Alien Affairs

Carrie had the best sleep—and best dinner—that she had ever had on an airplane. The airfield on Kwajalein Atoll bristled with F-16s and Carrie even saw a B-2 Stealth Bomber. “What good is a bomber against an aircraft?” she asked astronaut Lance.

“They fit those with cruise missiles. I’m sure they can target an aircraft, especially one two-hundred meters across,” he said.

“At this point in time, I don’t see any sense in attacking them, especially if you are going to be in one of the saucers,” Carrie said. “By the way, are you married?”

“Uh, no.” He looked at Carrie rather awkwardly. “And I certainly hope they don’t attack them while we’re onboard.” He seemed to gather his composure enough to add, “Why do ask?”

“Oh, well, uh, I have a daughter.”

Lance looked relieved and smiled. “Maybe you could introduce us sometime.”

“I’d like to but she’s stuck underground for the foreseeable future.” She decided that this was not the place to inquire about a sperm bank deposit.

A big Sea King helicopter ferried the two astronauts, the astrophysicist, Carrie and the security men to Bikini Island. It was the middle of a perfect equatorial afternoon. Schools of large fish basked in the crystalline turquoise water. Carrie yearned to forget the dire state of affairs and spend the day floating on that embryonic membrane without thinking about the inevitable olfactory impact of alien stench.

The half dozen caretakers who protected Bikini Island from some unspecified threat—it had already been hydrogen bombed after all—greeted the Americans with distain and showed them to the guest quarters that had been built for the since abandoned tourism industry. They did, however, prepare a sumptuous dinner of fresh fish and taro for their unwelcomed guests.

“Do you suppose the fish is radioactive?” Carrie asked the group.

Lance said, “What do we care? We’re already sterile.”

“Good point.”

After dinner while the men huddled, Carrie walked beneath the coconut palms and let herself slip into a sense of doom as she watched the sun set on the pristine sea. She did not want anything to do with the destruction of the alien ships, she did not believe that human weapons could do it and she sure as hell did not want to be anywhere near a nuclear explosion. She gave a thought to warning Deshler. Then she saw Turnbull’s familiar scowl in her mind’s eye and abandoned the thought.

She rejoined the men and noticed a bottle of Glenfiddich on the table. “Is that bottle empty?” she asked.

Ernie poured her two fingers. “It is now,” he said.

After finishing her scotch and joking with the men, she retired to her cabin and set her phone to wake her before sunrise. To her own surprise, she slept soundly until the alarm jolted her awake with the ‘cereal that’s shot from guns’ theme from the 1812 Overture. By the light of her phone’s camera she donned her bathing suit and walked to the beach. Light from the setting moon cast a shimmering silver path across the water. She waded to her waist, turned and floated on her back with her eyes closed in the warm, soft sea. When she opened her eyes there was the faintest hint of light in the east, and straight overhead, she saw them coming. Rolling, she stroked hard for the sand where she quickly toweled dry and wrapped it around her waist. By then the two discs appeared the size of full moons and hung over the heart of the island. Somewhere she heard the roar of the black bat-winged bomber. In the darkness it was as invisible to her eyes as it was to radar.

Terror seized her viscera. “Don’t fire, you damned fools,” she said aloud and jogged toward the hovering craft. One hovered while the second continued to descend. Carrie heard the men exiting their cabins and trotting toward the landing zone. A sudden realization threatened to turn her natural anxiety to panic. “Why only two?’ she thought.

The big circular ship settled gently to within inches of the ground and the rectangular orifice appeared below the rim with the gangly silhouette of an alien centered in it. Carrie felt her knees quiver as she took tentative steps forward. When the putrid alien aroma swept over her she stopped and said, “Come, Deshler.”

“I am not Deshler, Carrie Player,” the alien replied. “Deshler is rescuing Onath.”

The feeling of betrayal struck her palpably. “You found Onath?”

“You are not the only clever one, Carrie Player. We dedicated a computer to listen to all the communication signals on your planet. When it recognized our language we triangulated the source of the signal that was not coming from your device. It could only have been Onath.”

“You devious bastards. Then why do you need to take hostages?”

“Perhaps we do not. However, Deshler has failed before. We shall wait until we hear that he has succeeded before deciding to take your people to the satellite.”

“Are you not making yourselves vulnerable by sitting here?”

