The news of the return of the mysterious motorcyclist served only to depress them. They watched the news on TV which was history to them and of no real interest. In the few days since their appearance, the mystery they had left had moved down to the fourth or fifth item with most people assuming their ship was some kind of undercover craft from Area 51 or Edwards Air Force Base.
Not much other television was of interest: the crime dramas were dull and repetitive and the comedy shows hard to understand. “All they think about is sex,” said Ramirez.
“You’ll do well here,” said Gowan.
“Better out there than in here it seems.”
“Most of our clothing seems to have been made by six year old children,” said the Captain.
“We’re heading for the age of the infant,” said the Professor. “The time when most manufactured goods are made by youngsters. Thank God that was mostly stopped during the 2020s.”
“What are we planning to do regarding this chap on the motorbike?” asked Ogden. “He appears to have taken unusual interest in us and our activities.”
“Ignore him,” said Lillishenger.
“We can’t do that,” said Stiers firmly. “It has to be dealt with.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Gowan.
“We will approach him if we have to,” said the Captain. “We can challenge him on what he’s doing. Unless, of course, he approaches us first. That would make life easier.”
“Do you think he could be the light I thought was following us from dinner at Veterans’ Hall?” asked Ramirez.
“That light turned off onto a side street,” said Ogden.
“Yes, but he could still have followed with his lights out – or even watched to see where we turned off.”
“True,” nodded the Englishman.
“We’ll see if he shows up tomorrow,” said Stiers. “If he does we’ll have a talk with him. Anybody have anything to add regarding our efforts today?”
“I’m with you, Captain,” said Ramirez. “I want to go back home and there may be a way. It’s unlikely but I will probe further tomorrow.”
“We need food,” said Lillishenger, “and money. I need to remember I am now shopping for five times my previous budget. If we are to achieve anything, we must lay our hands on lots of cash.”
“Choose a bank that went out of business,” said Gowan. “We can easily duplicate acceptable credit cards and insert them into the bank computer system. They were quite primitive in the 1990s.”
“I bought some proper cotton clothes,” said Lillishenger. “We can reclaim them and manufacture proper rag paper and print our own money. If we stick to $20 bills it should be okay.”
“We’ll have to print an awful lot of them,” said Ogden. “A couple of us may have to survive here until they are a hundred years old or more. Just to attend to any hiccups in the experiment.”
“We have to rob a casino,” said Lillishenger. “They deserve it anyway.”
“Las Vegas casinos need to turn over $2 million a day just to keep afloat,” said Stiers. “They have huge overheads. The larger ones hold three or four million on the premises at any one time. If you win big they’ll want social security cards before they pay out. Some of the biggest sums are paid out over twenty years.”
“Will that part bother us?” asked Lillishenger. “As long as we win big enough?”
“No, it won’t,” said Stiers. “But the chances of winning are very low indeed.”
“Unless we fix it,” said Lillishenger. “We can soon fabricate an easily concealed device which will set a machine to win and leave no traces.”
“They have security cameras,” said Stiers. “If they suspect anything and find that device we could turn up in the desert with cement overshoes.”
“I think that’s for the ocean,” Ogden pointed out.
“Well, dead anyway.”
“We have no sidearms to protect us,” said Ramirez.
“We can pick any number of those up at a gun show,” said Lillishenger.
“We are not going to go in shooting anybody,” said Stiers.
“There is another plan to consider,” said Ramirez. “This is the era of big money drug deals. If we research our computer banks we may find one or two where we can muscle in and take the cash. What a noble operation that would be.”
“We’ll likely get ourselves killed,” said the Captain, “but I like this idea above the others.”
“How about a three way approach?” suggested Gowan. “We engineer a smaller amount from the casino for ready money; prepare credit cards and bank accounts by hacking into a bank that will go bust anyway – several did that in the early years of the 21st century; and look for drug deals where we can deprive some nasty people of volumes of cash where we have enough information to stay out of danger.”
“I haven’t given your brain enough credit,” said Lillishenger. “Smaller transgressions lead to fewer complications. I like it.”
“So do I,” said Ramirez and caught a brief smile from Gowan.
“We’ll start working on plans tomorrow,” said Stiers.
“But first we’ll shop for food and clothes. There’s a K-Mart near where we had dinner last night. We’ll kit out so we don’t stand out.”
“And try not to buy such tight pants,” Gowan said to Ramirez. “It makes you look too much like a six year old Spanish flamingo dancer.”
“Perhaps you’d like a go on my castanets?”
“Here we go,” sighed Ogden. “It’s like sibling rivalry.”
“She started it,” said Ramirez.
“Behave, Gowan,” said Stiers. “Try to confine your comments to the business at hand.”
“I was confining it to the business at Ramirez’s hand,” she said.
“Shut it now. Does anybody have more ideas about killing the aliens? They came out spitting fire so I do not plan any negotiations with them.”
“I have ideas,” said Lillishenger. “But I need to research what is here and what we can manufacture.”
“Okay. Tomorrow morning we shop till we drop then apply ourselves to our tasks in the afternoon.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday,” said Ramirez.
“Yes?”
