by Bill Nolan
Jane also enjoyed her shipmates’ love of games. They gathered together whenever they had time and played games. They liked card games, board games, and any kind of games at all. Robert had brought a lot of games up to Shanna over the years to keep his skeleton staff occupied. Now that there were more people on board, everyone was playing the Earth games, because they were new and different.
Tournaments quickly formed for things like Monopoly, Clue, and a dozen other board games. Card parties were almost constant, and role-playing games were also very popular. Robert particularly liked poker, and had a game every third night or so. Jane thought she had never seen a group of people who enjoyed competition more.
As they neared Earth, things got more and more hectic. Preparation and planning were nearing completion, and everyone was getting mentally prepared for action. Opening a new planet for trade could be immensely profitable, but there were a lot of pitfalls on the way. The primary question was how to handle the first contact. Should it be public or private? After a lot of discussion, it was decided that Robert should just drop in on the President, like he had promised in his conversation with the pilot a few weeks before.
Since Robert and Jane were most familiar with the United States, they were going to begin their trading operations there, and all decided a visit to the head of the government would smooth the way. Jane had to keep in mind that the To’Ach’an made no effort to obey any laws except their own. That meant that they were going to open up and sell their goods regardless of the opinions of the various governments.
Their position seemed completely logical to them, but Jane knew the US government wouldn’t agree. They would buy land, and once they did, they would consider it to be To’Ach’an territory, and would brook no interference from local authorities. They would neither pay nor collect taxes. If any governments on Earth tried to enforce their laws on the To’Ach’an, violence was likely, and Jane already knew that the To’Ach’an response to provocation was usually extreme.
It had taken Jane several hours of discussion with Jonu (this was considered school) to really understand the most basic of To’Ach’an legal principles. What it amounted to was that they simply didn’t recognize any law or authority except their own. In the US legalese Jane was more familiar with, they didn’t think anybody else had jurisdiction over any matter that affected either To’Ach’an, or those under their protection.
As far as the To’Ach’an were concerned, no outside individual, court, government, or whatever, had any authority of any kind over any To’Ach’an, To’Ach’an protectee, or any other To’Ach’an interest, and there were no exceptions.
Jane was really looking forward to seeing what the various Earth governments thought of that idea. She was also looking forward to seeing Earth again. She knew her point of view was totally different than it had been, and she no longer thought of Earth as home, but it would be fun, nevertheless.
* * * * * *
Maria Sanchez was having another bad night. Jake had made it very clear that she was to bring in $1200 a night, and so far she had only made about $600. With dawn only a few hours away, there was no chance she could make up the difference. Her mind had become numb, but her body still hurt when he beat her.
She’d used a John’s cell phone once, when he fell asleep, and called her mother. As soon as her mother heard her voice, she started yelling about what an ungrateful wretch she was, running away like that. After going on for a while, she hung up. Maria had felt alone all of her life, but never like this. She was in hell, and she didn’t know how to get out.
The day before, she had stolen a gun. Jake had a bunch of them stashed in the cabinet in his bedroom. It was a little automatic – she didn’t know what kind, but it had bullets in it. She’d looked. The trouble was, Maria didn’t know who she wanted to use it on. She did know that when she made up her mind, she had to get it right the first time.
* * * *
Earth
They had been in Earth’s system for about five days before Robert and the others decided it was time for him to meet the President. During that time the various teams had been hard at work. Jane had become part of Leida’s team. The team is the most fundamental unit of To’Ach’an organization, and like the rest of their structure, it’s pretty informal. There are usually from four to eight people on each team, but there is no set number. Each team has a leader, but that process is organic. Everybody on the team just kind of agrees on who is leader.
Jane liked Leida, and felt more comfortable with her team. Robert’s team was just a bit over her head. Chofma, Jonu, Kysandra, and Podara were the elite, and Jane knew it would be some time before she could contribute anything substantial to that gathering. She was still very much a part of that group when it came to planning, but when they split up into operational teams she had gravitated toward Leida.
Robert’s team was looking into security at the White House. Other teams were installing some communications satellites and navigation beacons, and Leida’s people were using Jane’s expertise to set up an undercover operation on the planet. Their first priority was to obtain local currency, while their next objective was to find a suitable piece of property for a planetside base, and buy it.
Robert assumed the government had discovered who they were, but he had planned for this very problem. Over the years, he had set up several other cover identities, and it was a simple matter to put the right pictures onto the documents. Once they had legal identities, they were able to sell a quantity of diamonds, which were easily manufactured, and thus cheap on most planets, while still being valuable on Earth. It took all of the first day to sell some diamonds and set up bank accounts. On the second day, Leida and Jane picked a realtor and started looking at property, while the rest of the team continued to sell diamonds. They wanted to spread their sales around to avoid raising suspicions.
