by Bob Mauldin
Even as he was being led away, hands cuffed behind his back, Conroy seemed to not comprehend the twists that had led to his arrest by Federal marshals. Simon knew, though. He knew that without the foresight and ingenuity of one Katherine Cattin, PhD., with a B.S. in systems analysis, among her other accomplishments, uncovering the culprit could have been a lot harder.
A whirlwind romance followed, the talk of the Agency for a time, then, as with most things, the tempest blew itself out. Until the wedding. After the honeymoon, Simon found the notice among all the other stuff in his in-box transferring him to field-operative handler. Reading between the lines he knew that he was no longer considered a good risk in the field since he now had someone else to worry about as well. And what could happen if he were covert and someone found out about his wife?
Two years he foundered on, trying to fit into a world of suits and ties, parties, galas and intrigue on higher levels that held no real interest for him. Finally, he tendered his resignation, moved to Billings, Montana, Katherine’s hometown, and set himself up in business as a security consultant. Hawke Security was a well-respected concern in the year two thousand and ten when one camping trip changed the course of life on Earth almost as much as the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Now he stood on a hilltop and looked down on a sight that fellow agents, former fellow agents, he reminded himself, had only whispered, dreamed about. Once he had been reassigned to the position of handler for field agents, he had become privy to some of the more esoteric briefings bestowed on the upper echelons. The evening bull sessions that revolved around all the what if’s, stared him in the face. Here-and-now snapped back into place when Kitty prodded, “So, what are we going to do, Simon?”
Kitty, for her part, hadn’t been idle while studying the thing. Heat-glow gone now, the moonlight sketched a roughly triangular shape sitting in the narrow strip of land between the pond and the ridge they sat on. The general shape of the craft below would make a casual observer think that they were looking at one of the space shuttles. Closer examination showed that not to be the case, leaving out the impossibility of its apparently powered landing in such a restricted space.
Kitty saw that the dimensions were more than a little off. While it had a round, cigar-shaped main body, flattened on both the top and bottom, fat stubby wings and a tall stabilizer, something just looked subtly wrong about the whole design.
“Look,” she said quietly, seeing the lights change, too. “And don’t even try to tell me it’s one of ours. I already know it’s not.”
Simon’s other senses brought him information that he took in, stored and analyzed almost subconsciously: the wind blowing Kitty’s long red hair around while it also scattered the smoke from the several small fires below, the smell of the lodgepole pines competing with the odor of over-heated metal and smoke whenever the capricious wind blew from the right direction.
“What the hell is a shuttle, whoever it belongs to, doing landing in the middle of a National Forest?” Kitty asked, pushing against Simon’s side until she stood unsupported. She reached up and felt around the cut on her head, fingers coming away bloodied again. She let her arm fall to her side, thumb rubbing over her fingertips, feeling the blood rather than seeing it, knowing there would be a lump in the morning.
Kitty felt the shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t know, Kitty,” he answered quietly. “One thing I am sure of is that that is way beyond anything I was ever told about. Of course, I’ve been out of the loop ever since I retired.”
Kitty looked up at her husband’s face, hidden in moon-shadow. “What do you mean, anything you were ever told about? You never told me about anything like this.”
Simon shrugged again. “Like I said before, Hon. Need to know, and you didn’t. Besides, I may be out of the Agency, but I’m still bond by several laws about revealing classified material.” He looked again at the shape in the darkness below and shook his head. “Of course, need to know just went out the window.” Reddish light spilled out of the open hatch onto the ramp and a small section of ground around it. “I guess it’s all moot now, though. But I sure never expected to see something like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“That,” he said simply, nodding in the direction of the ship below. “Who do you think built it? You said that it’s not one of ours. What do you base your opinion on?”
Kitty looked back at the craft in their little valley. “You know I worked on some of the low Earth orbit satellite projects after ... Conroy,” she said hesitantly. “Not as classified as your work,” she said sarcastically, “but we did need to know things about the space shuttles. Like their dimensions, both interior and exterior. That thing isn’t shaped right. Too long, too wide, too ... I don’t know.”
“So, who built it?” Simon prodded.
Kitty shrugged. “No one on Earth has the tech base for it. Who do you think built it?” She realized the two of them were just temporizing. All these facts had already been gone over.
Simon stated positively. “This thing flew over us, Hon.”
Kitty was silent for a time, replaying her last few seconds of consciousness. A hollow feeling began to form in the pit of her stomach. Hesitantly she asked, “Okay, so who does that leave?”
Simon said, “Aliens.”
“Don’t you dare make fun of my choice of reading material, Simon,” Kitty said tartly, already having come to the same conclusions. She had brought David Weber’s latest Honor Harrington book along on this particular trip, fascinated by the female protagonist and all that she had to overcome.
“It’s not a line, Hon,” Simon said gently. “And I read the same stuff as you, thank you very much. So. After I got promoted sideways, I attended a number of briefings on what to do in the event of something like this, and some of us, other controllers, did talk about it amongst ourselves. The ones who were cleared for it that is. There are special operation teams deployed all around the country and in some cases, the world, to deal with just such a situation.”
