by Lauren Esker
It breathed air. It couldn't have been in the water all this time. Had it been in some kind of stasis capsule in the pod? (She hadn't read all that science fiction for nothing.)
A glint in its fur caught her attention, and she leaned forward, closing one hand over its lanky foreleg. A silver bracelet dangled loosely around its ankle.
It was an exact copy of the bracelets Rei wore.
A copy, or ...
"Rei?" she whispered.
The dog groaned. Its ears pricked forward, lifting from its skull.
They were so close to shore now that she was stumbling in a rising heap of sand scraped up in front of the pod. Sarah wrapped her arms around the dog's wet bulk and tried to heave it off the cable. It was so heavy that all she managed to do was break its fall as it splashed into the shallow water. Sarah gripped the dog behind the forelegs and began dragging them both out of the way of the pod as it ground inexorably onward.
"Sarah?" her dad called. "You okay back there?"
"I'm fine!" she shouted back, stumbling out of the water with her arms full of the dog's sodden forequarters.
Rei couldn't have gone into the water and come out as a dog. He couldn't have. That was impossible.
As impossible as a spaceship falling out of the sky on top of her?
As impossible as blue people and injectable translation technology?
She collapsed to the sand with the dog half on top of her. They were both so wet by now that she could barely tell where its soaked fur ended and her coat began.
The noise of the winch stopped, and she remembered she was supposed to be keeping an eye on it to turn it off when the pod was out of the water. It must have run out of cable, or else her dad had shut it off. Lying on her back, she could feel the low thrumming of the truck's idling engine through the sand. She raised her head after a moment and saw her dad standing with a cane in one hand and his other hand hooked through his belt, gazing at the dark dripping shape of the pod. It was taller than the truck, with sand churned up around it and water streaming off its sides.
"Gettin' that thing on the trailer is gonna be a whole barrel of fun," he remarked. "Sarah, hon? Where are you?"
"Over here." She sat up, with the dog's forequarters sprawling across her lap. Dog, or ... something weirder and far more wonderful.
Its fur was definitely blue.
"Awww, punkin," her dad said, slogging toward her, his cane sliding on the wet sand. "I'm sorry about your alien friend. He didn't come up, did he?"
"I ... I don't know." She stared down at the mass of wet fur in her lap, as if she could make sense of the whole situation that way.
"What's that you've got there?"
The dog raised its head weakly, ears pricking forward.
Gary let out a surprised yelp. Starting to crouch down with the cane's support, he instead lost his balance and landed hard in the sand.
"Dad!" Sarah lurched up, and then back down, with the dog's unyielding weight pinning her legs. The animal was impossibly heavy ... about, say, the weight of Rei's dense, muscular body.
"'m fine," her father grunted. He didn't look fine—falling like that must have hurt—but he sat up stiffly and reached out to scruff the dog's wet fur. "Where'd you come from, boy? Man alive, you must'a got fed the right kind of dog food when you were a pup."
"Dad, I ..." Sarah hesitated, and then took the plunge into the crazy unknown. "I think this dog is Rei. Somehow."
"Sarah—"
"No, look." Sarah held up the dog's massive paw, with the bracelet dangling around its ankle. Its anklebones were smaller than the wrist of a man, but the large paw stopped the bracelet from sliding off.
"What the heck," her father said slowly.
It had to be Rei. She couldn't be wrong. If it wasn't, then Rei was dead beneath the waves on the cold, dark lake bottom ... or dying, even now, abandoned while his would-be rescuers exclaimed over a dog on the beach.
But she didn't think she was wrong.
"Let me check something." She felt behind the dog's ear. If this was Rei, there should be something she could feel where his translator ought to be, the same way she could feel hers under the skin.
And there it was: a little bump, rolling under the skin like a subcutaneous cyst.
Sarah burst into relieved laughter. Her eyes stung. "It is you. Oh, thank God. Rei, can you change back?"