“I’d like to go to church early in the morning. I figure we’ll need all the help we can get.”
“There are nine small churches in this town,” said Stiers. “I counted them when we went to the thrift store. We’ll split up in the morning and attend church – unless somebody has a particular objection?” He looked round. Nobody objected. “Then we’ll meet up and go shopping. Okay?”
Everybody nodded politely and Stiers felt he was taking charge again.
“There are ten churches, by the way,” said the Professor. “There is a small Roman Catholic church which backs onto the hills.”
“That’s mine,” said Ramirez.
The night passed without event and they awoke to the aroma of Stiers cooking breakfast. He produced scrambled eggs offering as an apology his inability to crack them without breaking the yolks. The eggs came with Farmer John’s bacon and toast. By 9am breakfast was over and they prepared for church. Lillishenger drove them, dropping them off at their selected points. Ramirez went Roman Catholic, while Stiers and Gowan dropped in on the Lutheran venue. Lillishenger and Ogden went to a Church of Christ which was as close to Anglican as they could find. Not that the Professor was English by birth. She had been – or would be – born in Austria then educated from a very young age in England before her final experiments in the USA.
Ramirez was embarrassed to be on his own but was welcomed as a guest. Lillishenger had ensured they each had enough cash to leave an offering and for the first time in years, Ramirez accepted the wine and wafer, and offered some deep, sincere prayers.
Gowan and Stiers sang cautiously at first until the Captain let loose with a singing voice of which she felt unashamedly proud. It encouraged to let loose with her own small voice and she felt the benefit of having to breathe in dee
ply. Singing, she thought, must be good for the heart and lungs.
Lillishenger came under close scrutiny from those who had never seen her with a man before. One or two older gentlemen, who had experienced unholy visions of Lillishenger naked upon their bed, showed chagrin at this adequately bellied upstart who now attended her side like some overweight Rumpelstiltskin. One or two of the older women relaxed and worried less about the wandering eyes of their husbands, mentally errant beasts who could not be relied upon not to ravage single females. Ogden felt both types of stare – the envious eyes and the grateful glances. His partner – both in the crew and in her bed – seemed not to notice any of this. Ogden found the woman still as appealing and delicious as he had in their youth. Her body defied and denied her age, which he knew was late-50s, and her pixie like face enchanted him as ever. His marriage had been the right choice and now sharing her body again was another.
As they waited outside church to be picked up, Gowan and Stiers found people introducing themselves and shaking their hands. This, to Stiers, was a welcome and a cause for caution. They could not get overly friendly with these generous people. Stiers felt the common bond that grows between people who share a certain faith – the bond that says ‘we are right and everybody else is misguided’. It did not fill him with comfort but left him aware that if they were of different faiths they would remain strangers.
When they were all rounded up, Lillishenger drove them the thirty miles into town where they shopped at the cheap stores and Lillishenger paid with a credit card she had managed to obtain some years earlier. They selected cheap clothes from a discount store and Ramirez and Ogden fascinated themselves with the antique radios and TVs on offer.
“Look and wait, TV’s out of date. Not even flat screens let alone holos,” said Ramirez. “They still use glass tubes.”
“It is antiquated,” admitted Ogden.
“Are we having lunch here?”
“How come you’re the one always thinking about his stomach?” asked Ogden.
“Unlike yours, mine never fills up.”
“You eat enough.”
“I’m young enough to burn it off,” said Ramirez.
“It’s all that masturbation,” said Gowan, joining them. “It really must burn off calories.”
“Tell me, Gowan, is your private area ever had the wraps taken off it or are you saving it in the hope it becomes an antique.”
“Child molester. I’m so young I haven’t been born yet.”
“See,” said Ramirez. “Take a woman clothes shopping and she’s happy. Even her banter lacks its usual cutting edge.”
“Would you really want her taking a cutting edge to your privates?” asked Ogden.
“Point taken.”
Their purchases complete, even down to shoes and trainers, Lillishenger drove them to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. The place was crowded and she explained, “Most Americans often eat out for Sunday lunch. It seems to be a tradition.”
“Maybe they don’t have microwaves yet,” suggested Gowan.
“Oh, they have primitive ones.”
“This food is good,” said Ramirez, tucking into a bowl of guacamole with tortilla chips. “This stuff is fresh.”
“I believe roast beef would have been preferable,” said Ogden.
“You’ll have to travel way into the hills to find any cattle,” said the Captain. “This is still high desert.”
“What is the difference between high and low desert?” asked Gowan.
“You can grow absolutely zilch in the low desert,” said Stiers. “High desert gets rain and snow in the winter but there isn’t enough vegetation for the cattle to feed on. Up around Kernville there is plenty of grass. They even have rodeos.” “Maybe we could…” began Ramirez.
“Wrong time of the year,” said Stiers.
They ate lunch and took a drive round town – not that there was much of it. There were many expensive and expansive homes but in the side streets small houses and trailers and mobile homes looked unappetising where they sat in the dirt.
“You won’t believe this,” said Lillishenger, “but $25,000 will buy you a nice 3 bed 2 bath home here.”
“We should buy one,” said Ramirez.