Kitty stared into the dark spaces where Simon’s eyes hid. “So we’re looking at real live aliens?”
Simon chose not to answer the accusation Kitty leveled at him. She stared up at him in the dark. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
Simon shook his head. “No, Dear, I’m not.”
She looked back at the ship in the valley. “So what does this mean?”
Simon’s gaze followed his wife’s. “It could mean that the balance of power is about to shift drastically. It could mean that the U.S. is about to get an advantage no one else will be able to match.”
Kitty’s voice came quietly to Simon’s ears. “Or it could mean the end of life as we know it.”
Montana nights tend to be on the chilly side, even in late May. Especially above six thousand feet, but Simon’s shiver didn’t come from the errant winds. Rather it came from the profusion of possible futures his mind conjured up, one possibility leading to another in an ever-increasing cascade of maybes until it was all just a blur. Some of those paths led to the best long-term gain for humanity. Some ended badly, humanity suffering more in the long run, some less dramatic, but a few led to the stars. He held Kitty tightly, his shiver passing to her. “If that ship doesn’t leave soon, you could be right, Kittyn.”
CHAPTER THREE
Kitty Hawke looked down in wonder at the ship that sat plainly exposed by the silvery moonlight. No Earthly craft could have landed in the confined space, except some of the more advance vertical take-off and landing types, and this certainly wasn’t one of those. Shaped essentially like a shuttle, it had floated over her head and apparently landed under its own power. Apparently, because its passage had knocked both her and her husband out, and now it sat at the bottom of the hill. Hell! Escape and relaxation was the reason for this sanctuary in the first place. And now this. “So, tell me, Simon,” she asked quietly, “what do you think is going to happen?”
“Truthf
ully?” Simon asked. Shaking his head, he said, “We’re out of time. That’s the future down there, and we’re in deep shit. Personally, as well as a race. The people who are going to show up soon are good enough to figure out who camped out here sooner or later, so even if we leave, they’ll be knocking on our door. And as a race, well, this isn’t going to be a Roswell kind of thing. Too many people have too many ways of finding things out for this to be kept under wraps for long.”
He ran his hand through his hair. Kitty knew that gesture. Whenever Simon felt trapped, or was unsure of his course of action, he fussed with his hair. “No nation on Earth can be allowed to have that much of a technological edge over the others. Balance of power, remember? I think that before we can figure out how to use what is down there, other nations, China, surely, Russia possibly, even France, and maybe Germany, will try to get their share of the pie. Of course, we’ll deny it, but word will leak out. I see a coalition raised up against us to turn it over to the world. I see us refusing, throwing up roadblocks while we try to get some advantage before world opinion forces someone to do something drastic.”
Kitty contemplated his words. “So, this is major.” Not a question, a statement of fact.
“Unless that thing takes off,” Simon confirmed, “very major.”
The two observers noticed another change in the light from the interior of the craft at the same time. It looked like something, or someone, was moving between them and the interior light-source. They stood rooted as a figure stepped into the doorway. Stepped, Kitty thought, legs shaking. One head, two legs, two arms. Maybe it’s a human ship after all, and things aren’t as desperate as Simon thinks.
The figure leaned against the door frame for a moment then stepped over the threshold. It seemed to sag as if it suddenly shouldered an extra burden and staggered two paces forward then sank to its knees. Knees, Kitty was almost giddy with relief. He’s human after all. In the dim red light pouring out of the interior, the figure looked like it was trying to stand, but only succeeded in kneeling upright before falling off the side of the ramp into the shadows.
“Honey, I think he’s hurt. I need to get down there.” Simon started to move toward the edge of the bluff.
For the first time in her life Kitty was afraid of the wild darkness of her native Montana. “Not without me, you’re not! I’m not staying here alone. Besides, you might need help.”
Simon hesitated, deciding. He handed her own flashlight and pulled his own mag-light from the nylon holster on his belt. “Okay, but be careful.” He took her free hand and slipped over the edge of the hill, beginning the long slide to the bottom.
As she scrambled down the sloping face of the knoll, a small patch of light her only guide, Kitty thought, This is crazy! We’re going to break our necks trying to get to a space shuttle in the middle of the night in the middle of a forest! She skittered down the slope just feet behind Simon, using one hand to keep herself more-or-less upright, the other shining her flashlight ahead so she could maneuver around the shrubs, rocks and occasional small trees that kept appearing in the tiny circle of light.
They reached the bottom and Kitty hissed at a stitch in her side and a new gash in her palm. Simon came over and looked at Kitty’s hand. He took a small package off his belt, opened it and placed it over the cut. Wrapping the ends around her hand to hold the gauze in place he said, “Pre-loaded with antibiotics and a painkiller. I’ll do a better job as soon as I can.”
Simon shined his light to the right, revealing a stubby wing set low on the stern of the vessel, out of which protruded a landing foot or skid. Pointed up, the beam revealed a heat-seared wall some forty feet high. The two felt the craft’s residual heat, though it was quickly dissipating in the night’s chill breeze. “This is almost beyond belief,” Simon muttered, taking in all the details his eyes could focus on.