“We believe that your people will not attack us if you are here, therefore, do not attempt to leave the area.”

“I hope my people have as high an opinion of me as you do.”

The alien laughed. Carrie noticed that everyone else on the island lingered behind her at a respectable distance. “Do you want me to come onboard?” she asked.

“That will not be necessary. We prefer to avoid your unpleasant aura if possible.”

“Thanks. I am happy to wait here. How long do you expect it to take Deshler to rescue Onath?”

“It is Deshler. Who can say?”

“Carrie,” she heard the voice of Ernie, the physicist, “can I come over there?”

To the alien she said, “One of our scientists would like to approach. Do you mind?”

“Not if he is peaceful.”

“He will be.” She told Ernie to join her.

“This is remarkable,” he said. “Is this Deshler?”

“No, we’ve been double crossed. Deshler found where we are holding Onath. He is attempting a rescue.”

“Oh, dear, that changes a great deal.”

“You bet it does. Walk away and try to get a message to Fort Aguayo in Chile—they’re about to be attacked. And call the Air Force. Tell them to go ahead and shoot.”

“Carrie, dear, what about us?”

“Okay, after they clear the island.”

“Before I do that, is there a chance I could see inside?”

“I doubt it. He doesn’t like how humans smell.”

“Yes, they are a bit rank as well. Could you ask him how they contain the antimatter?”

Carrie posed the question to the alien, it said, “It is contained in a strong plasma field within a total vacuum. Naturally some antiparticles annihilate with the particles of the plasma. This provides sufficient energy to generate the plasma but it shortens the time the antiparticles can be stored. So if Deshler takes too long, we will have to retire to above the atmosphere to refuel. If that happens, do not worry, we will return shortly.”

Carrie translated and Ernie said, “Ask him if that’s the way they contain cold fusion.”

She did and the alien replied, “Essentially.”

“Will he tell how to do that?”

The alien’s response was, “You do not have enough time left to do anything useful with it.”

Carrie translated and said, “He’s got you there. Now, go call the cavalry.”

Ernie walked back to the cluster of people. Carrie noticed for the first time that the two astronauts were in their spacesuits. She also saw a second alien approaching from within the ship. It conferred with the one at the threshold.

“Carrie Player,” the first alien said, “Deshler has Onath. We do not require any hostages. Going.”

Carrie said, “Going.” She felt oddly relieved, but also furious, and wished that the security men would launch their shoulder-fired missiles through the open door. The rectangle of light vanished and the craft rose rapidly but not the inertia defying instantaneous assent she had seen before.

The two ships appeared to be mere platinum dots in the brilliant tropical sky and were considerably north of the island when Carrie saw the sun erupt on the side of one of the discs. The orb of light burned phosphenes on her retinas. The same flash scintillated from the second saucer and she had to cover her eyes at the same instant that the blast knocked her hard to the ground and a thunderous roar struck her deaf. Seconds later hands seized her upper arms and she felt herself being dragged through the sand.

As her senses returned she saw the inside of a tourist cabin. It was crowded with people and the two astronauts, still in spacesuits, gave the scene a sense of the unreal. “What just happened?” she said but she could not hear her voice.

Ernie was speaking to her. She saw his mouth moving excitedly but she could still not hear his words. Then, gradually, his words became audible. “...nuclear warheads. They could have incinerated us. I never made the call.”

“What are we going to do about radiation poisoning?” she asked.

“The electromagnetic pulse has fried all our electronics. The pilots went to see if the helicopter can still fly. If not, we’re in a bad way.”

Carrie said, “When we tried to nuke them in space they suppressed the blasts, but these two must have detonated.”

“They definitely detonated. Whether they destroyed the alien ships remains to be seen,” Ernie said.

Lance opened the visor of his spacesuit. He said, “There’s no way they could survive those blasts.”

“Close your visor,” Carrie said. “I don’t want you radioactive when you meet my daughter.” She swung her legs off the edge of the bed, and sitting said, “Which cabin are we in? I need to get some clothes.”

“Nonsense,” said Ernie. “Nobody is going outside until we hear the chopper.”

She grumbled but settled for wrapping herself in another towel.

Someone said, “I hear the chopper.”

The thump of the rotors grew louder until it seemed it must blow the thatch from the roof. Ernie looked out of the window and said, “Let’s go.”

