you ask another country about giving you refuge,” Dr. James said.

“And start a similar process from, as you say, scratch?” Blue asked. It obviously didn’t appeal.

“No. Not unless you luck out and they dive in and grasp the opportunity. That isn’t likely. What it would do is motivate the Congress to shut up and approve the agreement USCIS presented.”

“How would you announce that without provoking them?” Three Fingers asked.

“You wouldn’t announce it at all,” James said. “Believe me, they will know about it almost as fast as the speed of light lag allows. No announcement says you are serious far more than a fanfare.”

Dr. James saw Blue mutter fanfare, look down, and type something. James suddenly realized that he was now lip-reading the aliens without being aware he’d developed the skill.

Blue shrugged, which was a new gesture they hadn’t seen before. “Why not? I’ve got the time to do that since they won’t give us a go-ahead and a landing site.”

“It looks like you will be landing here first,” Jatin said. He seemed a little smug India was ahead of the US at getting boots on the ground. But who could blame him?

“What are you offering them?” Jeb asked.

“They discussed putting them in the Siti valley, a mountainous desert area in the Himalayas, or south of Kalo Dungar on the edge of the Great Salt Desert, since they aren’t particular about climate. However, the one was too close to China and the other to Pakistan. Three Fingers was concerned about that looking at our maps. Instead, Nagpur in the very center of the country stood up and offered to accommodate them with both a site and generous financial support. They expect it to pay off in new industries. I hope you realize they are going to impoverish themselves if you don’t turn out to be the sort of benefit they are hoping for,” Jatin told the aliens.

“We’re soldiers, but we understand the basic ideas of trading,” Three Fingers said. “We have social credits that serve a similar function to your money. We had to watch our families deciding how to use those credits before entering our military service. We don’t expect something for nothing. We’ll try to see both our hosts get more benefit than they spend. Each will get separate help, so they don’t have to compete with each other over building or selling the same tech.”

“What shall we get?” Jatin asked, keenly interested.

“Our food technology the very first thing,” Three Fingers said. “The authorities in Nagpur are aware of that since we will need buildings. We ran as much production ahead as we can and are already dismantling our equipment and moving it to shuttles. We could leave a lot of things behind and survive, but that is vital. It will take a long time to test and know how many human foods are safe.”

“I thought I was short a can of beans after your fellows went shopping in my cabin,” Jeb said. “Was I right? Did you do any testing on those?”

“The seeds in thick brown fluid?” Blue asked.

“Yeah, and it said B-E-A-N-S on the can,” Jeb said.

“The little creatures,” Three Fingers showed a distance between thumbs, “All died. They swelled up and couldn’t breathe.”

“That’s probably what we call allergy. Look that up. Don’t be discouraged. It might not be the beans themselves. There are lots of other things cooked in with the beans. Some of the ingredients like tomatoes even sensitive humans have to avoid.”

“We shall be extremely careful,” Blue promised.

* * *

Three Fingers called everyone into a MeetThere conference at 0300 Pacific time. Only Jatin and his wife Kajol were dressed and looking alert. Sunlight was streaming through a window behind them testifying to the fact this conference gave them the time advantage for a change. Blue and Mohr looked as fresh as Three Fingers.

Jed was squint-eyed and bare-chested, which the aliens had never seen before in someone they knew. It took a lot of effort and training to have such defined musculature, but now there were drugs to force its retention without near the level of exercise needed to produce it. Dr. James was in a t-shirt with only his unruly hair showing he’d been roused. Fleming looked less than alert. He also had a t-shirt but long-sleeved, and Barnard surprised them all by appearing in a heavy dressing gown with a satin collar that looked like something from a period movie.

“Congress passed the USCIS agreement as written,” Three Fingers said. It seemed to amaze him. “We just started talking to the Australians hours ago. Could that have been what pushed them over the edge as Dr. James thought?”

“As much as I’d like to take credit, it’s unlikely.” Dr. James said.

“I’m looking at the news. Geez, it just happened,” Barnard said.

“Yes, they were in all-night session and droning on and on. There were not that many people there. They were speaking about letting us lease a site for what they called a nominal fee. A few people made the point they didn’t want our site to be sovereign land in their midst. They seemed surprised nobody want to argue that point. There was a lull then, with the speaker not calling on anyone. Suddenly, one member stood up and demanded a vote, citing some rule by number. They stopped bickering suddenly and a bunch of people staggered in half asleep from their offices and they voted. I don’t understand. Why didn’t they do this a week ago?” Three Fingers demanded.

“It’s complicated. I’ll write it up for you when I’m awake,” Barnard promised. There are layers and layers of how votes may proceed. It takes a flow chart to see how it works. It tends to get modified every time there is a contentious vote. They’ve changed it three times in the last two administrations and it will probably get modified by somebody unhappy with this vote. They’ll imagine it will keep a vote from happening again that they don’t like. Don’t invest too much into understanding it. By the time there is another vote critical to you it will likely be different.”

“It’s amazing they ever pass anything,” Three Fingers said.

“True,” Barnard agreed. “That’s fine with me. When it gets to where they can’t pass anything, then we’ll be safe from any new crazy laws.”

Three Fingers didn’t tell him again how insane that sounded. These humans were working on their side and it often seemed better to stay silent to avoid insulting them. Even by agreeing with them.

“Blue, may I ask something?” Jed said.

“But of course,” Blue said surprised he’d ask permission.

“When do you guys sleep? We’ve never talked about it and this isn’t the first time you seem to be active when it’s our night. I can’t remember ever trying to get hold of you and being told you aren’t available because you are sleeping.”

“We don’t sleep for hours and hours like I understand you do,” Blue said. “We tend to sleep twice in a day if the time is available. Our day is a little longer than yours but I don’t think most of us will have any trouble adjusting. People like to take about a three-hour nap at sundown and then again near dawn, but we can skip one without our performance slipping too much. If you are working very hard or upset about something we may take a third sleep period. It’s very easy to just lean back, close your eyes and sleep briefly but come right out of it if something stimulates us. If you need someone who is taking a break like that it’s usually sufficient to speak their name.”

“We would call that a nap. I have to warn you, many humans are very prejudiced against taking a nap during their work day. Some cultures take a nap mid-day but it’s not common in English speaking countries. Look up the word siesta. In my opinion, that’s more common where the heat is oppressive later in the day. However, you’ll be perfect for a lot of professions most people hate like a night watchman. A lot of humans can never adjust to working at night.”

“That assumes a level of successful integration I can only hope for,” Three Fingers said.

“With a little luck you’ll be given a landing spot by about 1000 DC time,” Dr. James said. “It looks to me like you are going to get a chance to try fitting in here. It’ll make it much easier for us to see you than if you ended up in Australia, say.”

“1000, is that when their offices start working?” Three Fingers asked.

“Oh no. They start at 0800 or 0900, depending on their job. But it takes until 1000 for everybody to check their private email, have a coffee or two, and maybe a donut. They’ll send a few messages about yesterday’s games and political news and then most of the work gets done 1000 to 1100.”

“What happens at 1100?” Blue asked.

“The heavy producers run beyond their natural attention span and start taking calls from their spouses about getting the kids started at schooling today and discuss what they are going to do that evening. They’ll decide if they are going to cook supper, go out, or order takeaway. All that talk about food will have them planning lunch or leaving to go get it. Then pretty much nothing will get done until about 1500 hours. Then they get a burst of activity again from 1500 to 1600.”

“Sweet little Goddess. Scholar Xilo would fit right in,” Three Fingers realized.

Mohr perked up at that.

“I’ve been paying particular attention to how human bureaucracies work. Business, Government, Education, and Ecclesiastical all have similarities. I have extensive notes. It is a personal project of mine to see Scholar Xilo happily in one of those networks so he is not our continuing concern. We are new and novel. I have hope one of them will seek just about any alien person of learning no matter his specialty or personality.”

“New word for you,” Barnard said. “You intend to foist him off on them.”

Jed laughed. “Also look up, White Elephant, and racial-token.”

“I’ll never learn this horrid language,” Blue complained.

“One never stops learning English,” Dr. James agreed. “By the time you think you have caught up we’ll have coined a thousand new words and the teenagers will have resurrected a dozen expressions they think are new slang. When we start working together side by side, we’ll steal your words and idioms, and start using them as our own too.”

Chapter 16

“Part of bringing it to a vote at all was promising the Senator from Nevada they’d be placed somewhere in his state,” Wilson said. “He could smell big money.”

“Did they stick them in one of the outdated casinos ready to be torn down?” Alex joked.

“I’m glad you weren’t around to crack funny,” Wilson said. “With Congress, if you say something like that, not only might they take it seriously, they may publicly credit you with the idea.”

“Better you than me to have to deal with Congress. I have the easier job, dealing with aliens,” Alex admitted. “Seriously, where are they going to end up?”

“There’s Federal land outside the huge test range there. Test ranges really, there are multiple facilities supporting many agencies. It’s isolated enough the public won’t show up in large numbers wanting to see a real live alien. They can back up against the range and that will make setting up a perimeter a little easier. They are at the southeast corner of the flight restricted zone so they can launch to the east without interfering with the test range. Las Vegas is within driving range as well as Nellis AFB if they need to transport sensitive things nearby for them.”

“But they’re not behind a fence and gates?” Alex asked.

“I’m not sure there’s enough barbed wire in the world. Look it up on a map,” Wilson said.

“OK, I was worried they would feel like prisoners,” Alex said.

“They probably do,” Wilson said. “Not from anything of our doing. They are like some early sailing ship crew wrecked on a distant island. Congress titled the bill as a treaty to aid the distressed travelers of the People. That may help us in administering this. We can point to all the previous things done to help various refugee groups. They’re stuck here with us primitives. I’m glad they are willing to make nice-nice and not wipe us out.”

“They’re a little bit ahead of us technologically but I’d be surprised if they could wipe out all the billions of us. I’m willing to consider they might not want to wipe us out.” Alex suggested.

“That supposes they may find us useful, or they are morally superior to humanity,” Wilson said.

Alex couldn’t hide he found that disturbing.

“You find that terribly cynical,” Wilson observed. “That’s OK, your attitude serves us well for what you need to do and mine is a safety check overwatching the whole process.”

* * *

“I see an awful lot of bare dirt,” Three Fingers observed. Blue stood on a high point and swept the phone around slowly to give him a good view. It was the latest Pixel with a fantastic camera. Why struggle to put up their own com satellites when the natives had a seamless mesh of sats, towers, and orbiting high altitude drones covering almost every square meter of the continent? He didn’t admit to the human providing it that it made his service issued belt com look cheap. He could make calls to their system locally but eventually, all their communicators would be replaced.

“And rocks,” Blue agreed. “The rainfall is such that plants with shallow root systems can’t survive. Everything you see either has a deep taproot going down where it can find moisture or strategies to store water. No few of them have impressive spikes and thorns to ward off animals.”

“The problem here is going to be cutting back the growth that tends to constantly encroach,” Three Fingers said. “Rather than fence our perimeter, the locals suggest planting a line of dense bushes with thorns. We are advised that in a couple of years they are impenetrable to even a ground car.”

“The land here is so rough we expect very few visitors,” Blue said. “There are a limited number of very rutted and impenetrable trails enthusiasts with four-wheel drive vehicles follow for recreation. We are using one of those recreational trails to get close to our building site. We then branch off as it goes on past us.

“We were asked if we wanted a perimeter patrol and markers. Instead, I asked for one officer of the law to be with us around the clock. We have a drone up that can easily see anyone approaching. He can stop them at a distance and determine if they seem a threat or if it is reasonable to allow them to visit. He’ll have a squad of our troops on call if he feels he needs them. We have acquired two of the off-road vehicles and locals to drive them and train a few of our people to drive. If we buy less capable vehicles, we’ll need to improve the trail or park them close to the road. That presents security problems if there is nobody there to guard them.”

“We too have gotten a ground car,” Three Fingers said. “I’m not even sure we need one but a dealer insisted owning one is a mark of a family of substance and a certain social station. He provided it in exchange for taking a video of us accepting it. One of our shuttle pilots lurched around the parking lot trying it out. He found out that when you turn the control wheel to make it turn, it doesn’t automatically return to the direction you left. He almost ran off the pavement into a tree. The dealer kindly offered a driver for us who will instruct several of our crew how to operate it properly.”

Blue laughed. “That part won’t end up in his advertising,” he predicted.

“We too have a couple of officers stationed on our entry turning away the idly curious,” Three Fingers said. “It a shame we have no list of safe foods yet. As soon as there were contractors on-site working with us to survey where we will build, the locals lined the approach roads with all sorts of food vendors and sellers of raw food items to prepare. At least they can sell to the hired workers. That’s besides all sorts of gifts and trinkets. They even have little statues of us in uniform. One has a head on a hidden pivot so it nods at the slightest motion. I found it creepy.

“I’m afraid limiting and easing into contact with the natives gradually is going to be more difficult here. I already had to discipline a fabricator tech for trading his uniform shirt for an embroidered jacket.”

“That sounds like a pretty good trade,” Blue said. Three Fingers was not amused.

“Seriously, we’re going to release them from service,” Blue said. “Do you intend to buy uniforms from the locals to maintain a certain appearance? Perhaps civilian attire would help the transition and help with the few natives who are put off by our being military. Wearing local clothing might be good for relations. Why not tell them they can wear local styles off duty and it will stretch what duty uniforms we have from wearing out.”

“I hate it when you are right,” Three Fingers said. “I’ll terminate the fellow’s restrictions and tell my people they can wear what they want off duty and especially off our compound.” He said the last as an English word and Blue had to look it up.

“You’re mixing words,” Blue said. “I find myself doing that too.”

“Not just me. The liaison to the local state government used that term to describe our facility. He said his job title comes from the French but was stolen centuries back in time. He’s already calling me commander in our language. I doubt there is any stopping it. A contractor spoke to me about building our campus. These people have an excess of words that mean the same thing. I thought that just applied to universities but he showed me material that refers to corporate campuses. I had to add another definition to our dictionary.”

“You’re ahead of us,” Blue admitted. “We mostly have stakes driven in the ground with different colored ribbons on them. Part of that is our remoteness. One of the human planners came out with a crew in a helicopter and put a lot of the stakes in. He walked around and made marks with spray paint for an assistant to drive them in with one of those little GPS devices in his hand. I asked him how accurate that would be and he held up his thumb and first finger about four tok apart. He was impressed with the inflating huts we have on-site and that they work just fine in a vacuum. He wants to talk to us about design rights.”

“Some of the little things I take for granted may earn us a better return in the end,” Three Fingers predicted. “When I described our greenhouse cladding the architect got all excited. I can’t believe they support their world population growing food outside in random soils, subject to storms and animals. Anything else? You haven’t had any more interference from other government agencies?”

“There was a brief news item that some officials were offended you went to deal with India and they got the second in command. I set aside half of one of their hours each morning to take questions from their news sellers. I take them on my phone. When I’m done with one whoever connects next gets to talk to me. They don’t like that system but I don’t especially care. When they put that issue to me, I just said: Well of course he gave me the easier one. They all looked at each other and didn’t seem to know what to make of that. I feel the same about a lot of their questions.”

“Until tomorrow,” Three Fingers said. “I know I’ll see you in conference but I like being able to speak with you without examining every statement for other ears.”

* * *

The group got together in MeetThere again that evening.

“I think we are going to be able to have functioning housing on our US site by the end of two weeks,” Blue reported. “Not finished, but functioning enough to get the rest of our crew down and end the ongoing hazard of them being on a ship with failing systems and a hole through the middle.”

“I saw the picture you released of that,” Dr. James said. “It shut up the skeptics who said it was all a story to explain your arrival. Some of the experts said spacecraft don’t fly with a hole blown through them and others asked what assurance we have you serve a legitimate government and aren’t just interstellar pirates of some flavor?”

“A couple of thousand man-lengths, a few kilometers away,” he corrected,” and it would have cut us in two.”

“Are they doing as well in India?” Jed asked.

“A little behind,” Three Fingers admitted. “We were persuaded the seasonal rains here would create problems if we didn’t alter the grades on our site. They have offered, however, to contract with a nearby resort hotel to house any crew we are waiting to bring down if the Americans land their contingent first. It seemed rather nice compared to most of the local housing. It already has a communal kitchen.”

“It would be going slower here if I hadn’t put my foot down,” Blue said. “I do like that expression. They seemed more interested in getting a facility built for instruction than our living quarters. I suggested since it seemed so important to them, and it would be more to their immediate benefit than ours, they should go ahead and build it to their standards at their expense. After a few brief phone calls, he agreed, saying he’d gotten the needed support.”

“Let me guess,” Barnard said. “They’re hot to get lectures going on anything to do with your star drive and fusion power.”

“Yes, and when I explained our only two specialists who understand the working of the drive are currently instructing two others in that technology he was horrified. He quickly realized how close we are to losing the ability and might have to depend on reverse engineering and study to recover the ability instead of living memory. He immediately started offering advice on not risking them or their students on one shuttle trip. I assured him I’m not an idiot and well aware of how to mitigate risk.”

“When we saw their plans, the lecture hall they wanted was huge,” Three Finger said. “I immediately asked how many they intended to bring for instruction. He indicated he’d have no trouble filling the sixty planned seats. I objected that for such an advanced subject that large a class wouldn’t allow the sort of one-on-one questioning and instruction to make sure the students had an in-depth grasp of it. I insisted both of our experts would teach together so they could correct each other, and our own two students will still be sitting in.

“I suggested four humans interested in the theoretical side of things and four who would deal with the physical mechanisms. He asked if I wanted engineers. After checking our dictionary and asking a few questions I agreed that’s what we needed. I’m getting to where I can read human faces and body language. He seemed to stifle a negative reaction about engineers. We eventually compromised on ten seats.”

“TF, what are you doing about intellectual property?” Jed asked.

“TF?”

“Excuse me, I don’t mean to offend. I often abbreviate guys’ call signs to save time.”

“I have no idea what a call sign is,” Three Fingers confessed.

Jed explained in some detail citing the security advantages of not having your name and rank said in the clear. Then told his own experience. “When I was in the service, I was Dark Angel. When time was short, they’d just say DA. I figured that’s basically what Three Fingers was to you.”

“And what did you do in your service?” Three Fingers asked.

For the first time ever, he’d managed to upset Jed.

“I really can’t talk about that,” Jed said. “You aren’t released from keeping safe guarding classified material just because you are no longer in active service. If I talked to you about that I’d be lucky to just end up in prison.”

“And when do you think your people might trust us enough to reveal such things?” TF asked.

“It’s not at all about you,” Jed explained. “I can’t tell them to anybody. Even people on the inside cleared for the same level of secrets,” he said, drawing a line in the air above his eyebrows with a flat hand. “If they aren’t directly involved in the activity involving that particular secret they have no Need-To-Know.”

Three Fingers could hear the capitals in that phrase. That was something new.

When he hesitated to reply, Jed added, “We call that compartmented.” If that wasn’t clear he made little boxes with his hands.

“You don’t trust your own people?” Three Fingers asked.

“Of course not,” Jed said, surprised. “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.”

That was so extreme Three Fingers could think of nothing sensible to say.

“Commander, I think I understand,” Blue offered.

“Then do explain, please,” Three fingers invited.

“We think in terms of fighting the Bugs and Tigers. It’s been ages since we had conflicts between factions of the People. There is no way we could even communicate operational secrets to the Bugs. And if one is in speaking range of a Tiger, he is either a prisoner or trying to kill you. But in the distant past when we fought our own some kingdoms regarding each other as enemies. Might one not present a false front about your identity or loyalties? If one saw your side might lose, wouldn’t it be possible to even switch sides? Prudent even. We’ve lost all the ways of thinking about those possibilities and all the safeguards we’d have to take to deal with traitors.”

“You see a little,” Barnard said. “Plenty will do it for enough money, to protect their family if the other side gets control of them, or just to avoid having crime or embarrassing actions exposed. So, if Jed was a spook or in black operations, it’s worth his life to tell you about it.”

That took a lot more explanation.

“I think I understand now,” Three Fingers finally said. “What a complicated mess. I assume then that every country will spy on its enemies”

“Everybody spies on their allies too,” Barnard admitted. “Maybe Jamaica doesn’t spy on Luxembourg, but it’s because they don’t have the budget to cover every conceivable threat no matter how small. Pretty much everybody with a big enough economy to pay for it spies on everyone else. You can expect they will spy on you too,” he warned.

Three Fingers just shook his head in amazement.

“If I may go back to my original question,” Jed pleaded. “What are they doing to protect your intellectual property rights? I’m assuming they will publish a transcription of your classes. Once something is published you can’t apply for a patent.”

Three Fingers was looking down, searching on his phone, but Blue revealed why.

“What’s a patent? he asked.

Jed sighed.

“It’s late and I thought we could wrap it up, but this is too important to put off.”

“Jed, it’s too late for you to get into another discussion,” Blue said much later. “Call me in the morning when you are up and I have a proposal for you.”

* * *

“Good morning, Blue. I slept in so thank you for your patience and not calling me when I didn’t respond at the crack of dawn.”

“That’s another odd expression that doesn’t resonate with me,” Blue admitted. “I’ve had plenty to keep me busy this morning. We keep running into important things we’re missing like what you caught for us last night. If nobody told us about the patent system it would have been very damaging to us long term. I’m not sure it was entirely an oversight. I’ve spoken with our immigration lawyers already this morning and asked them why they didn’t speak to us about that. They said they deal with immigration and probably don’t know much more about patent law than the average person in the street. He said they more commonly deal with people who have spent everything they have to leave an undesirable place. It seems they very rarely have immigrants with new inventions in hand just waiting to promote them in their new home. Neither did any of the officials bother to discuss this with us.”

“I can easily see your lawyers being truthful about that. You’re probably going to need a firm that specializes in patents and other aspects of intellectual property. You will probably need the same thing in India and I have no idea how those things work there.”

Jed screwed up his face in thought.

“You are probably going to need some good tax lawyers too.”

“And you didn’t think of that until just now?” Blue asked.

Jed shrugged, a little embarrassed.

“Life is complicated and most everyone we know is already dealing with all this stuff and knows about the parts of it that touch their lives. I’ve never had to hire a patent attorney for it to occur to me that easily. I don’t have very complicated taxes either and hope to keep it that way. Crap, you are going to need an accountant too. He keeps the proper records and such that the tax attorneys will need.”

“We are not unappreciative of your help and that of our other friends. I think we understand friends. It is not an alien concept. Indeed, you have befriended us when we treated you badly and stole some of your things. I’ve failed to say we intend to make that up to you.”

“I can see why you felt the necessity,” Jed said. “It was an exploration, not an invasion. You didn’t burn the cabin down and punch holes in my boat before leaving. Just left the door hanging open like a damn kid. Be assured what your people took was not a significant portion of my worth.”

“It’s still owed, and I’d like to make an offer. We need you for more than a brief chat every evening. We need the sort of advice you gave last night and already this morning to avoid serious errors. I believe what I’m trying to say is I’d like to offer you a job as a full-time advisor.”

“Wow… I didn’t see that coming,” Jed admitted.

“I believe we should negotiate now? Assuming there is interest?” Blue asked.

“There is interest,” Jed admitted and sat thinking.

“Do you need time? I can call back after lunch,” Blue suggested.

“Were you cracking a funny?” Jed asked suspiciously.

“Yes, I was making the joke. It must not have been too bad if it was recognized.”

“It was pretty good actually. Look I’m not obligated to anyone right now. I’m free to take the job though I wasn’t looking for one. But I have to tread carefully.”

“Take cautious steps?” Blue asked consulting his dictionary.

“Exactly. Go ahead and enter that expression. I have to be careful I don’t act as an agent for you. I’m sure somebody would object to that by equating you to a foreign government. So, I can’t try to influence my government for you or touch on anything purely political.”

“You should of course speak up and stop us if we try to ask you to do that. We may do so in error not understanding where the boundaries are,” Blue said.

“I’d like a nice safe job title that doesn’t suggest agency. I’d be more comfortable being carried on your books as personal security and what we speak about while I am guarding you is our business. It’s just natural to ask a native questions now and then, isn’t it? There are a lot of advantages to such an arrangement too complicated to go into. To do that I will need state licensing. Are you on good terms with the officers assigned to your site?”

“Yes, we’ve gotten along well with them and they seem very appreciative that we try to make them comfortable and ask after their needs. We had an office module brought in by helicopter for them.”

“Then ask them to help walk me through the process, please,” Jed said. “You can pay them for extra time spent with me, and accompanying me to testing and so forth. I’ll need a room near you and I’d like a separate private travel trailer or module like you got the officers on site. That will help me establish residency too.”

“Shouldn’t we discuss payment?” Blue asked.

“Are you getting local money yet?” Jed asked.

“We brought one load of monetary metals in from further out in your solar system. Fortunately, a ship our size has the tech for extracting materials in the field for repairs. Three Fingers is being shown how to convert that into currency. Jatin has a relative who is familiar with buying and selling gold. He indicated platinum is fairly easy to sell too but we are holding back the other metals associated with platinum until later. He has advised us already about not bringing too much to the market and influencing it. It seems even a hint we have a large supply available could lower the price. He will be able to purchase dollars for us until we have similar contacts here.”

“I suggest you hang onto that tech and don’t be too quick to sell it off. If you will just ask what a local lieutenant of police in Las Vegas makes you can pay me that. If you pay me too much or too little somebody will see it as a problem.”

“You accept then? Will you be coming fairly soon? Should I make arrangements for someone who knows our site to pick you up at the Las Vegas airport?” Blue asked.

“Not so fast,” Jed said. “I’m not done discussing compensation.”

“My error,” Blue apologized.

“I want two other things,” Jed demanded, holding up his thumb and first finger. “If I get too much pressure from the government, I want you to give me passage on one of your shuttles to somewhere safe. That probably means somewhere without extradition.”

“I don’t know that word but I’ll research it,” Blue promised. “Transportation I can promise.”

Jed folded down the finger and nodded.

“I want to get a ride or two on your shuttles even if it’s not an emergency evacuation. I know you have to be going back and forth a lot. Surely you can fit me in. Maybe when you go to your ship. I wouldn’t mind seeing it either. That’s will do more to induce me to hire on than any wages. Nobody else would give me a ride to space. It’s something I never thought I’d get.”

“That’s easy enough,” Blue said. “I’d give you that for all the help you’ve already given us.”

“Then I accept,” Jed said and snapped the thumb down with a dramatic gesture. It gave Blue a start because it looked so very much like their own affirmative gesture. “I’ll call when I need an escort to find your site. I’m going to buy a vehicle locally and keep it for my exclusive use. Are you trying to hire anyone else of our group?”

“Dr. James has already turned me down. I’m disappointed because we deeply respect the experience of years beyond his scholarly accomplishments. He said he’s quite comfortable where he is and suggested I hire Barnard but I haven’t asked him yet. Three Fingers has hired the Singhs in India.”

“What about Fleming?” Jed asked.

“He preemptively made clear we have already disrupted his life as much as he cared to allow some time ago. The local police made his housing group install a motorized gate and they still need to post an officer there to keep out the curious. They are so persistent they will park and walk around it. Unfortunately, his exact location was well published in early news releases and is easy to find online.”

“If you want to make that up to him, give him the ride your crew denied him after he saved the guy from the gator,” Jed suggested.

“I’ll think on how to do that,” Blue promised. “I doubt landing there again would make their problems with curiosity seekers any better.”

“That’s easy, he’d come to you just about anywhere for the promise of a ride,” Jed assured him.

Chapter 17

“Amazing, you can patent plants?” Three Fingers asked the lawyer in a conference call. Perhaps he hadn’t understood. It seemed bizarre.

“Absolutely. Not just those you’ve genetically altered like most of your food plants. If you find one previously unknown those are fair game. If you have samples of the original or can restore them that’s fine too. If any of them are edible by humans that will be valuable. If any of them taste good they could be worth billions of dollars. I strongly recommend you don’t release samples until you’ve done private testing and determined if they have potential. There’s no point in starting the clock ticking on your patent rights until you are ready to release it commercially”

“Your clocks tick?” Blue asked and looked down. “I see your dictionary defines it as a sharp noise and even mentions a clock, a nasty little parasite, or a point in time.”

“Yes, clocks used to be mechanical with a little ratchet thingy inside.” He made a repeated motion with his curved hand but didn’t know the name for a pawl.

“OK, it’s in our dictionary now,” Blue said.

“We’ll get to this as soon as we can,” Three Fingers promised. “Right now, we are working to find if any of the native plants are suitable for us. That’s more a more important matter of survival than quickly generating more income. India got most of our actual food-producing equipment from the ship but soon we’ll reproduce it in the US using local materials. By then we hope to be adapting some native plants.”

“Are you having any success now?” That was just curiosity on the lawyer’s part.

“Yes, we obtained a can of pork and beans on our first landing and it proved lethal in animal testing. We wanted to determine which of its ingredients was toxic. It turns out beans and bacon are not at all objectionable. Sugar is safe too. However, the tomatoes in the sauce are poison to all the organisms we have on our ship. The only other thing we are sure is safe now is rice.”

“You’re omnivores then if you tolerate the bacon?” the attorney asked.

“Much better than merely tolerate,” Three Fingers assured him. “It’s wonderful.”

“Oh, crewman Pons also determined your beverage Tequila isn’t lethal. He’s in cabin arrest because he traded his ship communicator for a bottle of the stuff. He’s feeling quite ill but I was assured a human would have similar distress if they consumed the same unreasonable quantity. If he wasn’t confined to his cabin, he wouldn’t be fit for duty anyway,” Blue said, disgusted.

“If I may suggest, I wouldn’t make a point of telling the public you are omnivores, that you do testing on your animals, or that you can metabolize alcohol,” their attorney advised. “There are large groups of humans, who can be rather militant, who see virtue in avoiding those things.”

“Sometimes, I think it isn’t safe to say anything,” Blue complained.

Their patent counselor perked up and looked favorably impressed.

“Do you know? I believe I could make a lawyer out of you,” he declared.

* * *

Jed made his way to Las Vegas by using a rideshare program and paying the set cash fee plus offering a ten percent bonus for everything the fellow would put on his cards. That was much more generous than what the fellow was asking. Some places wouldn’t take cash or using it made them remember you. He lucked out getting someone who wasn’t a chatterbox and he didn’t abuse Jed’s offer by ordering extravagantly when they stopped to eat.

In Las Vegas, Jed called around to the shops that did custom and specialty work on off-road vehicles and asked if they knew of any customers wanting to sell off-road capable trucks. On the third call, the fellow asked if he’d called Brady’s? Jed informed him he was from out of town and wasn’t aware of local dealers. He got their address and thanked the man. The fellow reminded him to call them if he found something that needed work or upgraded equipment. He assured the man he certainly would.

Brady’s was near the edge of town with a high chain-link fence that suggested it wasn’t the best neighborhood. It was a small sales lot that carried trucks, without a repair or custom shop on site. If they were a competitor the custom shop probably wouldn’t have recommended them. The front gates were wide open and a small modular office displayed a lit OPEN sign in the window.

Jed dismissed his ride because there were a couple of other businesses within sight where he could wait for another. There was a car with plates in an open metal carport next to the office, shaded from the sun. Further verifying that someone was present. The lot had a few luxury cars on the front line, a mix of sedans and SUVs behind that, and at the back of the lot a dozen and a half trucks ranging from work trucks to a panel van. Four of them were high ground clearance trucks with knobby tires and different levels of auxiliary equipment visible.

Brady turned out to be a much younger man than Jed expected, skinny and not dressed like an office worker. He was in jeans and a tropical print shirt worn hanging out with cowboy boots in some sort of blue exotic leather. The way he held his elbow Jed suspected he carried a concealed pistol. Instead of the expected cowboy hat, he donned a big straw hat suitable for gardening when he came out to greet Jed.

“Let’s look at the trucks,” Jed said when he was close.

“Work or play?” Brady asked.

“Work, but off-road. Are you aware of the place the aliens are setting up over in Lincoln County?”

“There’s been stuff about them on the news almost every night,” Brady said. “A lot of folks never want anything to change so they’re upset they are building anything. They have a bunch of people worried they will damage the habitat for some critter they favor.”

He said habitat like it was a dirty word.

“Well, I’m going to be working up there,” Jed revealed. “I doubt if any of them are concerned if the habitat is suitable for me.”

That caught Brady by surprise and made him laugh.

“Some folks went up there to protest a couple of days ago and tried to go up their access road in a little electric car. A friend at East Side Towing and Recovery told me about it. They got about a hundred meters in, tried to go along the side of the track because the ruts were too deep, and sank that thing up to the axles. They had to walk back to the road and stand in the sun waiting until somebody would carry word into town. There’s no cell service out there and the tow truck guys said they didn’t look like the sort of folks you wanted to stop and roll down your window to talk to ‘em. You hiring on to do some construction for them?” Brady asked.

“Nope, doing security, personal security not site. They already keep a deputy on site and he can call on their troops. So, if anybody asks, it would be a bad idea to sneak out there to nose around. Much better to ride right up and be open and friendly. A guy might have more trouble than he expected if he scared them, on purpose or not.”

“I don’t think I know anybody that stupid,” Brady said, “but I’ll mention it around when I talk with some of the guys who run around out there off-road.” He seemed to look Jed over again reappraising him if he was private security. “I’m guessing you want functional then, and aren’t worried about leather seats and stereo systems.”

“That describes me very well,” Jed agreed. “What have you got?”

“There are only three trucks there that I’d take up an unimproved road,” Brady said starting to walk back to them. “The bronze Toyota there is fine for that, and the white Brazilian Ford is OK, but neither one is going to be comfortable for all-day for a fellow your size. They’re OK to follow a track, but if you’re going to sit in it any amount of time, or if you’re going to set off cross country, the only choice is the big Chevy there.”

They walked up and Brady shut up and let Jed look it over. He opened the driver’s door but didn’t climb in right away, letting the hot air out a little first. He opened the back door too and looked in. The crew cab seats in the rear were gone and a plywood platform gave it a flat floor above the drive tunnel. There were a couple of lift panels to let you use the footwell space for storage. There were also two folding camp chairs, one propped in each corner. The insurance companies would have a fit if you used those for passengers.

“I’ll go get the keys,” Brady said and left Jed to look it over.

There was a rack in the back of the cab with two jacks, plywood bases for under them, a couple of tow straps, and shackles. When Jed lifted the access doors in the floor there was a pully to set up a compound come-along and the sort of sand and mud traction bars that you clamped around a tire through the wheel hole to dig yourself out of a soft spot. If you wanted there was enough flat floor to sleep in the cab overnight if you had an air mattress.

Brady was back with the keys.

“It’s the turbo-diesel with the factory auxiliary tank. It holds two-hundred forty liters. All the gauges like temperature in both axles. The fellow had an air conditioner that fit the sliding glass window but he took it with him for his next truck. He’d run it off a generator in the bed so he didn’t have to idle the engine. It’s easy to get one that’s made to fit perfectly from one of the build shops.”

“How old?” Jed wondered.

“Six years and a hundred and forty thousand honest kilometers,” Brady said.

“I thought it was older from the paint,” Jed admitted. The paint was a light brown, fawn Jed decided would be a good name for it, and rapidly showing the primer on all the top surfaces. In all honesty, it made the truck look pretty rough even if it didn’t mean that much.

“About eight years ago they had to switch paint formulations,” Brady said. “Something about the solvents being prohibited. It just doesn’t stand up to the sun here like the old stuff did. If you get it repainted in a body shop, you’ll have the same problem now. It’s not going to rust until you get bare metal around here, but I’ll tell you what the off-road guys do that don’t give a damn.”

Jed just lifted a curious eyebrow.

“You go to a big box store and get the white appliance spray paint that says it is epoxy. The shiny, not the matte. It isn’t exactly epoxy because you don’t have to mix it, but it doesn’t get sunburnt like this crap and it’s so slick that the dust doesn’t cake up on it. It keeps the cab cooler too.

“Notice, it has the eight lug steel wheels,” Brady finally pitching it to Jed a little. “The tires are only two years old and they have the Kevlar puncture protection. Besides the one hanging under the back, there’s a second spare in the bed too. The lights alone cost a couple of thousand bucks. It has the steel belly pans too, not aluminum.”

“How much,” Jed asked. He’d noticed there were no prices marked on the windows.

