Alien Affairs

October 13

Pan-STARRS operates a 1.8 meter telescope at the summit of Haleakala on Maui with which the Near Earth Project tracks objects having the potential to collide with the planet. After explaining their camera’s enormous seven-degree field of view to the visiting high school class, the docent told them, “Your timing is great. Last night we found something pretty exciting.” He aimed a remote at a flat screen monitor. The students saw three specks of light against the background of stars. He clicked the remote again and with a laser pointer circled a bright star. “Notice that these three objects have moved relative to this star. These images were taken an hour apart.”

“What are they?” a boy asked.

“We don’t know. We estimate they are roughly two-hundred meters across and they are going to pass very close to the earth in about forty days. We’ve never seen an object moving this fast.”

“Cool. Three alien ships heading for us and you found them on Columbus Day.”

“What if they’re only asteroids and they hit us?” a Polynesian girl asked.

The docent said, “Either would be bad.”

NASA runs the Near Earth Project and duly notified the CIA. The director was unfamiliar with the events from the early fifties and had to make inquiries as to protocol. She was advised to call George Bush, Sr. who was thought to be the last person living with direct knowledge of the Roswell matter. When she got the aging former president on the phone, he sounded worried. “Madam Director, somewhere in your archives is all the information that you need. I just hope to God you can find it.”

Archivists, in their mole-like existence, had little trouble finding the files and a team of analysts began absorbing documents. Carrie Player was not one of them.

Carrie was at home fixing dinner and watching the news. The report from NASA of three objects travelling in apparent formation on a collision course with earth was not being treated as an alien encounter. Speculation about an asteroid having been broken into thirds by a collision with another remained in vogue. The next morning she went to her supervisor.

“I need to be involved in whatever we’re doing about the three alien craft that are on their way here,” she said.

The man gave her a look that said he was thinking of calling security. “Alien craft? Have you had a psychological evaluation lately?”

“I’m not crazy. I know what they are and why they are coming.”

“And who is telling you this?”

“My late uncle, Miles Ashly, told me the truth about the Roswell incident and his part in it for twenty-five years.”

“Did your uncle tell you this before or after he died?”

“He told me on his death bed. Look, I speak their language.”

“You speak their language. Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s just say that you’re not crazy, what are you proposing?”

“The Company has vital information for dealing with this threat. I need to be part of the team evaluating it and making policy decisions.”

“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

“You’re damn right I’m serious, and I do speak their language.” She gave him a spoken sample that implied his parents were asexual degenerates.

“Right, I get that a lot. I’ll get this news to the director.”

The director said, “She speaks their language? I’ve got to meet this woman.”

During twenty years of service Carrie had never been to the top floor at Langley. In twenty years she had never been involved with or even heard of anything being done with respect to UFOs.

CIA Director, Georgia Turnbull, was a tall, broad-shouldered woman, who kept her striking figure into the latter half of middle age. She wore her platinum gray hair in a graceful sweep that framed her oval face in a dramatic manner. Her smile was wide and engaging but hardly anyone ever saw it.

Director Turnbull received Carrie warmly. She said, “You may be more up to speed on this than I am. Please tell me what you know and how you know it.”

Carrie took a seat and began. “In the fifties my uncle cracked the aliens’ language by studying a sort of ereader that was found at the Roswell crash site. He and two others translated hundreds of documents stored on the thing. The most important contained the information that they were here to destroy the human race by releasing something into the atmosphere that will make everyone sterile. My uncle’s team also figured out that, given where they were coming from, this year was the soonest they could get here to finish the job.”

“Good Lord. And it’s true you speak their language?”

“My uncle taught it to me when I was little.”

“Incredible. Well, you just won the top spot on the Alien Affairs team.”

The Alien Affairs team had a suite of offices that probably caused Miles Ashly to turn over in his grave. The sign by the door said only, “Classified.” Carrie arrived and introduced herself as being in charge of the project. There was no overt grumbling. Her staff consisted of three analysts, two seasoned and serious agents, Paul Whitehead and Jan Glassman, and a younger recruit, Eddy Baker, who was anxious to ride in a flying saucer.

“When they look for somebody to abduct,” he said, “I’m going to raise my hand.”

Carrie couldn’t repress a smile. “You should know that they intend to chemically castrate you.”

He cringed and put his hands over his crotch.

“Before we go on, I’d like to see the device. Do you have it?”

Eddy took it out of a drawer. “It doesn’t work anymore.”

Carrie took it reverently and watched bizarre characters flow over its face. A voice in her head began reciting the text.

“How’d you get it to do that?” Eddy asked.

“It works for me because it senses that I understand it.”

“How in hell do you understand it?”

“That’s a long story. So how many transcripts have you read?” Carrie asked.

Jan answered, “We went straight for the bad news and read the mission plan from 1947. Those old analysts got everything right. This is exactly when they said they’d return and we’ve got exactly thirty-seven days to find a way to stop them.”

Paul said, “Since we’re still procreating, we can assume the chemical agent wasn’t left here to be remotely unleashed, but what happened to it?”

“Nobody ever found out unless Allen Dulles knew and didn’t tell anybody—that was his style,” Carrie said.

Jan said, “Well, it doesn’t matter now. We can be sure they’ve got a fresh batch on board those three ships.”

“And we’re sitting here with no way to get into space.”

“We’ll have to bring the Russians into this,” Paul said.

Carrie stuck out her tongue. “Can you see Putin’s face when the president has to grovel for help?”

Jan asked, “Have you any idea if the president has even been briefed on this yet?”

“I know he hasn’t. He’s clueless.”

Eddy laughed. “Do you mean about this or in general?”

Although she had no way to make the comparison, when the director took Carrie to the White House to inform the president, it was a déjà vu of her uncle’s experience except that Eisenhower had a backbone and acted like a president.