The entire population of Bikini Island climbed aboard the Sea King, it tilted and rose over the water. An hour later, flying by dead reckoning, they disembarked at Bucholz field on Kwajalein. Carrie borrowed some jeans and a top from a female soldier and resigned herself to travelling all the way to Florida without her foundation garments.

All received a cursory examination by the base’s medical team, and specifically for radiation exposure. “You got a whole body dose roughly equal to a hundred-thousand chest x-rays—about 200 rems. Not good, but not lethal,” a doctor told Carrie.

The base communications office organized a video conference with NASA, Director Turnbull and the president. The base commander led the briefing. “The first thing everyone needs to know,” he said to the room and the camera, “is that both alien craft were destroyed. Secondly, we did not fire the missiles.”

He paused to let that settle.

“The missiles apparently came from two Russian MIGs. We would not have been so cavalier about your safety. At the moment we are looking for wreckage and there is also a Russian task force in the area that appears to be trying to beat us to it.”

Carrie glanced at the video monitors. The president looked bored and the director looked pissed. The commander continued, “The warheads that the Russians used appear to have been in the hundred kiloton range. We are on high alert in the event of attempted retaliation from the remaining alien craft. Until there are new developments, there is nothing more I can tell you. Are there any questions?”

Georgia Turnbull spoke. “I would like to hear what Ms. Player has to report.”

Carrie went to the podium and said, “Mr. President, Madam Director, as planned the team from NASA and I arrived on Bikini Island yesterday afternoon.” She continued to describe the events that transpired until the two nuclear blasts stunned her to semi consciousness. She emphasized that the expected cosmonauts failed to arrive and she noticed the face of the president grimace as he heard it. The report of Deshler’s rescue of Onath caused Director Turnbull to make an angry face. She finished by saying, “Due to the electromagnetic blast from the detonations, I have been unable to contact Deshler to see what his intentions might be. Do we have any information on the situation at Fort Aguayo?”

It took several seconds for the signal to reach Director Turnbull. She cleared her throat and said, “Yes, there are more than a hundred casualties at Fort Aguayo—both US military personnel and Chilean employees on the base. They were killed indiscriminately by a weapon of unknown nature. Survivors report that there are no marks on the bodies. A forensic team is on the way to perform autopsies. It is imperative that Ms. Player be supplied with a phone suitable for contacting the alien, Deshler. We must know his intentions.”

The communications officer said, “Will this do?” He took his satellite phone to Carrie who dialed and held her breath.

To Carrie it felt like forever before Deshler said, “Come, Carrie Player. You have been busy.”

“Come, Deshler, how do you feel about what happened?”

“I am naturally distressed.”

“You need to know that my country is not responsible for the destruction of your craft. It was the people that we call Russians. They are more belligerent than we are.”

“Nevertheless, you attempted the same thing.”

“And you personally killed over a hundred innocent people while rescuing Onath. How is he, by the way?”

“Onath is still Onath, and the unfortunates would have destroyed us had I not destroyed them.”

“Do you plan to retaliate?”

“Possibly, we have not had time to discuss it.”

“How did it happen that the two ships’ defenses were not able to prevent the blasts like you did before?”

“Most likely they did not have enough stored energy to stifle the explosions. While in the atmosphere we expend energy rapidly.”

“My communication device was destroyed by the nuclear blasts, so you cannot call me. I will call you when I have a new one. Please do not retaliate until I talk to you again.”

“You are talking to me now.”

“I have borrowed a communication device. By the way, it was pretty smart how you located Onath.”

“As I have told you before, we are smart enough to have made you. Finding Onath was child’s play, but considering the cost in the end, we should have left him with you.”

“I am sorry, Deshler. I did not want this to happen.”

“I believe you, Carrie Player. Going.”

“Going.”

Carrie ended the call and described the gist of the conversation. Director Turnbull said, “Carrie, get back here as soon as possible. There will be a new phone waiting for you at Cape Canaveral. Stay in contact with Deshler and report his intentions.”

The president remained silent. Carrie could not believe that the President of the United States could think of nothing to say. Finally, Turnbull said, “Mr. President, is there anything you would like to add?”

He appeared to squirm for several seconds before he said, “Only that it was a mistake to involve the Russians.”

Forgetting that she was still on camera, Carrie smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand. A small chuckle ran around the room.