“A hundred and five thousand,” Brady said.

His blinking must have conveyed his dismay. That was almost half what he expected Blue to pay him for the year. He wasn’t broke but he also didn’t plan to pay for the privilege of helping them.

“Take a look online,” Brady invited. “See what a new one costs. They had to add a fee to all the new ones or they were threatening to make them biodiesel only and regular diesel only legal to put in them if you have a commercial permit.”

Jed took him up on it and looked.

“Hoy… three times as expensive?”

“And about a third of that the fee. If you keep it in decent shape, it may actually increase in value instead of depreciating,” Brady predicted.

“Discount for cash instead of financing it?” Jed asked.

“No, I make more from the bank for bringing the business,” Brady said. “If you use a credit card, I pass a six percent fee to you and it has to be a debit or an irrevocable business card. There’s also a fourteen-point-five percent Clark County sales tax, registration, and plate fees. You have to have proof of insurance and a Nevada address.”

“Do I need a Nevada license?” Jed asked.

“Not if it’s for business. You still need an address but it doesn’t have to be your residence.”

“I bet you have a friend who can issue an insurance policy?” Jed guessed.

“Shucks no. I’m an agent myself,” Brady said.

“I should have figured,” Jed admitted. “I’m going to call to get your address. How long from when you have that until I can drive away?”

“Once your payment clears it takes about twelve minutes for my plate machine to produce a plate. I can fill out your insurance forms at the same time. Maybe fifteen minutes if your payment can clear.

“I’ll do a wire transfer to save card fees. It’s cheaper for this.”

Jed called Blue first and asked if their access road was marked at the county road.

“It was,” Blue said, “but the protesters the other day knocked down the county sign and our mailbox. Neither authority was amused by that and the idiots posted a video of them doing it online. They suggested we get a box in the post office.”

“Do you have GPS coordinates then?” Jed asked. “I hate to make somebody go down watch for me to come along and guide me in.”

“Hang on, I can get it off the satellite view,” a voice said from off-camera.

“Is that Barnard?” Jed asked.

A bald head came into view at an angle.

“Yes, are you still coming?” Barnard asked.

“I don’t know. Are you going to be my boss?” Jed asked.

Barnard did two long slow blinks processing that.

“I don’t know. Supervising others was never mentioned when I was hired. I consider myself unsuited to that role. I’d want a lot more money for the aggravation.”

“Will you accept Jed as your supervisor?” Blue asked.

“Oh sure. He knows what the hell he is doing,” Barnard agreed.

“Good, that is one less person reporting directly to me,” Blue said. “I have too many and need to reduce them further. There just aren’t enough hours in the day and too many interruptions.”

Barnard read the coordinates off loudly from off-camera.

“I’ll see you later in the day,” Jed promised. “I have a few other stops to make.”

“That works for me,” Blue said. “We don’t have enough humans on-site to run a kitchen. If you want to pick up some groceries the refrigerator in your office module is plugged in and there is a community grill to use.”

“Standard human voltage in my outlets?” Jed asked.

“Twenty amp, two hundred total, and two-forty if you want it run in,” Barnard called out.

“OK, coffee maker, two-burner hot plate, and a countertop oven too,” Jed said.

Barnard stuck his head back in.

“Kitchen crap too,” he warned. “No big sink or dishwasher so I use paper plates.”

“That’s not a problem. I’ve been using a dry sink the last few years. Does no big sink imply a little sink?” Jed asked him.

“You have a private bath with a shower, hand sink, and a commode. We both have an office on the same hall as Blue and everybody shares a couple of one-person unisex-unispecies restrooms in the office. The fixtures work perfectly well for both sorts of people. I suggested to Blue you have a Murphy bed in both places to crash where you will. I hope that works for you?”

“Sounds like a luxury resort,” Jed said, “See you before sundown.”

When he terminated the call, Brady was watching him intently, making no effort to pretend he wasn’t listening in and interested.

“I’ll get the money moving now,” Jed assured him.

“Take a few of my cards,” Brady said, handing him a short stack. “If anybody needs the odd vehicle or coverage. I can get you better rates for a business fleet too.”

“Sure,” Jed agreed dropping them in his shirt pocket.

* * *

Jed stopped at the custom shop and ordered an air conditioner to fit the slider window and got a plug-in travel refrigerator/freezer that would probably be better than anything they’d have at Walzon. It would be cooling down while he did the rest of his shopping. He went ahead and used his credit card now, unconcerned if anyone knew where he was. He’d be on the job site before anybody could get organized and intercept him. It would have been too easy to do that following his progress from Seattle pointed straight at the aliens' new location.

* * *

“Mr. Murphy is using his credit card in Las Vegas!” Henry, his number two told Jason head of Homeland Security. He seemed all excited but dismayed when Jason wasn’t.

“How interesting. We’ll see how long that little weasel Taggert takes to tell us. If it’s more than a half-hour they are trying to put a team on him and retain control. What’s a little insubordination?”

“Aren’t you interested in getting him under surveillance?” his Associate Director asked. “We have a phone associated with his movements and can get on him before he goes black again.”

“Not terribly. The situation has changed. His video tells us most of what we’d have asked. The other details we could speak to the aliens themselves now. He didn’t even break the secret of their existence since the astronomer and car salesman beat him to it. The only thing I’d ask before we decide what to do about him is – what did he buy?”

“It didn’t occur to me to ask,” his Associate said, near panicked, and ran to find out.

He looked a little less freaked out when he returned with a hard copy in hand.

“He bought a car cooler, ordered an air conditioner pre-paid. Then at his next stop an all-in-one box set of very expensive Italian pans, some common appliances, and other kitchen and household things including a few dishes and a bag of socks.”

“How domestic,” Jason mused. “He’s going to be in the area for some time. He’ll leave his phone on now or at least make no special effort to hide it. If he’d stopped at a gun store and bought significant firepower, I’d worry he was headed to the aliens to seek retribution for his home invasion.”

“You don’t think he might already have that with him?”

“You don’t burden yourself with pots and pans when you will be running from a planned crime soon. He’s brighter than I even credited him. He’s here for the aliens, but I’d suspect he has levered his contact with them into working for them.”

“Director Taggert on the line sir,” his executive assistant and gatekeeper called on the intercom.

“How irritating,” Jason said. “He waited just long enough I can’t be sure if he was sitting on the contact to work it or if he’s just being careful and confirming it before telling us.”

* * *

The truck was not at all what Barnard expected to see Jed driving. It looked like it had seen better days and Jed hadn’t called him again to say that he was arriving. He wasn’t sure if it was him coming up the trail or a local. He didn’t want to call him back and start getting a reputation of being needy. When their drone, orbiting overhead as high as the nearby range would allow, saw him approaching Barnard called the deputy to come greet the truck with him. If it wasn’t Jed the deputy could deal with them and make sure they were friendly. He wasn’t getting paid to do that.

“It is my buddy,” Barnard told the deputy when Jed was close enough to see his face.

The officer laughed at the rough looking truck.

“It looks like he’s gone thoroughly native already.” He turned and went back inside. The sun was low now but it was still over thirty-two degrees.

The passenger window came down and Jed seemed happy to see him.

“Hey Barnard, I have some junk to unload. Can you show me where my place is?”

Barnard climbed in, glad there was a step hanging down to help you up.

“Just bear around the main building here to the left. I’ll take you right to your door.”

Chapter 18

“The situation here is much different than what you have in Nevada,” Three Fingers said. “We can be out among the natives by taking a short walk. Given that we have used up almost all the ship’s stores of snacks and entertainments I’ve authorized the diversion of a small portion of our metal sales to fund a weekly personal allowance. People can use that to buy personal items and hopefully cut down on pilfering of small items to trade. Adding to their social credit account to be spent back home has become pretty much meaningless. I’d like you to do the same thing there so we are consistent. I’d hate for there to be any reason for our people to favor working at one site over the other.”

“What is there for them to buy?” Blue wondered. “I admit I haven’t been to a human town. I’m curious but still very busy. We’ve sent several workers with contractors to see how it works to pick up supplies and materials but that is much less contact than your people have.”

“The natives are ingenious at creating something out of nothing,” Three Fingers said. “They take a school child’s pencil tin and glue on a few pieces of wood, paint the thing cleverly, and make a model of a combat shuttle. You can hang it from the overhead on a string or get one with the landing pads down to use for storage on your desk. People have been without this sort of decorative civilian stuff so long they desire it all out of proportion to its worth.”

“There’s probably an English word for that kind of stuff,” Blue predicted. “I’ll ask Barnard.”

“There’s probably a half dozen English words,” Three Fingers predicted.

“So, they can buy entertainments,” Blue said. “I’ve seen our people here watching the human videos not to study them but as a diversion. Are we going to be able to buy sweet treats and drinks?”

“Sugar is safe and rice is safe, so they are already making little cakes of expanded rice and sweet syrup holding it together. I’d rather study staples but as a matter of morale, I have two of my four food technicians testing candies and beverages for safety. They already report ginger and cinnamon are safe and both have pleasant strong flavors. Just keep your people far away from anything labeled licorice. That stuff tastes good but it will clean you straight out and keep you that way a couple of days.”

“What do you mean expanded?” Blue wondered.

“Puffed was the word the chef we hired to help used. Some grains like corn puff up so easily you just heat them in a pan with a little oil. Others, you need to steam and suddenly release the pressure. As soon as we have a crop of Fil we’ll see if it works for our grain.

“Do you remember Shiny suggested maybe the natives are all filthy rich when it appeared the missile that took down our drone had its own radar?” Three Fingers asked.

“I’d forgotten that crack, but he’s not far off the truth there,” Blue said.

“Indeed. One of the things my nutritionists and botanical experts quickly found out is that the natives of even rather modest means keep a high-powered radar unit in their homes to cook food.”

“I don’t think I’d want to be in the same room,” Blue said immediately.

“Oh, they keep it all nicely sealed up in a metal box. It’s safe unless you do something stupid like run it empty or put something with electronics in it,” Three Fingers said. “We have one in our cafeteria.”

“Somehow, I don’t think that is the strangest thing we’ll find out about them,” Blue said.

* * *

“We have no obligation to advise the aliens beyond clarifying immigration law and we haven’t ventured beyond that,” Director Winston said. “There is a history of providing our forms and websites in various languages, so explaining English usage and technical terms is well within our mandate. Even that is limited because we are in the unusual position of negotiating special status with them rather than referring them to standard forms. A lot of our law was never intended to apply to actual extraterrestrial aliens. We’d look like damn fools to apply things about their vaccination status and proof of citizenship that can be shown to have some rational basis when dealing with other humans.

“Your accusations of our guiding them has no basis in fact. We are channeling all communications with them through my Associate Director so we know none of our underlings have had an opportunity to exceed their authority in these matters. If anyone has told you differently, they are simply inventing these accusations out of thin air. They may be doing so to deflect attention from the fact they hoped to take advantage of the alien’s lack of familiarity with our laws and customs. There is a thin line between not volunteering information and entrapment by willful silence.”

“If you aren’t holding their hand who is?” The head of the Patent Office asked.

“Our initial contact with them was through their immigration attorneys,” Winston informed him. “They hired a well-known, long-established firm. It’s well within their proper interest, indeed, their obligation to hold their hand. The aliens contacted them in passable if rough English. My understanding is they learned English from our radio and TV broadcasts as well as the internet. If they were aware of the complexities of immigration and needing professional help, it’s no great wonder that they saw the same need to protect their IP rights. I fully expect them to hire other specialists such as accounting and tax services. A good PR firm wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“If you believe that fairytale for a minute, you’re a damned fool,” his caller said. “They would need to have been studying us for years. That certainly doesn’t fit their story. They are aware of important complexities within our system of which even someone from another human culture wouldn’t be aware. Not without someone helping in secret.”

“It’s easier for me to believe that than to believe you are calling because of a deep desire to see your agency handle this correctly,” Winston said. “If you wish some guidance on how your agency should treat the aliens, consider Congress made a treaty with them to aid them. Do your actions work to that end? I have to wonder, who is upset that they were even made aware the patent system exists? Who was hoping they would publish all sorts of technical goodies and put them in the public domain before they realized it robbed them of the rights your agency is intended to protect?”

Winston looked shocked and reached out and closed the video chat window.

From the other side of the desk, Alex looked surprised too.

“Did he say anything to that? I didn’t hear anything.”

“He just hung up on me,” Winston said. “I guess that hit too close to the truth. He’s not foolish enough to allow a reply to be recorded that could come back later and bite him on the butt.”

* * *

“Mr. Murphy was given a Nevada armed security license courtesy of both Clarke and Lincoln counties. It seems he talked to the alien’s head administrator at this location, Blue, and persuaded them to reimburse the sheriffs for keeping a man on site. The state wasn’t picking up any of the tab for an open-ended obligation so that was very much appreciated.”

“You sound indignant,” Jason said to his Associate Director. “I can see where that would endear him to them. Do you feel paying the Sheriff was somehow a bribe or otherwise improper?”

“It’s technically legal,” Walters admitted. “It’s common to pay for special services like directing traffic for an event. A District Court judge accepted a Declaration of Domicile from Mr. Murphy. He’d already changed his driver’s license. He bought and registered a truck, and has a separate private residence established on the alien’s compound. The alien’s corporation also bought several vehicles and a half dozen firearms, they have been granted residential status so they are permitted to do that, and Jed Murphy bought a personal rifle, also all legal.”

“How do you know about him buying the rifle?” Jason asked. “Did you go in and demand to see the FFL’s book?”

“No need,” Walters assured him. “He bought it with his credit card. His purchase informed us to look for the alien’s purchase.”

“Most banks won’t process a firearms transaction now,” Jason said.

“He has an irrevocable business Visa prepaid with a half-million-dollar deposit. They can’t deny any legal transaction or their bonding agent will cover their payment to the merchant and a hefty penalty for default too,” Walters said.

“I’m surprised he doesn’t just use one of the guns the aliens bought. Or ask them for one of their high-tech weapons,” Jason said. “Out of curiosity, what did he buy?”

“A used Sako in .338 Lapua, but it was still pushing twenty thousand dollars by the time he bought optics and ammo.”

“Indeed, they aren’t cheap. I doubt he’ll be shooting prairie dogs with that,” Jason said.

“He better not,” Walters snipped. “There is a definite waiting period for hunting and fishing licenses. Varmints have no limit or season but you still need the basic license.”

Jason had to wonder how Walters came to hold Murphy in such personal dislike?

* * *

“I’m greatly encouraged,” Three Fingers said. “We have at least samples of all our vital systems safely down on the planet. In a hand of days or a human week, we’ll have everything we intend to bring down finished. The ship’s computers will remain of course, but even there we will have copies of all the software. The Protector is in an orbit that should stay stable well past our lifetimes if we can’t reproduce the drive technology until the next generation.”

“The more I see of the humans the less I think they will have the patience to wait for us to build a drive if we delay very long. I already had one tell me that once they know something can be done, the rest is just engineering. I noticed several others nodded their agreement with that. I wouldn’t want to argue who is smarter, the People or humans, but they have a pool of billions from which to pull their best talent,” Blue said.

“I can’t argue that,” Three Fingers admitted. “We are getting the most amazing results even in food production combining our technologies. Earth plants display thermoperiodism but the economics of regulating temperature limit applying it even inside greenhouses. Their plants are more sensitive to carbon dioxide levels than our plants, but they are also very sensitive to trace gases like hydrogen sulfide. We are investigating similar sensitivities in our food plants. The big thing they can contribute is controlling plant growth and nutritional values by altering the light spectrum to which the crops are subjected. They have been able to apply that precisely because of having tunable light emitters that can adjust their spectrum for particular plants and their growth stages.”

“Like the fancy hand-lamp you showed me?” Blue asked.

“Yes, and they use the tech other ways. I visited a fellow’s office that had a halo of the little light strung around the perimeter of his ceiling. They changed color but not in a simple repeating cycle. They changed according to our voice level and tone. He called it mood lighting. I found it disturbing because I found myself altering how I spoke. There was a feedback effect.”

Blue got that far-away look of deep thought.

“Did I provoke a new idea for you?” Three Fingers asked.

“You did but I’m not sure of its value because I’m no biologist. If the color changes how plants grow might not it do the same for animals? We should see if the natives have investigated that.”

“What an interesting idea,” Three Fingers said. “I have no idea either but I’ll pass it along to someone better qualified.”

“Do so privately,” Blue suggested. “As I understand it, you want to keep ideas that may have business value private until you secure the rights to them within their crazy legal system.

“It’s amazing,” Three Fingers said. “I never thought I’d need to have a mind for business when I joined the Deep Sky Services.”

* * *

Jed explained how he intended to serve as Blue’s security, what access to Blue he needed, and to the Deputy assigned them. The alien’s homogenous low crime society made their normal security measures rather soft by human standards. He asked to have a squad of armed soldiers available when he requested it without any time-consuming process of explaining why he needed them or waiting for multiple consultations up the chain of command before they were released.

“Our Commander of Troops may feel slighted to have another, and an outsider at that, be able to order his men. I’ll speak with him about it and explain the limited scope of it and the reason a quick response demands it. This is a new thing for me too,” Blue said. “I’ve never had personal security. I’m safe on any planet of the People and we never have contact with the Bugs or Tigers unless we are actively fighting them. Being immersed in an alien society that may have factions that oppose us is a new thing. I’d ask you to be available to speak with him to smooth that over,” Blue made a slow wiping motion with his hand. He obviously liked that expression.

“What was that first expression that passed over your face?” Jed asked. “Like you found a bug in your breakfast.”

“I can see that your being able to read my, or our, expressions isn’t always going to be a convenience,” Blue said. “I won’t lie to you. Both Three Fingers and I feel your world could be administered more efficiently. Even the Bugs and Tigers have one central authority on a world. But then we have one language too. Three Fingers has several times asked how you can all stand to live like you do?”

“Sometimes I wonder too,” Jed agreed. “I very much appreciate you didn’t come in thinking you would conquer us and impose a uniform rule to suit yourself.”

“At a ratio of millions to one? You’d eventually kill us all if you only had rocks and sticks,” Blue assured him.

“You keep demonstrating you aren’t nearly as stupid as you appear,” Jed complimented him.

“I have to introduce you to our previous scholar,” Blue said. “If only to see his face when you say something like that.”

“Do you have someone to spare who can be my aide or assistant? Maybe a little bit of a secretary too,” Jed said. “But not that scholar. I bet I’d find out why he’s the former scholar in short order.”

“It would be justice but I don’t have any desire to punish you too. You don’t want a human?” Blue asked. “You’ll both be stopping and explaining things endlessly before you can accomplish anything.”

“That’s exactly what I want to happen,” Jed said. “You absorb a culture faster by immersion than formal study. So, I’d rather have someone who will come voluntarily, not holding resentment at being forced to work with me.”

“You’re going to be my personal security. You will be near me most of the day,” Blue said. “I fully intend to question you when I have need. Can’t you just do the same with me?”

“If I see you need to be told something urgently, I’ll speak up,” Jed assured him. “But you are a busy executive. I don’t intend to constantly interrupt you for trivia. Trust me on that, you’d get tired of the number of questions I can think to ask every day. I’ll make notes if I have time. A good personal protection professional should be like furniture. You don’t think about a chair being in the room until you need to sit down.”

“I’d still like a set period each day to speak with you,” Blue insisted.

“Why don’t we take a meal together?” Jed suggested. “Your choice or whichever one you can afford to take at leisure.”

Blue looked at his dictionary again for leisure.

“I’m not sure any of them are taken at leisure,” Blue admitted. “Sometimes I just eat an emergency rations bar so I can read a screen and answer calls without looking at what I’m eating. If I eat off a regular mess tray I pretty much finish as fast as I can.”

“Hell’s tinkling little bells, Man. You can’t keep that up unless you want to burn out. You folks can’t be that much different, to be able to stress yourself constantly, and not hit the wall eventually,” Jed assured him.

“I suppose,” Blue said in an odd drawn-out voice.

“Sorry if that offends you,” Jed said. “It just seemed like common sense.”

“Hold a moment,” Blue said, consulting his linguist group live.

“You demonstrate the principle well,” Blue admitted shortly. “None of us knew the expressions hitting the wall or common sense. It took them a bit to figure out the tinkling bit was to embellish to hell’s bells. That’s a very odd expression but they found it with a search. Do I have the right sense it is more an exclamation like shucks! or rats! than a real thing or a classic of mythology?”

“Yeah, it usually moderates the harshness of a curse to elaborate on it,” Jed supplied. “Unless you deliberately add even harsher terms,” Jed added, thinking about a particularly fluent drill sergeant.

“Our expression for common sense is worker logic,” Blue said. “It used to be peasant thinking but our word for peasant or serf was deemed offensive some thousands of years ago. Holding people in such service is of course illegal now. It’s a little scary how recently they just told me you had such things. Still, one of our classic plays is about a high-born son who won’t listen to his father or tutor and comes to his senses when the gardener and housekeeper call him a fool over the same actions. To draw a parallel, when your alien employee tells you what your junior officers have been telling you all along, I suspect it’s time to listen.”

“Do you still have gardeners and housekeepers?” Jed asked. “Or has your society made having household help too classist to tolerate?”

“Please don’t quote me about this,” Blue asked of him. “But my father once told me that having employees was easier than slaves because you could fire a useless employee but if you were trying to sell off an incorrigible lazy slave everybody would be aware of why he was for sale. One does not express such things in polite society now. Three Fingers tells me that class distinctions are still very visible in India too.”

“Interesting, but not a direct answer,” Jed said.

“It’s not as common, but yes people still work to maintain a household. It’s expensive and having machines cuts way back on the number needed. My father’s estate had six people employed and it took over half his and my mother’s credits to pay them. That’s even with credits for keeping a historic building and allowing school children to tour.”

“Yeah, dishwashing machines and lawnmowers have reduced our needed labor too. Just like electric lights eliminated the need to lower the chandelier to replace the candles or to fill the lamps and trim the wicks. I’m all for class distinctions if they are based on merit instead of birth,” Jed said. “It’s a matter of self-interest. If you arbitrarily hold an entire segment of your population down you are wasting valuable talent.”

“Or waste limited positions on people of lessor merit,” Blue said, thinking of the ship’s former scholar.

“I’m very interested in hearing about these Bugs and Tigers,” Jed said. “I’d also like to hear about technical things like the drives you use and fusion power. I may not be able to understand all of it but I’ll absorb what I can.”

“They’ll all be recorded. You can play them back whenever you wish or even make copies. Some lessons will be conducted at the same time so we need to record them. Go attend them even, if you can get the instructor’s permission to stand off to the side and not make extra work for him. Your government is getting tired of waiting for the start of formal classes too, but we have held them off with the promise of detailed charts and live videos instead of simple question and answer sessions.”

“We call that auditing the class. It all sounds good to me. Shall I start work tomorrow with a breakfast briefing?” Jed asked.

Blue looked like it pained him to agree, but he nodded and said, “0800.”

Chapter 19

“I’ve been expecting you,” Jed said. He tried to put as pleasant a tone in his voice as he could and smiled. He wasn’t sure of his precise title but he’d call the fellow the Commander of People’s Marines in English. He had no idea if he had much experience dealing with humans yet. He had been told he was required to learn English like all the other department heads and officers. Most of the enlisted were learning it voluntarily.

Jed held his hand out more to see if he’d bothered to learn local customs beyond the bare essentials of the language. Malto took it a little awkwardly. Jed gave him points for knowing to do it at all. He gave it a single pump before releasing it, not trying any dominance games like trying to crush his hand. Jed wondered if he seemed crippled to him with only a single thumb.

“May I offer some refreshment?” Jed offered.

“If you have some of that ginger ale? It has been cleared as safe.”

“I do, because I heard it was safe,” Jed said and got it and a drink for himself.

“Do you understand my interest in you?” Malto asked.

“Certainly. You don’t want your men handed off to someone not qualified to lead them, who would regard their lives cheaply, or worse not even see them as people.”

“If you have military experience, would you describe it to me?” Malto requested.

“Ordinarily, no. Are you recording this?”

“Yes, I don’t trust my understanding of your English and will want to review it later.”

“Would you forgo recording it and work from memory? I’ll repeat it in the future if needed.”

Malto took his communicator off his belt and did something to it. He looked at Jed thoughtfully, popped the case open on the device, and removed a silvery rectangle the size of a candy bar.

“Tell me why this is necessary first. If I don’t like it, I’ll end our discussion.”

Jed nodded his acknowledgment of that. “If you inquired of my service, you’d get a list of duty stations and assignments that have nothing to do with what I really did. I’ll tell you the truth if you keep it entirely to yourself. I’m asking you not to record it later from memory or share it with your command. It’s a risk I’ll take because I know nothing else will satisfy you. If I don’t have your cooperation I might as well just leave right now.

“I’m told you have conflicts with two other races but we have conflicts among ourselves. Sometimes that requires us to act secretly to deal with an enemy that attacks and damages us while not admitting it or deflecting blame to somebody else. A situation that wouldn’t happen for you with direct open conflict. You had no need of such secrets by your nature. With us, these actions are hidden by the governments on both sides to avoid expanding the fight into a conflict that would impact millions.”

“I can imagine such a thing but it makes me uncomfortable. My Commander and Blue have discussed some of the aspects of the self-race conflict. I know we had such a period in our history but it would be regarded as criminal today. Yet you are saying this was known by your superiors?”

“More than known, actively ordered. You should examine the word sanctioned,” Jed suggested.

Malto took a little pad from a front pocket and a stylus. Jed spelled it for him before he could ask.

“I always try to have a backup that doesn’t need a battery,” he explained.

“Makes sense to me,” Jed agreed. “But you are going to need to consult your dictionary to have a decent conversation. Blue still does so all the time. If your word isn’t any good to not record, I might as well find out sooner than later.”

“So, what would you do for your government?” Malto asked after he slipped the battery back in.

“Infiltrate, get to know the culture and language just like you are. Find out who the people are hidden behind the scenes ordering harm to us and kill them.”

“Directly?” Malto asked. He looked uncomfortable, squirming in his seat suddenly.

“Sometimes. I’ve led teams of six or less where there was no other way and we needed to act directly. So, I do know small unit tactics and we didn’t leave team members behind. I’d lead from the front not cower behind. Such terrorists may take every caution when they are actively working on a mission, but thinking themselves anonymous and safe on their home territory, do normal things. Indeed, that is the point and benefit of their anonymity beyond just avoiding assassination. They can visit a restaurant and use the restroom, they are free to mingle with crowds and go sailing or skiing. Sometimes, they even go off to other countries if they are that confident that they are unknown.

“But whatever works. A bullet, a bomb, or something more subtle. A household appliance with a charge in it that connects over the internet, a spray of oil on the road where they go to work in the morning. Perhaps a high voltage electrical supply connected to their shower drain, a cartridge in their ammunition with a huge over-charge, or a bottle of their favorite very expensive liquor with neurotoxins added. A substitution at the pharmacy for their medication. There are so many ways and the world is a dangerous place anyway. One just needs to help it a little. That sort of person has other enemies and they often don’t endear themselves to their underlings. One can often find others who have access to them to act once you identify them, or pay them lavishly to do so,”

Malto looked at his half-empty ginger ale like it was a snake.

“I’ll take a sip of it if it’ll make you comfortable,” Jed offered.

“No. Thank you. I suddenly became aware that if you wanted me dead, I’d have never arrived here alive,” Malto decided.

“It is embarrassing to explain a corpse in your quarters. One doesn’t do such a thing lightly. After all, I have no indication you are planning to massacre my race to steal our planet.”

“We rather need you actually,” Malto hastened to explain. “We’re hoping you can support us with your manufacturing ability. We are simply too few to do everything needed to maintain civilization at our current level. I’m scared and horrified all over again that you can imagine anyone killing an entire race. I’m not even sure how it could be done and leave the planet habitable.”

“Perhaps an artificial lab-created disease,” Jed suggested. “Tell me more about the Bugs. I thought perhaps they could do such a thing.”

“Yes, they might be able to think of doing such a thing, but we can’t even talk to them to know. And nobody has ever suggested wiping one of their worlds clean. Since you brought it up, I’d say they would have to do that to us first to make us consider such a thing. They will attack ships or stations.”

“Mutually Assured Destruction,” Jed said. The capitals in his delivery had an obvious cadence. “It really is MAD but it works. That has been a restraining factor with us too. But what about the Tigers? I understand you know some of their language?”

“We do, but if you capture them alive, they won’t eat and die quickly. They will fight for territory and even deny us systems with no living world, just assets worth mining or gateways to far stars. But they have never bombarded a populated world. They take control of the near space and then land. I think they know now that we are more than they can digest. They tried to get us to surrender with threats and to pay tribute on our first contact. Indeed, they demanded we learn their language which is why we know some of it. Then they found out we had other worlds and would be hard to assimilate.

“Other intelligent species were not able to repel them, if you can believe them. They say they have client races but we’ve never been deep enough into their territory to see them. I’m going to lecture on all this to a group of your people. You should listen in or watch the recording. I’ll have a lot more, better organized to say with charts and video.”

“I plan on it,” Jed said. “I plan on viewing the technical lectures too.”

Malto looked at him thoughtfully a moment without saying anything.

“You may be smarter than me if you have room for all that in your head.”

“Thank you,” Jed said with a nod. “I don’t see us contesting with each other. At least I hope not. I’d be very surprised if you aren’t just like us, with a few terribly stupid people, a small number of really bright, and a vast crowd of the majority somewhere in the middle.

“There are different ways of thinking,” Malto said. “Three Fingers and Blue are all enthused where the sum of our tech is better than either alone. I agree you are a very clever race. I have the weapon you left behind at your wilderness home. The quality and power of it was impressive. Would you like it back? I feel like a thief now, speaking to you about it.”

“That would be a kindness,” Jed agreed.

“A question if I may. We assumed you took the better weapon with you and left the lesser behind. Is that true? Do you have what you carried here? I’d like very much to see it.”

“It was too difficult to bring it along because of political boundaries,” Jed said. “It was the same basic design as what you saw with different components in the upper section. It just shot a projectile, a bullet, three to four times the mass of that lighter weapon. It had a slightly greater range that was fine for that location and could take the local game. However, here I wanted something with more range for where it is much more open. I bought a rifle here that reaches out easily about six-hundred-man lengths as you’d name the distance. I didn’t have any need for that in the wooded environment. Nor did I expect to use it for personal protection like I might need to here to protect Blue.”

“I’d very much like to see that,” Malto said.

Jed was encouraged that he didn’t call him a liar.

“I’ll show you my Sako now and sometime we’ll go shooting together,” Jed promised, getting up to get it. “I had Blue buy a few other human weapons and I was hoping to familiarize you with them. You may have to be on the wrong end of them sometime. Also, I’m not sure how long yours will remain serviceable and you may have to adapt to human weapons.”

“An interesting idea,” Malto said. “Or you may produce something new on our general design.”

Malto didn’t stick his finger in the trigger guard or sweep the barrel without thought like the general crew had at his cabin. Jeb was glad he didn’t insult him with a basic safety lecture before handing him the rifle. Having an extra thumb didn’t seem to impair his grip on it. When he examined the magazine with cartridges visible his face twitched.

“These are much bigger than your smaller rifle.”

“I should have gotten a .50 caliber to demo,” Jed decided. “I’ll visit the gun store and correct that when I get back to town. There are enough of them you might have to deal with them sometime.”

“Would you tell me when you intend to do that? I’d like to go with you and see this store.”

“Sure, they’ll get a charge out of meeting you too. Since we’ve talked, can I have your assurance I will get a backup squad if I need it to protect Blue?”

“That was never in question. I was ordered to do so. The question was how enthusiastically I would cooperate and who I’d send to make up your squad. Perhaps you don’t accurately know what Blue is or understand what he is behind his automatic courtesy. If I refused his command or looked like a threat to his authority, I’d expect to be dead much faster and directly than you might arrange it.”

“Alright then. Am I on your priority com list or the don’t bother to ring list, and do I get the sad sacks that should have been garrison troops or your shooters?”

Malto smiled after checking his dictionary.

“That expression is worth adding to our language. We have two words that will convey the flavor of that sentiment perfectly, if vulgarly. Yes, you do get to ring my phone, and you not only get the shooters, you get the same quality of troops I’d send the on-site deputy. I’ll even arrange to have them do drills with you if you will take the opportunity to do so. You mentioned a squad of six. Would you still be comfortable with that number?”

“That would do very nicely, thank you.”

“Blue said you want an assistant or aide. I suspect you would value one with military training better than a cook or medical orderly. Shall I send one of my soldiers?” Malto offered.

“If he isn’t somebody you are getting rid of because he’s a screw-up,” Jed said bluntly.

“I have two of those and the last place I’d put them to cause me trouble is with Blue’s pet alien.”

“Will he spy for you?” Jed asked.

“Of course,” Malto said. “She, actually. She isn’t trained as an intelligence officer, but she isn’t stupid and I’d expect her to report anything of concern to me.”

“I like not stupid,” Jed said. “When I get through with her, I hope she goes back to you with some new skills that will make her an even more useful tool for you.”

Malto stopped outside Jed’s module when he left and got his little notebook out. Mutually assured destruction was a phrase that gave no return in their dictionary. It bothered him the way Jed said it and he decided he should investigate it further.

* * *

“You were correct,” Blue told Jed. “I told Fleming we had stripped most of what we intend to remove from the Protector and the number of shuttle flights will be dropping now. I suggested he visit us in the next week if he’d still like a ride. He said he’ll fly into Vegas later tomorrow.”

“He’d pay you if he had to,” Jeb said. “If you need to raise funds you can charge a very hefty price for rides when you are launching a shuttle for other purposes. Paid seats to orbit have only been affordable for a few billionaires. Are you going to let Protector orbit out there empty?”

“He’s already paid by saving our crewman from being eaten. We’ll keep two people aboard to run the com and monitor our instruments on the far side of your moon. They will be taking their food up to the Protector because we’ve brought almost all the equipment down to India and it isn’t practical to grow for two people. We’d hate for any of our people to show up and find it unmanned like a derelict. Especially with a big hole through it. That would just look bad. When we have the urgent items under control, we’ll think about repairing it.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Jed said. Almost all the Earth nations have laws about the salvage of abandoned vessels. The body of law is for ocean-going vessels but what do you want to bet they’d apply it to spaceships? Somebody might try to board and claim it. Fortunately, it’s so big that I don’t think anybody could tow it away.”

“I suppose there are lawyers who specialize in that too?” Blue asked.

“Maritime law? Of course,” Jed said. “We have lawyers for anything.”

“I suppose that follows, since you seem to have a law for everything,” Blue said.

“If we don’t there’s probably a regulation for it,” Jed quipped. “I’m going to go over to the lecture hall and audit the first class on your star drive.”

“Hyper-mode,” Blue automatically corrected.

“Whatever. I doubt we’ll confuse it with any others. Will you call me if you need to leave the campus or receive visitors from outside? I take protecting you seriously and I can always listen to the recording later if you need me.”

“Yes…” Blue said, but stood staring at Jed with a distressed expression.

“OK, even if I wasn’t getting accustomed to your faces, I’d know that is a worried look. Did you know? We can’t talk to our pets, yet we know if a dog is upset or hurting. I have yet to have one that didn’t look guilty when he’d been up to something. So, what’s eating at you?”

“Another expression!” Blue said. “And it is eating at me like something chewing inside me.”

I wonder if they get ulcers? Jed wondered.

“It occurred to me that we are going to have both the two ratings who know the hyper-mode generator and their current students all in the same room. Not to be insulting, but we do read about unstable individuals ‘flipping out’ as Barnard put it and shooting everyone around them. It may be more important to us to safeguard them than me. Would you see to that, please?” Blue requested.

“I was going to drop my pistol off with your receptionist to lock in his desk and pick it up when I returned. Some folks can’t relax with one in sight and get all bent out of shape.”

“That expression I know already,” Blue said. “I’d much rather you stay armed and sit where you can see both the speakers and the class. Then I will be more likely to relax. The class can adjust to us.”

“In that case, I’ll join your driver when he picks them up at the helipad. If I’m working somebody, I like to see them early and in as many circumstances as possible.”

“I’ll send him an order right now to pick you up here first. The students will be arriving soon in a helicopter.” Blue said. He did look more relaxed now.