Jane thought a warmer area would be better, and they needed some space, so she had decided upon a ranch in southern Arizona. They explained to the realtor that they were looking for a large place that was available immediately, and she showed them several. After a couple of days of looking, Jane and Leida picked a spot they both liked. It was located in the foothills of the Dragoon Mountains, near the little town of Pearce, Arizona. The ranch had just less than 20,000 deeded acres, and grazing leases on over 30,000 acres more.
Jane asked the realtor how soon they could close. Susan, the realtor, explained that they would make an offer to the owner, and if he accepted it, then they could close fairly quickly, assuming that there was no problem with financing. “How much do you want to put down?”
“No,” Jane said, “You don’t understand. This is a cash sale. I can have a cashier’s check for you on 24-hour notice. We want to move quickly. How soon can we close?”
Once the realtor was convinced they were serious, she called the owner of the property and the title company. Closing was set for 10 days later.
It took Robert’s team only a few hours to map out the security arrangements at the White House. They spent another day with Shanna deciding upon the easiest ways to overcome the systems and get Robert inside. The electronic stuff was pretty primitive by their standards, and they knew they could shut down all the alarm systems whenever they wanted. It was the people that would present the challenge. If they just shut down the alarms, the people would rush in to make sure the President was not in danger. It had to look like a natural occurrence.
They decided to have Robert ride a floater down. A floater is a platform about three feet square, with a railing on three sides. It has a top speed of about 100 miles per hour, but wind is pretty bad at anything over about 30 mph. Shanna could block radar coverage, but observers on the ground would still have a chance of spotting Robert visually. It was a new moon, and cloudy, so it would be really dark. Naturally, the guards were using night vision equipment, but they could beat that easily. They decided that a couple of bolts of artificial lightning would ruin everybody’s night adaptation and give a
good excuse for all the electronic malfunctions.
It was shortly after midnight, and the President had just gone to his bedroom. They had been monitoring the bedroom area with a microcam that had flown down and attached itself to the glass on a window. Seeing through the drapes was no problem for their technology. Robert was about 500 feet up when he got the signal and shielded his eyes. Three huge lightning bolts laced across the sky, crackling for several seconds. Robert started dropping faster. Inside the White House, the security systems went down, and outside, radio traffic was mostly concerned with the lightning having screwed up their night vision equipment.
Robert set the floater down on the porch outside the President’s bedroom. His cutter sliced through the locks on the French doors, and he walked into the room. Shanna promptly shut down all electronics in the room. The First Lady was in bed already, but the President was just coming out of the bathroom.
“Good evening, Mr. President. Please don’t be concerned, Mrs. Fuller. I have no hostile intent.” Amanda Fuller had pressed the alarm as soon as he had entered the room, and didn’t know it wasn’t working.
“Who the hell are you?” the President demanded. He reached for the phone.
“The phone isn’t working right now, President Fuller,” Robert said, “and neither is the alarm. Please, I’ll only be a minute. Hear me out, and I’ll be gone. My name is Robert Allen Masters. I’m sure you’ve heard it before.”
The President took a good look at Robert. “Yes, Mr. Masters, some people have been showing me your picture lately. You look older in the pictures. How did you get in here?”
Robert ignored his question. “Mr. President, I have several items for you.” He opened the bag he was carrying. “First, here is a sheet with instructions on setting up our next meeting. Second, this device is kind of like a telephone. You can use it to contact us, but only in accordance with the instructions on the sheet. Third, this block of material will be of interest to your scientists, and finally, this case contains a gift from my people to yours. Please accept it in the spirit in which it is offered. Do you have any questions before I go? I think you will find the sheet to be pretty self-explanatory.”
“You know there’s no way you can get out of here,” the President responded. “Give yourself up.”
“Thank you for the advice, Mr. President. Mrs. Fuller, it was very nice to meet you. I am sorry to have startled you.” Robert turned and walked back out the door to the porch.
President Fuller sprinted to the hall door, and opened it. “Intruder! An intruder just left by my balcony door!”
As soon as Robert was outside, he stepped back on the floater. It lifted over the rail, and when he was clear of the roof, he took it straight up, at maximum climb. One thousand feet over the White House, Podara scooped him up with a skipper, and 30 seconds later they were in vacuum.
About that same time, the President and First Lady were in the bomb shelter below the White House, where they spent the night.
The meeting at 10:00 the next morning wasn’t cordial. President Fuller was angry about the whole episode in his bedroom the previous night, and everybody knew it. He started with security. “John, you’re in charge of my detail. How is it that this man walked into my bedroom and out again, and nobody but me and my wife even knew he was there? How exactly did that happen?”
“We have not assembled the complete picture, sir. The people at the National Weather Service assure us that the lightning we observed could not have been natural, and we assume that’s what knocked out our security systems. Everything went down at the same time, and he was only in your room for about a minute. The timing was perfect. As to how he entered and left without being seen visually, we have no idea at this time. The lock on your door was cut by an unknown method, which seems to have sheared through the hardened steel. The cut is absolutely smooth, smoother than if it had been polished.”
Dr. Hanaway spoke up. “Mr. President, I don’t think you can blame them. Please let me tell you about the objects the intruder left. I think they explain a lot.”