“So you, uh, think these, uh, objects NASA found are alien spaceships,” the president said without introduction.

Carrie found his manner a little brusque. “I know they are.”

The president laughed briefly. “What makes you so sure?”

“This story has been seventy-some years in the making. My uncle translated the Roswell aliens’ mission plan—”

“Roswell? Are you tryin’ to tell me that’s true?”

Director Turnbull said, “Apparently it is true.”

“Why wasn’t I told about this before?”

“Because, sir, until now you did not have the need to know.”

The president looked peeved. “I, uh, think I should have been told. So, what did happen at Roswell?”

Turnbull said, “Exactly what you’ve read in the tabloids. A UFO crashed. It was recovered along with bodies. Ms. Player, please take it from there.”

“One of the artifacts recovered is what we know today as an ereader.” The president looked skeptical. “Among other things, it contained the orders for the aliens’ mission. They were sent here to destroy us.” She let that settle.

The president looked pale. “But why?”

“We were a research project. They made us, studied us and were finished with us.”

“Are you, uh, trying to, uh, tell me that aliens made us?”

“That’s exactly what I am telling you.”

“Ridiculous.”

“My uncle got that same reaction from Allen Dulles but he had the good sense to get us started on the way to the moon so we could see if they had a base there.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m not trying to say anything. The fact is we don’t have any way to go into space to intercept them.”

“We can blow ’em to hell when they enter the atmosphere.”

“Once they enter the atmosphere, it’s too late. They plan to deploy an agent into the air that will render every human being sterile.”

The president opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. Finally he said, “If I had known about this before, we coulda had a plan.”

Carrie said, “Look, we have handled this badly since 1947. The denial and the cover-up were just wrong, but that’s ancient history now.” The criticism of sacred intelligence habits drew a scowl from her director.

“Well, I’ve gotta, uh, have time to think about this.”

“Mr. President, we don’t have time. In thirty-six days they will be here,” Turnbull said tensely.

“This is too much to take in all at once. I need to talk to my advisors.”

“Those kids? Mr. President, you need to talk to the Joint Chiefs, and to Russia and China, who still have the wherewithal to go into space.”

“Director Turnbull, I don’t need to be told how to do my job.”

The director remained calm. Carrie ground her teeth.

The president looked at the ceiling. “Maybe we should focus on an antidote to their, uh, poison, uh, gas.”

“Once the DNA of the germ cells is damaged, there is no repairing them,” Carrie said.

“Are you a doctor too?”

With emphasis on each word, Carrie said, “I am the niece of the man who spent decades studying the matter. I have privileged information and I am saying that the only hope for the human race is to stop those three ships from entering the atmosphere in thirty-six days.”

“Okay, I’ll get some people working on this. Let me know if there’s, uh, any new developments.”

In the car on the ride back to Langley, Director Turnbull said, “If you want to ever be a grandmother, you’d better suggest that your daughter get busy.”

Carrie smiled ruefully. “I’m resigned to never being a grandmother.”

Director Georgia Turnbull received an order from the president to attend a meeting of his top advisors the following morning. She told Carrie to accompany her. When the president entered the conference room stepping quickly in mincing steps, he stopped behind the director and said to her ear, in a normal voice, “This meeting is for department heads.”

Turnbull looked at him squarely. “Ms. Player is the expert here. She stays.”

The president straightened abruptly and pranced to his seat. He promptly asked the director of the CIA to bring everyone up to date. She deferred to Carrie who took pleasure in watching the face of the glaring chief executive as she rose and delivered her standard short form of the situation. Cabinet secretaries and generals began a cacophony of questions, which the president attempted to intercept vaguely restating Carrie’s summation.

Until the Major General of the Air Force said firmly, “Ms. Player, please answer, what is the solution to this problem.”

She remained seated. “These three craft have to be destroyed before they get to low earth orbit.

General Esteban Matranga shook his head. “We are ill equipped to do that.”

The Commander in Chief said, “ICBMs can go that high.”

“Yes, but their MIRVs are ballistic warheads. They don’t carry enough fuel to chase a maneuverable target in space.”

“Just get close and detonate.”

“Mr. President, space is a big empty place. Low yield warheads would have to be very near the target. Besides, we don’t have algorithms for targeting an intelligently controlled object in space, and we should assume these craft have defensive weapons.” He looked from the smiling president to Carrie.

“Yes,” she said, “they have defensive and offensive weapons, but we don’t understand the nature of them.”

The president made an offhand gesture. “Look, we’ve destroyed satellites before and so have the Chinese.”

The secretary of defense said, “The low earth orbit intercept required months to prepare for. The SM-3 event was at the edge of the atmosphere.”

Admiral Alexander said, “We have plenty of Aegis Missile Carriers deployed. It could be done on short notice but at an altitude of about one-hundred and thirty miles and with a KW—kinetic warhead—which would shatter the craft, but not vaporize the chemical agent.”

The president said, “No chance to put these kinetic warheads on an ICBM?”

Matranga ran his hand through his thinning white hair. “Sir, not in thirty-five days, and besides, ICBMs don’t go much higher, they’re meant to get to the target pretty damn fast, not go to the moon.”

“Okay, okay, let’s get the Aegis boats on alert.”

“Excuse me, Mr. President,” the secretary of state said, “should we ask China if they have a launch vehicle ready for a satellite kill?”

The president looked confused so Turnbull added, “We don’t believe they do, but I don’t see any harm in asking. Perhaps Ms. Player should accompany you when you go to see the Chinese ambassador.”

“I think the secretary of state can handle this by himself.” The president sounded condescending. He continued, “Well, there’s nothin’ we can, uh, do except watch them until they get in range.”

Heads around the table turned to make eye contact with peers and shook incredulously.