* * *

The vehicle to pick the students up was an open resort buggy like a stretch golf cart. There was a canopy directly overhead but no doors or side curtains. If it was his cart Jed would widen the canopy to provide more shade, but he’d noticed the aliens seemed to handle hot weather a little better than humans. They kept the inside temperature a few degrees higher than most humans would choose.

The first thing Jed noticed was that the helicopter came in from the northwest where the test ranges were rather than the southwest where Vegas was. It was a lovely twin-turbine business helicopter in bronze and crème colors. The sort that did short hops from urban centers to outlying airports. However, everybody who came off it was in uniform, including the flight crew. None of them had computers or any sort of attaché case. That seemed unusual for anyone receiving instruction.

The first unexpected problem was that they intended for the crew to wait on their passengers. The helicopter needed to sit until the transmission fluid cooled down before they started it up again. It was pushing its service envelope in this climate. There was a step below the last row of rear-facing seats and the flight crew was good with standing on it and holding the hand rail. It was only a couple of hundred meters to the lecture hall and by the time they arrived all these men in tight jackets and ties were dripping sweat. It was well past the worst of summer and barely thirty-seven degrees.

Jed had on knee-length canvas cargo shorts, low-top mesh shoes, a wicking t-shirt, and a Panama hat. That outfit was comfortable but didn’t lend itself to concealing the Wilson-Brown compact pistol he wore, chambered in Hornady 10mm. He didn’t try, given Blue’s endorsement.

“Would you take the flight crew where they can be comfortable and get cold drinks?” Jed asked the driver. “Send word up your line of command so they know they have these guests too.”

“Yes, happy to do that,” the driver said slowly. “Cool drinks and tell my boss.”

Jed nodded. The driver, like most of them, was studying English and got most of what Jed said.

The auditorium was small and somewhat dim. It was cooler but the students were so hot now it would take them some time to cool down. Ten seats were in two rows staggered so the back row looked between the front row and was slightly elevated. The room couldn’t hold anywhere near the sixty seats originally planned but Jed suspected they spread the seats out so the gaps could be filled if the aliens relented and allowed more. You could put a few more seats on the ends and even more if they filled the room in the rear with another row of seats.

Four aliens faced the students from the lecture stage. Beelus, Mohr, and the two actual instructors. There was no permanent seating there but they were all comfortable in plastic Adirondack chairs. Like the stretch golf cart for a site ground shuttle, the things the aliens chose of human goods could be surprising. They had no preconceptions about things being appropriate.

The humans all stayed clustered and looked around uncertainly. Aliens were in two seats already.

“Come in,” Beelus said rising. “Take any seat you wish. There is a cooler in the back with drinks. There are restrooms on each side of the entry if you didn’t notice. We arranged for speakers there so you don’t have to miss anything. Your seats all have a small desk surface that swings in front of you if you wish it. There are power outlets and wireless if you want to record or stream to remote storage.”

Several of them looked surprised and their eyes all went to the same person in a Space Force uniform, so Jed figured he knew who was in charge. They appeared to be from three different services.

“I have to object. This is insecure,” the one Jed had pegged as their leader said indignantly “We all left our phones in the helicopter and you want to give us internet access!” Then he stopped speaking gathering his thoughts about how to handle the unexpected situation without orders.

He spoke to Beelus since he’d invited them to sit, assuming from that he was in charge. Beelus looked surprised, not sure what was happening, and looked at Jed giving his head that little turn to one side that indicated a question. Was the fellow objecting to the seating or something else? He hadn’t expected any problems so early and had no idea what human courtesy expected of him.

“This is Beelus,” Jed told the man. “He’s in their third tier of command under Blue. He’s their chief academic, historian, and librarian, in charge of all their research and keeping the continuity of their technology. You’re in his domain so you might get him to listen better by politely introducing yourself and stating your authority before declaring objections first thing. He hasn’t had to deal with any direct conflict with humans and won’t have any idea what the social boundaries are in expressing it. Things like raising your voice or the expression on your face may not tell him what you think they will.”

“I’d ask the same of you,” the man said. “Who the hell are you and what authority do you have here? I wasn’t expecting an armed civilian to be present.”

“I’m Jedidiah Murphy. I’m an employee hired as personal security for Blue. I’m frequently asked to advise him on site security. Like the Sheriff’s deputy, another armed civilian you’ll find on duty here, I can call on their Marines for backup. As just happened with Beelus I also am frequently asked about human custom, the usages of idiomatic English, and how to deal with human agencies and institutions. I’m going to audit some of the lectures, and Blue was happy to hear that, asking me to extend my security duties to protecting these critical workers.”

“They certainly don’t need protecting from us,” the fellow objected.

“Good, I love an easy assignment,” Jed said, struggling to look agreeable.

“Jed, Mr. Bradley was supposed to invite well-regarded scholars to sit for this,” Beelus said. “The first few lectures we will be speaking about the nature of space, not any hardware. If we do not have patents applied for, we may have to have secrecy agreements signed. Perhaps that’s the problem? I was expecting physicists from several universities. Mr. Bradley identified them as academics, not soldiers. I expected people like Dr. James. Are the two very commonly the same?”

“Not at all that common,” Jed said. “I think something else is going on here but why don’t you call Alex Bradley and ask him what he arranged?”

Beelus looked confused but pulled out his phone. The Space Force officer just smirked. Beelus turned his back speaking too low to be heard and started pacing behind their chairs. Jed checked his phone but stuck it back in his pocket after just a few taps without speaking to anyone.

“He said he can’t discuss this, and is legally prevented from telling me why,” Beelus said. “I am learning to read humans just as you are learning about us. He sounded very stressed. Do you know what circumstances could put him in such a position?”

“Yes, this is some sort of power play. Somebody, probably Space Forces,” Jed said, looking at the objecting soldier, “is trying to force USCIS out of the picture. With the cooperation of Homeland Security, they can slap them with a blanket gag order that keeps them from even divulging they received the letter. They would just have to declare everything you tell them is classified at some level of secrecy until reviewed for release in about fifty years. It’s rather heavy-handed but there is no subtle way to set aside a treaty Congress has ratified by decree. Only by a bald threat of force.”

Jed reached for his phone as if it had vibrated but looked puzzled and withdrew his hand.

“They can declare something secret before they know what it is?” Beelus asked astonished.

“Oh, it’s much deeper down the rabbit hole than that. They can declare the sky being blue is a secret and you better not tell anyone,” Jed assured him. “To have the level of smug assurance that’s painted on this asshole’s face he must have at least a signed Presidential Finding in his pocket. Not that executive orders can just void legislation. Most officers would recognize blatantly illegal orders.”

If Jed was fishing to provoke an aggressive response it failed.

“Perhaps my superiors do,” the Spaceman said. “I don’t question them when given orders.”

“You wouldn’t, would you? I’ve had three of them handed me when I was active. Still have them in a safe place. If you don’t cover your ass, they’ll eventually hang you out to dry when an op goes bad.”

For the first time, the Spaceman’s veneer cracked a little.

“Jed and we have discussed how you have different needs for secrecy as you have conflicts between factions of your race,” Beelus told the Spaceman. “He explained classifications, compartmentation, clearances, and need-to-know. We have had no need for such things for thousands of years. It seems to me there is a vital element missing here. We are the people in possession of these things you wish to be secret but none of us are inside your system with any clearance to know these things. We even have patent applications filed for some of our technologies. Your security is broken before you even begin.”

“That isn’t a unique problem,” Jed informed him before the Spaceman could. “In the past, people have invented new things who had no connection to their system and all their notes and records were seized. They didn’t even have the clearance to read their own lecture notes. Then, if they didn’t qualify, they were excluded from speaking or working on the subject again. The patent system very commonly holds back patents from public view that are classified secret.”

“That appears insane to me,” Beelus said. “No insult to you intended.” He nodded at Jed to make clear where that applied. The gesture was almost automatic with him now. “Under the circumstances, our lecture series is canceled until I can consult with Blue. He’ll likely need to discuss this with Three Fingers and our lawyers. Mr. Bradley is still our spokesman if we announce they will resume.”

“I didn’t arrive with orders to secure computer systems or bring anyone back with us,” the Spaceman said. “I didn’t bring the experts for data recovery with us and we’re at capacity on our copter already without any capacity to add anyone. Do hold yourselves at ready to comply if we return.” He looked at Jed like he expected a show of bravado like telling him, “You try, you die.” Jed just gave him a pleasant smile without any nod of acknowledgment.

“If your machine has cooled down sufficiently, I suggest you remove yourselves,” Beelus said.

“Fine, would you tell our flight crew and bring the jitney around?” the Spaceman asked.

“I’m not aware of human customs about hospitality,” Beelus said, “but in our society, once guests are no longer welcome you don’t send mixed messages by packing them lunch for their journey or bidding them a safe journey. You know where your transport is and all appear healthy enough to walk that far. The sooner, the better.”

Jed was amazed polite Beelus would make such a point but approved and would tell him so later. It was a relief because the delay served his purposes too. It was sort of amusing that none of them ever got to sit down without a signal that it was ok from the Spaceman. He never did give them his name. But then that was probably secret too.

“Those men are going to go make trouble for us,” Beelus predicted after they filed out.

“No, those men aren’t a factor at all anymore,” Jed said. “But the people who sent them may make trouble. Tell Blue to move plan B up to a ten-minute warning. I hate to do that but he needs to load some things in your shuttles that will take a little more time. It will disrupt everything for the rest of the day and then be a pain in the butt to unload, but we need to be ready if they decide to get rough with us.”

“I do note you are saying us now,” Beelus said.

“Yeah, I’ve thrown in my fortunes with you for sure. If we do plan B and bugout, you can be damn sure I’m going with you. Let’s go outside,” Jed requested. “I want to see them leave.”

On the helicopter, the Spaceman retrieved his phone from the bag holding them and powered it on. It showed solid bars which surprised him out here in the God-forsaken middle of nowhere. But when he tried to make a call, nothing happened. He went to text instead. When he hit send, nothing happened. He started forward to ask the flight crew if they could patch him through on their radio.

Outside Jed and Beelus stood in the shade by the entry and Beelus wondered why Jed wanted to watch. Maybe it was some long-standing human custom. There was a short delay until the helicopter lifted and then they watched it climb away until it was a distant dark dot in the sky. When there was a flash of light, Beelus jerked in surprise. The distance hid the details but multiple chunks trailing orange flames and black smoke as they fell wasn’t anything he wanted to see clearer.

“I didn’t see you trigger anything or give a command,” Beelus said suspiciously.

“Remember that if you ever have to give a deposition about today,” Jed requested.

“If not you, what happened?” Beelus asked. “I didn’t see you react at all. Surely that’s not normal.”

“Oh, I’ve seen quite a few aircraft vigorously disassemble,” Jed said. “Some self-disassembled because third world idiots serviced them. Some plowed into the ground because the pilot was so busy watching a hostile on his six, he didn’t watch his twelve. Some of them needed a little encouragement to start the disassembly process. A missile up the tailpipe is obvious but sometimes as little as a single bolt failing is entirely sufficient to start the process.”

“And how would you classify this one?” Beelus demanded. He seemed upset.

“This has all the hallmarks of a tragic training accident to me,” Jed said. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. It’s a surprisingly frequent explanation. Now we’ll see if the people who sent that crew get the message or if they send another team to get a little more insistent about it. They have no idea what was said between us. I’ll encourage Blue not to share your class recording because a little uncertainty works better for us right now than an aggressive complaint.

“However, I’ll remind you plan B, for this sort of thing, calls for your four critical people to lift right now, not at the ten-minute warning, so kindly escort your two techs and trainees to board a shuttle, please. I’d go with them if I were you. The shuttle should be manned by now and waiting for you, with its hatch open to take you to India. We just can’t take any chances with the only repository of your drive tech. If it seems clear, you can decide to bring them back later.”

The cart pulled up in front of them and the others had followed them out and were already standing behind them so Beelus nodded silently and climbed aboard.

* * *

“Thank you, Barnard. I was worried they were going to return to the helicopter too fast and catch you still working,” Jed said. “Beelus helped us by getting in a bit of a snit and denying them a ride back. He made them walk back in the heat. It wasn’t that much longer but it gave you an extra four or five minutes. I didn’t have time to discuss how to accomplish it with you. I hope it was something that our hosts couldn’t do?”

“It was, but how did you know I’d be able?” Barnard demanded. “Hostile takeover being attempted. Their helicopter needs to have a quick accident on departure,” could have been taken for snark or a ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ remark, if it weren’t for the - soonest please – you appended to it.”

“Some time ago, when you were explaining to the others what constraints I’d be under if I had a really deep black background, you knew just a little too much detail, too readily, for any other explanation. Your suggestions about communications and security were just a little too specific also.”

“You didn’t manage to dig up my service records?” Barnard asked specifically.

“I wouldn’t expect to be able to do that. I suspect your service was foreign, and if I could find out it would still be a bad idea. The access might be noted and somebody wonder why. That would be bad for everyone around you, including me.”

“Glad you know it. I won’t pry about you for the same reasons.”

“May one ask how the deed was accomplished?”

“The most time invested was unlocking the cabin door. I couldn’t leave it marked up or damaged to show it had been entered. Once I put the cell phone jammer inside the rest was easy. I had no way to disable or bypass the aircraft radios that wouldn’t warn them before they lifted.”

“But I didn’t even ask for that,” Jed objected.

“If you wanted it quickly, I figured it was more important to keep them from reporting back than allowing them to get further away, so the blame might be shifted away from the People. My outfit valued initiative and on the scene analysis of the situation more than not exceeding one’s orders. Did I do wrong?”

“No, you did exactly what was needed,” Jed admitted, “I admit this action was of my initiative. Blue would never have OK’d it since they don’t have the sort of same-species internal conflict we do. They’ll eventually have to learn how governments push at each other behind the scenes or everybody is going to take advantage of them. It just amazed me you came to those conclusions on so little information.”

“I’m an amazing guy, Barnard quipped and laughed at his own joke. “The charge was a spray-on fast-drying explosive gel. A few meters long line of it down the belly with a couple of cross lines wouldn’t be visible unless you crawled under her and looked carefully. Even then, it’s translucent and might look like a leak stain. The radio detonator was a stick on too. It used magnesium wires for electrical and was encapsulated in a thermite-in-polymer compound that ignited when the detonator went off. It would never reach the ground and won’t leave so much as an identifiable capacitor or chip after it burns. The spray and detonator are Romanian and Ukrainian if they would somehow identify any residues. They’d have to do a spectroscopic analysis of every square centimeter over a half-kilometer radius to reconstruct it. It’s all well-known and non-alien technology. I also sent two messages to you. One on delay and both self-erasing after one second. If you felt it vibrate that was me.”

“Yeah, I wondered about that. This is good then. Our hosts are clear. There are plenty of other state actors to blame it on who’d hate to see the US get alien tech,” Jed said.

“Except that one of their shuttles immediately departed for India,” Barnard said. “That might look incriminating to a suspicious mind.”

“But a perfectly natural response to remove your valuable people when the natives display such inexplicable violence,” Jed said. “Besides, that flight was planned two weeks ago and had nothing to do with the unfortunate events of the day. Veracity analysis will confirm I’m telling the truth of that.”

Barnard blinked and then smiled.

“Oh, back about the time Plan B was formulated.”

“If you say so,” Jed agreed. “Since I know your skill level now, if you need any of my kit to protect Blue, my gun locker code is 12, 78. 93, 68,” Jed said.

“And your door code?” Barnard asked.

“5 and 3 together, 1, then 2 and 6 together,” Jed said. “But if the helicopter didn’t slow you down, I figured the hardware store lock on my modular wouldn’t be any challenge.”

Barnard just laughed.

Chapter 20

Walters barged in all upset. Jason could hear his secretary behind him trying to tell him she should announce him. He briefly fantasized about giving her a gun and allowing her to shoot anyone who couldn’t be civil enough to allow him some notice who was going to burst through the door.

“Have you seen the alert about the copter going down after visiting the aliens?” Walter asked.

“I read the subject line,” Jason said. “I read all the headers in my morning brief and will read the six I saved when I get some other things under control.”

Walters was upset, but not enough to try to tell his boss he had his priorities messed up. He didn’t know if his boss got the same brief as he did but this story seemed like it should be the pivot point of his universe this morning.

“I’m interested in the details,” Jason allowed, trying to placate his agitated associate, “but something like a helicopter crash doesn’t require immediate action. Nothing I say or do is going to undo the event and I doubt anything I could order isn’t already going to happen automatically. There are well-established responses to start investigating any sort of crash. Is there some reason you feel this is different and needs our guiding hand?”

“Very much so,” Walters insisted. “I was informed Spaces Forces did an end-run around both us and the USCIS to have everything the aliens were going to release about their tech classified. They got to the President and persuaded him to issue a finding that it was necessary.”

“They didn’t do an end-run around us,” Jason corrected him. “I was hoping to get more control over the process initially, but I’d never approve of any attempt to back out of our agreements with the aliens after they were negotiated. That would leave us to blame if we lost the whole agreement and they took their business to somewhere else like Australia.

“You heard there was a finding issued on it? Nobody has notified us of that officially. If the aliens leave now, the Space Force gets the blame for it hanging around their necks. Do the aliens even know the chopper went down? Since I’m apparently going to have to hear this whole thing right now, you might as well go ahead and brief me.”

“The aliens themselves called in the initial report of the crash,” Walters said. “Although they called it in to the Las Vegas control tower, not the military. The copter crew called in that they were lifting and there didn’t seem to be any problem until contact was lost. The aliens described it as a flash and then burning debris raining down. Little doubt even before investigators arrive on the scene that it was an explosion.”

“Was it a military helicopter? A gunship maybe? Could it have been carrying live ordinance?”

“It was a commuter copter. The military keeps a few of them just like they keep some small biz jets. But it was in civilian livery. We have a very high-altitude stealth drone orbiting the alien’s site. It stays just outside their boundaries and we saw the whole thing. We also could see another stealth drone orbiting about six kilometers below us that we suspect is Air Force or Space Force. They aren’t nearly as stealthy from the top as the bottom. Also, the aliens themselves had a much lower commercial drone leased to watch over their site for security.”

“And the Space forces probably are looking down on your drone every time one of their satellites passes. But a commercial drone? They use human drones instead of their own?” Jason asked. “We know they have some because we shot one down.”

“They are adopting a lot of human things. I was told they have bought a lot of human household goods. They’ve bought furniture, silverware and kitchen things, a sort of resort cart for a site shuttle, and even human laundry equipment. They’ve bought a lot of high-end cell phones and somebody showed them how to use end-to-end encryption. About a week after they started using the phones, we saw changes to indicate they are using an unknown encryption system. We suspect they modified human apps to run through their own encryption. They still go through the cell service drone that covers about a quarter of the state. We still get some information about who is talking even if we don’t know what they are saying.

“The drone view showed Jeb Murphy rode the cart down to greet the helicopter, He returned and went in the lecture hall with the military,” Walters said.

“Ah, I somehow expected to hear he was involved,” Jason said.

“You think he was involved in the takedown?” Walters asked. He seemed surprised.

“I haven’t seen anything conclusive that it was a take-down,” Jason said. “It could have been a mechanical or a screwup. I expected Murphy to be involved or you wouldn’t be so interested. You have a fixation on the man.

“Damn right. I have a gut feeling he’s dirty and deeply involved,” Walters agreed.

“I’m still open to that possibility if you have some concrete evidence.”

“Not yet, but I’m watching,” Walters assured him.

“What else did your drone show?” Jason asked. “Did you see Murphy slip down to the helicopter later carrying a bomb and duct tape?”

“He stayed in the lecture hall. There was a very brief transmission from his phone. It coincided with another phone on the same circuit getting a data call but the other phone stayed active for some time after Murphy terminated his call and showed traffic. But don’t know the contents of either call. We also saw him come out with some aliens after the military group left. They hadn’t stayed there anywhere near as long as any lecture would take.”

“So, the only connection between the calls was an approximate start time.” Jason didn’t say it as a question at all.

“Yes, but who would manipulate their app just to make the timing suspect?” Walters asked.

“It would have to be a very devious character indeed,” Jason agreed. “Did the phone location change?”

“No. It stayed put. The cart did return to the helicopter but we saw the person carry a case of bottled water around to the entry door and then returned to the cart empty-handed in a bit more than four minutes. About as long as it would take to stock the bottles in the onboard cooler.”

“There’s no reason to think if the copter was bombed it couldn’t have been installed before it ever left for the alien’s compound,” Jason pointed out. “I can’t see how it would serve anyone’s purpose to have it blow up on the way in. Detonating on the return trip would expand the possible suspects to include everyone on site,” Jason reasoned. “Also, find this out. Did the aliens have any idea the copter was going to bring in a different load of students than what they expected? Did they even have a guest list from USCIS?”

“I’ll find out, but the group we saw get off the copter were all in uniform. They weren’t trying to sneak them in and pretend they were civilians,” Walters said.

“That sounds like the military,” Jason said. “March them up and put the aliens on the spot whether they would run the class as scheduled or create a fuss. They can’t be all that sure of our customs and institutions yet. Just the fact they are relying on USCIS to line up students says that. If they sat them down and instructed them, rather than protest, it would be hard to raise an objection and try to change it later. Now if I had an unexpected bunch show up for my lecture I might cancel until I found out what the heck was going on. I don’t know if these aliens think like that or not.”

“I suspect somebody was unhappy,” Walters said. “They rolled the site shuttle cart down to pick them up but made them walk back in the heat of the day.”

“Interesting. They can show some backbone. That also speaks against the aliens having any hand in the destruction of the helicopter. They had no time to plan a plot against it and prepare a device to plant in it if the substitution was dropped on them as a surprise. I know you think Murphy is a bad actor, and he does have a respectable combat record. However, he isn’t some kind of super-agent from a spy thriller novel. He didn’t even arrive with an entourage of minions to do nefarious deeds like rush out and plant bombs on helicopters, did he? I bet his truck doesn’t even have the bladed hubcaps that extend,” he said, making a claw of his fingers and twisting them in the air.

“No. You’re making me feel better.” But he was too deeply invested in his suspicions to think the crack about killer hubcaps was funny. “We’ll see what the crash analysis says,” Walters decided.

After Walters left Jason still felt he’d missed something. It bothered him until he went back and listened to Walter’s story again. He caught it the first time through. Somebody took a case of water in and was gone long enough to have stowed them away. But why didn’t he mention having the carton and wrappings when he came back out? He said empty-handed. Service crew wouldn’t leave trash on an aircraft like that. He wasn’t about to mention it to Walters. He was paranoid enough as things stood.

* * *

“That has Murphy’s dirty little paw prints smeared all over it,” the number two in Special Operations Group Three said.

“Are you sure none of our other alumni got hired by the aliens?” his boss asked.

“We have no idea where three of them are,” he admitted, “but they are employed there only if they have had major reconstructive surgery and assembled a complete new bullet-proof identity.”

“Then it’s likely Murphy,” his boss said.

But a couple of other countries have operatives with similar skills. He thought privately.

“Does that mean you are reconsidering intervening?” his number two asked. He didn’t show it but the idea alarmed him. He thought staying hands off was settled.

“Hell no! Just the opposite. We have all the Space Force video, satellite passes, and the spook’s radio intercepts and I still can’t figure out how he did it. He’s so demonstrably clean it’s like he tailored his actions with total awareness of how he was being surveilled. I just wish we understood how he does this crap so we could instruct others how to do it. We’ll just watch and admire the art of it without being players. If somebody doesn’t get the message being broadcast here a lot more chessmen are going to be knocked off the board. The stupid suckers can’t tell a knight from a pawn. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall in that lecture hall. Why did they send all of them in uniform? It was far too early in this sort of an operation to make the point it was a power play. They should have got a lecture or two in the can and then had a milder confrontation by having a few of them attend in uniform. Then, if that generated any questions. I’d break it gently to them that they were owned.”

“It’s hard to feel sympathy for them trying to destroy the legitimate agreements of other agencies,” his assistant said. “It appears the aliens have superior encryption protocols. They tapped into our secure internet early on to start compiling a database of English words and grammar. I wonder now if they tapped into the military coms systems and broke their encryption as easily?

“That and so many other things I’d like to know,” his boss said. “Not just operational details like how were the boomies positioned, but do the aliens understand what sort of an enforcer they hired?”

“If they do, that means they understood it was inevitable somebody would try to try to gain control of them from the very start. If they understood our psychology that deeply, that worries me more than any little tricks they can demonstrate from superior technology. They aren’t that far ahead of us in gadgets and hardware. The other would suggest they’re smarter than us. Maybe not a lot, but enough to matter. I’m not sure there is any way to deal with that.”

“Of course, there is,” his boss said. “Decide to be on their side and determined to be the useful humans they consider assets instead of the ones in opposition who have to be dealt with. We’ve always had bosses over us. These aliens might treat us better than our human masters.”

“They do seem fairly reasonable, as long as they don’t decide we are edible or need to be systematically bred.”

“You’ve been watching science fiction horror movies again, haven’t you?”

* * *

“I’m Terril,” The alien introduced herself to him. “I was told to report to you and act as your assistant or aide. I’ve been studying English on my own, but I checked all these words and asked others to listen to this introduction to you. My unrehearsed English won’t always be as good.”

Jed was sitting by the door watching Blue hold a meeting. It was all aliens so they were using their language and Jed only understood about one word in ten. He still got something out of it because he was learning their facial expressions better.

“Let’s take a walk and talk,” Jed said. “Let’s go to the cafeteria and I’ll get coffee and you can get anything that strikes your fancy.”

“And it starts,” Terril said, looking up that expression.

Jed noted she didn’t seem angry or exasperated at that just amused.

“I’m just full of homey sayings and folk wisdom,” Jed warned her. “You’ll learn hundreds of them.”

“OK, I have a question already. Is folks a derogatory expression? I’ve heard it said by different people on the news and in videos and sometimes it seemed neutral or approving but sometimes it seemed disapproving.”

“That’s a tough one,” Jed said. “You are going to need to be very proficient at reading a person’s social standing and their tone of voice before you know how they are using it. Folk is a very old English work and volk is pretty much the same in German. They both mean people, but the way it is applied is to mean the common people. Now if you have a high opinion of everyday working people and think they have a body of collective wisdom you might call it folk wisdom and mean it as a positive thing. If you are a member of the higher classes with more money, better education, and connections to power, you may despise the common people and think the idea of folk wisdom is stupid. So, the answer is both ways are used depending on who is speaking.”

“Nothing is simple,” Terril complained.

“That’s a safe assumption,” Jed agreed. “I’ll actively try to teach you things as I am able, like how to look at a person’s clothing, and how they carry themselves, to know their social standing. I’m assuming you have similar stratifications in your society, but I just haven’t learned to see them yet. Blue and Three Fingers have mentioned social credits, but haven’t explained them in any depth. I have no idea how they are issued or how you spend them.”

“They aren’t just money,” Terril said. “I’ve been watching human videos and figured out that your money isn’t the same as social credits. I’m afraid explaining how you get social credits and how to lever them to get more is going to be as complicated as the meaning of folk.”

“That’s fine. We’ll both learn from each other. But I’m going to get some use out of you so the instruction will be secondary and your duties primary.”

“I’m ready. What can I do?” Terril asked.

“Continue studying English. I’m going to go into town tomorrow. I’m inviting Blue, as he hasn’t visited there yet. I’ll be making several stops and I’d like to buy you some human-style clothing so you don’t stand out so much from a distance. Can you read English?”

“Not as well as speak it,” Terril admitted.

“Look up the Nevada driver’s license test online. They’ll have sample questions. Concentrate for a few days learning the words on that site and being able to read them as well as speak them. How do you work duty hours? Do you need certain hours of the day as personal time when I shouldn’t call on you? Or should I call when I need and count on you telling me if there will be a delay before you can report? I know your sleep patterns are different than ours. Humans tend to jam all their work activity into a third of the day with only one short break for a meal.”

“If you don’t mind getting extra messages, I can send short texts and say I’m going to take a sleep period or eat and you’ll know. We tend to have multiple work periods in a day.”

“You don’t look all that much different than Blue or Three Fingers to me. Perhaps a little thinner, but human males and females tend to be more visibly different.”

“It would be very much appreciated if you didn’t say that to either of them. They would think it very funny and remind me of it without end,” Terril said. “The differences are much more striking to their eyes,” she assured him.

“Oops, stuck my foot in my mouth already,” Jed said.

“That expression I haven’t heard,” Terril said, “but it doesn’t need any translation.”

“I was going to say. It would be simpler at this point to deal with humans if you didn’t identify yourself as female. There are a lot of negative stereotypes about females you can avoid by doing that?”

Terril looked up the word stereotype in her dictionary.

“Are there any negative stereotypes about males?” she demanded.

“Without end, but of course they are all nasty lies,” Jed said straight-faced.

“How am I ever going to learn facial expressions if you hide them like that?”

“It’s called a poker face. Look that up and the game of that name. That’ll kill a couple of hours.”

* * *

“I spoke with Jed too. Might you have said something along the way to make Jed think we were open to initiating this level of violence? Three Fingers asked, Blue.

“I’ve been thinking about that. It isn’t so much what I said as what I didn’t say. I emphasized how we needed him readily available to consult with us, not just a few hours a day. That reinforced what appears to be a major personality trait favoring not just immediate communications but immediate action. Accepting his desired job description as my bodyguard reinforced that. I didn’t object when he went armed. I admit it made me feel more secure. I was still accepting that when I encouraged him to actively guard our people vital to securing the drive tech. I deferred to his judgment. Now it seems hypocritical to complain he exercised it.

“Even now, I’m horrified at the destruction of the helicopter and death of those humans, but I can’t say it was the wrong thing to do. I wouldn’t have ordered it but I see no retribution coming back on us from anyone in their government. Jed never admitted having a hand in it and I admitted I couldn’t see anything he’d done to cause it. He told me to remember to testify to that if anyone ever deposed me on it in a criminal investigation. That stopped me from demanding if he was guilty, yes, or no?”

“That fits perfectly with one of the things he mentioned about same-species conflicts,” Three Fingers said. “Look it back up in our notes. It was plausible deniability.”

“Consider what would have happened had Jed not been there,” Blue said. “Beelus would never have been as confrontational. He’d never have called Mr. Bradley and found out those weren’t his choices being sent to us. I watched a recording of the whole thing and Jed’s presence alone stopped them from just smoothly sitting and the lecture proceeding. The fellow who seemed to be in charge was upset at Jed’s presence as an armed civilian and it seemed to throw him off his plan. Fortunately, he seemed to be a very rigid personality who couldn’t improvise when confronted with a situation he didn’t expect. I suspect if Jed hadn’t been there, we’d now find ourselves effectively under the control of their military and cut off from any meaningful communications with the rest of them by these classifications.”

“Under their thumb,” Jed would say. “Which is an amusing expression coming from a race so deficient in thumbs. Or said even stronger, that we’d be owned. That would have been even harder to roll back once allowed to start by the innocent fact that Beelus is so courteous.”

“How do we know that threat is ended without actually asking?” Blue wondered.

“Exactly what I asked Jed when he said we should not make any complaint until they push a little harder. He said raising a fuss now would make it harder for them to back down and we should wait and see what they do.”

“Once again it is going to be handy that you are second in command,” Three Fingers said. “I never foresaw how beneficial it would be for me to be here and you at the nation that regards itself as more powerful. After this frightening attack by unknowns, so close to our precious reservoir of knowledge, I’m going to keep our valuable people here in India where nothing like that has happened. If they object lay the blame on me. Halfway around their world with a nominal ally, they can object all they wish but I’ll ignore it or throw it back at them that all that physical isolation wasn’t enough to ensure our people’s safety.

“We will punish them lightly by canceling those lectures there for now. They will only still benefit from them by allowing them to be conducted online, not in private, and not only for their military. The other series such as fusion power and some of our other tech will still happen if they back off this aggressive power grab. They are now aware those too may be yanked away if they try to control them. If we need to have participants agree to nondisclosure agreements at least some of them will be Indian now and not subject to all the pressure the Americans can bring to bear on their own.

“I think the way we’ll know they’ve dropped this ploy is if Mr. Bradley is allowed to fill our guest list with his choices and is allowed to discuss it with us freely. We should expect to see academics, not soldiers, or at least not all soldiers. We’ll ask for some Indians too. From a population of their size, they should be able to fill the class if needed. A few should be no problem.”

“That sounds workable,” Blue agreed. “I’m going to unload some of our shuttles we packed in a hurry, but my trust has been broken. I’m going to leave a few samples of everything vital in a couple of shuttles so we don’t lose everything if we have miscalculated and still need to evacuate.”

Three Fingers nodded. “As that character in the videos says: Make it so.”

Chapter 21

“I’m going to town if you want to come along,” Jed invited Blue. “I’m bringing Terril.”

“I’d like that. I’ve seen all sorts of videos but have never been in a human city. If I wait until I’m caught up on everything, I fear it will never happen. Should I bring anything special?”

“If you have ID, photo ID would be even better. Don’t bring anything that’s a weapon, though a small pocket knife is OK. You should carry your phone too.”

“Then I’m ready. I have my phone and I’ve never owned a pocket knife.”

Jed looked at him trying to decide if he might offend him.

“It might be better not to be in a uniform. Especially a strange one.”

“But this is all I have. I can buy a few items of civilian clothing in town if you have time.”

“I want to do that for Terril too but I think one of my shirts would fit you close enough. May I lend you one?” Jed asked.

“Your kindness is very much appreciated,” Blue assured him. Jed didn’t know it but that was a very close personal thing to offer among the People.

Blue had never been in his module. He looked around interested and innocent of any thought he shouldn’t stare at everything. He followed Jed to his closet when a human might have waited in the main room until invited to come in further. The look on his face made Jed stick the first shirt he grabbed back on the pole like he meant to do that. It was a tropical print with macaws and Blue’s face said it was too radical a change from a dark gray uniform.

When he pulled out a pale denim shirt that was soft from repeated washing there was no expression of alarm. Jed held it by the shoulders pulled wide and held it up against blue.

“That’ll work. It may be a little loose, which is better than too tight. It will be cooler and the bottom is cut off square so you can wear it hanging out.”

Blue pinched something at his neck and unsealed his shirt seam. It appeared to be more like a food bag zip-seal than a zipper. He wasn’t self-conscious at all and Jed found his appearance interesting.

“Your muscles are subtly different, the ribs too,” Jed said drawing a line with his finger on his own chest. “Oh wow, you don’t have any nipples.”

“Indeed, I do,” Blue corrected but amused not offended. “They aren’t as prominent and they’re down here where they belong,” he said with a wink, touching on his hip below his waist band and further to the side. “I also have a navel, but it isn’t centered like yours. It’s in line with my heart,” he said drawing a line like Jed had, “which is offset opposite yours.”

“I have to be extra careful driving and taking care of you,” Jed decided. “If I had to take you to the emergency room at the hospital, they wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what to do for you.”

“Well, some things are basic,” Blue objected. “Seal a wound, or elevate the amount of oxygen a person is breathing. It’s true, we haven’t even started to test what drugs we may share safely.”

“That’s another thing you might sell us,” Jed said. “You can patent them too.

“I’m starting to wonder what you can’t patent,” Blue said. But you’re right. Don’t take me to an emergency medical facility. Since we have been known to the public, we’ve had hundreds of requests from hospitals and universities to supply them a corpse when one of us finally dies. I’m afraid once they had me on a table, they might not be able to resist disassembling me to see what makes me tick.”

“Damn, that’s ghoulish,” Jed said. “You know, hundreds of years ago anatomists had to grave rob to get people to dissect. I can kind of understand the revulsion.”

“I’d look that word up,” Blue promised, “and revulsion too, but I suspect it’s going to be one of those things that take hours to look up all the associated things.”

“You know, they have some pretty decent passive scanning methods now. Maybe it would satisfy them for now to do a full-body MRI. They’d probably pay whoever volunteered.”

“And add MRI to the list. Those three will probably take a morning. I may hand them off to our linguistics team and let them report back to me. There aren’t enough hours in a day,” Blue complained.

Jed hadn’t thought to have a mirror installed so he showed Blue how he looked in a video call.

“Buttons are interesting,” Blue said. Jed noticed he struggled with them. “Do I look presentable?”