“We should buy them all,” she replied. “When I checked on the ship computer the same properties were fetching $150,000 less than ten years later.”
“Property prices aren’t regulated?” said Ogden.
“Not at this time, nor at any time in the near future. Property became acquisition for speculation rather than for housing. It was – or will be – all very sad.”
The drive back to Lilly Ranch – as Ramirez had dubbed it – was also uneventful with nobody noticeably following them and no sign of the man and his motorcycle parked nearby. They locked the gates behind them and let themselves into the concrete structure where they all went back to work. Although this was a rest day, all of them wanted to get on, and none wanted to explore nearby ghost towns which they vowed to do later.
“They’re still there in our time,” said Stiers. “Better preserved and monitored also.”
Ramirez focussed on finding ways of shielding the Challenger and spent a long time exploring his theories until Ogden approached. “So what do you know?” asked the Englishman.
“I know a man with a wooden leg shouldn’t have a woodpecker as a pet,” said Ramirez.
“What are you trying to do?”
“I am trying to find a way back for all of us without us getting squashed at light speeds.”
“We’ll need to be in a vacuum like space,” said Ogden.
“I know. But we can’t travel at light speeds in space.”
“It is a problem. Did you consider reversing the polarity of the shields?”
“Yes – but it does nothing to protect us.”
“Then we’ll need to create a vacuum,” declared Ogden.
“Even that won’t protect us at the speeds we will need to travel – although it will help.”
“It’s a shame we can’t tap into the giant Hadron collider in Switzerland,” said Ogden.
“Why can’t we?”
“They haven’t built it yet, old chap,” said Ogden.
“You are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.” Yet that brief conversation had started a buzz in the brain of Ramirez which he felt could lead to better things.
That evening, as they sat down to dinner prepared by Gowan and which Ramirez saw as being mainly different varieties of lettuce, Lillishenger announced a plan to eliminate the aliens.
“How?” asked Stiers.
“Sarin,” she said. “A particularly potent formula of Sarin. It’s the perfect weapon for our needs. If we can figure out a way of delivering it inside the alien ship we can knock them out. Sarin has been banned for decades in our time.”
“Can we manufacture it?” asked Stiers.
“Nobody knows the formula anymore,” said Lillishenger. “It was wiped from Earth’s memory banks along with other nasty stuff. The Germans invented it – or I should say created it for it is entirely man made. It is a potent nerve agent that has no taste and is colourless. It works exceptionally well when water-borne and is ideal for the misty environment of the aliens. It kills everything it comes into contact with so it will, at least, disable them – we hope.”
“But we cannot make it?” queried Stiers.
“No. But we may be able to locate the formula in this time line – or more likely steal the stuff. The British developed a very sinister form of Sarin mixed with other nerve agents which was kept locked down at Porton Down in England. It was longer lasting than its more usual variety.”
“You’re suggesting we should steal it?” said Gowan.
“Wake up, Sweetheart. We could take over the world with your ship. Stealing some Sarin should pose no problems,” said the Professor. “Sarin can be lethal with just eye or skin contact. It causes paralysis and death – but it evaporates quickly in the air. On board the alien ship
it will recycle and the British version has a longer duration in an active state. If we can get that on board we can weaken them enough to destroy them.”
“Unless they happen to be resistant,” said Ogden.
“Sarin is not selective. It attacks everything,” said Lillishenger. “I am counting on the fact the aliens, as ugly as they are, still breathe oxygen and use water. And there is a trump card.”
“Go on,” said Ramirez.
“The aliens travel naked using their outer shells as protection. They will be attacked by Sarin B2 – that’s the British one – in every orifice.”
“I had no idea they travelled naked,” said Gowan.
“It makes sense,” said the Professor. “Their ship is no doubt climate controlled.”
“And it saves on laundry,” said Ramirez. “Hey, Gowan, you’re always washing your panties. What do you say we all go commando? You first.”
“I couldn’t stand you panting round me like a lost, demented dog,” she said. “Anyway, who wants to spend all day looking at your baby carrot?”
“Baby carrots,” said Ogden, “would make me think of roast Sunday lunch.”
“It is not going to happen,” said Stiers. “I don’t plan to wander around in my boxers.”
“Or less,” said the Professor. “I have nothing against the idea myself and I am certain Daniel would agree.”
“Only very reluctantly,” said Ogden. “For men it is different. We see each other naked in the gym or the showers or sauna, but in a close community such as ours no man here will care for everybody to know he has the smallest penis.”
“Do you?” asked Ramirez. “Do you have the smallest penis?”
“I expect he was thinking of you, Ramirez,” said Gowan. “He is probably trying to save you from humiliation.”
“Oh yeah? Come on, let’s all get them out now. I’m not ashamed. I’ll slap mine on the table here against anybody.”
“Please, not where we eat,” said Ogden.
“We are not getting into any kind of penile discussion,” said Stiers. “Take it from me, clothes in this crew are mostly mandatory.”
“Mostly? What exceptions?” asked Ramirez.
“You can be the exception as you seem so keen,” said the Captain. “Feel free to flap your appendage about whenever you like.”
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