The dog blinked dazedly, closing and opening eyes that were, come to think of it, exactly Rei's amber color. Sarah didn't think he was quite all there yet.
From across the lake, the low chop of the helicopter's rotors changed pitch. Gary looked up. "We gotta get that thing on the trailer and get out of here."
"Yeah—yeah." She pulled her legs out from under the dog and draped her coat over him before giving her dad a hand up.
They'd brought heavy boards in the truck bed to serve as a makeshift ramp. Sarah steadied the pod while her dad winched it slowly onto the trailer. Rei was right, it was lighter than it looked. No way she could have moved it on her own, but the boards didn't crack under its weight, and the trailer didn't settle too badly.
She had trouble concentrating on the work, and kept glancing over her shoulder at the huddled shape under her coat, as slow waves lapped up the beach against his paws.
How?
Maybe something on the ship itself had caused him to transform? A ... an Infinite Improbability Drive or something like that?
That's from a book, Sarah, you nitwit.
But aliens and interstellar spaceships were supposed to be fiction, too.
"Crap," Gary muttered. "Chopper's comin' this way."
They heard it pass over the lake, a little way down. Sarah glimpsed it for a moment, a sleek black shape like a hunting shark gliding through the thinning fog beneath the low bellies of the clouds.
It's an actual, literal black helicopter, she thought in disbelief. She pinched her finger painfully as she fumbled with the straps, trying to get the pod ratcheted down as quickly as possible.
"I got this," her father snapped, shaking out one of the tarps that had been wadded up in the pickup's bed. "You see if you can get Blue into the truck."
"I'm here," Rei's voice rasped.
He was standing right behind her, with the sheepskin coat draped over his shoulders. He looked like he could barely manage to stay on his feet, and that probably wasn't his healthiest shade of blue, but he was there. Alive. Not a dog.
A quick glance along the beach assured her that the dog had vanished. The dog was Rei. Somehow.
Sarah flung her arms around him, catching him in a quick, wet hug.
Rei jerked in surprise, which provided an instant for her logical brain to catch up with the rest of her and make her realize that she was hugging a wet, naked man, in front of her dad. She dropped him just as quickly and stepped back. "You need to get in the truck," she said. The rumble of the helicopter was getting louder. It sounded like it was right above the trees and coming their way. "We gotta get out of here."
She was pushing him into the truck as the helicopter suddenly roared overhead at treetop level. Light speared down at them and then was gone, but she could hear it circling around for another pass.
"Dad!" Sarah yelled, sliding into the driver's seat. "Get in!"
"Comin'!"
Rei pulled him up into the passenger's side of the truck. She still wasn't sure if Rei was completely tracking on what was happening, but he'd definitely picked up on the urgency. Sarah killed the truck's headlights and stomped on the gas, lurching forward into the wet, dark woods.
The very, very dark woods.
"Damn," she whispered, braking. She'd been driving this old road a few times a year ever since she got her license, but she didn't think she could do it blind. The minute she turned on the headlights, the helicopter would find them and could follow wherever they went. It was her desperate hope that if they kept the headlights off, visibility was so poor in the fog and the rain that it wouldn't be able to find them by the glow
of the taillights alone.
Except it won't matter if I kill us by driving into a tree.
Paralyzed by indecision, she clutched the steering wheel. The chop of the helicopter's rotors shivered the air. It sounded like it was either landing on the beach or hovering right above it.
"Sarah, we gotta move," her dad said.
"I can't. If I turn on the lights, they'll find us."
Rei spoke up suddenly. "Can't you see?"
"No," she said, surprised. "Can you?"
"Yes. I'll guide you."
"You sure this is a good idea?" her dad asked as she put the truck in gear and began to creep forward.
"Rei says he can see." She kept forgetting her dad couldn't understand him. "He can help me drive."
Rei reached out a hand to curl his fingers over the steering wheel beside her own. With small tugs, he guided the truck as Sarah crawled at less than ten miles an hour—horrifically slow, and yet much too fast. She couldn't see a thing beyond the glow of the instrument panel and the rain slopping on the windshield in the wipers' wake.