“You look just fine. We’ll see if human shoes can fit you and I’ll teach you to tie them. That’s a little harder to figure out than buttons.”

Jed called Terril to meet them at the truck. He needed to get her a real phone instead of a communicator too. The drive out to the highway was rough. Jed suggested Blue should relax and allow himself to sway with the truck a little more instead of bracing himself rigidly. He looked like somebody on a horse for the first time, being jostled with every move. In the mirror, Terril was doing better, but he didn’t want to make Blue feel bad by mentioning it.

At the highway, some of the protesters had been around again. They left behind a pipe stuck in the ground with a hand-painted arrow attached to a sign that declared: ALIEN INVASION LANE.

“I’ll knock that down,” Jed said, irritated.

“No, please,” Blue said. “I think that is what you said about taking yourselves too seriously.”

“Damned if you aren’t a lot easier going than me,” Jed said and left it alone.

* * *

Fleming flew his private plane into North Las Vegas port. He arranged for fueling and turned down a voucher for a car since he was being met. Barnard was sitting in the café waiting for him. He tried to keep his bag but Barnard quietly insisted anyone watching would expect a driver to take care of it for him. He kept his mouth shut after that, not telling Barnard how happy he was to meet him in person until they were in the privacy of the vehicle.

He also didn’t object to having the door held for him to use the rear seat, though he’d have much rather rode in the front. The Florida heat he’d left was nothing compared to stepping into this Nevada furnace. He was glad Barnard left the white Tahoe running to keep it cool.

“I haven’t been to Las Vegas for years,” Fleming said. “That for a few trade shows and I flew in commercial because I just had an old Cessna that wasn’t up to that big of a trip.”

“What are you flying now?” Barnard asked.

“A twin inline turboprop Embraer – Scaled Composites four-seater. More truthfully a two-seater with room for luggage or a couple of very small people who like each other in the rear.”

“Can you make it from Florida without refueling?” Barnard wondered.

“You can if you run one engine at about sixty-five percent power. That can get you about four-hundred eighty kilometers an hour. If you run both at about seventy percent it can push the Mach so close you start to buffet That’s fine to go about five-hundred fifty kilometers. But you waste all that speed and burn a lot of dollars by needing to stop, refuel, and climb back to altitude to reach Nevada.”

“Sounds expensive,” Barnard said.

“It is, unless you start comparing it to fancy boats. Then it seems like a bargain.”

That made Barnard smile.

“Are you aware you have somebody following you?” Fleming asked.

“Nope. I’m aware somebody is following you,” Barnard said. He glanced in the mirror to see if Fleming wanted to refute that.

“Yeah, I’ve been getting that now and then,” Fleming admitted. “A few times, I thought it was local news reporters, but I doubt that they’d watch my flight plans or follow me here.”

“No, it will be some Federal agency, though so many are interested I wouldn’t guess which one. If they were going to stop us, they’d probably have had a local cop pull us over by now,” Barnard said.

“They’re staying well back and I think they switched off once already,” Fleming said.

“You did get a bit of a reputation saving that crewman,” Barnard said. “They can probably imagine you saying, As God is my witness, he looked like an alligator to me, Your Honor.”

Fleming laughed.

“I’ve been given all sorts of grief about that, with people mentioning buck fever and asking if I stopped shooting because I ran out of ammo? But you managed to put a new twist on it.”

* * *

The first stop Jed made on the edge of town was a cheap big box store. He parked on the edge of the lot and set his security system to alert him by his phone if anybody approached it. He had a four-camera cluster with overlapping views hanging inside the cab so it was pretty effective. He bought as high-end a phone as the store carried and prepaid a year’s service. They found some cheap clothing for Blue and he suggested sticking with men’s clothing for Terril. Her build wasn’t like a human female and the fit wouldn’t be a problem. They both got t-shirts, shorts, and work pants that they liked better than dress slacks. Blue found a straw hat that he absolutely had to own.

There were no dressing rooms and he had to stop Terril from peeling off her uniform top to try a new one on. The aliens gave each other an odd look when he explained it was against custom and would attract unwanted attention. He had expected all sorts of unwanted attention just from their appearance and instead all they got was a few lingering glances. In fairness, some of the other Walzon shoppers looked just as bizarre in their own way with colored hair, tats, and wild clothing. The aliens watched everything he did closely including how he paid. When they returned to the truck, he let Terril know it would be fine to swap shirts in the privacy of his truck.

Their next stop was the gun store he’d used previously. It was a shooter’s store with serious accessories, gunsmithing services, and knowledgeable people. Not the sort of gun store and range making their money by selling the thrill of shooting a machinegun to tourists. Many of them coming from countries where they couldn’t legally touch a gun.

It was the same two fellows at the store he’d dealt with before. You’d think from their lack of any reaction that they had aliens visit the store daily. Jed briefly wished he had something like a giant land-going octopus to walk in with him just to crack their composure.

“Mr. Murphy,” the older man acknowledged him with a nod of his head.

“Frank, this is Blue,” Jed said. “He’s the aliens’ number two in command and head guy locally. This is Terril who is assigned to assist me. I’m going to use the long guns we bought earlier for their for-profit corporation as training aids. I decided we need a fifty caliber too. They’re likely to run into that caliber of weapon or foreign equivalent and need to understand them.”

“We have a few rifles,” Frank said. “If you want an M2 we rarely even know of one for sale. Their price never seems to stop escalating either. It’s ridiculous and most of them are actively making money in the tourist trade. When one comes on the market from a private collector it’s usually an estate sale and gets locked into corporate ownership.”

“No, we don’t need a Ma Deuce. A rifle will train on the ballistics and penetration. I’d rather an automatic than a bolt action though,” Jed said.

“We have an older Barrett that isn’t all beat-up,” Frank said tentatively.

“That would be perfect. It’s a training weapon so figure we’ll beat it up,” Jed said. “Also, a thousand rounds of ammo, half match, half any mix of surplus that’s not tracer.”

“Have you priced Hornady match ammo lately?” Frank asked.

“Doesn’t matter. We need it,” Jed said. “We’ll take whatever you can spare today.”

“That will be special order and may take a week,” Franks said.

“Run it out to us when you get it. You know where we are don’t you?” Jed asked.

“We can give you seven boxes of ten today. It’s surplus so only about twelve bucks a round. I need to have a couple of boxes held back in case somebody else wants one of the other fifty calibers. The A-MAX we’ll only markup twenty percent. That’s a big enough order that we’ll add to it to our stock because it will qualify for a discount.”

“Thank you. Let’s see the Barrett, please. Then I’d like to explore what pistols fit my friend’s hands,” Jed said.”

After Frank went in the back Jed turned to Blue.

“Do you guys have hand guns? I’ve never seen any of you with one.”

“We have three. They are in a lock box by the captain’s station on the bridge. I haven’t bothered to bring them down but I will when we leave the Protector with just a com watch. A pistol isn’t much use for Bugs or Tigers and three was more than sufficient for the unlikely event of a mutiny.”

“Energy or projectile?” Jed asked.

“Projectile, but electrically driven, not chemical like yours.”

“I’d like to see one when you bring them down.”

“I’ll give you one for your service,” Blue promised. “I’d have been happy to be supplied one.”

Frank returned with the rifle and put it on the counter open ejection port up with the empty magazine beside it. It had a scope on it which he hadn’t mentioned.

Jed inspected it with particular attention to the bore.

“This is fine, but we need you to upgrade the scope to one like my Sako with the appropriate reticles and ballistic data in the computer. Put a newer style muzzle brake on it too. This kind throws a cloud of ground litter and dust back on you when you fire it. If you can find them, sell us a couple of extra magazines too.”

“They still have new available. How about if we get all that done and bring it out with the ammo?”

“That works. I’ll zero it in out on our site.”

“Good, because the backstop on our range isn’t up to handling this.”

Blue didn’t seem very interested, but Terril was leaning forward fascinated.

“May one handle this, please?”

“Sure, if you aren’t used to handling arms, mind where you point it and keep your fingers off the trigger,” Jed warned her.

“I’ve never, but my father made houses. I’d handle a bolt and stud gun the same.”

Terril picked it up. She snapped it to her shoulder and drew a bead on a ceiling light fixture, then rolled it around in her hands looking at it. When she was satisfied, she sat it lightly on the counter.

Frank wasn’t any dummy. He was close to sixty if not there yet, and had been around the barn a few times. The sort who if you said that about him his friends would agree and add: both ways. It was satisfying that he finally displayed some surprise now, unlike when they walked in. He didn’t say anything but looked Jed in the eye and set his mouth a bit tight. Jed just smiled at him. He was as surprised as Frank but wasn’t about to show it. Terril, visibly the thinner of the two aliens, hadn’t grasped the rifle with the tight grip a fourteen-kilogram rifle should require to lift. She held it in a loose finger tip hold that said its weight was insignificant to her.

Nothing more was said about it and they moved on to pistols. It turned out the alien’s extra thumb worked perfectly with an extended magazine to fully utilize their grip. When dainty Terril shot a massive fifty caliber Desert Eagle hand canon like she was controlling a twenty-two-caliber target pistol, Frank gave Jed the old fish eye again but still said nothing.

They left without buying any pistols, though Jed thought Terril looked disappointed. He was learning their expressions but some were still beyond him. He searched his phone and added a stop at a nearby medical supply house. He suggested it would go faster if he went in alone and promised it would be a brief stop.

“I’d like one of those devices that measures your grip,” he told the clerk. Jed made a squeezing motion with his hand to illustrate what he wanted.

The clerk looked him over with a full up and down.

“If you didn’t use the technical name for it, I assume you are using it for exercise. You aren’t a physical therapist, are you?”

“No. As you can see, I’m not a body builder either but I want it for non-medical purposes.”

“Well, the medical version has all sorts of requirements like the accuracy being traceable to the National Bureau of Standards lab. If you go down the street three lights, there is an exercise and gym equipment sales store. You can get the same thing there without the medical device certification sticker on it for a fifth of the price.”

“Thank you, that’s very kind of you to tell me,” Jed said.

“That’s OK, nobody who isn’t a doc ever wants to pay two thousand for one.”

“They didn’t have what I want,” Jed said when he returned. The aliens were terribly patient. At the next stop, Jed reconsidered. “Come on in with me if you want.”

They had stools at the sales counter and Jed took one with the aliens copying him.

“These are the aliens all over the news?” the young man asked Jed.

Unlike Frank, he wasn’t shy to show his surprise and interest.

“Yes, they speak fairly good English now so you can speak with them too.”

The fellow nodded but had nothing sensible to say to them.

“You’ll notice they have two thumbs,” Jed said. “We are interested in a grip meter for their gym but want to see if you have one that will fit their hand.”

“OK. The ninety-kilogram or the hundred-eighty-kilogram model?”

“The higher range one for sure,” Jed said.

The little machine was in a plain white cardboard box and the clerk unpacked it for them. Jed intended to have the aliens test it and if that satisfied his curiosity, he’d find some reason to not buy it.

The clerk opened the battery compartment, pulled out a plastic shim insulating the battery, and turned the device on before handing it to Jed.

“This is to measure your hand squeeze,” he told Terril. He demonstrated by gently compressing the pull handle against the frame. The display showed a hundred and twenty kilograms without much effort. He pressed the reset to bring it back to zero.

“Give it a good hard squeeze,” he urged her.

It was plenty wide for her to get both thumbs over the end bar. She didn’t jerk it but put on a steadily increasing pressure. Jed saw the meter rise through the second-place numbers but at the end, there was a >CRINK< and the loop for her fingers abruptly snapped against the thumb bar. The display read ERROR and it was clearly busted, the pull loop not rebounding. Terril was dismayed.

“Well, we bought this one, but I’m afraid we’re looking for something a bit more robust,” Jed said. He just handed the shocked clerk his card.

“You shouldn’t have to pay for a defective item, should you?” Blue asked quietly when the clerk stepped away. He still didn’t get it.

“It wasn’t defective,” Jed said. “You guys are that much stronger than us.”

Blue was as shocked as the clerk.

“How could we possibly get this far along and nobody noticed this?” he asked.

“I guess everybody has been too polite to suggest arm wrestling,” Jed guessed. “You probably should let all your people know to be careful with humans. If they got into some good-natured horseplay, they could accidentally hurt someone.”

Blue was checking that expression on his phone.

“Do horses really play that roughly with each other?” he asked.

“Sure, they get pretty boisterous running and bumping each other,” Jed said. “Another idiom for it is rough-housing. But if you’re not a five-hundred-kilogram pony you can’t join in. They can seriously mess you up just stepping on your foot.”

“I’ll be careful my friend,” Blue promised.

* * *

“Do you have accommodations for humans here?” Fleming asked when Barnard drove into the countryside. “I thought you might put me up in town and come back for me tomorrow. That’s when Blue indicated the shuttle would be going up.”

“I’m sure Blue would have told you if we were going to do that. He isn’t one to leave something like that unsaid. We have a module set up for hired help but it isn’t a bunkhouse. It has six decent little rooms and only half are occupied, though the two bathrooms are shared. I wouldn’t think to put you there. The drivers would have too many snoopy questions about who you are and how you rate a shuttle ride. Jed and I helped Blue hire them locally but I’m still not sure none of them are spies. The one fellow seems to spend almost every other night in town. But then everything makes me suspicious.”

“I like that in a man,” Fleming said. “Where am I staying then?”

“Jed and I both have private modules with plenty of room. He’s off in town so you get to stay with me. I had housekeeping bring you a bed in. I hope you weren’t counting on being in town so you could visit the casinos.”

“I got that out of my system years ago,” Fleming assured him.

* * *

They were late coming back from Vegas. It was worth it because the aliens had never seen a display like the lights in Las Vegas at night. Blue said it was wasteful, silly, and magnificent. Terrill was stunned beyond words.

“Will you be able to drive up our road in the night?” Blue worried.

“Not a problem,” Jed assured him.

“Now, we’ll do a little light show of our own,” Jed said when they turned off the county road.

He reached down at the bottom of the dash and flipped six toggles. The desert lit up like daylight to a couple of hundred meters away. The panels of lights had so many point sources there weren’t distinct shadows. There were soft-edged shadows behind every large rock and plant.

“That’s the same intense sort of light as your flashlight we took,” Blue said.

“About the same as two hundred of them,” Jed agreed, “and a few extra on the front bumper. If you want, we can stick a little rod in the dirt every fifty meters or so along the trail with a little reflector at the tip. It would make it a lot easier for a vehicle with just the stock headlights.”

“Maybe later,” Blue said. “For right now, I’m happy for it to be difficult to visit us in the night.”

“We could put a gate up at the road but it’s sort of silly with no fence on each side,” Jed said. “The trail itself works fine to keep out most people like the demonstrators who got stuck. They didn’t have any water and could have been in serious trouble if they’d had to walk further or if nobody had come along soon. You might put a sign up, warning the trail is impassible for normal autos.

“If you want to make it easier for us, why don’t you grade and improve the trail from about a kilometer in? I can’t imagine most people would last long enough to find out it got better.”

“That’s an interesting idea,” Blue said. “Most of the contractors got in and out just fine but a few of them complained about how much extra time it took.”

“Shame on them if they didn’t visit or investigate the job site and figure that in their bid,” Jed said.

“Can you arrange for our vehicles to get similar lights?” Blue asked. “We haven’t needed to go to or from town in the dark but this would make it safer if it should be needed. I’m conflicted. I like it being hard to reach us but would like to be able to use a couple of normal ground cars or light trucks to do business in town. We’d have to grade or even pave to the county road to do that.”

“You could put a gate somewhere along the road where it would be difficult to bypass,” Jed said. “It doesn’t have to be right at the road. If you can do it after where the road cuts off to you that will avoid making enemies of the people who already used this trail. Just grading it smooth regularly and spread gravel a few places should be plenty. You can buy a machine to do that.”

“Another thing to do. I have no idea what those machines are called or who to call to buy one.

“Ask your deputy to have somebody from the county call you and tell you what they use and who sells it,” Jed suggested. “I don’t have any more idea about that than you do.”

“Somehow, I find it reassuring to discover you have some limitations,” Blue said.

Chapter 22

The next morning Blue considered wearing one of his new shirts. It just felt wrong to do it while he was engaged in his duties as second in command. He reluctantly set them aside for the next time he had some rare personal time and put on his usual uniform. Today Fleming would get his shuttle ride but he wouldn’t see him off. Barnard would see to it that he boarded. He went to his office to find Beelus waiting to speak with him.

“I’m happy to report Mr. Bradley said he has a class ready to be instructed the day after tomorrow. He told me the student’s qualifications before I could ask,” Beelus told Blue. “There is one person attached to the military and he is an academic person too. There was no talk of secrecy or classification.”

“Did he address the military trying to take control of the classes?”

“Not a single word,” Beelus said. “As if it never happened. It makes no sense to me.”

“No indeed. Jed and Barnard explained he may be under gag orders both before and after. If we confronted him, he’d be forced to say he couldn’t discuss it if he could even say that much. At worst he might be obligated to lie to us. I have no desire to back him into a corner or humiliate him.”

“That expression transliterates,” Beelus said.

“It would, wouldn’t it? That’s the nature of corners to trap things. The amazing thing is not that we say it the same but that we’re so much alike we both build spaces with corners.”

“Hadn’t thought about that,” Beelus admitted. “Some aliens might burrow or make nests like green stingers. I wonder what Bugs do on their worlds?”

“Hope that they never send you to find out,” Blue said. “If their ships are any indication, they don’t find right angles more attractive than any other. Nor any simple geometric shape attractive.”

“Little chance I’ll be sent anywhere again,” Beelus said. Blue didn’t argue.

“What follows after your introduction to the nature of space?” Blue asked.

“That’s delayed for now. We’re going to have an introductory discussion about fusion technologies first because the correct people weren’t immediately available,” Beelus said but looked upset.

“Is there a problem about that?” Blue asked.

“I’m afraid it may be one of those things that are all tied up in secrets and classified. I’ve looked on the internet and nowhere does anyone admit having a working commercial fusion power system. Yet we saw neutrino sources when we approached this world. Maybe we should have run a thorough sensor survey to see how many exist, where they are, and detail their emissions.”

“Our sensors aren’t very precise,” Blue pointed out. “It’s hard enough to detect the slippery little devils at all without getting detailed images and a precise spectrum. I realize now those were military ships we saw on our first approach but surely they wouldn’t keep something so valuable to everyone a military secret?”

“I wouldn’t think so either,” Beelus agreed. “Fusion transforms the economy but I’m not seeing any evidence of it in the civilian economy. Almost everything here seems to run on oil or natural gas. I’m confused and it doesn’t make any sense to me. I feel they are being dishonest. The methods they claim to be investigating on the internet sound silly and ill-conceived. It even occurred to me they were just ways to hide funding since they love secrecy so. It could be I just lack the correct words to add to my search terms to unravel the whole puzzle.”

“This is why we have allies in Jed and Barnard working for us and we can call on Dr. James and Fleming even if we don’t employ them. Ask them,” Blue instructed, “and I want to sit in on it. Jed is scheduled to have lunch with me. Why don’t you see if Barnard can join us and we’ll all discuss this as we dine together?”

“Is that a human custom, to do business at meals?” Beelus asked.

“I’m not sure if it’s a human custom or Jed’s custom, but it seems to be working for us. He doesn’t interrupt me with all sorts of questions until our set time together, and I have to admit it got me sitting down to a real meal instead of grabbing a ration bar.”

“Very well, I’ll see if Barnard can come and bring his own meal along,” Beelus said.

* * *

“He didn’t bring up the makeup of the group in the helicopter?” Winston Porter asked.

“Not a word. He treated it just like me, like it never happened, including any reference to the crash happening,” Bradley said. “They are under no compulsion to be silent. If they did it, Blue has nerves of steel to brazen it out with us. They also don’t seem to have noticed that the helicopter crash never appeared on the news networks. We know they are still watching our news and other programs to expand their understanding of us and English. Perhaps they don’t know that’s unusual for any sort of air crash to not be reported. You’d think there was no connection between the crash and the students that were sent to them. It appears they expect us to reciprocate by not noticing they weren’t there long enough for a class to be conducted. There are a lot of questions not being asked all around. Nobody has ever asked me about the call Beelus made when the students weren’t who he expected.”

“They did turn them away but you can forget about them downing the copter directly. I was told unofficially that traces on the wreck match European explosives,” Porter said. “Exotic, but only human in origin.”

Bradley thought on that a bit.

“They have done a remarkable job of communicating with us. However, it seems a stretch to imagine the aliens have been able to develop their own intelligence nets and are aware of how things work so well that they’d be able to hire mercenaries. I don’t think we can pin this one on them.”

“No, even the people who leaked that information to me weren’t paranoid enough to think they hired European contractors. They didn’t have time to arrange anything that complicated, even if somebody leaked the switch of students to them. Somebody did it, but I’d say it was somebody that doesn’t want us to get their tech at all. Not anyone worried about which US faction gets it. Still, the new group will be flying in from Las Vegas. I’ve held the helicopter under a lock down in a hanger, after a very thorough inspection. I’ve got security riding with them that will remain with the copter the entire time it is on the ground. Even with all that I’d still rather not ride with them.”

“The new group doesn’t know about the previous downing, does it?” Porter asked.

“Not from me. There is one person that is a Space Force instructor. They might tell him. I don’t know. I certainly wouldn’t if I wanted him to board. He is eminently qualified and there was no reason to exclude him. It might be seen as retaliation to reject him too.”

“It’s a small test to see if the aliens will complain about his military connection,” Porter decided.

“They know and passed that. I just really wish we knew what happened with the first class.”

“Have you thought of just asking them?” Porter suggested.

Bradley looked horrified.

“You aren’t going to order me to, are you? Why should they answer?”

“I don’t know. Have you caught them lying to you about anything?” Porter asked.

“No, but that just isn’t how things are done,” Bradley protested.

“True, but the aliens probably don’t know that either.”

* * *

Blue was eating something that looked suspiciously like a pot pie. It steamed when he broke the crust and it had chunks of this and that some of which were green. Beelus had a rather large bowl of something that looked like a watery chili. The situation was far enough outside the aliens’ custom for Beelus to look uncomfortable dining with his commander. It struck Beelus funny that his man Dorton could sit down with the commander or humans without the slightest self-consciousness or any worry about how it could impact his duties or career like he was suffering. He simply wasn’t able to turn off his feelings that it wasn’t quite proper. If he had described Dorton’s eccentricities to Jed and Barnard they would have immediately recognized him as being on the spectrum. That was a whole area on the fringes of human behavior they didn’t know existed yet.

Jed had a stacked corned beef sandwich with cheese dripping down the side after he microwaved it. Barnard had a dish to rival the one Beelus had but filled with a bright curry full of huge prawns and wicked little green peppers. Beelus didn’t know it, but those tiny peppers were why his eyes were irritated sitting across the table from him. They hadn’t tested hot peppers yet for safety. They would prove to be safe even though the first alien to taste them would be sure he was poisoned and dying.

“I have a few unexciting questions I’ll defer to next time so Beelus can put some things worrying him to you,” Blue volunteered.

“Sure, what would you like to know?” Jed asked. He gathered up his sandwich and took a bite that surprised Beelus. He couldn’t see how he was going to fit it in his mouth. The thought came into his mind that a bite from a human might be a greater danger than he’d imagined.

“We’re going to have an informal get-together and discussion about fusion power soon. The first meeting won’t be a class,” Beelus said. “Rather we’ll discuss the differences in our technologies and from that decide how many classes we’ll need and define the areas we’ll cover.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jed said. “I’m no physicist but even I know the common fusion reactions using the three isotopes of hydrogen are well know to our human scientists. I’m kind of hazy about the fusion reactions using other elements like lithium and boron. But I’m sure they’ve been studied. I know that theoretically, all the elements up to iron can yield energy from fusion. I think I’ve read that happens in stars. You shouldn’t have to waste a lot of time discussing the basics with them for very long before you’re all up to speed.”

“That’s encouraging,” Beelus said. “However, I’m concerned I’ll look foolish speaking with these humans who aren’t allies like you. I’m looking on your internet and I don’t see any articles about commercial fusion power. Even articles and papers with recent dates talk about experimental devices trying to get a high enough power output over-unity to make it financially viable. Frankly some of the machines they claim to be building show no hope of ever achieving that. We do have a similar history of trying some rather silly ideas out thousands of years ago. Some of them, like a huge torus with magnetic confinement, are so expensive I wondered if they aren’t fake projects to cover up money being diverted to other things.”

When Jed looked shocked, he added. “You do seem to love your secrecy.”

“No, there are other easier ways to cover up funding black projects,” Jed assured him.

“At least the majority of them are real projects,” Barnard spoke up and assured him. “We may look like idiots to you with the advantage of hindsight. I can’t say I’m proud of our species record on developing fusion power. It’s one of those things that they have been predicting it will just take one more trillion-dollar experiment and we’ll have a fusion economy twenty years from now. Unfortunately, they have been predicting it is just twenty years out for the last century.”

“But we saw neutrino emissions when we approached your planet,” Blue said. “We didn’t know the name for it, or even realize it was military at first, but saw an aircraft carrier group with odd neutrino sources. There seemed to be several. Our sensors aren’t that great, but they didn’t all seem to correspond to the ships we saw. When they shot down one of our better drones trying to get a closer look at them, we figured out pretty quickly they were military.”

“Those were nuke boats,” Jed said, “but the ones that appeared where you didn’t see any boat were probably attack submarines escorting the carrier. I’m surprised you can image those emissions at all. Neutrinos are very hard to detect much less sense enough of them to construct an image.”

“This is what I don’t understand,” Beelus said. “You aren’t making any sense to me. If you have fusion power for boats, why don’t you have it for civilian power generation?”

“They’re nuke boats, but not fusion,” Barnard said slowly. “They run on fission power.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Beelus said. “There isn’t any way to extract power from fission the other side of nuclear stability from iron until you are clear into the super heavy elements. Unless you’ve devised some way to weaken the nuclear forces to prompt fission?”

“No, we do just what you said,” Barnard said. “We use the super heavy elements, uranium, and thorium. We create substantial amounts of transuranic elements like plutonium too.”

Beelus looked up plutonium on his computer. When it wasn’t in his dictionary, he started looking up references on the web. His race never created amounts of plutonium large enough to be visible.

Barnard didn’t wait on him, pressing ahead impatiently.

“The only real effective use of fusion power we’ve developed is in large atomic bombs.”

Beelus interrupted his search and laughed at him.

“Oh yes. I love reading your science fiction and playing video war games. I’ll be happy to hear all about your blasters, phasers, photon torpedoes, and death stars too.”

Jed and Barnard slowly turned their heads and looked at each other, dumbfounded.

“Oh shit,” Beelus said.

“Yep, I’m so glad I don’t have to explain,” Jed said. “We just assumed you had the tech.”

“But only a minor fraction of uranium is readily fissionable,” Beelus protested. “To cause the release of any significant power requires continually bombarding the material with a supply of low energy neutrons. It takes so much energy to do that I’m not sure it is any more practical than some of your bizarre fusion schemes.”

“You can get natural uranium to sustain a chain reaction if you build a rather large mass of it with interspaced material that slows neutrons down,” Barnard assured him. “The geometry is important and it’s difficult to create such a stack of those materials. In fact, that’s why we call it a pile. You can build one by stacking up a huge pile of hundreds of blocks of graphite and uranium.”

“I can’t start to imagine all the problems that would present,” Beelus objected. “Uranium and those other metals are toxic and burn in air. The products of fission would be unstable and quickly pollute everything around that pile. The whole thing would be a toxic radioactive mess and I have no idea how you could control it much less stop it. How could you extract the energy? It would be huge and heavy. I can’t picture it fitting in a shuttle even if you could make it go off like a bomb. It seems to me it would just get hot slowly until it melted and made a smoking toxic radioactive mess.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely one of the big hazards of nuclear power,” Barnard agreed. “There’s a deep lack of trust among the public since that has happened a time or two. It kept large plants from being built for several years until the need became overwhelming. There are a lot more small, sealed reactors producing power locally now than huge plants feeding power into a continental grid. That method had too much transmission loss anyhow.

“It’s like anything else. If you tried to describe making steel to a people that never had done it at all, the details of how it can go wrong would seem overwhelming. They’d object it turns back to rust too easily to be very useful anyway. You have so very much to learn to alloy it, heat-treat it, and develop all the protective coverings such as painting or plating it to make it useful.”

“This is not an elaborate joke you’re trying to, what was that word? Foist off on us?”

“Nope, sorry to tell you, it’s not a video game fiction at all,” Jed said.

Beelus and Blue sat silent for a few minutes absorbing that.

“OK, assuming for the moment that I believe all that,” Beelus asked, “please tell me how you make such a thing small enough to transport. Isn’t it difficult to deliver a huge bomb in a special truck? Do you dig a hole and plant it on the expected route of an invading army?”

“No, you simply separate all the fissionable isotope from the bulk of the material. In this case, the atomic weights of the common isotopes are 238 and 235. The 235 is the good stuff. There are all sorts of technologies to do that. We haven’t stood still on that either. Some of them are quite efficient now. It’s more complicated than that describing the full fuel cycle in detail but that’s the basic tech.”

“They’d have to be,” Beelus marveled. “Separating common hydrogen from its isotope of double the weight is difficult enough. How did you ever develop the tech? It isn’t like making steel that can be done on a small scale before you progressively develop ways to create it by the tons. I can’t imagine how much wealth it took to bring that technology to a working level. All the problems would quickly deter anyone trying it on a small scale.”

“They’re all filthy rich,” Blue quoted.

“You told me that story,” Beelus said. “Even Shiny had no idea how right he was.”

“It was because we still have same-species conflict,” Jed said. “There was a huge war, a worldwide war between conflicting models of governance on separate continents. The second such war in which the weapons were mechanical and complex. We just barely had the technology to make it work and saw it as a way to end the war with an overwhelming weapon. It was a vast project that took a significant portion of the richest nation’s wealth to create a weapon. Indeed, the war was fought with borrowed money far beyond their means, since their survival was at stake. If they lost, the cost wouldn’t matter. A few decades previous and it would have been beyond our technology to do it. Or if the sides had been less evenly matched and victory for the Americans certain they might not have spent the money. The other side knew of the theoretical potential so that spurred them on too. The opposing governments couldn’t muster the resources needed, had their needed assets ruthlessly attacked, and made critical errors in their development.”

“It's also why we still don’t have one political system for the planet,” Barnard said. “Once several large nations had nuclear weapons there was no possibility of a world uniting war without the level of destruction being more than anyone wanted to contemplate.”

“Mutually Assured Destruction,” Blue slowly intoned. “Malto mentioned that because he felt you were being over dramatic.”

“No, it was hard policy for some time,” Jed said. “They wanted to be able to hit any important target three times. Break it into pieces, break those to gravel, and then reduce it to sand. They worried that beyond the things targeted a serious exchange between big nations would ruin the climate of the northern hemisphere for years.”

“How could it have such a huge effect?” Blue asked, horrified.

“The rising fireball sucks tons of dirt and vaporized target into the upper atmosphere. Also, there would be continuing fires around the cities and in forests in some places. All that dust and soot and smoke doesn’t come down for a long time. It would block the sun. It would probably be less of a problem now. They’ve cut back from when both sides maintained tens of thousands of weapons.”

It was Beelus and Blue’s turn to just look at each other.

“Filthy rich,” Beelus repeated.

“How do you create a fusion explosion without a fission trigger?” Barnard demanded.

“We don’t,” Blue said.

“That has to make fighting in space much more difficult,” Barnard said.

“I’m afraid you are about to correct that for us,” Blue said.

All four of them sat with their food getting cold, overwhelmed with all the implications.

“I’m certainly glad we asked you about this before I cracked all funny with my students about death stars and phasers,” Beelus said.

“If you want to refuse to discuss nuclear weapons tech with our people we’ll keep your secret,” Jed offered. “They’ll just assume you have way better and you don’t want to upset the balance of power among the primitives.”

“No,” Blue insisted firmly. “If we turn to lying to you, we’ll eventually get caught. We’d have to keep all our people from talking to you or live in terror of some cook or technician saying something that will reveal it all. It’s unworkable. They’ll just have to think less of us for never developing that technology if they want to. We certainly have other things to offer.”

“They will also know now that you can’t turn them into a fused glassy plain,” Barnard pointed out. “That shouldn’t be the basis of respect, but for some people, it’s the only thing they respect.”

“My commander and I have been telling our soldiers we couldn’t fight millions of you even if you had only had sticks and stones. Little did I imagine the reality of it,” Blue said.

“My curry is cold. I’m going to go nuke it and avoid unpleasant talk when I come back to finish it. Now that we know the reality of it, we’ll just have to deal with it,” Barnard declared.

Blue and Beelus broke down in hysterical laughter.

“What?” Barnard asked. He hadn’t said anything funny.

“We never understood why you called microwaving your meal nuking it,” Blue said. “You people have lived with this so long you’ve normalized it. I’d bet anything people weren’t so casual about it when it was a new thing.”

“Oh, no. They had some silly idea it could kill off everybody,” Barnard said and rolled his eyes. “But there are cities that got nuked and except for carefully preserved places to memorialize it you’d never know what happened there.”

“You are all quite insane, do you know that?” Blue asked.

“That may be how we deal with it,” Jed admitted.

As Barnard suggested, they dropped the topic for the moment. Everyone was overwhelmed with it and needed to process the implications before they moved on to decision-making.

“The day after tomorrow,” Beelus said when he got up to leave, “you’ll be at the class again won’t you? It would have been a disaster last time without you.”

“Absolutely, I want to be there,” Jed assured him.

* * *

Fleming fairly babbled about his flight. Barnard took him to Jed’s modular and they cooked a late supper outside on his grill. When he finally ran down, he realized how amused his companions looked.

“So did anything interesting happen here today?” he asked a little embarrassed.

“Very much so. We found out the aliens don’t have nukes,” Barnard said.

“But, that’s like 1940s technology,” Fleming protested.

“Don’t tell Blue that. You’ll hurt his feelings,” Jed advised him.

“How can they have a star drive and not nukes?” Fleming persisted.

“We explained how we happened to develop them at lunch today,” Barnard said. “They seemed to find it plausible that it was a very unusual set of historic circumstances unlike any they shared that permitted the tech’s development. If you want to watch my recording of it, I’ll let you play it. I don’t feel like running through the whole argument again. Feel free to tell me if you think it is rubbish.”

“Please. I have a hard time understanding that. I had this assumption that discoveries depended on each other so much that once one thing was invented a bunch of other related things would just naturally follow. Like airplanes needed light internal combustion engines or telegraphs needed cheap wire and batteries to become practical.”

“They might very well take the other side and say - How can you possibly have humongous thermonuclear explosives and never have figured out a star drive?” Barnard suggested half facetiously.

“This is going to change everything,” Fleming said, suddenly deciding to believe them without examining Barnard’s recording.

“Well sure,” Jed said. “Judging by the shock Blue and Beelus showed today they know it too. We were all talked out and haven’t discussed it in any detail yet. It’s going to take some careful thought to see how it changes everything. Don’t imagine they won’t catch up quickly. There’s so much about the development of the atomic bomb on the internet or even just in a public library that there is no hiding it from them. They know the right terms to search now, and I’d be shocked if they aren’t hard at work downloading everything they can find on it right now.

“They will have all that information gathered before we ever build a drive with them and go back looking for their home. They’d have to be pretty stupid not to be able to build a simple gun-type of a nuclear device with the personnel they have here now. Once they get back to their worlds with lots of very smart people available, they’ll catch up on most of the rest of the tech in a few months.”

“Some commanders might decide to destroy the tech and sacrifice themselves to being in exile to keep us from showing up at their home worlds,” Fleming speculated. “After all, we might just decide to conquer them like the Bugs and Tigers they told us about have tried to do.”

“With the numbers reversed millions to one against us?” Jed asked. “I don’t think even nukes can eliminate that big of an advantage. That’s on one world. We won’t catch up with them building ships for a long time, if ever. If we attacked and even one ship got away, they would mobilize multiple worlds against us. We’d be in a very precarious position only having our one world to defend against many.

“On the other hand. This is going to eliminate their Bug and Tiger problem.”

“Oh my God. We’re going to precipitate an interstellar war,” Fleming said.

