by Bob Mauldin
The power increase threw the ship into a higher orbit, passing near one of the blips as Kitty used the right stick to maneuver around the obstacles. Rising to a higher orbit put the shuttle above most satellite traffic and the radar screen went dead, hologram fading out of sight in a matter of seconds.
She faced back to the front and began to search for the ship when she realized just how fruitless such a search would be. Easier to find the proverbial needle in a haystack, she thought sheepishly. “Computer, display main ship and this shuttle,” she ordered.
She turned the chair back to view the display. The green spot in the center, she understood to be this shuttle, so she assumed the pulsing blue dot farther out to be the big ship. “What do the little yellow dots mean?” she asked aloud.
“Artificial satellites placed in predictable orbits for various purposes by the indigenous species of this world,” the computer replied.
Kitty studied the various spots of light and ran her hands over the joysticks. She fed more power to the engines slowly and threaded her way through the satellite layer, slowly closing the distance between the green spot and the blue. She glanced over her shoulder out the front of the cockpit and was rewarded with a three-quarters view of the Earth, terminator swallowing the mid-Pacific before her very eyes. A chill ran through her when she thought about how long she had dreamed of seeing this very sight with her own eyes. Watching coverage of live missions whenever possible and every documentary that came her way couldn’t have prepared Kitty for the emotions welling up inside her.
Her hands trembled slightly as she twitched the controls so that more of the planet became visible. Blue, green and white predominated as she had always known, but the browns, tans and greys of deserts and mountains were visible as well. The variegated greens of the coastal shallows faded into the deep blue of the open seas. The British Isles and Western Europe were just coming into view, their large, well-lit cities showed as expanding patches of light along coastlines and most of the major rivers.
Her breath caught in her throat and a memory floated, unbidden, to the top of her mind. She could no longer place the speaker or the particular mission, but one of the astronauts commented on the fact that no national boundary lines could be seen from space, a remark significant enough to resurface at this time. She looked down at the planet slowly turning below her and realized that the only boundaries were those imposed by man. A sense of insignificance verging on impotence washed over her until she remembered that she had possession of an artifact capable of giving her species an unexpected advantage technologically as well as time-wise if only the squabbling factions would give up bickering over a few square miles of land and unite under one banner to work toward a common goal.
For the first time since this whole thing started, alone and without the distractions of her husband and friend, Kitty tried to clinically diagnose her ... their ... situation. Three humans in possession of alien technology of unknown potential, of course the government didn’t know there were just three. That was a plus, but the low numbers were a definite liability, which was why they were going to find a scientist to turn to.
Kitty knew that Simon had downplayed the danger he faced. He knew the caliber of people he faced in a way she and Gayle never would, she hoped, and she also knew that some bright young agent would correlate the disappearance of an ex-agent living in the near-vicinity of this incident and start asking questions. A thought occurred to her. “Computer, are we cloaked from electronic surveillance?”
“Yes, Captain. But we are not cloaked from the lesser technologies. Specifically, from devices that manually magnify light.”
“Damn,” Kitty muttered. “Some amateur astronomer is eventually going to see us and report an anomalous body in orbit. The shit will really hit the fan then.” One thing she did know was that most astronomical discoveries were made by amateurs.
What would she do if she were leading the opposition? Knowing they could just beam out was small consolation. First, if they got arrested and used their wristbands to escape, it would confirm that they had the ship, and second, it would demonstrate the level of technology available, and it was just too early for that.
People like they were looking for tended to focus their attention on particular parts of the sky. Once the bigger ship was reported, every eye on Earth would be staring straight at them. “Can you evade incoming missiles?”
“Considering the level of technology exhibited by your race so far, there is nothing that can approach us without being destroyed.”
Kitty relaxed slightly. “Anything that gets too close, you will destroy. Unless your sensors report humans aboard. It’s remotely possible that NASA or somebody else could send a manned vehicle up to get a closer look. You will inform me of either situation before you take action.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Kitty thought long and hard about the repercussions. At present, only the U.S. and Russia could mount manned missions to inspect the ship, but a number of other countries could send up unmanned missiles with fairly sophisticated gadgetry aboard. Anything beyond that would require the cooperation of the whole world, setting the stage for a one-world government, and there were still too many madmen and patriots alike unwilling to give up any of their hard-won ground for that to happen anytime soon. What they, the madmen and patriots, needed was a common enemy, and she smiled uneasily at the idea of becoming that enemy.
Kitty brought the shuttle into traffic control range of the bigger ship and let the automated process take over the landing. She had too much on her mind to attempt to bring the shuttle in under manual control. The shuttle banked into its final approach and Earth slid out of view to the rear.
She turned her thoughts back to the task at hand. First and foremost, she planned to talk to the computer at length. That, in association with a far more thorough inspection, should help her answer any questions or at least know where to look for answers when the conscript came aboard. She no longer wondered whether or not there would be a recruit, she just wondered when.
Simon turned onto his street two blocks before he normally would. Even late at night he spotted the grey sedan parked a block from the house. “I’ll bet that there are at least ten agents in the area,” he said to himself. “I hope Gayle doesn’t have any problems.”