From the sound of things, the helicopter was on the move again, cruising above them. Very low above them. The noise rattled her teeth.
"The road is ahead," Rei said quietly.
"Hold on. I'm stopping."
She braked just before turning out onto the lake road. The side of Rei's hand rested against hers on the steering wheel; his shoulder, through the jacket, was pressed to hers.
The helicopter skimmed across the treetops in a flash of lights, ghostly in the mist.
"It's behind us," her father said. "Go."
Sarah gunned the engine, turning out onto the road. She glimpsed distant taillights far down the road, but there should be few people out in this weather and at this time of night.
Yeah, more opportunity for the Men in Black to grab us. Lucky us.
The truck responded sluggishly with the weight of the trailer behind it. Not that she wanted to go fast. In pitch darkness and rain with no headlights, thirty-five felt more like eighty.
"Rei," she said, her voice breathless with tension, "I can't see if we're coming to a curve. You've got to tell me when I need to slow down."
"I will," he answered softly.
"Turnoff to the Muller place is coming up," her dad said.
"How do you know? You can't see either!"
Gary flashed her a quick grin. "You might think you know this corner of the county pretty good, kiddo, but you ain't got nothin' on the old man."
"I'm slowing down, then," Sarah declared.
She braked, her heart rate slowing markedly with every five miles that the speedometer dropped. At least until headlights appeared in her rearview mirror, making her realize that with her headlights off and the trailer blocking her brake lights, other vehicles couldn't see her. It was coming up fast behind her.
"There," Rei said quietly, just as her father said sharply, "Turn here!"
Sarah wrenched the wheel and pulled off, wincing as the bottom of the truck scraped something in the dark. The trailer rattled along behind them, and the other vehicle, whatever it was, roared past on the road with no awareness of their presence.
They also seemed to have lost the helicopter. Sarah could hear it flying a search grid as they jolted along the shortcut through the Mullers' back pasture, but it was staying behind them, at the lake.
"We got away." Sarah discovered she was grinding her teeth when the words came out indistinct. She forced her jaws to unclench. Her teeth were chattering, her whole body shaking.
"I'll take over," her dad said, reaching over Rei to pat her arm. "Hear me, hon? You did good, but I got this. You take a break now."
"Your hips," she protested shakily. "Driving is—"
"Something I've been doin' for forty years. Take a break, punkin."
She was too shaken to argue. It was all hitting her now, the chase and the fear and—and being hunted, that helicopter had been hunting them, and Rei vanishing into the cold dark water and not coming out—
"Hey, sweetheart. It's okay. You did good, kid."
They stopped to change drivers, and she ended up on the outside, with Rei's arm around her. That was awfully nice, wet though they both were. She leaned, shivering, into his solid side. He was shaking too, but from cold, she thought, not fear. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling like a terrible coward.
"You were very brave," Rei said quietly.
Sarah opened her eyes, looking up into his warm amber ones.
"Hey, kiddo," her dad said, "think you can ask Blue to do for me what he was doing for you back there, show me which way to go and all that?"
Rei put a hand on the steering wheel. "He can understand you," Sarah said. "It's just that you can't understand him."
"Yeah, well, keep that in mind, so if he says I need to do something in a hurry, you gotta translate."
The truck jolted into motion.
It was a less seamless process with her dad driving. Rei guided them around obstacles, but Sarah had to translate any detailed instructions, such as the need to stop for gates blocking the road. Still, they managed, with Rei as their eyes and her father's strong, capable hands on the steering wheel, and Sarah as the translator mediating between them.
When she thought back on this night afterward, the fear was not entire gone—but it had been eclipsed by the memory of those last miles, and Rei's quiet voice, guiding them home through the dark.
10
___
S ARAH WOKE TO honey-colored sunlight bathing her bedroom walls, turning the old yellow wallpaper to molten gold.