“Not at all,” Barnard insisted. “They’re already waging an ugly, protracted interstellar war. We’re going to give them the means to end it. From the sounds of it, the Bugs and the Tigers are the bad guys by any measure humans would apply. We can be glad the People found us before the others.”

“I’m glad it took some time to find out they don’t have nukes,” Jed said. “I’m not sure but what somebody might have decided they should be better safe than sorry, and eliminated them before they became public knowledge. Then we’d never know the Bugs and Tigers were out there until maybe some day they showed up, guns blazing. We’d be limited to fighting them in our solar system with no way to take the fight to them. They could wear us down and never be in danger on their home worlds.”

“When we do get a working drive from them, we better arm our explorers,” Barnard said. “If the People already found two hostile races in their stellar vicinity that makes me expect it to be common. We better be prepared to defend ourselves and not lead trouble back home.”

“Have they shared their information on the Bugs and Tigers?” Fleming wondered.

“Oh yes,” Barnard said. “Don’t expect the Tigers to look like our tigers. They just picked the word for the scariest predator they could find early on. They are more like Centaurs. Forward leaning rather than straight upright, but with ridiculous little skinny arms and hands up close to their heads like a T-Rex for feeding. If you want to look at the Bugs, I suggest you wait until the morning or you’ll be up all night with bad dreams. They’re like the worst horror movie you’ll ever see.”

Fleming got a slow smile.

“Maybe the Bugs will feel the same about us.”

* * *

“Let me make a statement before we begin,” Beelus said to the assembled scholars. Jed was present as he promised. He was sitting on a lawn chair where he could watch both the class and Beelus and his assistants. Nobody objected to his presence or the fact he was visibly armed this time. He watched all of the humans closely to see how they would react to Beelus’ opening statement. He’d reviewed it.

“I’ve been studying everything I could find on your internet about fusion power. I’ve spoken with a few friends we have among the humans about what I found to confirm my understanding. First of all, most of the current experiments about magnetic and high-temperature confinement are useless. The only such working systems of which we are aware use gravitational heating and confinement and are called stars. You’d be well advised to abandon those efforts and cut your losses even if well along.

“I have no opinion on the idea of laser pressure implosion because we never developed the energy level of lasers that you are already utilizing. It is novel and interesting. I do wonder if it might work as an alternative space drive system. I wish you luck pursuing it.

“One of my human advisors said your only successful generation of fusion power has been in atomic explosives that require a fission energy source to initiate it. The People have never developed that technology and the adversary races we’ve been dealing with in a long-term struggle don’t have that tech either. It was pointed out to me that you have a recent history of self-race conflict we lack, that this tech was developed right at a narrow window of opportunity, historically speaking. You just barely had the theory and ability to act on it appear right at a time when you had both a reason and the ability to make a massive investment to develop it as a matter of survival. Any other time the expenditure would have been prohibitive or unnecessary.

“Electrostatic confinement can work, but as you are already finding out, it lacks the energy density needed for mobile uses.

“You will find we have several means of generating fusion power, but they are all dependent on establishing favorable conditions to maximize the quantum tunneling of fuel particles together. A hot plasma is among the least favorable environments for that to occur.”

“I understand you have experimented with saturated metallic matrixes to achieve a favorable environment, but using crude bulk materials that have no engineered pathways to feed hydrogen and remove both helium and materials that invariably contaminate the critical points in the matrix that are acting as a catalyst. We can explain how to create the needed engineered material by layering nano composites and complex single crystals.

“I imagine this is enough to raise all sorts of questions already. So, I’ll pause here and let you speak on your first impressions and quiz me.”

Two hours later Beelus dismissed them. Most wanted to shake his hand and a few asked to take a picture with him. They looked tired, shocked, and Jed noted two looked irritated if not outright angry.

“What do you think?” Beelus asked Jed. He was as wrung out as any of the students even though he hadn’t stood to lecture and he sat back down.

“Two of them you might as well have stabbed them in the chest when you said to abandon magnetic confinement. The fellow from MIT and the Canadian guy. I think you probably just shot their life work in the head.” Jed said, dropping a thumb hammer on an index finger pistol.

“I can see how that would be upsetting,” Beelus acknowledged.

“Two others looked progressively angrier as you continued. I think they simply didn’t believe you. They especially didn’t believe you don’t have nuclear weapons. It is interesting however that neither of them was the person affiliated with the Space Force.”

“I do appreciate your analysis,” Beelus said. “I’m nowhere near trusting my ability to read the subtleties of human expression. I’ve had some attempts fail badly. I asked Barnard the other day if he was upset with me. He laughed and said no – he was just suffering a little gas from his taco supper.”

“We don’t always read other humans that well,” Jed assured him. “Especially from other cultures. There are clues you will learn there are universal tells, like a sudden involuntary widening of the pupils. I look at it this way. It doesn’t matter about the nukes now because you aren’t stupid. I imagine you had people archiving every article you could find on it overnight. It might take you a couple of weeks to set up the machinery to do isotopic separation, but once you have a few kilograms of U-235 I know some bright high school students who could make a Little Boy device.”

Beelus didn’t even make a show of looking up Little Boy on his computer. He knew that already.

“This changes everything for us you know,” Beelus said.

“That’s what Fleming said right away,” Jed agreed, nodding. “The Bugs and Tigers are in for a hell of a surprise.”

Beelus just smiled.

Chapter 23

Jed had his lunch with Blue and repeated his opinions about the students and his expectations about the alien’s status with nuclear weapon development.

“Even if you didn’t have all the material from our internet, now that you know it can be done your bright boys would figure it all out.”

“You’re quite generous with your assessment of our intelligence,” Blue remarked.

“I’m sure you have your idiots too,” Jed said with an expansive wave. “The lower rank fellow who tossed my cabin I wouldn’t trust to dog sit for a weekend. It doesn’t much matter how the average intelligence of our species differs. With billions of people, we’ll both have more genius than we can use.

“Indeed, I saw the video and made sure that fellow was put where it would minimize the chance of him creating a disaster,” Blue said. “I’m not sure there is any reasonable way to eliminate it.”

“I know, believe me. When I was in the service there were a few who couldn’t sweep a concrete pad clean without busting something. If nothing else was breakable, they’d screw up the broom or trip over their own feet and end up at the clinic from the fall.”

Blue laughed nodding his head emphatically.

“Fleming left earlier to return home,” Blue said. “He said to tell you goodbye since you were tied up with the class. His business interests seem to require his close attention.”

Jed nodded.

“When you have your own business like that it all falls apart if you aren’t on it constantly. Which is a big part of why I never wanted a business with employees. You have to practically live there.”

“He must find it rewarding to put forth the effort,” Blue said.

“It allows him to live in a nicer house, and that airplane he owns is expensive to keep, But I’m happier with the balance in my life shifted more towards freedom and leisure than better toys,” Jed said.

“We messed up your comfortable life in Alaska, didn’t we?” Blue suddenly realized.

“Yes, but it’s been an adventure I’d rather not have missed,” Jed admitted.

“Three Fingers is going to come in tonight from India,” Blue said. “he’s dropping off food and supplies, picking up some things, and taking a crew to switch off with the current ones on the Protector. Do you want to get the ride you were promised with him tonight?”

“Sure. Is there room to take Terrill?” Jed asked.

“There’s room for a fifty if we weren’t carrying freight, but it isn’t any special experience for us. Three Fingers will bring some of the last records and personal things down that you would probably regard as ceremonial,” Blue said. “It’s sad. Their removal transfers our command here.”

“That works for me. If you have any doubts about your safety while I’m gone depend on Barnard,” Jed instructed. “He has a very high level of training similar to mine. Perhaps superior in some ways. Pay attention to what he recommends you do.”

“I will, but things are pretty quiet,” Blue said. “Enjoy your trip and don’t worry needlessly.”

* * *

“Aren’t you going to ask how it works?” Three Fingers asked as they lifted off smoothly. It was not quite silently. There was a low rumble more felt than heard. The lights of Las Vegas were visible off to the right, but the pilot slowly turned them to the east where it was mostly dark as they rose.

“Not only do I not have the background to understand it, but I’d bet anything you don’t have a deep understanding of the physics involved. You’re trained to command and dealing with people and tactics. Very few humans are broad polymaths who could both design and command the spacecraft they fly. I’d be shocked if you guys have more than a handful of that sort of person. They are probably the ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine, nine percentile of your heavy-hitters just like us. You’d just give me the Spaceships for Dummies edition of how it works that you tell all your ninety-ninth percentile people so they don’t feel so bad about not understanding it. If you can’t describe it in math, you don’t really know it,” Jed said.

“You certainly lack the proper awe expected of the aboriginal population,” Three Fingers said.

“You should have taken Fleming for his flight,” Jed said. “He came back all starry-eyed and babbled on and on about every detail clear through supper. You wowed him like an elementary school kid who had his first trip to Disneyland.

“Instead of going way out to the outer system to mine, you might consider selling orbital rides for a bargain million dollars a pop and provide satellite placement much cheaper than our launch services.”

“We might, but our lawyers say it is extremely complicated. Once we offer commercial space services to humans, and not just for our use, they inform us that we expose ourselves to all kinds of regulations and licensing outside our present agreement. We aren’t in any position to make endless demands while dependent on your hospitality. Rather we intend to fit in your society and laws. The lawyers say we can petition and influence the lawmakers to update the laws to fit the new realities of our tech and abilities.”

“Oh my God, you’re going to hire lobbyists as well as lawyers,” Jed realized.

“That’s the word they used,” Three Fingers acknowledged.

“When is this crate going to accelerate forward instead of just climbing?” Jed asked.

“It is already,” Three Fingers said with an evil grin. “Do you want us to dial down the damping so it feels zoomier?”

Jed looked at him with suspicion.

“Did you just try to coin a new English word?” he demanded.

“It was understandable, wasn’t it?” Three Fingers asked, pleased with himself.

“It is, and it’s probably not original because you can tack i-e-r on almost anything to create the comparative form, but it shows you are getting nicely fluent in English.”

“In Indian English, which seems to be similar to the British usage as I understand it,” Three Fingers said. “When Blue and I compare our progress, we find differences. I notice Barnard has used a few of the British variants. Do you know if he lived there?”

“I’m carefully keeping out of Barnard’s private life,” Jed said cutting off that line of inquiry.

“You seem to be the best or worst source of all these idiomatic expressions and folksy sayings,” Three Fingers said letting his question go. “You’ve used three. Polymath, wowed, and starry-eyed, just since we took off. I’ll have to research them even if I think I understand them from context. I’ll also need to find out why children are so taken with this Disneyland.”

“This beats any ride they have in the Magic Kingdom,” Jed assured him as the arch of the terminator became visible to the east of them.”

“Four,” Three Fingers added and sighed.

“Now it gets boring for a little while,” he said as the Earth fell away. “Take a walk back through the shuttle if you wish. There is a toilet, head, whatever you wish to call it right behind the flight deck and a small place opposite that has a limited number of snacks and drinks stocked not tested for humans, but there is coffee. Stay out of the airlocks since you have no idea what you are doing. It’s possible to flush yourself to space if you go pushing buttons you don’t understand.”

Jed looked at him sharply. Three Fingers wasn’t smiling at him but Jed decided he was just baiting him and didn’t think he was that stupid.

* * *

“Put some lights on it,” Three Fingers told his pilot.

The floods revealed the hole punched through the Protector. It wasn’t what Jed mentally pictured. It was cut razor-sharp on the edge with no distortion or melting.

“Is it bigger on one side than the other?” Jed wondered.

“Not enough to matter,” Three Fingers assured him. He directed his pilot to dock.

“A laser did that?”

“No, this is a particle beam weapon. Neither Bugs nor Tigers use lasers as weapons. Do humans have a laser that could do that?” Three Fingers asked.

“There are rumors they have x-ray lasers pumped by hydrogen bombs,” Jed said. “But if they have actually deployed them, they’ve kept it quiet. There was a lot of research done starting clear back in the 1980s so who knows what they’ve done since then?”

“I’m amazed at the things you can keep secret,” Three Fingers said.

“Not to get into specifics,” Jed said, “but when I saw your shuttle land, I already knew about two generations of secret aircraft. I thought it might be one I didn’t know. But that looked entirely different than this shuttle and I haven’t seen it again.”

“We just have the one and most assault carrier commanders like me don’t like getting stuck carrying one. It isn’t well-armed and can’t carry all that much but it’s fast for a non-hyper craft. A large force always has one for a fast courier in-system. I hate losing a shuttle dock to it that would give us another combat shuttle. We drop to seven because of it. If I have to lose a berth, I’d rather have an interceptor, but the planners in their wisdom have decided that maintaining mixed loads of troop carriers and fighters requires too much service and maintenance space. The fast shuttle is on the Protector right now for the watch crew so they can’t get stranded.”

“What exactly are they watching for?” Jed asked.

“When a super-luminal vessel emerges, it creates a wide spectrum burst of radiation. Your sun is noisy and your civilization generates so much electrical noise it might be hard to detect it, so we put our instruments on the back side of your moon where they are shielded. If our people come looking for us, or one of our explorers shows up, they will stay quiet and survey you. They might be so cautious they would miss the Protector orbiting here if we don’t hail them. We’ll watch, and if they can be identified, reveal ourselves.”

“Why not give them a shout the minute you see a vessel emerge?” Jed suggested.

“There’s no real difference between the emergent radiation of a vessel of the People or a Tiger or Bug ship,” Three Fingers explained.

“Oh,” Jed thought on that a little

“What would you expect them to do?” he finally asked.

“A Bug ship, especially a single ship, might note an advanced civilization and slink off to report. A Tiger ship isn’t going to be alone. They always travel in groups and seeing a civilization they will rush forward to add you to their subjugated races. A bug ship may stay silent after emerging but I’ve never heard of Tigers failing to unleash a powerful search radar after emerging, so we’d expect that warning.

“Staying silent with them wouldn’t help. It may go easier for us, and buy us some time if we can hide among you. They would attack us first as a known danger if they see us among you. I’m starting to suspect they would need a long time and have to send home for massive reinforcements to establish a permanent presence on your world, much less finish subjugating you in detail.”

“Maybe never, if you mean being able to walk around like they own the place,” Jed said. “Even if our leaders surrendered, there are thousands of ornery humans who couldn’t resist popping a Tiger if he ventured out for some fresh air.”

There was a slight tremor as the shuttle latched to the Protector and Jed’s ears popped.

“Come with me while I arrange the change of the watch. It’s near the end of their last shift and the four we brought up will take over and the old watch return with us. You probably wanted to see the control area most of all. I’ll show you a few interesting areas in the Protector after. It’s too big to give you a full tour short of spending a week. I doubt you care to see the laundry or waste and recycling anyway,” Three Fingers said.

“Do you mind if I take some pix?” Jed asked.

“Will you promise not to share them with the Bugs?” Three Fingers asked, amused.

“On my word,” Jed said and held a hand up like he was swearing to it.

The corridor from the shuttle dock to the control room was as utilitarian as Jed expected. It was far quieter than he anticipated and it smelled far better than any totally artificial environment had any right to smell. Even though they docked near the front it was still quite a hike to the control room. He knew the aliens’ standard gravity was a little lighter than Earth-normal but not enough he could tell.

Three Fingers spoke in his language on entering and Jed only caught a few familiar words. He did notice nobody jumped up or made anything he’d think a salute. He kept his mouth shut until Three Fingers was done and asked him if he had any questions.

“Are you running any kind of radar?” Jed asked. “I don’t see any screen that looks like radar.”

“There aren’t any dedicated radar screens,” Three Fingers said. “The operator can bring anything he wants up and position it on the screen front and center or to the side depending on its importance. We aren’t running active sensing because that would be the same as hailing an unknown entry to the system. Worse really, because it would be going out continually and we’d lose the advantage of the speed of light lag from here back to where they emerge. Right now, they would know you are here from all your emissions, but the frequencies and wave forms of the People’s radars are well known to our enemies and would announce our presence.”

“What happens if your sensors on the back side of the Moon do detect someone?” Jed asked.

“This screen is reporting our sensor readings,” Three Fingers said, pointing at one to the side. It had several lines of symbols Jed couldn’t read and four obvious graphs scrolling. “It’s relayed around to us through a satellite orbiting your Moon. We can sense in other directions but your radio noise makes that much less sensitive. We might miss an entry from other directions. It does a self-test every few minutes from an external signal source and affirms it is working properly. The operator doesn’t have it centered because chances are it won’t report anything. If it does, it will call attention to itself with an alarm.”

The screen he was pointing at got a bright pink flashing frame around its edge and a nerve-rattling buzz filled the bridge. The graphs got sudden peaks scrolling opposite the human convention.

“Geez, you had to point at it,” Jed quipped.

Three Fingers was speaking in his language with the two seated watch crew, ignoring Jed. The two watch members off duty came in and grabbed seats, too. Not far behind, the four crew they’d just brought up showed up having abandoned their efforts at moving in. One still had his bag of personal possessions and changes of uniform. Three Fingers kept talking to them and all but the two seated when they first came in hurried off the bridge.

Three Fingers finally turned to Jed.

“There’s an entry into your system, quite deep. They are inside the orbit of the next planet out.”

“Mars,” Jed supplied.

Three Fingers nodded to acknowledge that but kept talking.

“There aren’t decelerating immediately or we’d see their drive signatures. The crew we brought up is grabbing a few things I intended to collect and taking them to our shuttle.”

One of the seated aliens interrupted with something that sounded like KEE sharply. He and Three Fingers exchanged words rapidly.

“The incoming ships activated radar that is definitely Tiger,” Three Fingers said. “We will take the replacement crew back and the current watch crew will evacuate on the fast shuttle for India. They will set the Protector to crash into the Moon on autopilot after we are off, to deny her to the Tigers.”

“Won’t that make duplicating your drive much more difficult?” Jed asked.

“Yes, but that’s not an immediate problem,” Three Fingers said.

“Could you hard-land it instead of crashing it?” Jed suggested. “Even if it’s a wreck, you will have saved some of the pieces to help you duplicate them later.”

Three fingers got an intense expression and said a few sharp words to the two seated aliens. An obvious command to pause because they stopped inputting commands.

“Even in the lighter gravity of your Moon the Protector has no way to land. It won’t balance on its tail. There are no supports of any kind and the interior is unusable in that orientation. We could bring it to a halt like that but then it will break its back when it topples and never lift again,” Three Fingers said.

“There are craters near the poles when sunlight never reaches,” Jed said. “It seems unlikely the Tigers would find her there before it would no longer matter.”

“That isn’t a half-bad idea,” Three Fingers agreed and rattled off orders. “Come on. Time for us to get out of here.”

* * *

“The ones we left behind will be OK?” Jed asked as The Protector receded.

“They’ll be in India before us,” Three Fingers promised. “Don’t worry about them.”

“Should I worry about us?” Jed asked.

“It depends. If you mean all of us, the People and humans, yeah. If you mean my crew, they have been told to take as much of our food and necessities as they can fit on the shuttles and evacuate. Each pilot will disperse and try to hide in as inconspicuous a location as possible. If you mean us on this shuttle it’s going to be a close thing to reach India.

“The Tigers can do short jumps coming insystem and they may have some units inside the orbit of your Moon much sooner than I’d like. I know you can’t tell but we’re hurrying as much as possible.”

“Does this thing have weapons?” Jed wondered.

“Close range and ground support,” Three Finger said. “We had interceptor support off other carriers where we were fighting. We neglected to bring any along.”

“Oh, I just had a thought,” Jed exclaimed. “Did you bother to tell the Earth governments that they are about to have a bunch of very unwelcome visitors?”

“I thought it would be self-evident,” Three Fingers said.

“You better tell them,” Jed told him. “They can get stuck on doctrine instead of thinking. They may start shooting at each other instead of the Tigers and waste one hell of a lot of ordnance where it will be counter-productive.”

“That’s my blindness to same race conflict again,” Three Fingers admitted. “I’ll send orders to all our units and tell them to shout it to everybody.”

* * *

“Why are you still here?” Blue demanded of Barnard when he entered. “When you took off, I assumed you were evacuating with everyone else.”

“Jed charged me with protecting you. I loaded up his truck with his stuff and a bit of mine. I thought you might be stupid and not get on the last shuttle.”

“This is my command and I have not been relieved,” Blue said. “Since all the shuttles are gone there’s nothing here to attract Tiger attention any more than a thousand other groups of rural buildings.”

“Did Three Fingers say to evacuate everyone?” Barnard demanded.

Blue hesitated to answer.

OK, that’s what their stubborn face looks like, Barnard thought.

“Don’t nitpick with me,” Barnard said. “Did he say what means everyone in your language?”

“I’m not everyone,” Blue insisted.

“You pick the damndest times to play lawyer,” Barnard said. “You’re directly disobeying your commander’s order and preventing everyone from evacuating because I’m not leaving without you.”

“You’re in violation too,” Blue said.

“I’m a contractor. I’m not in your chain of command and I sure wasn’t hired for this.”

Blue blinked rapidly, shocked by that. Barnard knew he had him.

“Too late to fly away but come evacuate with me in Jed’s truck. We’ll ride it out just a few kilometers away and be able to be first back before any of the shuttles and assess the situation.”

“That sounds… prudent,” Blue admitted.

Barnard just ground his teeth and swallowed what he wanted to say.

“Come on then. Move your stubborn butt.”

* * *

“Tris, tris, tris, tris,” Three Fingers growled and smacked the console with his fist.

“Translation?” Jed asked.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Three Fingers yelled back.

Interesting. He didn’t repeat it four times, Jed thought.

“We aren’t going to make India without being intercepted. Worse, we might just barely make it and be hit on the ground before we can get out.”

The bigger center screen showed a satellite view. There were no political boundaries but Jed could picture them pretty well.

“We can make maybe this far,” Three Fingers said and stabbed his finger at the line of their flight which was now crawling across the Balkans. He jabbed right between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf which left a small circle where he touched. That would be dead in the middle of Iran.

“No, no, please. You don’t want to land there. Try here,” Jed suggested. He tapped the screen at the Mediterranean shore east of Gaza. “Ask to be vectored in to land at the Tel Aviv airport.”

Three fingers spoke to the pilot very briefly.

“He has much better English than the first time he landed in Florida,” Three Fingers assured Jed. “He understood most of what you said. He’ll talk with the controllers OK. I told him to put it on the speakers for us.”

* * *

Blue didn’t demand to get anything from his quarters and just followed Barnard right to the truck. He even put on his seat belt correctly, which little detail greatly encouraged Barnard.

“You know your way around out here?” Blue asked when Barnard turned to follow the off-road trail instead of going the other way into town.

“I wouldn’t live or work anywhere without knowing the area. It’s basic safety like finding out the fire exit when you get a room in a hotel. I have maps on my phone and a few hard copy backups.”

Three kilometers away he turned and followed a ridge that turned into a cliff of increasing height. Shortly they came to a slight cup in the cliff with a dry stream bed emerging from the face of the cliff. Barnard made a sweeping turn and backed up.

“It’s a crack, all the way to the top,” Blue marveled as they backed in.

“Technically, it’s a slot canyon,” Barnard said. “A few hundred meters in you can touch both sides with your hands. It will be cool in there and they are beautiful but dangerous.”

“Why?” Blue wondered. “You could hardly get lost.”

“There’s a big plateau behind this that rises from here,” Barnard illustrated with his hands. “It doesn’t rain much here but when it does there isn’t much to hold the water. It all channels down this crack. That’s what carved it in the first place. It will come through faster than you can run and higher than you can climb in the time you have. The water sweeps logs and rocks along up to boulder size. There’s no surviving the crush and being dashed against the walls.”

He backed in and left the windows cracked open and the backup camera on.

“It can be bright and clear here and raining way north of us so it comes through here unexpected. But if we hear its roar or see the front we can drive out and to the side safely. To hike in safely, you need to look at all the satellite views and radar weather maps to make sure there aren’t any storms to feed it.”

“Now, we have a good forty-five or fifty-degree view to the south-south-west. Your base is just to our left out of sight and there is restricted air space and several government airfields that specialize in advanced or secret aircraft and spacecraft off to our right and maybe a bit behind us. The sun is low on the horizon so that may give the Tigers an advantage on approach. This seems like the perfect place to see some fireworks when they get here.”

Blue looked confused and consulted his translation dictionary in progress.

“Like this?” he asked Barnard and showed him a short video of the fourth of July celebration grand finale along the New York waterfront.

“Yes, that’s about what I’m expecting.”

“Cool,” Blue said.

* * *

“You will divert around us or be fired on before you cross the coast,” Tel Aviv control told them. “We don’t need you leading trouble to our civilian airport and main city.”

“Would a military base accept us?” The pilot begged.

“A foreign and alien warship with no alliance to us? I don’t suggest you try.”

“Then I’m declaring an emergency,” the pilot said. “I’m going to do a visual on the biggest piece of bare land I see without buildings or roads and put it down. Shoot us down if you refuse even that much aid to a craft in distress.”

There was no reply to that.

There were rolling hills with a dirt road and at the last second, the pilot saw a couple of trucks and some sort of small mill. He landed beside the trucks pointed the same way hoping his craft would look like it belonged in the group. It was early in the morning and nobody seemed to be around.

“Exit into the trees and around the nearby hill away from the shuttle,” Three Fingers ordered.

Jed found out the aliens were good sprinters but lacked endurance. They circled and climbed the hill until they could see their shuttle if they stood up, but then hunkered down spread out in the trees.

“These are olive trees,” Jed pointed up at the tiny green fruit. “It’s too early for them to be picked.”

“Food?” Three Fingers asked.

“Yes, and oil. They have to be processed but they are highly valued. The trees live a long time.”

“I hope our presence doesn’t cut that short. Not to mention us,” Three Fingers said.

In the far distance, white lines grew from the horizon with amazing speed.

“I think your Tigers followed us right in, Jed said.

“Then we did draw trouble to them just like the controller feared.”

“Nothing we can do about it at this point,” Jed said. “You don’t want to be up there right now.”

Lines of slightly different thickness and hue started rising and in the far distance, there were flashes reflected off the clouds.

“That’s probably out over the sea,” Jed said.

Suddenly there was a blinding flash through the clouds.

“Look down, look down and close your eyes,” Jed said.

There were three more flashes and finally one so bright it was bright orange through his eyelids.

When the flash blobbies started clearing the whole northwest horizon was on fire. As they watched a line of fireballs climbed into the Stratosphere. Even this far away they roiled with colors.

“And that is what a nuke looks like from as near as I have any desire to be,” Jed said.

The scene lit up with four quick flashes close together again but this time from behind them.

“And the Tigers pissed somebody else off,” Jed said. “Probably the Iranians. They are that-a-way,” he said pointing, “but they have interests off in that direction too.”

“And what is this place called? You never said,” Three Fingers reminded him.

“I forgot you wouldn’t know from their capital. This is Israel. A tiny country but they take their defense very seriously. Last I knew, they had six separate interceptor systems that had ranges from fifteen kilometers to orbit. It’s hard to penetrate that many layers. They can absorb a salvo of a couple of hundred missiles.”

High overhead a V flight of fighters drew contrails across the sky. They were well beyond them toward the sea when the booms of their passing shook the trees.

Before it had time to be quiet there were new sounds of helicopters approaching.

“I imagine that is their military coming in,” Jed said. “They do have some legitimate gripes with us and they have undoubtedly been told to take us into custody. Since this is their land, I suggest we be very polite and argue about being released later with their bosses. They’re probably not in any mood to listen to any foolishness.”

“And the Tigers? What of them?” Three Fingers asked.

“You don’t seriously think they survived that, do you?” Jed waved a hand at the still discolored horizon framed in dissipating contrails. “If any manned vessels, not just missiles, got through that and were running away, I bet they didn’t get past the Iranians.”

“Oh, I’m not sure Tigers know how to run away,” Three Fingers said.

“Good, then we don’t have to hunt them down,” Jed said.

Chapter 24

“Uh-huh, game on,” Barnard said. Far to the south, there were shooting stars but far too many to be natural. The colors were mixed and some of them broke up and ended in sprays as they watched.

“Is that Las Vegas?” Blue asked.

“No that is way too high to be from Las Vegas or aimed at them. I’d say that’s from orbital targets coming in over the west coast. They have a crap ton of interceptors on the coast.”

There were bright pinpoints of light that winked and faded far overhead.

“High stuff. Probably out at geostationary level or those nukes would be blinding,” Barnard said.

“How high?” Blue asked.

“About thirty-six thousand kilometers. Call it eighteen thousand man-lengths.”

“And we can still see the individual explosions?” Blue asked.

“Well, sure. Did you think we were putting you on about that?”

“No, not at all,” Blue assured him.

The next wave of debris was much closer. So close a flaming wreck passed overhead with a roar like a freight train with chunks falling off. The fight had been going on so long it was getting into dusk. The flaming ship dropped out of sight towards their buildings. Blue hoped it missed.

There was a flash around the edge of the cliff and not long after a ground wave from the impact made their truck jiggle a little.

“That’ll buff right out,” Barnard said. Blue had no idea what he was talking about.

From behind the cliff to their right a violet beam stabbed the sky briefly. It didn’t seem to be aimed at anything. It stabbed again aimed more to the east before the glow of the first one dissipated. The third time it flashed it terminated in an eye-searing sphere of white-hot plasma that faded through colors to pale red as it expanded and cooled. It was so high it was silent.

“What was that?” Blue asked.

“Damned if I know. Some super-secret crap I’ve never heard about. Bad luck to try to fly past one of the few places where they test that kind of stuff. The developers are probably having a ball getting to try it out on real targets.”

Nothing happened for a half-hour, then the southern horizon flashed like a photo-strobe. The color faded but grew higher in the middle.

“And that was a nuke for sure, a big one. Way the hell over the horizon down along the California – Arizona line. There aren’t any big towns down that way so at least that’s good. Maybe one of your Tiger ships made the mistake of landing and sitting in one place for a few minutes. I don’t like being backed in here in the dark, so I’m going to pull out and to the side a bit at the edge of the hollow. I’m going to have a cold beer. There’s some ginger ale in there. Do you want one?”

“Sure, when do you intend to drive back?”

“Not until the morning,” Barnard said. “I won’t try it in the dark and by then we should be sure they are done.”

* * *

“Here’s the deal,” Jed said. “They are willing to let us go. You can have somebody come pick us up or they will provide transportation, but they aren’t going to let the shuttle go.”

“Will you speak for me?” Three Fingers asked. He seemed less upset than Jed expected.

“Of course. They picked me because they knew we could communicate. But one of the first things I told them was you speak English.”

“I’d like you to speak because I will be too emotional. I am not surprised they are demanding the shuttle. It’s an inconvenience and we will simply have to deal with it. I can see from how they handled the Tigers we have no chance of taking it back by force. The thing that concerns me now is that we picked up the symbol of our unit’s commission from my quarters when we visited the Protector. It is an emotional and cultural thing but we would be disgraced if I allow it to be captured and not destroyed.”

“What is it?” Jed asked, “a flag or pennant?”

“It is a shield. A very old shield from when we used unpowered weapons. I don’t know the names of them except for swords.”

“Melee weapons,” Jed said. “Not just swords. Spears and halberds, hammers, and pikes. Anything you use by hand. I’ll go present that to them. Should I ask for the crew’s duffels, with their clothing?”

“Not if it dilutes the message about our shield,” Three Fingers said.

* * *

“Wake up Barnard. It’s light enough to drive now, isn’t it?” Blue asked. “I’m anxious to see if our home survived. You slept over six hours. Surely you can function on that or nap later.”

“Just barely,” Barnard said squinting at the twilight. “Has there been any new activity?”

“Nothing after you started snoring. I slept for a time too,” Blue said. “But nothing happened to wake me and we are light sleepers.”

“Hang on,” Barnard said. He exited the truck, eased nature, and walked off his stiffness. When he returned, he got an energy drink though what he wanted was coffee.

“I’m fine on six hours and I’d rather get back before the heat of the day if we have to deal with any damage. If there is any, we’ll take pix of it and probably have to get the contractors to come out. If we can even call them,” he said frowning at the thought. He pulled out his phone and checked for a signal.

“I’ll be damned, I’ve got five bars. Civilization survived. I’m really surprised there are any cellular drones still flying and not fried. I’m going to have a granola bar to celebrate.”

He took off at an idle wallowing along following their inbound tire tracks back out, eating with one hand. Blue was nervous because he was driving one-handed with a loose grip letting the wheel wiggle considerably rather than fight it.

Back on the trail, they went up a slight rise. Near the top Barnard jammed on the brakes and threw it into reverse. Well ahead, an alien craft was laying flat on its belly across their trail. It wasn’t exactly a flying saucer or a wing. It was more an oval with one long side straight and the far side bent up with a ragged end that was obvious damage. Barnard saw a long line through the sparse vegetation where the craft graded it flat as it slid to where it stopped.

“Not one of yours?” Barnard asked.

“Not ours and I’ve never seen one like it before. It’s definitely a fighter, not a transport. It was hard to judge without other objects to give us a scale, but it looks pretty big. I sure didn’t see it cross in front of us last night.”

“If it wasn’t flaming like that other one we could heard impact, we could have easily missed it. Let’s look at the truck cam image,” Barnard said. He took the memory card out of the forward-looking camera and stuck it in his phone. It didn’t seem like a good time to be using any kind of wireless. Which made him think to turn off his phone’s transmitter and suggest Blue do that too.

The dash cam showed something he’d missed in his haste to back up. There was a hatch open on the forward face of the oval. It was fairly high, over a meter off the ground for sure. In front of it, three Tigers were laid out in a row. For all the neatness displayed in lining them up, each was sprawled in a loose pile rather than arranged with any dignity.

Barnard opened his door and stood on the scuff plate, braced against the open door. He got back in and pulled forward a few meters and checked again, stretching until he could just see the top of the craft.

“Can you use human binoculars OK?” he asked Blue offering the case.

“I’d be surprised if I can’t,” Blue said.

“Climb in the back and we can take a look at them over the cab,” Barnard said.

Blue was figuring out the focus and Barnard slid Jed’s Sako and Barratt cases over the edge of the box and two carriers of ammo. When he climbed up, he put Jed’s Sako on the roof and inserted a magazine. After peering through the scope for a minute he extended the legs of the bipod a little.

“Someone has come to the hatch twice and thrown dark packages out on the ground,” Blue said.

“Yeah. It looks like soft-sided luggage It has some kind of straps on it. I have more magnification through my scope than your binoculars. You’ve limited to twelve power magnification and I have forty-eight, but I have it dialed back to thirty-six.”

“If you aren’t going to shoot, can I take a look?” Blue asked.

“Sure, I’d kind of like to watch to what they intend to do and how many of them there are before blazing away. If they try to leave, I’ll shoot. We don’t need them loose in the back country where it would be tough to track them down. Go ahead and look.”

Barnard uncased the .50 caliber and put it on the roof too while Blue was looking.

“What is the number in the bottom right and why does the glowing dot move around?” Blue asked. Still peering through the scope.

“That’s how many meters to the target. I read that off the side of the ship beside the door. I risked one laser pulse and they didn’t detect it, so I left it on active ranging mode. The dot is the theoretical point of impact. It changes because the scope shoots out a beam of laser light in the infrared. It reads the doppler shift off dust particles along the line through the air out to the aim point. It constantly checks and adjusts as the wind shifts. That’s besides checking the angle off of the horizontal, air pressure, temperature, and humidity too. It leaves that after glow behind the dot moving to give you an idea about the range in which the wind has been varying. I have it set to show the last thirty seconds.”

“It looks like it is weaving a basket,” Blue said. “It says nine-hundred fifty-seven meters. Can it shoot as accurately as the dot suggests it’s able to at that distance?”

“Didn’t know you folks made baskets,” Barnard said. “It will shoot very close to what it shows if you can hold it steady and know how to release the trigger with some finesse. I don’t know much about your arms training.”

“It’s been about twelve, well, fourteen of your years, since I had to qualify with a long weapon.”

“You’re rusty then. It’ll come back quickly but you better let me do any shooting,” Barnard said. “I’m looking through the Barrett’s scope now. What the devil is he doing to the deaders?”

“I think he is cutting off the back leg. What do you call that?” Blue asked.

“The haunch or hind quarter,” Barnard said. “You mean to eat?”