Simon backed the truck into the driveway, intending to unload the gear into the garage and take the clothing into the house.
Watching from the corners of his eyes, he saw one of the cars pull up to the curb as he opened the tailgate and topper door and began to pull the first stuff out of the back of the truck.
He pretended not to see the two men until they were almost on him. He looked up, looked closer, a classic double-take, and said, “Johnny! You’re about the last guy I’d expect to see these days.” He dropped the tent he had been lifting out of the back onto the tailgate and shook the man’s hand. “What brings you here after all these years?”
John San Martino gripped his ex-partner’s hand firmly, sighed, and said, “Let’s not play games, Simon. We were partners, for Christ’s sake. You saved my life on more than one occasion. I got assigned to a case and your name keeps coming up in all the wrong places. We need to talk.”
“Is this a downtown thing, a back room thing, or can we talk while I unload the truck? Then we can go in the house and have a beer like civilized adults.”
“We can talk here as long as you play straight with me, Simon,” San Martino said, leaning nonchalantly against the side of the pickup.
Simon looked at his ex-partner from hooded eyes as he pulled a long grey case out of the back of the truck. He handed it to San Martino. “30-06. Never leave home without one. My pistol is on the passenger seat.” The tone was pure banter, but the gaze was speculative. He lifted the tent back onto his shoulder, turned around, opened the garage door and walked to the back wall. He set the tent on a shelf and came back to the truck. “So, what do you want to know, Johnny?”
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br /> “You’re going to make me go through the whole routine, aren’t you?”
“Yep,” Simon replied, hauling an ice chest out of the truck and setting it aside with a grunt. “If you’re official, we need to be on the up-and-up all the way across the board, don’t we? I know your boss ... who is that these days? Wouldn’t like any of the particulars to be overlooked.” He hooked two folding chairs with one arm and snagged a folding table with his free hand. Carrying them into the garage, he said over his shoulder, “Let’s stipulate that you’ve read me my rights and I understand them. Come on, John, get specific.”
“We found your telescope, Simon. Has your prints and name all over it. Were you expecting a landing? Do you have some kind of connection to these landings we’ve been set to watch for?”
Simon walked back to the truck, thinking. “Oh, come on, John. I’m an amateur astronomer, and you know it. I saw whatever it was come down and I got the hell out of there. I had vacation time coming and I really needed it this year. You remember Kitty? Katherine? We’re having some troubles right now and I needed to get as much distance from her and money troubles as possible. Then that thing put an end to that.”
“So, why did we find her blood at the scene if she was nowhere around? And who was the third person? Woman or small child? And there are the tire tracks in, but not out. Those same tracks go across the clearing and into thin air. Not to mention three indentations in the soft soil that said something heavy sat there and some small fires caused by whatever it was, leaving. And let’s not forget the supposed remains of something definitely not from this world. You see, we’ve got quite a bit along with the tires on your truck which is now under a national security seal.”
Sleeping bags and a mattress were tossed into a corner, pillows tossed at the porch, and Simon pulled the last item, an over-sized canvas suitcase out. He closed the camper door, picked up the suitcase and said, “Okay, John,” sighing hard. He wiped his hands on his pants and picked up the ice chest. “Come inside and I’ll tell you everything. All I need to do is empty the ice out of the chest and put the perishables away. Forgot all about the ‘scope at the time. When you guys are finished with it, I’d like it back. It’s a gift from Kitty. You know how wives are about stuff like that.”
“So, why didn’t you report it, Simon? That’s the question on everybody’ s mind.”
“Everybody’s?” Simon repeated. He picked up two crates of food and moved them to the back porch along with the chest. “Or the Director’s? You seem to forget, I’m a civilian now. Yes, I still have classified information, like the existence of ALERT teams, and I knew troops would be on the ground within the hour most likely. But you should also notice that I just got home. When have I had time to report anything?”
Simon opened the back door and sidled into the house with the big suitcase. San Martino followed him carrying the rifle. Simon dumped the suitcase in the middle of the floor, laid his pistol-belt on top and stepped out the back door and grabbed the ice chest ignoring the remaining agent. He quickly put perishable items in the refrigerator and pulled out two beers. Stepping into the living room, he handed one to San Martino. “Sit down, John, and tell me why this is going to be the last beer we share. Oh, and the third set of prints belong to a girl friend of Kitty’s. Gayle Miller is her name.”
San Martino set the beer down unopened, an action not unnoticed by Simon. “Because you are dead center in the middle of something a lot bigger than any of us, Simon. And your wife is in it up to her ears, too, along with her girlfriend. That’s one sharp woman, you’ve got there.” He looked around the living room and shook his head. “This is as far as you could get in fifteen years, Simon? A four-bedroom house in Billings, Montana of all places? Home of the Freemen, the Unabomber, and now Simon Hawke.”