“All right, Dr. Hanaway,” the President replied, “Go ahead.”
“Yes sir. He left these four items. I will go over them in the order he presented them. The sheet of instructions is just that. The instructions tell us when and under what conditions we can meet with them again. Of equal importance, the sheet itself tells us a great deal. We cannot identify the material from which it is made. It’s smooth and cream colored. You’ll notice it is thin and as flexible as paper. We measured it several times, because we didn’t believe it the first time. It is about 1/100,000 of an inch thick, with a thicker edge. The edge is probably so it won’t slice up the reader. We’ve tried everything from lasers to diamond blades, and we can’t even scratch it. It’s the toughest material we have ever seen. I can’t begin to tell you just how tough it is, because you have to damage something before you can know how much abuse it takes to damage it.”
“The second item was described as being like a phone. Well, it looks like one, and has an amazing screen. The instructions said we could make a test call to verify that it works. It does. I spoke briefly with a woman named Shanna, who refused to tell me anything that wasn’t on the sheet. The thing is, we were monitoring every wavelength we know how, and as far as we can tell, this thing doesn’t transmit. At least it doesn’t transmit anything we can detect. Oh, and we think it’s made out of the same stuff as the instruction sheet.”
“The block of material is certainly of interest to us scientifically. You’ll notice it has the number 172 engraved into it. Testing has confirmed that it is an element we have never seen before, with an atomic number of 172. An element with that high of an atomic number should not be stable, but this one appears to be. We are still studying its characteristics, and we will have a more complete report later.”
“The final item is in this case, which is made of the same material as the sheet, so far as we can tell. It appears seamless, but when you push on the depression, it opens like a clamshell, as you can see.” As the case opened, all could see a green statue. “The statue is made of a single piece of emerald, weighing about three pounds. I don’t know what that is in carats. No emerald even close to that size has ever been found on Earth. It’s a statue of a cat-like animal, but not one that ever lived here on Earth. Of course, it may have been an artist’s conception and not a real animal.”
“So,” the President asked, “what does all this explain, Dr Hanaway?”
“Mr. President,” the doctor replied, “in my opinion, these objects, the lightning, the locks, and the security systems failure all add up to one conclusion. The man you spoke with is definitely not from this planet, and wherever he does come from is far ahead of us in technology. According to the sheet, they are traders, here with goods to sell. I suggest that we set up the next meeting, following the instructions on the sheet.”
Robert spent the morning with Leida’s team, looking over the ranch property. It looked like it would work beautifully. The satellite team had completed setting up the two communications satellites and the navigation beacons, and now the team assigned to construction was getting everything ready to install the base as soon as the purchase of the ranch was final. Naturally, most of the installations would be underground, so only a small percentage of the land would be impacted. Most was needed for privacy. Another team was already studying how to secure the perimeter of the property.
The sheet had suggested two possible meeting places, and three possible times. The meeting places suggested were both military bases. The first was Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, and the alternate was the Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The times were all at 10 PM, but on three consecutive days. The government chose the air base and the middle day, which was a Tuesday. As instructed by the sheet, Dr. Hanaway made a call on the “phone” and confirmed the place and time with Shanna.
On the appointed day, the military people at the air base were busy. It was decided that the
meeting would be held in a hanger, to keep it far away from the rest of the base. An area had been partitioned off with 10’ high walls, and the inside of that area was carpeted. Lights were set up, and a large table was put in place. The sheet said to provide space for 10 people, five on each side.
The President insisted on going himself, although his Secret Service detail was against it, for security reasons. “Look, John,” the President said, “This guy walked right into my bedroom. So much for security. Hide a few sharpshooters up in the rafters of that hanger if you want to, but this may be the most momentous meeting ever held, and I’m going to be there.”
In addition to the President, it was decided that the science advisor, Dr. Hanaway, the National Security Advisor, General Smithson, the Secretary of State, Thom O’Brian, and the Secretary of Commerce, Janet Anderson, would make up the delegation. They arrived at the base on Air Force One shortly after noon, and spent the rest of the day going over contingencies. They were in a building about a mile from the hanger.
At 9:30 PM, the “phone” chirped at them. Dr. Hanaway picked up the call. “Hello Shanna… yes, I understand… OK, I’ll tell him. Thank you for calling.”
“Well,” the President said.
“Sir, the woman Shanna just informed me that if any of the riflemen hiding in the hanger point a weapon within 90 degrees of one of our visitors, they will be killed.”
John, head of the detail, said, “Mr. President, I feel that’s enough reason for you not to attend this meeting. They are expressing hostile intent.”
Thom O’Brian immediately replied, “I don’t see it that way. What they did is spot hostile intent on our part and respond to it. Sir, you know I was opposed to those riflemen. It was a mistake to put them there.”
The President thought a moment. “OK, get them out of there, and I mean all of them, John. If they spotted them that easily, they won’t do any good anyway. Let’s get ready, and let’s find out how in hell they knew those shooters were there.”