“They are carnivores,” Blue told him.

“That’s disgusting,” Barnard said.

“For us too, but is it completely unknown in humans?” Blue asked.

“No, dammit. But it’s still disgusting to decent people.”

“That may be the only provisions they have on your world,” Blue pointed out. He was far more sympathetic than Barnard liked. “I think those packs hang over their back on each side.”

“Saddle bags or panniers,” Barnard named them for him. “Swap guns with me. The Sako is more accurate and more than enough gun. I’ve seen enough. I don’t want these creepy critters wandering around our neighborhood. They may show up and slit my throat while I’m sleeping.”

“You guess right. They are night hunters. That’s why they have sunglasses,” Blue said.

“That’s what those are? I thought they were kind of bug-eyed. Next time the one comes to the hatch I’ll take him down,” Barnard said. “Watch and see if you can tell where I hit.”

When the alien brought a new pack to the hatch the aim point was behaving nicely and Barnard aimed high on the chest just below where it started tapering. It was more a neck like a horse than a classic Centaur torso. He pulled the rifle into his shoulder, took one deep breath, let it out smoothly, and squeezed. It shoved him back and felt like a good clean trigger break.

He recovered from recoil and the alien he’d hit had fallen out of the hatch and the other one below had run over to him, back to them. That was very foolish. Barnard aimed right at the top of his rump and repeated his gentle squeeze. The breeze shifted a little and the bullet hit one cheek of his rump instead of centered. When Barnard recovered his sight picture the alien was thrashing on the ground, laying at an angle to him instead of end on. Barnard repeated his careful squeeze and the second shot went through the torso on an angle. The alien’s frantic motion stopped abruptly.

“How was my first shot?” Barnard asked.

“I have no idea,” Blue said. “The noise scared me so badly I jerked and was looking at the sky.”

“Should have warned you I guess,” Barnard allowed. “I wonder if that’s all of them?”

One of the black hemispherical blisters on the front edge of the ship rotated. The beam it emitted dazzled Barnard’s vision and it hit the forward slope of the rise they were behind about a hundred meters to their left. Sand, pea gravel, and bits of charred vegetation fountained in the air and rained down around the truck. Barnard tried to get the black bubble back in his scope despite the flash blobbies in his vision. About fifteen seconds later it fired again. The gunner seemed to be transversing the crest of the hill but didn’t know exactly where they were. The second shot was almost directly in front of them and would have been lethal aimed a little higher. This time the rocks raining on them were bigger. One side mirror shattered loudly as a rock took it off. Some hot pellets of melted sand rained down. Barnard’s hat stopped them but he had painful burns through both sleeves before he could knock them off.

He had the weapon blister back in his sights but before he could fire the big .50 beside him spoke. There was a tremendous >CRACK< from the alien vessel, not the gun, and a flash brighter than the weapon’s beam. The shock wave from it blew his hat right off his head and almost took him off his feet despite being sheltered behind the cab. When he looked, he didn’t need the scope to see the ship was now spun around almost a quarter turn and a huge bite taken out of the curved front edge which was turned more toward them. Not a clean bite by any means. It was ragged and the area behind the notch was bulged up now from internal pressure.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Blue said. “It seemed like a bad time to discuss switching guns or where to aim. I just went ahead and shot into that weapon blister. It looks like I caught his condenser battery just as he was ready to shoot again.”

“Pretty good for out of practice,” Barnard said.

“That blister is a couple of meters across. Shame on me if I couldn’t hit it with a stone.”

“But you hit right on the power storage,” Barnard said.

“That was just random luck,” Blue insisted.

Barnard wasn’t so sure.

“Blue, would you please call the Sheriffs and tell them about this? I’d rather they not be aware of me by name. If they ask, just say I’m your driver. Somebody should search that wreck to make sure there aren’t any more hiding in there and I don’t want it to be us. We can wait here for them and make sure none sneak away.”

“Where should I say we are?” Blue asked, booting his phone up.

“You don’t know how to use the GPS on your phone?” Barnard asked.

Blue just shook his head.

Barnard took it and grimaced. “There’s no GPS. They must have shot the crap out of the system. This phone uses three different systems too. I’ll try the one in the truck.”

He was gone a few minutes and didn’t charge Blue with watching the Tiger ship but he did.

“The truck GPS is better and it still only had three satellites visible but that will be within a couple of hundred meters, plenty good enough. Here are the numbers,” he said handing Blue a notepad.

Blue explained the situation and the need for caution. He suggested circling them from a safe distance and approaching low from behind them.

“Two of them will come ahead in a helicopter and take over our watch. The SWAT team will come out in an off-road vehicle. They have a team member who knows the trails out here.”

“I should have asked them to bring some burgers,” Barnard said. “We’re going to be out here all day. I’m going to get a beer. Keep an eye on them would you buddy?”

* * *

Three Fingers was getting nervous when Jed didn’t return quickly. They weren’t in a cage with bars but the door was locked and the windows didn’t open. There was bottled water and two small rooms with toilets. A gentleman in a suit came in and knew to address Three Fingers.

“I’m Yossi Davidson. My job is dealing with others who are not of our nation. I doubt the formal title would mean much to you. If you’d please follow me, we’ll try to improve your situation.”

Three Fingers didn’t have anything sensible to say to his crew. They left without guards so that was an improvement right there. His guide took him up several stories in the building and he was shown into a large room with a long table surrounded by two hands of chairs. There were the crew’s bags on the near end of the table and several ration packs from the shuttle as well as a large capped pitcher of ice water and glasses sat upside down.

“We thought these were food packages if you are hungry. They have no pictures on them so we weren’t positive. The water is very pure so it is safe. If you wish to clean up and refresh yourself there is a bathroom right there with a sink, shower, and toweling to dry off,” he pantomimed wiping with a towel and indicated a door. “We don’t know if any of the luggage is yours but feel free to search them if you wish a change of clothing. We can supply clean human clothing that is a fair fit for you if you want.”

“I – thank you,” Three Fingers said. “I’d like to just wash my hands and face. Anything more depends on how long you intend to keep me.”

“I’m sorry, I should have made that clear. Your associate Mr. Murphy will be returning within minutes. We’re going to return your precious object to you and then you will be released to either travel as you will or we can provide more comfortable accommodations in a civilian hotel if you are too tired to travel immediately.”

“Thank you. I will just be a moment and perhaps we can speak some more?”

“Please. That’s part of my job and I’d welcome that.”

When Three Fingers returned the man was sitting at the corner of the table with the other chair pulled out. He stood and invited Three Finger to sit with a gesture.

Three Fingers poured himself some water and waved Davidson away when he would have served him the water. Why was the man being so solicitous?

“How much authority do you have to negotiate with me?” Three Fingers asked bluntly.

His face said that wasn’t anything Davidson expected to hear. Even Three Fingers could tell when the man’s mouth dropped open briefly.

“I wasn’t aware we had anything to negotiate,” Davidson admitted.

“Which doesn’t answer my question at all,” Three Fingers said curtly.

“I would have to speak with the Prime Minister. Depending on what you want he’ll probably consult with appropriate experts and his cabinet. It’s conceivable you could ask for something that would require the agreement of the coalition parties or even the entire Knesset.”

“Will you take an offer to them?”

“I would but I’m not aware you had further items you might offer. Everyone wants your star drive, but I’m hard-pressed to imagine we have any coin to buy that prize. Most assume the Americans will get it and that’s why you have a base there now.”

“We’re going to make sure the Americans don’t have a lock on the stars,” Three Fingers assured him. “They already attempted to change our initial agreement and classify all our efforts to start transferring technology. They sent all military students subject to secrecy to the first-class unannounced, and tried to switch the agencies we had agreed were responsible for dealing with us.”

“You said they tried. How did that work out?” Davidson asked.

“Without engaging in a lot of speculation, or expressing my suspicions, all that matters is that all of them died in a tragic accident. They chose not to repeat the effort.”

Davidson looked shocked and seemed to be fumbling for words. He likely assumed the tragic accident was an action for which Three Fingers didn’t want to claim any credit. After a silent pause long enough to write a paper on it, the best he could muster was, “How sad.”

“Aren’t you curious what I want to trade?” Three Fingers asked, trying to move along. He didn’t want to still be talking when his crew or Jed returned.

“I rather thought you would be telling me soon.”

“You have this shuttle now,” Three Fingers said. “You’ve been through it enough to find our luggage and recover it. I assume you noticed that there was no flight instruction manual on the pilot’s seat nor any service and maintenance documents to help you along?”

“Indeed. One wouldn’t find those sorts of things boarding an airliner.” Davidson said cluing up.

“Like any complex machine, there are all sorts of things that have to be maintained just so. If you don’t know what you are doing it’s entirely possible to break some small part that can ground the whole craft. Even reproducing that part might prove difficult. That’s not even to say anything about flying it.”

“And your solution to this hazardous situation?”

“We could provide one of our crew to instruct on the proper maintenance. Translations of the detailed manuals will be within our ability fairly soon. And an experienced pilot can show you not only how to fly it, but with skill.”

“What would buy such a generous package?” Davidson wondered.

“We want to be brought up to your current level of technology in nuclear weapons. Not buy them but the full details of design theory and the variations in their construction. Now if you wanted to add processing our material into at least the key components that might be a deal too.”

“Wow… I have no idea how that will be received. There’s going to be a lot of strong feelings and intense debate on that,” Davidson admitted.

“Would you be in that debate?” Three Fingers asked.

“As a minor player.”

“If you’re going to pass the offer on, I’m sure your attitude will set the mood for considering it. How do you feel about it?”

Davidson frowned looking at the ceiling like he might expect divine help. When there were no angelic trumpets or golden light, he started speaking very slowly, carefully weighing his words as he sorted out the pros and cons.

“First of all, we paid a price in blood for your lives and the shuttle. No minor amount of treasure too. Nobody else can offer us help with the shuttle. There are several countries that might offer their best experts to help but I doubt we have any shortage of experts just as good. So, your offer is unique. On the other hand, what you want several other nations can give you. Not only can, but if we refuse you, I suspect it wouldn’t be long before you get what you want for the shuttle tech or other knowledge. Our nuclear technology is as advanced as any except perhaps the US and China and far superior to countries like Pakistan or Korea. Neither of the Great Powers is going to share their expertise without trying to own you, as you’ve found out already. If you trade the shuttle tech elsewhere, it will dilute the value of what we already have, even with the advantage of physical possession. It seems like an equitable deal to me,” Davidson said.

“I thought so too,” Three Fingers agreed. “I’m trying to make the best of a bad situation since we were forced to land short and lost the shuttle to you.”

“So, you just formulated this proposal off the cuff?” Davidson asked surprised.

“That’s a new expression to me. If it means on the spot, I know that one. It didn’t occur to me until I sat down with you here.”

“Remind me never to play poker with you,” Davidson said.

“It’s funny you should say that,” Three Finger said. “We see constant ads to play poker either at the casinos or online back at our base outside Las Vegas. Maybe I’ll try it some time. It seems more abstract and interesting than the video war games the crew seems to enjoy.”

Chapter 25

The Sheriff’s helicopter must have made a very wide cautious circle around the alien ship. They never heard it until it came up behind them low and slow, and sat down well back along the off-road trail. That was wise because it raised a lot of dust hovering low and that could be visible from the ship.

The blades came to a stop and the deputies sat for a moment to let all that dust settle and blow slowly off to the east. They approached at a normal pace with long guns and drag packs that they slung over their shoulders. The tailgate was down with a drop step and they slid their bags in the bed and clambered up. The lead deputy’s eyes registered surprise at the guns on the roof.

“Hold on bringing our rifles forward,” he said over his shoulder. “They have that covered just fine.”

After introductions, they peered at the ship through the gun scopes and Barnard showed them the video from the truck cam.

“The whole ship is moved and that big notch on the leading edge wasn’t there,” the deputy saw right away. “What the hell did you hit them with, an antitank missile?”

“I shot two of them that were tossing gear out of that open hatch. Then there was a sort of weapons turret that started walking fire towards us. You can’t see the pits from here but that’s why there is sand and gravel all over the truck. Busted the damn windshield too. Blue here put an armor-piercing into the blister and was lucky enough to get a secondary explosion.”

The deputy looked up again thinking about the range to the ship.

“You’re experienced on a fifty?” the deputy asked Blue skeptically. It seemed unlikely.

Blue did a perfect human shrug. “Ba… my driver explained how the scope works. I’d never shot it before but it’s an excellent piece of equipment and seems almost fool-proof. He was kind of busy and I went ahead and took the shot.” The deputy didn’t say anything so he added: “I lucked out.”

“Uh-huh,” the deputy said not managing to sound sincere. He’d heard too many street stories.

“Why don’t you leave the fifty for backup and my partner will replace the other rifle. If we see any aliens trying to escape, we’ll engage them first. Let’s stay right here. This seems to be an ideal platform and beats the hell out of crawling forward and laying out a shooting mat.”

Barnard agreed but was unhappy. They were stuck here until the SWAT team arrived and couldn’t check on their site. He didn’t think for a minute the pilot would consider taking Blue to their compound, splitting up their team, with a stranger supporting his partner. And asking to borrow the copter was going to get him asked if he learned to fly helicopters where the alien trained on anti-material rifles?

On the plus side, he remembered he had four cold beers left. However, it wouldn’t be very gracious to just guzzle one in front of them.

“I’m going to get a cold beer. You guys want one?” Barnard offered.

“On duty?” the pilot deputy asked, horrified. The shooter didn’t look so offended.

“Oops, more for me,” Barnard told him.

* * *

“Well, you look comfortable,” Jed said with forced cheerfulness when he came in. The rest of the crew was right behind him. Several looked relieved to see their commander. Several took seats which made sense. What else were they for if they brought them in here?

“Mr. Davidson and I have been having a very productive discussion,” Three Fingers said. “I thank you for speaking to him for me.”

Jed was immediately sorry he missed that. Three Fingers had that tight around the nose look he got when he was pleased about something. Given what a disaster everything was, why would he look like the cat that just swallowed the canary?

“May I suggest you stand as a courtesy?” Jed said. “They have a ceremony to conduct for you.”

That seemed odd to Three Fingers but if it was respectful, he’d play his part.

The Israelis who came in parted to each side and lined up. They looked nothing like the armored-up soldiers who surrounded them in the olive orchard. They were closer to Mr. Davison in the formality of their dress with the addition of insignia, an odd soft hat worn at a cocky angle, and white gloves. The last one to the left carried a pole with a complex flag. Through the door came two more holding his shield between them and Three Fingers held himself in check not to rush forward.

When the two passed through their line the soldiers saluted and held it. The flag bearer thrust his arm out straight and dipped their emblem.

Three Fingers choked up with emotion. He struck his shoulder hoping they recognized his salute. They dropped theirs with perfect timing, so they did.

“Is there some kind of carrier or case we can supply?” Davidson inquired.

“No thank you, that’s not our custom,” Three Fingers said. He stepped forward and slipped his arm through the strap and his hand under the grab bar. “We’re quite ready to go now if you will.”

“We’ll have a bus out front to take you to the airport,” Davidson promised. “You’ll have a commercial airliner at the airport but it will be a private flight.”

“Thank you again. Lead on,” he invited Davidson.

At the bus, Davidson cut Jed away from the others.

“I expect it is no problem for them. But do you need travel documents?” Davidson asked.

“Not at all,” Jed said and showed his passport. “Never leave home without it,” he quipped.

* * *

The pilot deputy leaning over, talking low and intensely into his phone.

“There’s another black blister on the far side of the curved edge,” he pointed out. “Is that like the one that fired on you?”

“Exactly the same,” Blue confirmed.

“Do you know if they have any weapons on the other side? I assume that’s the back of it.”

“Given the way it came sliding in here, I think so too. But I’ve never seen one of these,” Blue said.

The deputy thought about that a moment, frowning.

“Why not put a few shots through that weapon blister too?” Blue suggested. “They seem easy enough to damage with this weapon,” he said patting the .50 caliber.

“Is it going to blow up like the other?” the deputy worried.

“Probably not, if it isn’t actively charging to fire. Would that be such a tragedy?” Blue asked.

“It would be nice to have some captured systems but not at the risk of our men,” he said.

“Have my… buddy put a few through the discharge aperture,” Blue suggested.

When the deputy looked at him blankly, he explained.

“The little dot in the middle. If that is damaged it won’t form a beam. It may even direct the energies back inside and do much like my shot if they try.”

“Can you hit that?” the deputy asked Barnard. “I think I could span that with my hand.”

“Maybe not every time but I have a whole case of ammo sitting here.”

“Have at it,” the deputy invited.

Barnard removed the surplus armor piercing and inserted a magazine of Hornady match ammo. The third shot took the slightly red-tinted circle out and made an obvious dark hole. Barnard went ahead and emptied the magazine putting two more rounds off-center through the blister.

“I’ll load up again in case it still activates,” Barnard said.

The deputy spoke again on the phone before turning to them.

“They are stopped just out of sight on the other side. They’re going to come around the back side and stop right by the open hatch to do an entry. My man will shoot if he sees any motion in the hatch before they go in.”

The driver wasn’t reckless at all. He drove steadily and turned away at a slight angle with his rear towards the vessel but not pointed at the hatch. Two deputies ran to each side of the door and threw something inside. The hatch flashed with two brilliant strobes and a couple of seconds later they heard the report. The door keepers stayed there and as four other armored-up deputies ran forward, they grabbed their harnesses and heaved them up into the hatch. It was a little higher than Barnard thought. He upped his estimate of the Tiger’s size.

It was ten minutes before one of them came back to the hatch with a headlamp shining.

“Can you hear me now?” he called on his phone.

“Affirmative,” their deputy said.

“We can’t get a signal further inside. There aren’t any more aliens inside unless they are sealed in something. It’s a mess, much worse than it looks from the outside, with stuff crooked and broken loose We’ll come over there to join you until the military shows up.” They sort of avoided saying how quickly that would be.

Blue and Barnard looked at each other with the same thought. The last alien must have been manning the weapons blister, not running it remotely, or they’d have found either him or his body.

When the Sheriff’s vehicle parked beside them Barnard turned to the pilot.

“You don’t need us anymore, do you?”

“No, but I’d like a copy of that video you showed us.”

“Keep it,” Barnard invited and handed him the memory chip. He had a copy on his phone.

“That’s good then. Thank you, Blue. Thank you, uh…”

“Barney,” Barnard said and shook his hand. He was in and started the truck even before they had their gear off, ready to be gone if they could take a hint. The truck was already rough but now it had dents in the hood and a cracked windshield. It ran just fine despite the damage.

“Jed is going to kill me,” Barnard muttered.

Blue looked at him funny.

* * *

Three Fingers came and sat beside Jed on the airplane. He politely closed his phone to give Three Fingers his full attention.

“Did Davidson say how many Tiger ships they destroyed?”

“He said they shot down three larger ships. They were estimated at several hundred meters long. There was also a swarm of smaller craft on which they don’t have an accurate account. They’d guess about thirty but that could be off and they aren’t certain if any escaped.

“They lost six of their most advanced fighters with two men in each, and a civilian air freight plane that just happened to be in the wrong place. Falling debris and panic resulted in ten known civilian deaths and considerable property damage. A couple of people were just scared to death. The fighters cost a third of a billion dollars each so that was a considerable loss, and the nukes they used aren’t cheap either.”

“Filthy rich,” Three Fingers muttered.

“I know, I know, and it’s true,” Jed agreed. “But they are a small nation if not poor.”

“How many planes does the loss of six leave them?” Three Fingers asked.

“I’d have to look it up. Jane’s online can probably tell you, but you might have to subscribe. I’d guess two or three hundred fighters, not all of which will be the very best they threw at the Tigers.”

“A two or three hundred aircraft air force for a tiny little country? And they destroyed the Tiger fighters at something like five for one?” Three Fingers asked.

“Uh, no. Two or three hundred fighters. They probably have four times as many planes total. You need transports, mid-air refuelers, trainers, helicopters. Any air force is a complicated organization.”

“Rest assured, if the Tiger’s interceptors didn’t have those three carriers to return to, they can’t escape anywhere. They aren’t star capable and won’t turn up somewhere, unexpected. May I assume they ran into pretty much the same fate with tiny little countries all over your world?”

“If they were foolish enough to dip into the atmosphere like those guys chasing us, yeah. Most countries will vigorously defend their air space from such an aggressive intrusion. The dumb suckers should have broken off when we got low. Frankly, what I’m hearing looking online is that even an obsolete fourth-generation fighter could take down their interceptors if it mounted a modern missile. It might not be going home after but if it got off the missile before it was shot down the Tiger was toast.

“Most of them were destroyed in orbit, and a lot of people are upset they revealed systems to do that they would rather have kept secret. There’ll be a tremendous arms race now while people try to develop new black systems to replace the ones revealed. The Tigers destroyed a lot of civilian satellites. I’d be surprised if the replacements aren’t armored up and actively defended, unless they can be replaced with a bunch of small cheap ones easily replaced.”

“Are people blaming us for bringing this on them? I honestly don’t know if the Tigers somehow tracked us here. We weren’t even fighting them when we exited out of control. Maybe some Tigers were lurking, observing our fight with the Bugs.”

“I haven’t heard that. But people are seriously pissed with the Tigers. We’re going to have to do something about them,” Jed vowed.

“Am I hearing their death sentence?” Three Fingers wondered.

“More likely house arrest than genocide,” Jed said. “Confined to the surface of their planets and that enforced from high orbit.”

“I can’t imagine Tigers abiding that,” Three Fingers said.

“If any launch gets a stone dropped on them big enough to make a humongous crater they may eventually learn. We have no history of avoiding bombardment.”

“A rock instead of a nuke?” Three Fingers asked.

“We can be cheap even if we are filthy rich, and it doesn’t make any fallout,” Jed said

Three Fingers just shook his head and went back to his seat.

* * *

One of the shuttles beat Blue and Barnard back to the site. Why it was now white and orange was probably going to be an interesting story. The evacuees were already getting services like the kitchen and laundry running for the others to be welcomed back to a functioning community.

Blue was ready for a decent meal even before going to clean up and Barnard was happy to heat two of the frozen human meals that he’d normally disdain.

The ranking alien who piloted the returned shuttle joined them as soon as he heard they were back.

He came to their table and was shocked beyond speaking when he looked at them. There were burns on Barnard’s arms, streaks of dirty sweat stains on their clothing, and sand in their hair.

“You should see the other guy,” Barnard quipped at his gapping appraisal.

“I should have been prepared,” he finally managed, still staring. “I saw your truck.”

“Well goody for you,” Barnard sneered. “I suppose you got your shuttle back without a scratch.”

The fellow squeezed his eyes shut like he was remembering something painful.

“No scratches, but I have no idea how we’re going to clean it. I followed directions and looked for a place of concealment. There was a lot full of those big articulated city busses in Salt Lake City and I set down at the end of a row of them. It seemed perfect. We weren’t all that much bigger than them. The locals were pretty agitated at our arrival but I refused to move. Once they understood we were hiding among them and might be targeted, one of them started yelling orders and a swarm of workers surrounded us and painted us just like a city bus in about twenty minutes. There was no way to stop them without violence. They even painted fake windows down our sides.”

“Don’t worry,” Barnard said, chasing the last bit of meat loaf and gravy into a corner with his spoon. “There are solvents that will take it off. We’ll give you a drum of paint thinner and a box of Q-Tips. It’ll take a while but keep you out of trouble.”

“I have no idea what a Q-Tip is.”

“It will my pleasure to show you later.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let him abuse you,” Blue promised. “He gets ugly when he’s hungry, and a little drunk too,” he directed at Barnard to rebuke him.

“Cut me a little slack,” Barnard demanded. “These guys had an actual shuttle and didn’t engage any Tigers.”

He looked at the young, clean, and thoroughly bewildered alien and smiled.

“We only had a pickup truck and rifles, but shot the crap out of a Tiger interceptor. Your man Blue here put a round right in its weapons turret and blew a hole big enough to park our truck in.”

“You did, for real?” He was so impressed he forgot to be afraid of Barnard or his superior.

‘We’ll have a telling of it, I promise,” Barnard said. He paused and looked thoughtful. “And maybe make a video of it to pick up a little coin.”

“I see why you’re all filthy rich,” Blue sighed.

* * *

The next morning after returning to India their front desk man, Pipa, who dealt with the public at their front entry, called Three Fingers.

“We have an unscheduled visitor. I took the initiative to have him put in the conference room and offered him refreshments. I’m aware you had a rough day yesterday and got in late but I think you should speak with him. He refuses to speak with any subordinate or state his business.”

“Who is this mystery man?” Three Fingers demanded.

“I haven’t been able to confirm it yet, but he claims to be Ikeda Hayato, Japan’s ambassador to India. I’ll look online for a photo now that I’ve talked to you. It seemed rude to ask for documents.”

“Tell him I’ll be there in just a few minutes. Do try to confirm his identity. I need to do a ten-minute crash course about Japan. All I can remember right now is they are a fairly advanced country, they had nuclear weapons used on them, and their flag is a big orange ball. Do I need a translator or does he have one?”

“He speaks English quite smoothly with no hesitation. Probably better than me.”

“Thank goodness for that. Any other suggestions?” Three Fingers asked. “You see all sorts coming to our front door. How would you compare him to the local officials and businessmen?”

“He looks like an idealized statue. A suit that looks like he was born in it and not a hair or a thread out of place in this heat. He stands waiting like troops at inspection too. So, I’d put on a fresh shirt and be more formal than the Americans seem to like since he seems so fussy about appearances.”

“You’re a treasure, Pipa. Go back personally and as Jed says, make nice-nice with him.”

“Mr. Ikeda, I’m Three Fingers. I’m the ranking officer of the People on your planet. I confess I know very little about the Japanese people or your customs. I ask your patience with me because I may offend without intending to at all.”

“Commander,” Ikeda said rising, “I ask the same forbearance of you.” He offered his card with both hands and a nod that wasn’t quite a bow.

“Ah, at least I do have a card to exchange,” Three Fingers said happy for that small common ground and was careful to offer it to him just like his guest.

“Shall we sit?” Three Fingers offered. “Is there anything customarily offered we can provide? Has my man, Pipa, made you comfortable?”

“Pipa was most polite and offered refreshments. I did not send someone of lesser rank to him first and work toward a meeting with you because the matter needs urgent attention at the highest level.

“Then it’s well we haven’t squandered any time,” Three Fingers agreed.

“Should we speak here? Or would you be more comfortable, and secure, in your offices?”

“Be assured I’m not slighting you. My office has no comfortable accommodation for a guest. I always direct visitors here. I confess, when my people make a report in person, I find they are more concise and quicker to exit and leave me to my other work if I don’t give them a chair to settle in and get comfortable.”

Ikeda laughed more heartily than Three Fingers expected.

“You tempt me. I wish I could get away with that. Very well, let us speak here. I’ll try to be concise though this is a very comfortable chair,” Ikeda said, making a little joke. “This is all information my embassy got in the middle of the night by our most secure means. During the recent attack by another species of aliens, one of their principal ships altered course to cross our nation. It launched a flight of much smaller fighter craft that dropped ahead of it. That led us to think it intended to land. When we engaged the fighter escorts however it didn’t drop. Perhaps because we were very successful in downing its protective screen. We only lost three of our craft for every one of theirs and our long-range missiles were very effective. Indeed, our defense became more effective as we quickly learned to use our longest-range missiles at near their maximum range and not try to close with them. Trying to continue to close range with them lost all of our planes that tried it. The second wave of interceptors all took off with those effective missiles alone and none of the short-range heat-seekers. The decision was then made to attack it with a particle beam weapon as it overflew us in orbit.”

Three Fingers perked up. “Now, that is of interest to me. Our ship was struck with such a weapon, although not from a Tiger ship. That’s what led to our arrival here. Did you have another spacecraft in range to fire upon it? Or is all this a secret in its details you don’t wish to discuss? I’m growing used to that with Earth agencies.”

Ikeda sighed. “It was a secret. A surprise held in reserve, though we know of three other nations with similar weapons. My private opinion, which none of our military find persuasive, is that if we can infer the existence of other’s programs as a black box problem, they will do the same with us.”

“I probably have an expression in my language for that but I have no idea what a black box problem means in English. Does it have to do with black programs and black budgets?” Three Fingers asked.

“Not directly,” Ikeda warned. “Black is often used in English to denote something is hidden. In this usage a hidden process as if it were in a metaphoric black box. We see the inputs and the result but not the details of how the result came to be. The process has increasingly become automated by artificial intelligence. Indeed, it has grown to where inputs such as material deliveries and energy usage are examined in more detail across a county’s entire economy than a human could follow. They may infer a product without seeing anything but the input. This leads to a mere human not being able to critically follow the process to determine if it is valid or a result of artificial intelligence that is what I call artificial stupid. The users of these systems all ignore that possibility as long as the results keep satisfying them. They ignore the possibility that eventually a huge error in predictive accuracy may be a single point systemic failure undoing all the previous gains.”

“This is once again a problem related to same-species conflict,” Three Fingers said. “We don’t need to hide our orders and production of weapons if it can’t be observed from orbit. I may be new to this entire secrecy game but I can see several ways to confound your black-box analysis.”

Ikeda nodded. “Often, a person new to a problem can provide better insights than those whose thinking has been slowly formed and stuck in narrow channels.”

“It would be easy to add totally unrelated inputs to one side of your black box or successfully hide one input so the rational output has no relation to reality,” Three Fingers suggested.

“Bravo! You found the essence of its weakness instantly,” Ikeda said. “And if the algorithms are beyond human examination there is no way to check they aren’t making very basic wrong assumptions that negate the end product. Artificial Intelligence is still not mature enough to explore every way in which their inputs may be lying to them. The sum of all possible lies adds up to all the possible processes, when any number of them are lies, or partial lies.”

“Thank you,” Three Fingers said. “I need to make my people examining published human data aware it may be corrupted to give false appearances to your internal enemies. That isn’t their normal way of thinking. At home, they would trust public reports to be as accurate as possible.”

“You are welcome,” Ikeda said nodding. “I feel keeping you in the dark about the nature of human society is more dangerous than allowing you to see us with all our warts as it were. But the effect of all this data collection and analysis is that once we used this weapon, we must assume it isn’t a secret anymore. And no, it wasn’t used from another spacecraft. It operates at a power level beyond any system we can lift to orbit.”

“For us, and as far as I am aware for our enemies, particle beam weapons work very poorly or not at all through an atmosphere. How do you get around them being scattered, absorbed, and attenuated by passing through so much air?” Three Fingers asked.

“Another secret I’m sure is now pointless to keep,” Ikeda said. “It is a coaxial weapon. First, a powerful laser emits a beam that is heavily absorbed by the atmosphere. It super-heats a column of air so hot that it expands into a respectable vacuum. While the cylinder of air is still expanding supersonically the proton beam shoots down it not much slower than the laser pulse ahead of it.”

“Alright, once again you are ahead of us in the use of lasers. They are a technology we didn’t refine as too expensive for the volume we thought we’d use. Your semiconductor light emitters make exciting lasers much easier. We’re amazed to find them here in every ground car and smartphone. They are in household items. May one assume you destroyed the Tiger ship?”

“No. The ship was fired upon while it was low on our horizon approaching Japan. While large, the total amount of energy hitting the ship head-on was not sufficient to vaporize such a huge mass. It would have vaporized the front surface enough to decompress the first compartments and transiently decelerated the ship from the shock wave generated on its front surface. Sufficiently so to likely kill or incapacitate any crew and damage the vessel to an unknown depth behind the front surface.”

“That’s impressive,” Three Fingers allowed.

Ikeda made a small bow like he’d been paid a personal compliment.

“However, as I am given to understand is common in the heat of battle, the situation became more complex. The vessel continued in its orbit beyond our sky and overflew the Russian Republic. They seem to have regarded it as a threat just as we did. They attacked it with a missile that deployed multiple enhanced radiation weapons. If there was any crew or automated systems capable of intercepting such incoming weapons they failed. The devices detonated very close to the Tiger ship and any one of them would have been devastating. We can only assume they used that sort of weapon intending to capture the vessel intact.”

“My knowledge of English and human technology fails me again,” Three Fingers admitted. “What sort of radiation did these weapons have enhanced?”

“Are you aware there are specialized nuclear weapons?” Ikeda asked.

“We’ve been told some nations may have x-ray lasers powered by thermonuclear bombs, and also the sort that when detonated high in the atmosphere yield an abundance of gamma rays that will produce a strong EMP and damage electronics below. Is there another sort?” Three Fingers asked.

“Yes. There are devices that when detonated produce a copious flood of high-energy neutrons with its other energy releases very diminished. One is not aware if they have been made directional at all. They kill living things without damaging the physical surroundings beyond rendering them slightly radioactive. Slightly enough that it is a temporary problem with which we can deal by robots, shielding, or patience.”

“The horrors never end with your weapons,” Three Fingers said.

“I’m sure the Tigers felt that way, very briefly,” Ikeda said. “In any case, we were able to have a launch to intercept and dock to the vessel ready before the Russians. We now have a shuttle docked to the damaged Tiger ship that is broadcasting our claim and that the derelict is occupied and we claim salvage rights. The Russians seem reluctant to try to challenge that claim or destroy the vessel to deny it to us while we occupy it. Since you understand star drives, we would propose a joint effort to study and possibly remove the Tiger drive to be reproduced or compared to yours so an improved composite might be produced. A good first action would be to send one of your shuttles to the ship to discourage the Russians or anyone else from contesting our possession. How would you regard that?”

“As a very important opportunity,” Three Fingers agreed. “We had to soft crash our ship on your moon, and recovering our hyper-mode from the wreck is going to be difficult. I don’t think we’ve recovered a Tiger hyper-mode in the last three generations.”

“You’ve been fighting them that long?” Ikeda asked, shocked.

“Indeed. Our history has progressed at a much different pace than yours. Do you have the orbital elements so I can have a shuttle rendezvous and establish a co-possession of this wreck?”

“I brought a print-out describing them,” Ikeda said producing a folder.

“Are the Japanese laws regarding salvage rights and maritime law similar to the English models? Should we hire Japanese lawyers familiar with your customs to protect our mutual rights?” he asked.

“I’m astonished how you can be unfamiliar with well-known facets of human culture and so well informed about the most obscure,” Ikeda said.

“Our intelligence gathering has been narrowly informed by our special circumstances,” Three Fingers admitted. “We have been greatly aided by a small number of very well-informed allies. We depend on them to define what is important to us. It will take a lifetime for any of us to absorb significant trivia. If we can see a basis for mutual trust, I see no why reason we can’t have such allies among the Japanese. We have no bias against non-English speakers or cultures. It was a matter of convenience and opportunity that made us deal with Anglophones first.”

Ikeda nodded. “Your speaking of trust first before the bonds of contract speak well for us being able to establish such a relationship. Let us pursue that idea further.”

“That how I expect an ambassador to sound,” Three Fingers said, “Perhaps you should ask your government for authority to be ambassador to the People. We have legal resident status in two countries but lack a territory at present to host an ambassador.”

“There is nothing in our custom preventing an ambassador to be certified to more than one sovereign group,” Ikeda said. “We’ll consult the lawyers on your diplomatic status and potential for citizenship or dual citizenship other places too.”

Chapter 26

“The Russians, Indians, Israelis, French, British, Australians, and Germans all request permission to send people already in this country on student visas to attend the second class working towards our hyper-mode theory and engineering,” Beelus told Blue and Jed. He’d asked to join their luncheon and was much more comfortable.

“That sounds like a doubling of your class. Can you handle that?” Blue wondered.

“We have room to seat that many and half again if we needed to. I was more concerned with diluting my ability to respond to questions,” Beelus said. “So far, they are asking far fewer questions and of much better quality than I expected. They all assure me they are fluent in English. That’s hardly surprising since they are already here studying.”

“I like it, actually,” Blue said. “If they don’t move to try to stop them attending it should put an end to all questions of the Americans keeping the tech theirs exclusively. What do you think, Jed?”

“This reads like a list of the nations capable of reproducing both technically and from an economic basis. Except for Japan and China. I think the Chinese are going to cut off their nose to spite their face. It’s stupid and short-sighted. I just hope it doesn’t somehow cause trouble later.”

“That’s a horrible expression,” Blue said. “It makes me uncomfortable every time I hear it. The Chinese may feel they can build from our public disclosures and retain their pride.”