Simon looked at the place he had called home for fifteen years. It looked fine to him and he felt sorry for the agents who never knew where they were going to be from one day to the next. Of course he was in the same boat, now, in a distinctly different way. A mixture of the two of them, Simon and Kitty had managed to make dust-ruffled furniture co-exist with a mounted eight-point whitetail rack and gilt-framed oil paintings of mountain scenes. A blue Persian rug tastefully set off the light oak furniture sitting on burnished hardwood floors. “Actually, I’m rather happy here, John. I run my own business, come home to my own bed every night and only have my wife to answer to. Why would I jeopardize that?”
“I don’t know, Simon,” San Martino admitted. “But our profilers say it is extremely likely that you are mixed up in this. And remember, you helped train me. I know you. That’s why I was assigned to the case. And I don’t like getting the old Hawke smoothness in full force. You almost had me there.”
Simon just grinned. It wasn’t fun to give his old friend the run-around, but it would keep the waters muddy long enough to cover some of their tracks. He cracked his beer and took a pull.
“You know we’re going to have to interrogate Miller, too. We have to cross-check all the information,” San Martino said tiredly. “You know how the game is played, Simon. So far Miller and you and your wife are the only ones we can connect to the ... incident. How you got separated, how you got away in the first place, where you’ve been, who you’ve talked to. We’re going after all of it, Simon. We want that ship.”
“Sorry, John,” Simon said. “Can’t help you with the ship part. I don’t seem to have it on me.” The sound of a car door slamming brought the two men to their feet. Simon looked out the window to see Gayle walking up the sidewalk. He let out a silent groan.
Simon started for the door, but San Martino raised a hand. “Allow me, please.” He opened the door just before Gayle could knock. “Come in, Miss Miller. Simon is waiting for you. My name is John.”
The blonde walked over to Simon, a perplexed and somewhat apprehensive look on her face, and she wasn’t supposed to be here, anyway. She took a deep breath and turned to face the stranger. “Mind introducing me, Simon?” she asked brightly. He was secretly surprised by the composure she showed, walking into the situation almost blind knowing there was going to be trouble. That was obvious from her stance. He had sparred with her a couple of times and knew how much trouble she had pulling her punches, even sparring. But pissed off? Hell, he’d been out of his league when she was just warming up. Her black belt wasn’t for show, and she practiced regularly.
He was going to have to keep his attention on San Martino, and just hope that Gayle could hold her share of the line if push came to shove. He noted that Gayle wore a long-sleeved shirt, a common-enough event in Montana in the springtime that even his own long sleeves didn’t get remarked upon. And of course, the two pieces of identical jewelry wouldn’t be noticed ... at least not until they were hauled out in handcuffs.
“Gayle Miller, my ex-partner John San Martino of the DIA. It seems that John wants some answers to some very touchy questions.”
At Simon’s introduction, Gayle stepped forward, a thousand-watt smile lighting up her face. “If you were Simon’s partner, I’m glad to meet you. We could use a friend in all of this mess.” She held out her hand to the agent.
“John isn’t the friendly face you think he is, Gayle,” Simon warned. “As a matter of fact he’s here to arrest us. Isn’t that right, John?”
Gayle jerked her hand back, her expression going blank. She looked at Simon who had sat back down on the couch, the picture of the genial host. Gayle slowly sat down on the other end, almost as if she expected the couch to bite her. Simon noted that her foot was ready to strike in the direction of San Martino’s knee. He wasn’t sure she had the reach though. If he could get the agent a little closer ...
Gayle dropped her hands into her lap. “Don’t you need a warrant or something before you can arrest us? And don’t you need to prove that we’ve done something?”
“Miss Miller,” San Martino said patiently, “we’ve got all three of you linked to a place and time where an ... an
omalous object ... appears to have landed.” He held up his hand to forestall interruptions and began ticking points off on his fingers. “We’ve got the telescope with both Simon and Katherine’s prints on it found at the scene. We have blood samples taken from the scene that match Mrs. Hawke’s DNA. We have shoe prints that as likely as not match your boots, and tire tracks that probably match your Jeep. There is always the Homeland Security Act that lets us do pretty much what we please.”
“How do you know all that?” Gayle interrupted.
Simon held up his hand. “They’re very good at their jobs, Gayle. I should know. I used to be one of them. As a matter of fact, I trained John. No good deed goes unpunished, right?” He turned back to San Martino. “Go on, John. I’m sure you’ve got more.”
“We’ve got NORAD and several satellites verifying that something entered Earth’s atmosphere and landed in a small valley about five hundred miles from here. We’ve got tire tracks leading into the area but not out. We’ve got those same tracks leading us around the edge of the clearing and into a small meadow, finally vanishing as if by magic. And we’ve got a mass of ... something ... burnt to a crisp. DNA analysis just doesn’t have a place to put what we’ve got.”
“This is all circumstantial, you know,” Gayle said, finally finding her voice. “There’s no way this is going to stand up in court.”
Simon patted her arm. “There isn’t going to be a trial, kiddo. We are about to be disappeared until they have all they can get out of us. Even then, we might not get back to our normal lives.”