It was rare for her to sleep past sunrise this late in the year, when the sun rose after seven. As a farmer's daughter, normally she was up at dawn. But this morning, she lay in bed for a few drowsy, indulgent moments.
It had been long after midnight when they'd pulled into the farmhouse driveway. All of them were too exhausted to think about unloading the trailer. Gary had backed up to the big door at the end of the barn, and Sarah and Rei dragged enough clutter out of the way that he could back the trailer into the barn, unhitch it, and then park the truck in its usual place beside the barn.
They didn't have a guest bedroom, as such, so she'd made up a bed on the couch for Rei. "Sorry we don't have anything better. At least it's not the barn, huh?"
His smile was rueful. "You have been too kind. I don't know how I can ever repay—"
"There's nothing to repay. We haven't done anything except be decent human beings. If I were stranded on an alien planet, I'd hope someone would help me too."
She'd run upstairs before she could give in to the temptation to sit beside him on the couch and try to comb the mud out of his stiffening hair with her fingers. She had so many questions, a million questions. And now that they had retrieved his ship, would there be time to get answers to any of them?
Was he even here now? Maybe he was already gone.
This made her sit bolt upright. "Ow," she groaned aloud as her stuff body protested.
There was mud embedded in the creases of her palms, and her hair had dried into a mess of tangles that resisted the brush she tried to rake through it. Outside the window, leafless branches of the old maple tree outside her window glimmered in the morning sun, still wet from last night's rain. The sky was a vivid blue between patchy clouds that sent a brief chill across the world when they temporarily hid the sun.
Sarah opened her window and leaned out so she could see the barn. Everything looked fine. Perfectly normal. You'd never guess there was a trailer with an alien spaceship hidden inside those old wooden barn walls with their peeling paint.
He couldn't possibly have left already, she reassured herself. Not with the ship in the condition it was in last night. But maybe it would be better for him if he had, because she could hear helicopters, not close, but definitely out there. Flying around. Searching. Their buddy from last night had come back with friends.
They know we took something out of the water. They just don't
know where we went.
She pulled on a sweater, determined not to lose her good mood. They'd escaped with the ship, the sun was out, and it was a beautiful day. She supposed Rei would probably want to work on his ship, but maybe later she could talk him into letting her show him around the farm a little. If he was leaving soon, she wanted him to have some nice memories of Earth to go with the terrible ones.
There was no one in the kitchen, but she found bacon and scrambled eggs in a covered skillet on the stove. Sarah made herself a bacon sandwich and stepped out into a fresh, glorious morning. The air had a hint of chill, fading rapidly as the day warmed, and a crisp smell of autumn leaves ... and also manure, but long familiarity meant she hardly noticed it except when the wind blew directly from the pasture.
Ringing hammer blows echoed from the barn. Sarah nudged open the side door. The noise escalated to deafening levels before cutting out abruptly, to the sound of a ringing clatter of something falling. The radio was playing country music quietly in a corner.
The spaceship was off the trailer on the floor of the barn. It looked much bigger indoors than it had on the beach, and even more wildly out of place. Nothing about this thing belonged in a barn on a Wisconsin farm. In better light she could see how filthy it was, festooned with lake weeds and mud. A clutter of junk surrounded it, regular metal farm junk mixed with pieces of the matte gray metal and plastic the ship was made of.
"Dad? Rei?"
She couldn't see Rei anywhere, but her dad popped up over one of the ship's side fins, with a welding mask pushed up on his forehead. "Hey, punkin. Playing hooky?"
"Tuesday. No class."
Her dad nodded toward the shelf beside the utility sink, where the coffeepot lived along with its attendant collection of cracked mugs. "Grab a cup of joe, then, and have a look."
Coffee was a lot less interesting to her right now than the spaceship. When she circled around to her dad's side of the ship, she found it gaping open, exposing the interior. It was impossible to tell how much of that was crash damage and how much had been done afterwards by the one-man/one-alien wrecking crew disassembling the ship.