“Maybe you should invite the Japanese?” Jed suggested, ignoring his discomfort.

“Three Fingers is working a separate deal with the Japanese in India,” Blue revealed. “They will be attending virtually because they can’t attend physically. They’ve already been given a recording of Beelus’ introductory lecture. We should send that recording to the other new students too.”

Jed noticed how carefully Blue spoke. Slower than usual. There was a lot he wasn’t telling him.

“I’m nervous enough having the lecture back here. The only objection I have is that these students from different cultures and nations represent much more than a doubling of our security risk. We should take extra precautions. I’d like to have passive scanning on their entry to detect weapons. Not to exclude them but to inform us who to watch closely. I’d also like Malto to put a guard on each end of the presentation stage, visibly well-armed.”

“I’ll order him to do that. Do you mind if I cite you as instigating it?” Blue asked Jed.

“I wish you would. Otherwise, he may think you are losing confidence in me.”

“I’m not. In fact, I wonder why you think you need backup?”

“If one of them does intend harm, he would be a professional and he wouldn’t be deterred by seeing three guards. But he’d try to neutralize the well-armed aliens in uniform before the civilian human with only a silly little pistol.”

“So, they are present just to buy you a little extra time?” Blue asked.

“You make it sound so cold-blooded, but yeah. And if they eliminate a threat before I even have to react how much better for everyone,” Jed pointed out. “If not, it’s still a better trade than losing one of your irreplaceable lecturers.”

“Or you?” Blue said.

“Thank you,” Jed said, choosing not to hear it as a question.

* * *

“So, the core has to have regions that are critically shaped and oriented single crystals separated by several atom thick barriers of material that is magnetically active?” the British student asked.

“Yes, do you have a technology that requires single crystal fabrication?” Beelus asked.

“We manufacture a lot of turbine blades for jet aircraft that are single crystals,” he replied.

“How big are they?” Beelus wondered.

The student held up his index fingers about a sixth of a man-length apart.

Beelus nodded. “You have the concept. That’s a good start.”

“How big is this structured core of crystal?” the student asked suddenly suspicious.

“About four man-lengths long, with interior regions in a rather complex geometry that must be multiples of nine,” Beelus said. He showed a picture for the students that made a few of them think of an elongated bulb of garlic.

“Well, Rolls-Royce isn’t going to be able to knock those out for you,” he said.

“This is a company of your home nation?” Beelus asked.

“Yeah, they make jet engines.”

“Whoever makes them they are going to have to be made in orbit,” Beelus revealed. “The process is too delicate and prone to a very high rejection rate if you try to do it in gravity.”

“So only space-capable nations are going to be able to make a hyper-drive,” the student said. He didn’t phrase it as a question at all but Beelus nodded his agreement.

“Space capable, and able to build a large facility to handle rather large volumes of very carefully formulated semiconductor material. It is ultrapure and growing a core in successive volumes of different alloys without disturbing the adjacent one already formed requires precise temperature control. There is also a need to avoid any significant vibration and shocks such as from a ship docking to the facility.”

“We can produce those sorts of materials too,” the student said. “However, it is usually cut into thousands of tiny pieces for electronic chips. The amount you are describing may very well be our entire annual production.”

“I’m given to understand it wasn’t much more than a century ago that your annual production was zero,” Beelus pointed out. “We are heartened we don’t have to start from zero but merely increase your production. Imagine if we had to start with identifying the elements needed and where to mine them. In that case, we might not see success within our lifetimes. We thought that a possibility at first.”

“So, once we have the increased production and an orbital facility, how long does it take to fabricate a core? Or I guess I should say, grow one?” the Indian student asked Beelus.

“It takes the People at our shipyards a bit more than three years to finish a hyper-mode.”

“I thought we’d hammer out a working model of some sort in six months or so,” the American said.

“If you let it crystalize too fast you get far too many faults. Even if it is functional, its service life will be reduced. It is the accumulation of faults that eventually makes us remove a mode from service. A mode needs to cool between uses. Ours was on almost a half-hour instead of seconds. That’s half its service life and all at once is much worse than a little at a time. It’s a wonder we got here.”

“This is going to take decades,” the Australian said. He seemed in despair.

“Your race is very… pushy. And I mean that as a compliment,” Beelus hastened to say. “I’ll be shocked if it takes more than three or four decades given your history of technological advancement. It took the People two centuries from when there was a consensus that such a device would work until we were confident that we had all the necessary techniques and started building an orbital facility. From there we built the first core and a ship to put it in before another century had passed.”

Most of the students looked dismayed if not outright horrified.

“You also have an unusually rich planet,” Beelus said by way of encouragement. “You have multiple nations capable of doing this if they decide to commit. We only have three facilities among our worlds capable of doing that and they now draw on the resources of multiple worlds. The first time on our home world took an extraordinary effort and far too much of our total economy.”

“A thought,” the French student interjected. “Instead of growing one section upon another, each one slowly enough to have the required internal structure. Why not grow several core sections dimensionally correct but quickly? Then use it as a mold to grow the next segment likewise? You would have a set of multiple forms upon which to grow working segments slowly. The end result would be the final components would still have to be grown slowly to get the desired internal structure. But you could be growing several at a time - instead of one.”

He looked at Beelus expectantly.

“I’m not sure how you’d get it to separate at the magnetic material. There is no gap and the binding forces would be huge,” Beelus envisioned.

“It’s just a mold. You don’t have to use the proper material as if you intended it to stay together. It can be added after. There must be something that would serve as a release agent. Gold treated with noble gasses since you’d do this in vacuum. What the heck, maybe Teflon.”

“Write up a paper on it please,” Beelus encouraged. “Including how you’d assemble it. I can’t say it wouldn’t work. It’s a complex and radical new concept I doubt anyone has ever entertained.”

These huge jumps of imagination unsettled Beelus so his heart was beating fast.

“If you run at cryogenic temperatures maybe that deterioration can be slowed,” the Indian said.

“You’re in zero g and vacuum,” the American said. “It will have to be enclosed for a constant radiant background temperature. Just push them together with plastic shims around the edges. Put a slight opposite charge on each piece and slide the shims out. They’ll self-assemble.”

“Collaborate and co-author on the paper with me,” the French student invited the others.

Maybe two decades. Beelus thought but didn’t dare say it aloud.

* * *

Their lunch meeting was enhanced by Barnard sitting in and Three Fingers visiting. Blue and Jed had done this several times and agreed four was as many as could hold such a brief meeting and get anything accomplished. Blue started it off with a news item.

“The United States announced a national program to build launch capacity to support a hyper-mode fabrication facility when it is built. It’s interesting. How do they decide what mass and dimensions they need to be able to lift with their vehicles when they haven’t even started designing the orbital factory?”

“I’d guess they’ll build the biggest thing they can design right now and hope it’s enough,” Jed said.

“You can usually break an object down into parts and assemble them in orbit,” Barnard suggested.

“Why are they building rockets when you have visibly superior shuttles?” Jed asked. “Why aren’t they begging for classes about how to build those as well as hyper-modes?”

Blue looked at Three fingers rather directly. He tilted his head a little. Blue changed his face slightly. Three fingers tilted his head the other way but not as far.

“Like an old married couple,” Barnard said to this non-verbal display.

“You sure?” Blue asked Three Fingers.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“I’m not sure there is anyone who hasn’t asked for the shuttle tech,” Blue told the humans.

“Jamaica, Tonga, Luxemburg,” Three Fingers supplied easily.

“Anybody who could honestly build one,” Blue said to the quibble.

“It seems to me it would speed up the objective of building your hyper,” Jed said.

When they said nothing, he added: “I imagine you have your reasons.”

“Several, but it’s complicated,” Three Fingers admitted. “The shuttles are much easier than the hyper-mode. I can see you people will just build fleets of them. That will be the end of our mining for rare metals as a way to have a little financial edge. It also cuts off our last line of retreat if we find we just can’t get along with humans. We could go Mars or the Moons of Jupiter and have a couple of generations to solve our problems before you could bother us in any number.”

“Wouldn’t work,” Jed said. “It doesn’t have to be in numbers. It just takes one ship projecting military power and your retreat is rendered moot.”

“We figured that out. Withholding the shuttle tech was from before we knew about nukes.”

Something passed between the aliens again.

“We do have an agreement with Israel about shuttle tech, but part of that is not proliferating it. They see that very much to their advantage. We also have a private understanding about some tech with Japan. In principle, they have agreed to work together at a future time, but the process needs some time to mature,” Three Fingers said.

“Those two countries’ spheres of influence are far enough apart that may work,” Barnard said.

“And we’ll tell you more in time or if we need advice,” Three Fingers said closing the topic.

“The financial reason will hold for a while,” Jed said. “I think the price of platinum metals has been a bit soft. They haven’t dropped but they aren’t keeping up with inflation. They have to buy a certain amount for current needs as catalysts and other industrial applications but everybody is being cautious about stockpiling too far ahead or holding it for investment.”

“We are trying very hard, with expert help, not to kill the market,” Three fingers said. “As far as the other. It’s not like they need the shuttle tech right now. They’re nowhere near needing massive lift capacity to start making hyper-modes.”

“Mmmm. I’d take another message from that news release,” Barnard said. “I’m hearing, “We’re seeing to our needs and we’re going to build this even if you stop helping us.”

“There are some things that they can do with the tech and some actions that we are quite sure are beyond them,” Blue said.

Three Fingers nodded his agreement.

“If you find somewhere habitable when you test your ship, I suggest you claim it as sovereign territory,” Jed said. “Even if it is only a half dozen or so people to give you a claim. If you mix a few humans in it will complicate it for anybody wanting to challenge it. The value in the future will be its proximity to Earth.”

“I’ve spoken with Three Fingers about that. We’ve decided it is too risky to only have one ship and do any landings. We will make claims on some body even if nothing is habitable. Probably among the Centauri stars since they are closest. Just some rock around which you could orbit a station will do. A satellite broadcasting our claim is sufficient. But we won’t claim it for the People but as our own.”

At Jed’s surprise and raised eyebrow Blue explained.

“We aren’t sure at all how we are going to be received at home. Think on it,” Blue told him. The People know two other star-faring species. The others intimated to us we’ve never met because they are enslaved by the Tigers. We have no idea if the Bugs have any others subjugated because we can’t even talk to them. If they do, it’s likely the others are as strange to us as the Bugs or they would just attack them and contest star systems with them like they have with us.”

“He paused to see if Jed would see his point without belaboring the obvious.

“Oh. Aliens must have a pretty bad reputation with your kind,” Jed said.

“Indeed, I am told human elders scare their little ones into behaving with mythological characters.”

“Yeah, various flavors of boogeymen,” Jed acknowledged.

“The same with us, except our boogeymen are very real. We have videos of them fighting and actual bodies even if it isn’t our custom to display them. Our people may not be thrilled with us bringing a new alien species to our home worlds. A few of you treated us very well but that was not universal. I thank you and your friends for that again, but others were ready to take advantage of us if not openly hostile. I fear there are still those that may want to make us a client race as the Tigers do others. I’m sure they would phrase their actions in the loftiest terms, doing so out of supposed necessity and asserting it is only to our advantage and benefit. But it would be to our benefit the way a farmer provides the very best care to his prized dairy cow. To maximize its benefit to him.”

“Nothing big nations don’t already do to little nations,” Jed said. “You already found out what stops that nonsense. Having nukes. Chills that sort of false benevolence. There’s nothing like knowing that pushing past a certain line will make you install a fresh glowing crater where one or more of their cities used to be to make someone treat you with respect and courtesy.”

“One likes to think we wouldn’t be so aggressive,” Blue said. “But we have no way of knowing if our history had played out just slightly different if we wouldn’t be the same.”

“What ifs are pointless,” Jed asserted. “I certainly don’t expect your people to all be saints who will never short change a stranger or fudge on how wonderful the widget he’s selling is. Surely you have at least petty crime?”

“Sometimes not so petty,” Blue admitted. “Murder is not unknown, just rare. There is far too much control to have things like your drug trade. The concept of cash like you have doesn’t exist now. People can still trade in goods but that is difficult to raise to the level of an underground currency. There are no specific limits on how much one may earn, but it works to that end. I’m not sure if that isn’t one of the things that made us advance slower than you.

“In any case, we aren’t sure how we will be received at home and our foothold here is far from secure. We may need a place to retreat of our own. Our claim will not be for the People and it will include our human allies to lend weight to it with the other nations.”

Jed wanted to ask more, but they’d already withheld some information from him. He wouldn’t beg.

Barnard looked at him with a sly smile and Jed nodded. They’d talk later.

Blue frowned. “Now they’re doing it,” he told Three fingers.

* * *

“The US, UK, European Union, and the Russian Republic, have all announced long-term national projects and goals of achieving star flight,” Barnard pointed out. “Notice that India, Israel, and Japan aren’t making any big announcements?”

“And China. They seem to not even have an opinion or interest,” Jed said.

“They seem more put off by the alienness of the aliens than even the Islamics. They would have to resemble dogs which immediately suggests they are unclean.”

“Nah, they have the same problem for the Chinese we do,” Jed said. “None of us are Han.

“They won’t work with us but I’m sure they are working on stealing the tech,” Barnard said. “A lot of it is public knowledge but I get the impression there’s something really important about the drive that they aren’t telling us yet.”

“Have you figured out yet what parts of this are beyond the different nations?” Jed asked.

“No. I and I’ve thought on that vague statement a great deal,” Barnard admitted. “All I can imagine is it isn’t something that will keep them from actually building the drive. We’re past that point even if they never said another word. The best I’ve come up with is that operating it must have some undisclosed effect they haven’t told us about.”

“Maybe you come out the other end without any perceived delay, but the trip still takes as long as it would for light to go the distance. So, it’s suddenly years later from when you left and that much again if you return,” Jed speculated.

“You have a very vivid imagination. But they do keep talking about their history being thousands of years. Talk about waiting for your ship to come in!”

“We’ll find out eventually,” Jed said. “I don’t resent that they are becoming more independent. It isn’t healthy for them to depend on just a few humans who can heavily influence them. We lucked out that we got to protect them from being absorbed by human bureaucracy. It’s probably the most worthwhile thing I’ve done in life.”

“So far,” Barnard said.

* * *

Weeks went by with no life-threatening crises. Nothing threatened the People and the political scene found other problems more immediate. After some months things were almost in a routine. Everyone was making progress and the markets had settled from rumors of industry destroying technologies from the aliens. Some commentators poked fun at the areas in which the aliens seemed to have a blind spot and were stuck in 1960s technologies.

The total number of Tiger ships the various nations claimed to have destroyed was eighteen as close as anyone could tell. There was no evidence any survived and people stopped holding their breath waiting for another fleet to appear. The nations who dealt with them replenished their weapons expended and increased their stockpiles in case of another engagement. Financing was suddenly found for even more advanced systems. If no survivors fled to give them a warning the consensus was that they’d make short work of any other Tigers that showed up.

Various religious and environmental groups still picketed the end of the aliens’ driveway in Nevada. Sometimes at the same time, which could be entertaining. Blue took to sending a crew down to offer them ice water and visibly take video with their phones of the protestors taking video of them. Protests dropped way off in the peak of summer heat which could be brutal in Nevada. In India vendors lining the entry to the aliens’ compound threw fruit and less pleasant substances at anyone demonstrating. The two policemen assigned always seemed to be looking the other way. The Aliens in India had their security just out of sight inside their gate. In Nevada Jed never dropped his guard watching Blue, and trained some of Malto’s men in the mindset of Earth security that was very different from their military training. A few washed out until he found those with the right personalities.

“It’s been almost three years now I’ve been your bodyguard,” Jed brought up at their lunch meeting one day. “Your security is trained and proficient in both English and dealing with human expressions and oddities. The site has better physical security and the early nut cases who threatened harm have settled down. I don’t need to guard you day to day,” Jed insisted.

“Are you anxious to get back to your Alaskan wilderness?” Blue asked.

“No, I needed some quiet time badly back then but I’m past that.”

“Then what do you want to do?” Blue asked.

“Take a little time to travel. There are a few places I’d like to see in person, not just video. Machu Picchu for one but there are a bunch of similar sites and more found since that was discovered. Sacsaywamán and Moray fascinate me. There is a volcano in Ethiopia, Erta Ale, I’d love to see.”

“Take a break. Go do those things and when you are refreshed come back and take up some new duties,” Blue suggested. “We don’t need your modular. We have plenty of room and can bring in as many as we need. Keep it as a base to return to between your travels. When you are done, we’ll put you back to work.”

“Doing what? I don’t want you creating make-work for me,” Jed said.

“Not at all. It will be no surprise to you that everyone wanting to build superluminal vessels plans to have them heavily armed. The Tigers taught them it isn’t a friendly universe out there. The Israeli-Japanese coalition has agreed to work with India to make their first vessel a joint effort.”

“That’s the oddest combination of allies,” Jed said. “They had very little in common before this.”

That amused Blue. “You are too close to it to see what is apparent to me. It’s the fact they had little to do with each other that makes it possible. They haven’t seen each other as rivals before this.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Jed admitted. “None of the bigger players would think they need any of the three and don’t need to ease the economic burden of doing it alone.”

“The bigger players as you style them don’t want us as partners either,” Blue said. “Of course, they want the technology but they would be happy to go their way and use it to serving their own purposes once they have it. We’re to the point now that they will all attain star flight if we never gave them any more help with it.

“Our three allies are willing to get us back in contact with our home stars as our first priority. We’ve persuaded them they can expand their safety and prosperity by establishing a good relationship with the worlds of the People when we make contact. The superpowers haven’t expressed any interest in doing that at all. I suspect they haven’t found us sufficiently advanced from you beyond having our hyper-mode to consider us peers. Perhaps they will at least see us as a vast market for their goods.”

“It sounds to me like it’s four allies. You belong to this group and not the others. I always thought getting you back in contact was the unspoken objective of this whole exercise,” Jed protested. “What is the point of it if they don’t intend to find your worlds?”

“If you examine their statements carefully, and the internal ones that become public in particular, it appears they think of this more as a punitive mission against the Tigers for attacking your world. If we didn’t happen to be in the same part of the heavens, I think they’d want to find the Tigers first and us as an after-thought, if at all. I’ve had it suggested that objective is seen as what is more popular with the voters. I’m afraid they want to go make war upon the Tigers and fear they will find simply exterminating them the simplest solution and within their capabilities.”

“From what you’ve told me about their inability to surrender and aggressive nature, I’m not sure that won’t be the only end game possible.”

“And yet it isn’t your immediate first choice,” Blue said.

“I’ve always been wary of doing things you can’t undo,” Jed said. “Far too many people would remove things they find irritating without a moment’s hesitation. Take as an example mosquitos. The vast majority of people would use a chemical or disease to make them extinct given the chance. They can’t judge what that would do to the birds and other insects that feed on them or the fish that eat their larvae. I sincerely believe they couldn’t start to make an accurate model of it. An unbalance can cascade into completely unexpected changes.”

“Well, that’s interesting,” Blue said. “I was going to frame it in terms of a moral imperative but you make a case for self-interest.”

“I’d argue doing what is moral is in your self-interest but the short-sighted can’t see it. What happens to the client races the Tigers claim to have? Do they perish with their masters? What is on the far side of your contacts with the Tigers they may be holding back? Nobody knows.”

“This is why I want to retain you. I’d miss our lunch talk terribly. You think differently and it has value to us. The coalition ship will be armed too, but rather than carry all our soldiers for possible ground actions, we want a collection of small independent teams from all of the sponsoring nations.”

“Isn’t Malto going to want one unified force with uniform training and equipment under his command?” Jed asked.

“Malto was ready to retire if we’d returned home from the fight the threw us far from home. He’s about the equivalent of an eighty-five-year-old human. Which he says is too old to lead fighters.”

“I still can’t read your age differences very well,” Jed admitted.

“He also declared he isn’t going back home to retire,” Blue said. “He said he’d never fit back in now, sitting on his balcony, twiddling his thumbs.”

Jed smirked because they could twiddle four thumbs at once.

“It was his idea actually,” Blue went on, ignoring Jed’s amusement. “Others of our soldiers have left our service to be civilians or will age off like Malto by the time you go. We have more important work for our crew to do than maintaining a constant number of soldiers. He pointed out the sort of action we might need on our return is different than what his group was trained to do. They always were part of a much larger action combined with troops from other ships. It’s far more likely we will need a raid to seize or destroy limited artifacts or persons. Such things are better done subtly, not the way he fought Tigers or Bugs. One small action can have far-reaching effects if done correctly. Something as insignificant to a larger battle as downing a single helicopter,” Blue said pointedly.

Jed still didn’t acknowledge that so he didn’t react.

“Malto is organizing and will send a group of six of our own trained for such actions. We warned them that when they are back in contact with our service they may be stripped from their special service and assigned to other units.”

“You go?” Jed picked up on that right away. “You aren’t going to return either?”

“I’ll stay in command here as long as I am able and as long as I still have crew who haven’t asked to be released.”

“I’m not in active service with any of those three nations to form a team,” Jed worried. “Like Malto, I’ll be getting pretty old by the time you leave. You know Barnard could do this too?”

Blue heard he still wasn’t convinced if he was saying when you leave.

“We thought you’d organize a human team with direct loyalty to the commander of the People. We like that it would give him two teams. You could draw on anyone you like to form it. My understanding is human medicine can now keep most people active and fit into their seventies. If Barnard is as capable, we can ask him if he’d stand ready as a spare. Just in case, as your expression goes, you get run over by a bus. Be aware our commander of the People is expected to be Beelus at this point. That doesn’t mean he will be the ship’s commander or the commander of any other vessels that may associate with them.”

Jed carefully considered the counter-arguments, one by one.

“That would be interesting to do,” Jed admitted. “After a little break like I mentioned.”

Blue just nodded and didn’t interrupt him talking himself into it.

“I’ve always had a few ideas about how teams should be organized,” Jed mused. “If we have different teams with different structures, we can train against each other and learn from that.”

Blue just nodded and fought the urge to close the sale as his business manager called it. Jed wasn’t the sort you put the hard sell on and he seemed to be talking himself into it.

“We’d have to talk about our budget and my compensation,” Jed warned.

“Compared to building a hyper-mode ship and arming her, the funding of a few special operating teams will be a minor matter. We aren’t going to stint on anything we think we need for this expedition. I wasn’t even going to detail all that to you if you just agreed to come back. I didn’t want to ruin your vacation by giving you too much to think on to relax.”

“My mind may wander there a time or two,” Jed admitted, “but I worked out in Alaska how not to obsess about things that aren’t an immediate concern. If I have any ideas, I’ll make a note on my phone and review them all together when I get back.”

Blue smiled. ‘When I get back’ was as close as he needed to a formal acceptance.

“Enjoy yourself,” Blue said. “Eventually I hope to have responsibility lifted from my shoulders and I’ll go view some of the wonders of this world too.”

“You should. We still have this quaint custom of sending cards from exotic locations to your family and friends. I’ll send you a postcard or two,” Jed promised.

Chapter 27

“Our alliance, with fewer resources, are going to have the first functional hyper-mode ship,” Three Finger said. It gave him a great deal of satisfaction. “They liked our suggestion to first build a smaller ship with a basic shell and make everything modular and easily modified. The second hyper-mode core will still be ready well before the bigger ship to follow. The others are wasting a huge investment trying to design in detail and far too specialized. They will have the perfect ship designed that will be ten or fifteen years out of date when finished.”

“Humans can’t live with a ten-year-old phone,” Blue said. “I admit they will have superior ships to the People or our enemies, but not the best ship they could make. Too many design details will have to be frozen far too early to integrate so many systems this early.”

“From what I see, they just expect that to be the norm in many things like ground cars,” Three Fingers said. “They develop new technologies so quickly they commonly expect that they have to go to production at some point or they’ll never settle on a design. The flip side of that is that they have no use for building a phone or a car you’d expect to use for life. It will be obsolete and abandoned long before it fails or wears out so why put the effort and expense into making it last? I think this will only be a problem for them in this first generation of ships and then they will follow the usual business model. We’ll only be able to take advantage of it this once.”

“This is going to be a huge shock to our people when they see such a rapidly advancing culture that has no use for what they see as stability. It’s going to be disruptive,” Blue predicted.

“I can see that, but the complexity of it is beyond my ability to predict,” Three Fingers admitted.

“The so-called great powers still haven’t tried to assert control over our friends or settled who is in overall charge of all these vessels?” Blue asked.

“No, it amazes me,” Three Fingers admitted. “They are obsessed with details and seem to be missing the larger questions. I assume they are all working behind the scenes to gain any edge they can imagine. I’ve seen a few articles by minor media personalities asking which nation will be the command vessel, but none of them have zeroed in on what will determine that. There have been no such questions officially raised. The journalists are either locked into blinders based on their personal nationalism or suggesting ideas such as their ridiculous United Nations being given overall control.

“We do have to cautiously speak with Beelus about this,” Three Fingers said with his gravest face. “He’s going to be reporting to leaders who haven’t had several years of exposure to human insanity. They simply aren’t going to be able to believe what he tells them. Perhaps not even the evidence of their own eyes. He may have to make decisions for the good of the People we could never have contemplated. Things we left behind thousands of years ago.”

“And we can’t anticipate from afar how all that will play out to try to write him orders,” Blue said. “I start to understand the human desire to micro-manage. I think he is flexible enough to see if his superiors can’t deal mentally with a new reality. He’s younger. That’s a big help right there.”

“And smart,” Three Fingers added. “He’ll have Jed’s action team who will not hold established authority in awe like our own troops might. I say that for not only the People but the other Earth authorities who may try to assert control if they can locate our home stars. I hope they will be reasonable enough we can allow contact. If we must refuse, they will have deep resentment. I have my doubts.”

“I believe our allies' military teams will support him if the major powers try to take control, but I think it too dangerous to try to prime them for such an event. If we speak of opposition or rebellion, we may precipitate it needlessly,” Blue worried.

Three Fingers nodded. “I think we have done everything within our power.”

* * *

Jed had just returned from another small vacation which included a visit to the Indian site.

“The time has come, I believe, to make you aware of some other facts,” Blue told Jed over lunch.

“I like to think my input is still useful. It’s a conflict,” Jed admitted. “You have to grow to trust your own council, and yet there are still human ways of thinking and history you haven’t fully integrated into your thinking yet. It may seem like I want to have undue influence on you.”

“We will have to make some mistakes to learn how to act for ourselves,” Blue said. “One hopes not fatal mistakes. We also saw the value of your rules about the need to know. As long as one doesn’t get obsessive about it and make everything a secret habitually.”

“Yes, you have to trust someone in the end,” Jed agreed.

“The three allies cooperating with us to build a ship, India, Israel, and Japan all brought unique assets to the mix. We agreed to share different things with each of them individually before and now have merged that knowledge to be available to all three.”

“Are you free to discuss them?” Jed asked.

“Yes. As part of the protective force our ship will carry, you need to be aware of our other capabilities. With Israel, we traded our heavy shuttle tech for their knowledge of nuclear weapons. An unexpected bonus was that both Japan and India had specialized designs and details to add to that knowledge. We brought Japan and India both into access to other shuttle technologies and had similar results. They each had something to contribute. That’s just from three countries.

“After seeing how each one hoards their abilities, I’ve concluded that if all your nations had pooled their research and abilities years ago, you would have found us first instead of the other way around. The Japanese brought a huge prize to our collaboration. They used a secret beam weapon on a Tiger ship overflying their nation. They vaporized the command area and the primary data node there. Then the Russians seeing the same ship and unaware of its damage, attacked it with three radiation enhanced weapons,” Blue said.

“Neutron bombs,” Jed said. “Three says they weren’t sure of getting through to it.”

“Which even after we learned about atomic weapons we didn’t immediately understand,” Blue said. “That killed everyone else on board who might have initiated a data wipe to their distributed backups or did a self-destruct of the rest of the vessel. It’s the best-preserved Tiger ship we’ve ever had. Of course, we never had either of these sort of those weapons to use on them before.”

“I imagine it is slightly radioactive now,” Jed said.

“It is, but we explored initially with robots. The radiation level declined quickly and is still dropping. It won’t be long before any of us can work a full shift aboard with light shielding. We’ve already extracted the dispersed data storage and the Japanese had the amazing ability to recover data from damaged memory. The most important aspect of that is we now recovered enough data to know approximately where in the galaxy the Tiger home worlds are in relationship to three pulsars. Since their worlds and ours share a boundary, we know our way home far better than we did when we arrived here.”

“You didn’t have pulsar navigation?” Jed asked.

“Not as accurate or compact as the Tigers,” Blue said. “Their clocks are every bit as good as yours. We previously stole other things from them. Capturing tech from the wrecks of their fighters was far easier than their capital ships. They are far ahead of us in data encryption. That was important to us learning about you from your internet at first.”

“Well, that will save some time finding your worlds,” Jed said.

“We’ve also supplied our new allies with fissile material from other parts of your solar system. They already have the processing in place to take advantage of the new material and have made improvements from sharing design data. They in turn are supplying us. We don’t think the other Earth nations will be aware we are mining that as well as monetary metals. That was our allies' biggest bottleneck in nuclear weapons production. None of them wanted to deplete their stores and leave themselves unprotected here on Earth to arm our expedition.”

“I can’t say as I blame them,” Jed said. “Most of them built up supplies of those key weapon materials slowly and at great expense.

“You saw our shuttle land in Alaska,” Blue reminded Jed. “You are probably aware it had a different drive than the heavy troop shuttles?”

“Yes, it was far too bright to look at. So, it’s quite different than our usual rockets.”

“It is. It uses a fusion source to heat the exhaust gases, but that is enhanced by using a mass that contains a considerable fraction of monatomic hydrogen. The thing that happened, is that when we revealed that tech to our three allies, they had ideas to improve it. It seems that it is a superior drive for missiles now. Due to their efforts and our mining of platinum group metals, it’s cheap enough to use for that purpose.”

“So, you have decent nukes on superior missiles. The major powers probably can’t believe you could join the nuclear club so quickly. That’ll be a shock to the big boys if you ever have to use them where they can observe.”

At Blue’s carefully neutral face he added.

“Yeah, I know. Or if you have to use them on the big boys.”

“One never knows. But better to have the capacity than not,” he asserted. “If the Tigers do show up again, they’ll now find our troop shuttles aren’t the easy targets they found them before. They will soon carry far more lethal missiles than theirs with greater range. Our allies will soon develop improved fighters with similar capabilities and we’ll buy what we judge the best for our use.”

“Thank you for bringing me in on these things you have been keeping secret.”

“There are a few more,” Blue said.

Jed leaned forward, interested.

* * *

“Our first hyper-mode core was finished last night, early because we copied a slightly simpler geometry from the Tigers,” Blue told Jed. “It wouldn’t matter if we were building a huge complex ship. We’d just be waiting on it to be finished. Our first vessel to receive this core is only about four times the volume of a troop shuttle and is almost ready. It also has dual drives. The sort a combat shuttle has and the hyper. That’s a design the People have never used. It takes up a great deal of internal volume to have two systems but will be very versatile. It will let us build the vessel in an existing hangar at a military base deep in the desert in Israel with very good security. The ship will lift to have the hyper-mode installed in orbit tonight. Everyone else is building both their hyper and ship in orbit. I think it’s going to shock them to find we have a finished ship while everyone else has a half-done shell. It’s smaller and not nearly as useful as what we’ll build next but we’ll start getting data about your neighboring stars much earlier.”

“You’re sure it will work?” Jed asked.

“Nothing is ever certain, but I’d bet my life on it,” Blue said. “In fact, I will. I’m going along.”

“How long to install the second drive?” Jed asked.

“About a week unless we run into problems,” Blue said. “If there are any problems it will probably be our fault. We decided to use your common metric system rather than impose our system of measurements. It just made sense. We get to order and use all sorts of standard things like fasteners instead of having them all custom-made. Materials like sheet metal, wire, and tubing are all in standard gages and dimensions. We also aren’t demanding special specs on most of the parts like your military does. We don’t need special aerospace quality electrical connectors or toilet seats.”

“Yeah, that’s an embarrassing meme that won’t die,” Jed acknowledged. “Are you still planning on going to the Centauri stars first?”

“Yes, the test flight will be to the three Centauri stars. Dr. James has requested he be allowed to go on that trip and have copies of the astronomic data to publish to his amateur astronomy clubs. He seemed positively gleeful at the prospect. We certainly owe him that much for his help.”

“That’s going to rub their noses in the crap so many established journals and institutions gave him when he first published about your presence. I can’t say as I blame him,” Jed said. “Are you going to announce it is making a test flight? If you just sneak off and then claim to have visited another star a lot of people won’t believe you.”

“We’ll have photos and Dr. James’ data,” Blue said.

Jed shook his head no. “Lots of people already think Dr. James is a crackpot, and if you haven’t noticed, humans fake all sorts of things. Including supposed photographic proof.”

“Can there be any way around such deeply held disbelief?” Blue asked.

“Get a prominent newsman from a big service to go with you,” Jed said. “Don’t announce it far enough ahead to give the other shipbuilders time to react, but do announce it just before they go.”

“And they’d believe a prominent newsperson more than me or Dr. James?”

“It doesn’t make any sense to me either,” Jed admitted. “But believe me, people have confidence in the talking heads they see every night on the evening news. They can lie to them and get caught at it and they still trust them. Much the same as politicians. It’s crazy but that is the psychology of it.”

“If you hadn’t given us so much good advice that worked so well, I’d just dismiss this,” Blue said.

“Ask Barnard and Dr. James,” Jed encouraged him. “See if they don’t agree. Swear him or them to secrecy until you get back. Journalists are used to holding a story briefly before releasing it.”

“Couldn’t I wait until the very last hour and tell them they have to leave right now or they will miss the story? I keep hearing stories about people in positions of trust leaking information.”

“You might but you’re less likely to get a big-name reporter that way. You could pick out a half dozen and invite them all at the last minute hoping to get two or three,” Jed suggested.

“We don’t have room for more than two after everyone who is needed is aboard.”

Jed shrugged. “Tell them you are calling six and the first two who make the ramp and get on your shuttle will get to go.”

Blue slowly smiled. “Yes, I’ll do it that way. I confess, I’m going to enjoy that.”

* * *

Kenneth Wilson had been reading the news for the Public Broadcasting Service for twenty-six years. His steely gaze radiated both sincerity and certainty. He was an icon whose face was well known in distant corners of the Earth. His big break had come when his producer didn’t understand how a story was supposed to lean because he was drunk. Ken dutifully read what was put before him and contradicted every other news source on the air that evening. He then looked prescient when the story blew up on them. A little more maturity and gray at the temples only added to his trustworthiness.

“Ken, do you want to talk to a real live alien?” his secretary asked. “He’s asking for you.”

“One of the mutt heads?” Ken asked.

“As far as I know they don’t have a live Tiger so that’s all we have to offer.”

Ken wondered why he wasn’t calling his producer, his current one, not the old one who drank himself to death, but he didn’t voice that.

“Sure, why not? Put him through.”

Blue appeared on the man’s screen, in uniform per everyone’s insistence.

“Mr. Wilson, we are about to perform a test flight of a new space ship that is will be very newsworthy. We haven’t announced it because we’d like to do so without interference or fanfare. I’m informed by several human advisors that we should include a couple of well-regarded commentators to go along on the test to report the matter on our return. We are going to have one of our shuttles available at Teterboro airport in six hours to accept two people to report on the flight. We’re only inviting six people and the first two will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. Do you wish to participate?”

“I’m sure you are going to fill that with New York based reporters,” Ken said. “They will get there first easily. I’m in Las Vegas and some of the better-known anchors are as distant as Atlanta or LA. I couldn’t go anyway because of contractual obligations,” he lied easily. He was offended they thought he should scramble against lesser personalities to be included. He was also terrified to fly and didn’t want a ride on any spacecraft, much less an experimental one.

“However, one of our very well-known traveling commentators is in the New York area. If I may send your request to my producer, he may divert him from his present assignment. May I do that?”

“Please do so. It will save me searching for another name to add. Thank you for your time,” Blue said because his humans had taught him just terminating calls with no warning was considered rude. It was still far more abrupt than Ken Wilson was used to.