“‘Almost’ isn’t a word I would use,” Kitty said sarcastically. “Where’s the pilot?”
To the left, no flashlight was necessary. A pale red light washed out of the opening, illuminating the ramp and part of the ground in the near vicinity, but leaving everything close to the ship in shadow. They had come down with the ramp between them and the fallen pilot. But what about the rest of the crew? A ship this size had to have a crew of at least five or six. Shouldn’t they be coming out as well? The two of them had made enough noise coming down the hillside. Loose pebbles still clattered down the slope.
Kitty watched Simon start to move slowly in the direction of the ramp some twenty feet to their left. She started to call out to him to wait, but just followed instead. She watched him reach for the old Army .45 caliber pistol he always wore in the woods, fearing something bad was just ahead. Her heartbeat slowed when she realized that he merely checked to see that the leather flap was still fastened down.
Simon stepped gingerly onto the ramp from the side, crossing the fifteen-foot expanse in silence, watching the interior as he made his way across. Kitty followed onto the strangely textured surface, and glanced into the interior of the craft as well, seeing nothing but an unbroken expanse of floor. Simon’s hiss brought her attention back.
She moved up beside him when he motioned her forward, his light never wavering from something in the shadows on the far side of the ramp. Their near-vertical controlled slide down the face of the hill in a darkness broken only by the wildly swinging beams of their flashlights and a full moon had been bad enough. But this! This was just un-bloody-believable! She had figured the pilot was a human being, even after what Simon had told her. Of course, she had. After all, who in their right mind would really expect a UFO to drop out of the sky right in front of them? It just had to be next-gen technology not yet released to the public
He had told her of his military service and how he had joined the DIA after leaving the Army so that he could keep doing something for his country. The problem had been that he wasn’t one of those who easily tolerated the regimentation of military life. That was why the DIA had been perfect for him. Until they got married. The Agency took married operatives out of the field, believing that they were more likely to err on the side of caution when risks needed to be taken. On some deeper level though, she struggled. She just couldn’t believe that he hadn’t told her about this years before.
Until now. Apparently, you can take a spy out of the business, but you can’t take the mind-set out of the spy. Speared in the twin beams of their flashlights lay indisputable proof. “Simon! He’s red!” Kitty stared in fascination at the… person… crumpled on the ground beside the ramp. “I mean really red. Look at his face!”
The ochre light spilled from the open hatch and mixed with the beams of their own lights, revealing a sight Kitty could hardly tear her eyes away from. The pilot, the alien, slowly moved to lie flat on his back. His, because there was no evidence of breasts showing under the form-fitting, bluish garment he wore.
He looked back and forth between the two beings standing over him. There was no hair on his head, no eyelashes, no eyebrows. The lack of the latter gave him a permanently startled appearance. The eyes themselves were a slightly lighter shade of red than his skin, the nose had no cartilage to give it form and the fingers seemed to have at least one extra knuckle each. How must we look to him? Kitty thought. He leaned away and coughed something dark onto the ground.
Finally breaking free from the trance he seemed to have entered at the sight of the being on the ground, Simon said, “We have to do something. Help me get him up.”
Simon stepped to the far side of the alien and as he and Kitty squatted down and reached out toward him. The man, for that was how they both thought of him, said, “K’lat! Muvara chi. Liperin se.” As he spoke, the alien struggled to get himself into a seated position.
The two humans looked at each other. There was no way to know what the alien had said, but the intent was obvious: they weren’t to touch him. “Stop!” a voice said from inside the ship. “I cease. Touch not.”
Ti
me seemed to stand still for Simon. His thoughts raced. Two aliens? The weight of the pistol on his hip comforted a small part of him and he suddenly realized just how small a part that was. But the voice from inside had said, “I cease.” He looked first at Kitty, then at the open doorway into the vessel. Images filled his head. Scenes played out to their logical, and sometimes illogical, conclusions, and all of them left much to be desired.
Simon took on faith that whoever, whatever, was translating for the alien was capable of working the other way as well. “What can we do to help?”
As the translation rumbled out of speakers somewhere inside the ship, the alien seemed to relax, though his expression remained guarded, if any earthly description could be applied to a face so different. “Keppa sil,” the alien answered. “Chi a sumara do jora, kiya liperin se.”
Seconds later the voice sounded from inside the huge ship. “Very little. I would feel a planet’s breath once more before I cease.”
Simon was acutely aware of the passage of time. He asked, “What happens to your ship when you ... cease?”
“It will cease also,” the alien answered. “I would see that not happen.”
“Me, too, I think,” Simon muttered.
Kitty spoke up from beside Simon. “So, how can that be prevented?”
The alien thought for a moment, or perhaps gathered his strength. The impression both humans got was of less than good health: the short breaths evident by the movements of the nasal skin flaps, and the labored rise and fall of the skinny chest. “I am the last of the crew,” came from the internal speakers. “When I cease, the ship will know by this.” He held up his wrist, encircled by a silvery metal band covered in colored designs. “To prevent the capture of our technology by ... others ... we make our ships cease when the last of the crew dies. This can be prevented if one of you agrees to wear this. It will identify you as the Captain and allow you aboard. The technology will be yours.”