“Martha, run that past Sid and see if he wants to send Terry,” Wilson instructed. Terry was a pretty boy who Ken suspected was being groomed to replace him when his face suggested doddering to the public instead of mature. With a little luck, the ship would go boom and he’d be reading a tearful eulogy about their beloved fellow worker in a few days. He had no idea he’d just given Terry his big break.

* * *

“Who else did you get besides Terry Bristol?” Three Fingers asked.

“Priscila Wyatt from BBC America,” Blue said. “She reports their food news such as restaurant reviews, stories about regional cuisines, and recipes. She was another substitute although they didn’t clear it with us first like PBS. Both of the other two who showed up later were second-tier players too.”

“So, nobody considered our flight significant enough to send who they consider their best?”

“That’s what I’m seeing too,” Blue agreed. “That is, besides the two who didn’t send anyone.”

“I’m conflicted whether to be insulted or to think it is safer not to be the public’s center of attention if they find us less newsworthy than the latest trendy dinner spot,” Three Fingers said.

“In a different conversation, Barnard pointed out to me that the average person is remarkably stupid and self-centered and I should always keep in mind that half of them are worse than that. I’d been wondering if we or the humans were smarter. It seemed a delicate question to even pose. I decided we of necessity have a similar situation statistically but our system of governance and military tradition hides it better. Does it matter at all whose bell curve is higher or shorter on the average?”

“Indeed, they seem almost to celebrate the reality instead of fighting it. It makes one appreciate their expression about making things foolproof, doesn’t it?” Three Fingers asked.

“You can only limit the expense fools cause,” Blue decided. “Given any freedom, the very worst of them will kill themselves in even the most protected environment.”

Three Fingers made a little gesture that meant don’t say anything, I’m thinking.

“Consider this and speak to me about it again some time,” Three Fingers invited. “The only portion of that intelligence graph that matters is the right side that the humans pick to show the high end.” He drew a bell in the air and extended it to the right, holding it briefly. “Perhaps as few as several hundred individuals out of billions are capable of really brilliant original thought. They humans may have advanced more rapidly not because they have more real genius but because they tolerate the attendant social oddities and disruption of society easier than us.”

“We’ll speak of it again, but I can tell you one way that works right now.”

Three Finger showed his interest without speaking.

“They will put up with all sorts of nonsense from anyone whose idea promises to make them a great deal of money,” Blue said. “That seems true no matter what ideology their government claims.”

“Alright, then we have to emphasize that advantage to our activities,” Three Fingers decided.

* * *

Terry Bristol was astonished they would allow him to take video of the bridge of their spacecraft. He didn’t imagine the other builders would allow that even with the screens shut off and blank. The four consoles wrapped around seats in front of them had Blue, a navigator of the People, an Indian communications specialist, and a Japanese engineer manning them. An Israeli observer was sitting against the back bulkhead with them and his role was unexplained, but they noted he was in uniform and armed. Terry wondered if he was to guard them. With no need for screens and consoles the news people, Israeli, and Dr. James were jammed together almost as closely as theater seating.

There weren’t any belts or other restraints and Terry had visions of old Star Trek movies where the crew were tossed back and forth when the ship sustained some impact. When he expressed that to the crew, they assured him any loss of acceleration damping would leave them all a smear on the same bulkhead not just thrown about beyond standing. It wasn’t very comforting.

He was used to having a cameraman and the studio people despaired of training him to use anything more difficult than recording glasses. Trying to use a high-end shoulder rig would end up looking like the sort of ill-framed, jerky home video that proud parents took of their offspring.

When Blue announced they would make a transition to the next star in two minutes, Terry took a quick look down the row of observers. Viewers had to be shown the emotional context of others to understand the event and how they should feel about it.

. Unfortunately, the BBC woman was trying to catch his reaction and the Israeli just looked irritated with being recorded. Only Dr. James showed had an air of excited anticipation. They’d just have to edit out the others and feature him with extra commentary. Terry had to look up who Dr. James was when he was introduced.

He looked back at the forward view port and disciplined himself to not let his gaze wander. They had been told the new star would appear suddenly straight ahead. When that happened, it was brighter than he expected. Star in his mind was a point of light and this showed a disk although the viewport dimmed it instantly to a manageable brightness. The only audible response was a soft ‘Ahhhh’ from Dr. James. Nobody was going to accuse them of an over-dramatic staged response.

“Is that what it will look like going back?” Priscila asked.

“Pretty much,” Blue agreed. “We’re visiting the binary first but this is the brighter of the two. We’re close enough we’d have to turn to see the other. When we visit the distant third star here you may notice it is much dimmer and cooler. We’ll also have views of several planets, but our survey mission this time doesn’t include any landings. That will be much more time-consuming and risky. We’ve found almost all misadventures in exploration and survey work involve landings.”

“But what if you see artifacts from orbit to know there are inhabitants?” Priscila asked. “Could you resist taking a closer look?”

Blue looked back over his shoulder at them astonished.

“Much, much, easier than you can imagine. We just had to land on another planet full of billions of natives because we had no choice. It was that or die. Though desperate, we had many more resources than we have in this little ship. The last few years as a result of doing that have been an adventure, to put it mildly. I’d run away from any evidence there were inhabitants as fast as we could and leave it for a much better-equipped survey with backup ships for rescue to investigate any inhabited planet.”

“When will landing happen then?” Terry asked Blue.

“There’s no timetable planned. Probably after trying to make contact with our home worlds.”

“We’ll do a rough survey of other nearby stars with this vessel while we have a larger one built for our journey home. The data may be valuable on returning and may give both of us nearby sources of valuable materials that are scarce on Earth. Just a few local stars should give your people more resources than they can use for hundreds of years.”

Terry doubted that, but had no idea what the numbers would be, so he didn’t argue.

Chapter 28

“Well at least they aren’t arguing we made it all up,” Three Fingers said. “Jed’s advice was good for that even if they put us off with the B team.”

“But they are upset we took the Explorer out without notifying them and upset we left a satellite around both exo-worlds claiming rights to them,” Blue said.

“I believe the expression Jed used is butt-hurt,” Three Fingers said. “He did a little walk to illustrate it that translates right across any of our physical differences. We got a call from the US State Department explaining why we couldn’t do that as resident aliens subject to their law, and how they could not abide a distant race positioning a base directly against their territory.

“I did point out we tried to work with their air traffic control when we landed on their world, but that there is no system of traffic control in orbit. One may change orbits or depart entirely without notifying anyone. When I explained that your Nevada branch of our people and our US corporations did not enter into the claims, rather it is our Indian colony along with our allies of India, Israel, and Japan that are co-claimants, he was fairly boggled. I suggested he consult with those nation partners on an equal basis with us. I explained we had neither authority to claim territory for our distant government nor the desire to do so. He seemed skeptical if I may flatter myself at reading human faces now but he announced he had to consult with his superiors and terminated the conversation.”

“What do you expect them to do next?” Blue wondered.

“Jed already predicted that they would refuse to cooperate with us if we’re going not going to show any appreciation and have a bad attitude about our proper place and importance in this world.”

“Does he get it then?” Blue asked.

“Not entirely. He may suspect several scenarios. When he sees the end play it will amuse him.”

* * *

“Did you see the news article about the Chinese vice-premier who was quizzed why they haven’t joined in the race to produce a hyper-mode core and build a starship?” Jed asked.

“No, I have some news gathering done for me but that wasn’t among any of my one-line teasers collected for me, I’m sure. What sort of vice-premier is the man?” Three Fingers

“He deals mostly with their economic policy and central bank,” Jed said.

“How odd they inquired of him rather than their military or someone in foreign policy.”

“I don’t know. Opening up travel to other stars is going to have an economic impact,” Jed insisted.

“Culturally, more than economically,” Three Fingers said. “You will have access to rare elements and be able to build things you wouldn’t otherwise. But your world was already rich in minerals. You aren’t going to import bulk food from other worlds even if they have suitable biospheres. Nor should you expect to import things like concrete. It won’t solve any population problems because people can be bred faster than ships can carry them away.”

“I can see that,” Jed agreed. “Not that this fellow addressed that.”

“How did he reply?” Three Fingers asked.

“He said China will pursue such technology in the fullness of time and for its own purposes. That they appreciate the information you’ve shared, but that he doesn’t see them competing with the other nations doing so at present or for the same goals when they do.”

“They may benefit by waiting if any of the others follow our instructions and still have problems making it work. One supposes the reasons and fix would be exposed on so public a project. The second generation of a technology is always cheaper and easier,” Three Fingers said.

“No comment on the other? I haven’t heard anyone publish a firm set of goals,” Jed said. “Not the intent to build ships but how they intend to use them.”

“You’ve noticed that, have you?” I think everyone is assuming their mutual goals are obvious,” Three Fingers said.

“I don’t think so…” Jed said and stared at Three Finger like a challenge.

“That’s because you think a great deal,” Three Fingers said. “Perhaps too much. You don’t need any help from me. At this point, let’s just let everybody make all the assumptions they wish. Perhaps later you’ll appreciate that condition of plausible deniability to which you introduced me.”

Jed looked surprised.

“Let me ask you something else then,” Jed requested. “Are you going to bring people from your home worlds back here? And what will that mean? Do you think they will want an official presence like an embassy with an ambassador?”

“I have no more idea than you,” Three Fingers insisted. “I expect them to have no idea how to deal with a race that isn’t actively hostile. They are much slower to change anything than humans. They may take a few decades discussing it to death before they decide how to treat you. It’s beyond their comprehension that you will change so much in a few decades that the original conditions won’t apply.”

“But surely some will want to come back, if only academics interested in studying us. If there is no restraint on business people coming here, I can envision the most ambitious coming to Earth to seek their fortunes. If it allows somebody to develop something of value that would be stifled by your slow cautious system at home, it may work out to our mutual benefit to have that happen,” Jed said.

“They might just make travel here prohibited if it scares them too badly,” Blue speculated.

Jed shook his head. “Unless I am way off in how I’ve come to know you, you think too much like us. There have been nations that tried that on Earth. Some built a literal wall on their border and would shoot anyone trying to leave. The Japanese tried to seal off their island nation from foreigners. The disparity in tech became so great that Japan found black ships in their harbor one day they were powerless to resist.

“Your people don’t have the concept of internal secrecy enough to see the necessity of keeping Earth and the conditions here a secret. In the end, if the population knows a better place for them exists, where they could have a better life, the wall will come down stone by stone, by hand if necessary. It can get ugly when things self-correct. The longer you delay a correction, the greater the chance it will end with the enforcers hanging from lamp posts. You do have public lighting along your city streets, don’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure anyone keeps that much rope now.”

“Not a problem,” Jed said, “an electric cord serves just as well.”

Blue shivered visibly. “We’ll try to convince our leaders that some change is inevitable.”

“Again, you sound just like us if you can predict that change will be resisted. It continues to amaze me how hard it is to find differences between us rather than search for similarities. We humans won’t even have to push it,” Jed predicted. “You have a core population here that doesn’t want to go back. Even if they do get afraid and cut off travel, I already thought we’d have a window of time to bring some more of your people here before they do that. Now you confirm that they are so used to nothing changing quickly that they may debate back and forth. Even if they hold the lid on there, the population of the People here will eventually grow and change in nature until they won’t be put off from visiting the rest of their folk.”

“I admit that scenario is very convincing,” Blue said.

“No need to be a passive observer,” Jed said. “Plant the ideas for it to happen if you see things are headed that way. It’ll speed things up and be less trouble for everybody in the end.”

“We are already going to have some people return and not come back with us to Earth. I doubt we could stop the growth of that meme. That’s fine. We’re more concerned they may demand the service of a few we want to get back, such as Beelus. He wants to return to us but will be subject to orders by those superior to us once he arrives there.”

“He’s not taking the Protector back,” Jed reminded him. “And your ship is not going to be a ship of the People’s Deep Sky Services. Your allies have a share in it. Why does he have to be an officer of your service? If you release him and he’s serving your new but civilian authority here they will have much less of a handle on him. You can resign your service, can’t you? What we’d call our commission. You aren’t slaves. Do you or Three Fingers have the authority to accept a resignation, not just release enlisted crew?”

“We do, we had that ability even underway on a normal voyage. Why didn’t I think of that?” Blue asked.

“I think your original authority still dominates your thinking over the newly acquired role as a civilian leader under human laws and customs. Three Fingers said he is determined to keep his military authority and role as long as there are crew who have not asked to be released. I sort of understand that, if your service takes care of its own,” Jed admitted. “You don’t have any authority to kick them out without cause or dissolve your entire command on a personal whim, do you?”

“No, you have the right of it. When we first arrived here our thinking was that we would have to live here several generations before we built up the infrastructure to produce a hyper-mode. We had no idea how close you were to equaling our tech. We expected our command would just end with the deaths of our original crew if we didn’t deliberately keep it going. Three Fingers feels the military structure is unsuited to stable civilian governance and I agree with him. It has a different purpose.”

“If you explain why you want Beelus to resign, and that it is a protection for him not to be sent off to other duty upon going home, he may volunteer his resignation. Why send any of them back at risk of being kept, if you and they wish to return? How many fit that description that will go back?”

“Beelus, his navigator and a backup navigator, and one of the hyper-mode experts to explain the new things we learned from the captured Tiger drive. Six common crew want to return.”

“So few crew?” Jed said, surprised. “What sort of price are you asking of them for the details of the Tiger hyper-mode?” Jed asked.

Blue just looked at him speechless.

“Oh my God,” Jed said at his deer in the headlights stare. “You were just going to give it to them?”

“It’s a major asset towards the success and survival of the People,” Blue objected.

Jed nodded. “Yeah, it’s really valuable. Are you gifting it to humanity at large too?”

“We weren’t going to share it here beyond our allies,” Blue admitted.

“Did you explain to the Japanese that you intend to gift your race with the prize you both worked so hard to obtain? They may regard that as outright treachery.”

“We still identify with the People,” Blue said. “We don’t have patents and copyright. We understand that way of thinking now but to claim ownership of design like that will not be understood or approved by our people. That will cause a rift if just bringing aliens home doesn’t.”

However, he said it visibly conflicted, with audible distress in his voice.

“You made enough of a mental break to want to claim Centauri real estate in your name but you’re only about halfway to admitting the reality of the situation. You aren’t avoiding claiming a site in the Centauri stars for the People to protect us. It’s the possibility your own will reject you and you will have handed them a base in your stellar backyard. Admit it, you came from a homogenous culture and have of necessity changed to survive. You may identify with them but don’t be surprised if they don’t identify with you. They may demand you strip yourselves of any contaminating influence to be accepted back,” Jed warned.

“We didn’t willfully change to be defiant,” Blue objected. “But I can see what you are saying happening even clearer than you can envision. We’ve been deluding ourselves about reintegrating and how we will be received. Politely avoiding planning for a worst-case event and just hoping to be well received. They may well feel we are an alien invasion that must be resisted. I need to talk face to face with Three Fingers about this.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Jed offered.

“No, I have to tactfully make Three Fingers aware of how much we have become other. This has to be from me, expressed in our language and ideas as much as that is possible. It can’t appear to simply be your alien influence, critical of our culture. I can make the point we’ve changed beyond what our own will accept without ever quoting you. If he then calls you in, I’d appreciate it if you listen like these are new concepts before you comment on them. Pretend we never had this conversation, please.”

“My lips are sealed,” Jed promised.

* * *

“We are contaminated,” Three Fingers admitted. “I can’t even speak with you now, without dropping an English word in every few sentences. I know some of our crew who’d kill if you tried to cut them off from ever having a cup of coffee again, and I have one of the crew who is seriously considering embracing Sikhism.”

“I agree, we need to demand payment for the Tigers’ hyper design. It wasn’t bought with our blood and we have joint ownership that can’t work one way here and another way back home. We are straddling the fence and haven’t come to grips with our obligations and moral debts to some humans,” he continued. “It might have been better for us if we did have to rebuild and create our hyper-mode without human help. It’s too late for that now.”

“That would have been a harsh existence imposed on several generations,” Blue said. “Living without the support of our civilization, struggling to survive, and not lose the most difficult skills that we’d need to get back to them.”

Three Fingers sighed. “And would we be any less changed in three or four generations than we are now? Or if the humans were less capable, the Tigers might be ruling this world right now and have ended our little project. We might have been a nice population of lab animals for them to learn how to manage and control the People. We still might if they come back in force.”

“I’ve given that some thought,” Blue said. “Recklessness in their fighters may be very beneficial, but I’ve come to suspect their leaders, whom we have never met, may be more cautious. I bet they won’t mindlessly throw another fleet after one has been lost completely. They may be cautious even sending a ship to spy on the cause of their disappearance.”

“The humans may be their downfall,” Three Fingers agreed. “They not only object to being owned, but seem minded to extract retribution for trying. And as we’ve noted, they also seem willing to spend more wealth than any one world has the right to possess to do so.”

Blue nodded his agreement. “I just don’t want them to roll over the People and absorb them almost as an afterthought on the way to putting paid to the Tigers. They might do that even without offering any violence.”

“We have several ways to make sure of that,” Three Fingers reminded Blue. “None of which will be easy or painless to demand. Let us seek the counsel of our human allies if we don’t like the way events are trending. I don’t think they are actively deceiving us about their intentions, do you?”

“Not if you mean the early individuals, not our newer national allies,” Blue agreed. “I can trust Jed and Dr. James far better than Japan and Israel.”

* * *

“It’s hard to remember these people have never visited another star so they’re thrilled at every detail of what we consider a perfectly unremarkable stellar system,” Three Fingers said after the Explorer returned with a wealth of data and photos.

“Yes, it’s the event itself that is a success irrespective of the utility,” Blue said. “I was reading recently that the first powered aircraft flight they celebrate was only a couple hands of man lengths. They were inspired and like everything else they do it was only a few more years they were making actual useful flights. It didn’t take them a full century before they were walking on their moon.”

“How long did it take us?” Three Fingers wondered.

“It isn’t detailed in the history texts we have in our computers,” Blue said. “A couple of them mention powered flight happened about five thousand years ago and the first orbital flight before the next millennium. It doesn’t seem to be considered a significant event by the historians.”

“I can’t remember them making a big point of it in school,” Three Fingers admitted. “They dwelt on Porce the Unifier forming the first world government and the practical inventions most often cited were the worldwide program after him for the building of dams. Their dual use for irrigation and power generation raised everyone’s standard of living. Of course, we have a drier world than this and benefited more. Humans are even rich in water. The effective preservation of food by thermal sterilization was considered a very big deal. Human history that I’ve examined seems to lean heavily to the succession of nation-states, the wars that forced those changes, and especially devastating plagues.”

“Remembering my school days, our scholars seemed to think that Porce marked the start of real civilization, and anything before that was primitive and slightly embarrassing,” Blue said. “The humans aren’t embarrassed at all. They’re proud they kept any number of political systems from expanding or dominating. I worry a little they may not approve of our Council of Advisors and Primary Three. None of them have asked me details about our civilian form of government.”

“Humans are also good at not asking things where they might not want the answer,” Blue said.

“Indeed, I find myself not wanting to volunteer that we have no system of voting since they seem so proud of it. If it comes up, I plan on asking them when they ever voted down a war. I confess I have no idea if the concept figured in any of our fractured nations before Porce forced the Great Consolidation. I can only hope they won’t feel compelled to meddle with a system that is stable and functioning very well.”

“They haven’t meddled, as you put it, with our corporations chartered under their law,” Three Fingers pointed out. “I’m not even sure they have thought about the fact they aren’t public companies.” “Certainly, none of our friends have inquired about buying stock in them,” Blue said.

The idea was so ridiculous Three Fingers laughed out loud.

* * *

“How goes the building of the big ship?” Jed asked when he hadn’t heard anything for weeks.

“Some of the biggest improvements will be in things you can’t see,” Blue said. “The Indians have been marvelous at data recovery. They can read the individual state of semiconductor gates with an electron microscope. It allowed us to recover the keys to the Tiger’s encryption control chips and copy their hyper control software. We’ll be able to short jump as well as they do now.”

“When do I get a layout of team spaces so I can plan how to bunk my people and stow gear?”

“It must be in the design by now. I’ll request drawings,” Blue promised.

“I’d like you to acquire some heavier gear for us and have it sent directly to the ship,” Jed said. “It’s too much hassle and more expensive to get them here and Israeli stuff is top quality. There’s some US made stuff I want but it’ll be easier to get through the Israelis.”

“Give me a list. They’ve been very cooperative. But how will your people train with them?”

Jed looked amused. “My people already know how to use this equipment,” he assured Blue.

Chapter 29

“The United States wants to hold a conference of all the shipbuilders to determine what sort of structure the command of the common fleet should be,” Three Fingers said. “They sent a letter to everyone building a hyper capable ship.”

“How nice of them to include us. Yet it’s really odd. Do you remember telling them we were all building a fleet in common?” Blue asked. “Perhaps you mentioned it in some off-hand remark and it slipped my attention, Commander.”

“You still have to slip into English when you want to be really snarky,” Three Fingers said.

“It’s so late to be bringing this up now. Do you think they quietly discussed this in private and just want to present us with an accomplished fact by their consensus?” Blue asked.

“No. I think the Americans are nervous that our ship is visibly complete on the outside and they have no idea how much internal finishing and systems installation remains. Barnard and Beelus assure me they have kept security very tight, but it is impossible to hide every purchase. Just the number of shuttle flights bringing materials up gives them an idea of how far along we are. Somebody in their government is belatedly nervous that they don’t control it.”

“How are you going to reply?” Blue wondered.

“For right now, I will say that after ironing out our relationship with our allies we have no desire to start over to make new agreements. They can decide whatever they wish among themselves. We are not in conflict with our three partners and the only other entity with which we have a relationship on Earth is the United States. Any other questions or requests to change our agreements with them should be addressed to our USCIS liaison or our attorneys.”

“That’s a little snarky without invoking English,” Blue said.

“I’m not sure I can avoid offending them even if I try,” Three Fingers admitted. “Just in case they decide to kick you out, plan an emergency withdrawal. If you have to come here, we still have room for expansion to our full numbers and I’m much more certain of our welcome here.”

“Contingency plans are good. I know you have let the Singhs know more than Jed and Barnard so they might expect an influx. Don’t you think it’s time to reveal what we may do, so they can decide what they will do? If we become unwelcome guests here, they may consider leaving with us. Their relationship with us is so close the authorities may take out their frustrations on them, right or not.”

“Very well. Bring them in on the call and let’s see how they feel. Let’s see what their thoughts are before we reveal our options,” Three Fingers said.

Blue read their invitation to the conference to Jed and Bernard and asked their thoughts.

“Of course, the US wants to be the Big Kahuna,” Jed said. “They’ll bully everybody if they can get away with it. They want to hunt down the Tigers and put the hurt on them and anything else they say is just window dressing. They’ll do the very same thing as the Tigers by rushing in with confidence in their superiority. They assume their military has better tech, better training, and better moral worth than the others so of course, they should be in charge. They’re very, very, good but slow to allow that others can be good too. They will mess with the Tigers without determining how many worlds, ships, and billions of people they have. That they may be initiating a generations-long war won’t occur to them. I’m just surprised they took this long to try to assert themselves.”

“One does note they haven’t made any strong statements about establishing a friendship with the People or engaging in trade, but many statements about keeping Earth safe,” Blue said.

“Despite what Jed said, the reality is with so many independent commands they will have to give up something to each to get their cooperation,” Barnard said. “That’s fine in some sorts of operations. I’ve seen it work between allies in war games without major casualties, downed aircraft, or sunken ships. But it’s not how you run an invasion fleet, which this threatens to become. That might not be honestly acknowledged until an order is given to fire on ships or worlds. Then is not the time to stop and argue about the limits of the common command. People accustomed to following orders will probably just obey. If everybody has a finger in the command nobody is in charge. It’s a recipe for disaster.”

“We don’t intend to let that happen,” Three Fingers informed them. “We aren’t interested in leading an invasion fleet to punish the Tigers or joining one. We have all those misgivings you do and more. Our reception with our people is uncertain and bringing back any aliens is likely to worry them. An armed mob looking for blood more so - even if they claim to only be hunting Tigers.

“We will tell the US to speak to our lawyers and told the lawyers just to point out our agreements and accept no changes. When we refuse a vengeful role, the nations wanting to go hunting, the US in particular, may be very unhappy with us. We decided to more fully inform you now so if we have to leave Nevada, you know you can choose to go with us. We thought they might treat you very badly too.”

“There a reason I always have my passport in my pocket when I go out the door,” Jed said.

Barnard made a derisive snort through his nose.

“I have three passports for different blokes in my pocket who all happen to look like me. I’ve got thirty thousand dollars in my sock and a cache a kilometer out that will see me to town. I’m always ready to run because you never know everything that is going down.”

“I’ll take that for a yes – you’ll come along,” Three Fingers said.

“Even if you refuse command and won’t acknowledge theirs. That still doesn’t tell me how you are going to prevent these guys from following you back to your old neighborhood. Even if you find your people first, they know the Tigers border you and they’ll find them with a little searching,” Jed protested.

Barnard didn’t react at all. Blue was certain he had it figured out.

“There’s no way to trace which direction a ship went when jumping out,” Blue said.

Jed’s eyes got big and his mouth made an ‘O’ briefly.

“Son of a bitch…”

“When we arrived here, the star map didn’t match anything we could recognize. The shape of space over long distances can be very uneven. We had a rough idea of which direction home might be. So rough it amounted to – this side is better than the opposite to search. We’re very, very, fortunate the Japanese recovered enough data from the Tiger’s ship to identify three pulsars visible from their home space. We can derive a plane in which to search, knowing our home stars are near theirs. We’ve always said we were lost, and never felt any need to share even the general direction we were guessing before acquiring the Tiger data.

“We provided the hyper-mode technology that humans wanted. I think that alone has been a pretty good payment for your hospitality. I’d call it a fair trade. Our lawyers have been informed we intend to insist on a to-the-letter reading of our treaty with the US and to act on that for us. We want a strict interpretation of our treaty and contracts. They inform us that is entirely proper under your laws and the normal way for them to work. We never promised to lead them to our people or form a common cause with them.”

“They aren’t going to like that at all,” Jed predicted.

“We can hardly lie and say we’ll lead them and then give them false directions,” Three Fingers said. “That would enrage them and justifiably so. We’re leaving the majority of our people behind and even our partner nations wouldn’t be able to weather the storm that would raise.”

Blue was nodding his head in agreement.

“You better guard your ship in orbit,” Jed warned. “Some bright fellow might decide that by disabling it or even destroying it they can force you to stay here until you yield to their demands.”

“Once we make this clear, the Explorer isn’t making any nearby survey trips until the big ship is mobile and ready to defend itself. In fact, it already has some interceptor batteries completed. But a static defense is usually overcome. Between those and the Explorer, we think it is reasonably safe. If the big ship is attacked the response will be to do the same to all their ships under construction and their hyper-mode factories.”

Three Fingers said that with surprising calm.

Jed frowned thinking intensely. “I doubt the US would attack your ship without seeking private assurances from the others that they won’t interfere and warning them to protect their own.”

“Thank you for the confirmation. That was our thoughts on the matter too,” Blue said.

“Similarly, you shouldn’t drop this bomb on them without informing your allies first,” Jed said.

“Oh my, no. We explained this was the most likely turn of events right when we invited them to partner with us. They were all quite willing, nay, delighted to, uh…what was that expression, Blue?”

“To steal a march on them, Commander.”

“Indeed. I’m surprised Jed never taught me that one.”

Jed looked so stunned at the audacity of it Three Fingers had to say something.

“Sometimes,” he reminded Jed, “you just have to trust someone. I think we’ve picked well.”

* * *

A couple of weeks, later, Three Fingers read the headlines out loud if a little slurred.

“Disgraceful lack of Gratitude,” screamed the Washington Post.

“Masterful Misdirection,” said the Jerusalem Post.

“Our First Export should not be War,” said the banner on Financial News.

“Who was Harmed?” Asked the National Law Review.

“Is Alien Farming Organic?” the Mother Earth News inquired.

“None of our concern,” the Wall Street Journal quoted the Chinese Premier.

“They yelled, they screamed, they didn’t do shit,” Barnard said.

“The golden moment when they could excuse doing something stupid on emotion does seem to have passed,” Jed agreed.

“Congress is going to consider a bill to deny export licenses for goods intended to facilitate construction of space assets such as the Seeker by the People or our allies,” Blue said. “It will be considered next year after they get back from recess.”

“That’ll teach you!” Barnard declared.

“I am wounded,” Blue agreed. He laid a spread hand on his chest. Jed wondered what kind of chick flick videos he’d been watching to copy that dainty gesture. At least he didn’t bat his eyes.

“We’ve opened the heavens to them and they’re still peeved with us,” Three Fingers said, “yet they have the nerve to say we lack gratitude.”

“Gee, you’ve treated me pretty decent,” Jed allowed.

They were all slightly drunk which was unusual. Blue had discovered watermelon margaritas and mixed a huge pitcher for their lunch.

Jed swirled the last of the slush around in his glass and swallowed it before it thawed.

“This frankly sounded awful at first but it isn’t half bad,” he admitted.

“The secret is a dash of salt besides that on the rim and a trace of lime,” Blue said.

“Been experimenting, have you?” Barnard asked.

“And produced something worthy of interstellar commerce,” Blue asserted. “I’m sending seeds for both watermelon and lime back with one of the fellows who want to return. A few other things too. If I ever do go back, I’ll be filthy rich and if I don’t, I’ll have enough credit to be able to buy star goods.”

“But you can’t patent plants, can’t patent anything back home,” Jed protested.

“No, but we can keep both in a very high security grow house,” Blue said.

“We’ve corrupted you,” Jed said. He didn’t sound remorseful at all.

“In far worse ways than a little greedy capitalism,” Three Fingers agreed.

“I think, we got away with it,” Barnard said.

They all nodded at that around the table.

* * *

“Very impressive,” Three Fingers acknowledged. He looked around the massive hanger deck where his shuttle looked a little lost. There were empty slots for Earth fighters to be stacked in storage racks down both sides of the hanger. Only the closest six were occupied. A few specialized craft were grappled to the deck and a stack of cases from his shuttle. He hadn’t needed to come up to deliver those. He just wanted to say goodbye to Jed.

Jed was quite a bit older than when he met him. He had the same stern serious face but older in the way humans aged. His hair was still dark which Three Fingers understood was unusual for a man in his sixties. Of course, human medical tech was advancing as fast as everything else they did. He had on hard armor instead of the usual duty uniform. The color could be controlled and set in a pattern of white and dark gray that allowed his rank to be read from a distance better than insignia.

“Why are you armored up, my friend?” Three Fingers asked.

“I wanted to show you the newest model,” Jed said. He put out his hand and braced his feet wide.

“Push my hand to the side,” he invited.

Three Fingers, used to being careful not to hurt humans, pushed cautiously, then harder when there was no give. He leaned into it and found not the least bit of resilience. Jed might as well have been a bronze statue for all he could move him.

“That’s impressive,” Three Fingers admitted. “It isn’t bulky and I don’t see any power pack.”

“The Seeker is improved too,” Jed assured him. “We’ve made a lot of progress since the first test flight to Centauri. Now that this one has finished its trials well, we’ll start on building three more. We’ll stock them with the next generation interceptors and the consensus is we’ll be ready if the Tigers return.”

“Ah yes, the Tigers,” Three Fingers said. He wondered if Tigers would scare their cubs with stories about when the humans came?

“Well yeah. With a little luck, we’ll avoid them and find your folks first. That’s the plan. Are you sure you don’t want to come along?” Jed asked again.

“I would be reproved severely if I turned up without my entire command with me. Beelus will be better received and forgiven for his resignation if he reports me keeping faith off at another star. It’s so touching it will bring a tear of pride to a few eyes. Bad enough the Protector is a gutted wreck destined to be a museum. One does not go off and abandon even the remnant of one’s crew. Beelus and our navigators are sufficient for your needs. I’d be a token presence, a supernumerary.”

“I hope to bring somebody back to officially relieve you,” Jed said, “or at least a release.”

“I’m not concerned about it. I’ve grown accustomed to your world and your people. If I were relieved, I’d stay on Earth now as a civilian like most of my crew has become. I’m not sure I could adjust to living with the People again. Everything was so calm and unchanging. Your world has changed unimaginably just in the last couple of decades. I’d miss the chaos.”

“You helped direct some of that change,” Jed reminded him.

“Yes, and if I went home, I’d want to do the same there. I’d be a troublemaker and discontent with the slow pace and reluctance to change. Not that that won’t happen once you show up and disturb all their hundred-year plans. But let somebody else be the lightning rod.”

“Beelus seems willing,” Jed said.

“Indeed, I feel my hair wanting to stand on end when I’m near him.”

“Is there anything I can bring back for you?” Jed offered.

“No, there are already people making plans to bring back less common food plants and even decorative plants that they miss. So much so that some humans are already worried about them getting loose as exotics. We don’t have the constant turnover of entertainments you do. We already have the classics of our music and plays. I don’t have anything like that I miss greatly. If I had close family, I wouldn’t have gone in the Deep Sky Services. Bring yourself and our return delegation back safe. That’s all I want. I kept all the postcards you sent me from your vacations. Sadly, the custom doesn’t exist back home.”

Three Fingers put his hand out and Jed shook it with no trace of too much force. The armor had very good control. He turned his back and boarded his shuttle without looking back at Jed.

They don’t have postcards but there must be some sort of courier service, Jed thought. I’ll take some pix and have them printed on card stock. Won’t he be surprised? If you’re going to print one, a thousand are as easy, aren’t they?

The End for Now

The Last Part

Other Kindle Books & Links by Mackey Chandler

April (first of series)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0077EOE2C

April is an exceptional young lady and something of a snoop. She finds herself involved with intrigues that stretch her abilities after a chance run-in with a spy. There is a terrible danger she and her friends and family will lose the only home she has ever known in orbit and be forced to live on the slum ball below. It's more than a teen should have to deal with. Fortunately, she has a lot of smart friends and allies, who give them a thin technological edge in rebellion. It's a good thing, because things get very rough and dicey.

Down to Earth (sequel to April)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RGBIVK

April seems to make a habit of rescues. Now two lieutenants from the recent war appeal to her for help to reach Home. The secret they hold makes their escape doubtful. North America, the United States of North America, has been cheating on their treaty obligations and a public figure like April taking a very visible vacation there would be a good way to remind them of their obligations. Wouldn't it? Her family and business associates all think it is a great idea. She can serve a public purpose and do her rescue on the sly too. But things get difficult enough just getting back Home alive is going to be a challenge. It's a good thing she has some help. Why does everything have to be so complicated?

Family Law (First of four in series.) Also as audiobooks.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006GQSZVS

Who is family? Who should decide? Should it be a matter of law? Could an alien adopt a Human?

Of course, if the alien in question can fly starships and is the size and temperament of a mature Grizzly bear one needs a certain delicacy in trying to tell him no…

The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet (sequel to Family Law
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006GQSZVS

In the first book of this series "Family Law", Lee's parents and their business partner Gordon found a class A habitable planet. They thought their quest as explorers was over and they'd live a life of ease. But before they could return and register their claim Lee's parents died doing a survey of the surface. That left Lee two-thirds owner of the claim and their partner Gordon obligated by his word with her parents to raise Lee. She had grown up aboard ship with her uncle Gordon and he was the only family she'd ever known. His adopting her was an obvious arrangement - to them. Other people didn't see it so clearly over the picky little fact Gordon wasn't human.

After finding prejudice and hostility on several worlds Lee was of the opinion planets might be nice to visit, but terrible places to live. She wanted back in space exploring. Fortunately, Gordon was agreeable and the income from their discovery made outfitting an expedition possible. Lee wanted to go DEEP - out where it was entirely unknown and the potential prizes huge. After all, if they kept exploring tentatively, they might run up against the border of some bold starfaring race who had gobbled up all the best real estate. It wasn't hard to find others of a like mind for a really long voyage. This sequel to "Family Law" is the story of their incredible voyage.

Link to a full list of current releases on Amazon:

Including other series books, stand-alone books, and short stories.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004RZUOS2

Mac's Writing Blog:

http://www.mackeychandler.com

Table of Contents

- Fair Trade
- An Alien Invasion Story
- Cover Image by Luca Oleastri
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29