Making the Galaxy Great

In the doorway stood a woman in her late fifties, with an angular jaw and sharp features and unnaturally dark hair cut so short she looked like a Soviet athlete from the 1970s.

Michael’s face froze; he looked as if he’d just come out of cryogenic stasis. His mouth quivered several times before words began to leak out. “I’m, umm, this is Mr. Fleming. He’s . . . he came . . . he’s the person that Agent McCauley brought in.”

The woman looked at Fleming as if he were bacteria under a microscope. “Which she shouldn’t have done. I thought we were going to send him to Moredale.”

Moredale? Jason didn’t like the sound of that.

“The Colonel — she decided to keep him,” Michael stammered. “He’s going to work with McCauley.”

“With McCauley? Doubtful.” She gave Jason the once-over for a second time. “Dr. Jane Ashwood. I run the labs you’ve been peeking at without authorization.” She shook Jason’s hand quickly and without feeling. “Did you really manage to trick Agent McCauley by substituting a brooch for the demmerat?”

“The demmerat? You mean the hologram thing? Yes ma’am.”

“I can understand why she might underestimate you. And to answer your earlier question, we have to be extraordinarily careful how we disseminate the knowledge we acquire here. Even after all these years, we haven’t really figured out a good process, which is why a lot of what we do in here hasn’t seen the light of day. And why if you even dream about anything you see here, you will disappear forever. I don’t care what Colonel Williams says.”

There was something in her raspy voice and solemn glare that convinced Jason he should avoid her. Then she suddenly turned and opened the door to leave. With her back to them, she raised a hand and said: “Get him out of here, Michael.”

“Don’t worry. She’s just like that,” Michael told him helpfully.

Jason nodded. “She makes Agent McCauley seem warm and fuzzy. Is she going to write you up or something?”

Michael shrugged. “I hope not. It’s not like they can fire me. If they decide I’m a risk, they just . . . “

“Send you to Moredale?”

Michael appeared to actually shiver. But as they continued down the hall, he quickly began to warm up again. “I wish I could show you some of the really awesome stuff in the medical labs,” he said. “The Yrreans brought us these genetic sequencers . . . they say you can create vaccines for new viruses in, like, a couple of days. Remember the pandemic? The main vaccine, the one that worked best, actually came from here.”

Jason stopped walking. “I thought it took months to create the vaccines.”

“It took that long to get approval to use the machines.”

“Approval from whom?” Jason asked, his face suddenly heated.

Michael nodded back in the direction that Dr. Ashwood had gone. “You just met her.”

“But thousands of people died! What was she waiting for?” Jason thought of his neighbor down the street, whose mother had died in a nursing home.

Michael shrugged, exhaled sadly and continued walking.

At the end of the corridor was a set of double doors that opened into a compartment that Jason initially mistook for an elevator — a glass elevator. The back wall of the elevator looked down across a huge hangar, the size of a basketball arena. As Jason peered through the glass wall, wondering if they were headed down or up, they suddenly began to glide slowly across the hangar, a few feet below the ceiling and many yards above the floor.

Jason steadied himself by placing his hands on the glass walls. He looked up to the ceiling of the compartment and could not see any cables or rails.

“Umm . . . Michael, what are we riding on?”

“We’re riding on a beam of light,” said Michael. “I call it our ‘light rail’ system.”

“Ah,” said Jason nervously, “you made a funny, Michael. So is this Yrrean or Haku tech?”

“Actually, it was sort of a human-alien collaboration. McCauley’s mother—” Michael stopped short and turned his face away

Jason squinted at him. “McCauley’s mother? What about her?”

“Nothing,” said Michael, showing a sudden reluctance to chat.

Jason gazed wide-eyed over the scene below. At one end it looked like a giant warehouse, with several trailer trucks lined up. Some of them were offloading crates. The other end of the chamber was infinitely more interesting. It reminded Jason of a typical aircraft hangar, except the aircraft occupying it was like nothing he’d ever seen.

“Holy shit, a spaceship.”

They glided soundlessly over a huge triangle. It wasn’t bright and silvery, but dull and gray, like a giant slice of lead pie. Jason estimated it was about 40 yards on each side. Its exterior, at least when viewed from that distance, was utterly smooth. There were no obvious markings, windows, or appendages — or any way to determine what was the back and what was the front. He watched as workers wheeled crates into an opening on the underside at one end of the craft.

Michael returned to his usual loquacious self. “That’s a Haku vessel. Loading up supplies to take back to Dalus.”

“What kind of supplies?”

“Agricultural products, mostly. The only reason they share technology with us is because they’re way overpopulated and can’t grow enough food to feed themselves. Like I told you, Dalus has only one continent, and it’s something like 90 percent mountains and desert. There’s just not enough arable land. That’s why the Yrreans and Haku used to be at war all the time. So we trade farm products and raw materials for their technology.”

Jason was fascinated. “What kind of farm products?”

“Well, they love corn, especially the Yrreans. Corn on the cob, popcorn, corn starch. You know that whole campaign to get people to eat less high-fructose corn syrup? We started that so we could ship more of it to Dalus.”

“No way,” said Jason.

“Way. And they love soybeans, especially soy sauce. I’ve heard that popcorn with soy sauce is like . . . I don’t know, like, if you wanted to seduce an Yrrean, bring that on your first date.”

Jason grimaced.

“Oh, and just about any kind of snack chips,” Michael continued. “Get this. They think our food processing technology is advanced.”

Jason pointed at the ship, which he found more compelling than processed food. “What kind of metal is that? It looks like lead but it couldn’t be. It’d be too heavy, right?”

“It’s a metal we don’t even have here on Earth. Incredibly strong and lightweight. Even if we had the technology for the jar-ma engine, we couldn’t use it because we don’t have an equivalent metal that can withstand the strain.”

Jason watched one truck pull away from the ship. “What did you say? Jar-ma?”

Michael nodded. “Yeah. Jump drive. Warp drive. Hyperspace drive. Whatever you want to call it. It creates a field around the ship that lets it slip through space-time so you can get to distant points incredibly fast. It’s actually Marjan technology. They shared it with the Dalites a couple of centuries ago.”

“But they haven’t shared it with us?”

“Not yet. They’re waiting for us to ‘mature’ a bit.” Michael made air quotes around the word mature.

“And these things fly in and out of here on a regular basis?” Jason asked incredulously. “How come I’ve never seen one? I mean, I would notice a huge triangular UFO flying in and out of a field this close to town.”

Michael looked at Jason like a teacher reminding a student of a homework assignment. “Remember the cloaking technology that hid our entrance when you first got here?”

Jason nodded. “Ah, right. That makes sense. But sometimes they must not use it, because occasionally people do see them.”

“Yeah,” Michael acknowledged. “The Haku have been known to go joy-riding. They like to buzz military installations. Frankly, a lot of them are assholes.”

Their light rail car had crossed to the far side of the hangar and the doors opened on the opposite side. Jason followed Michael down another hallway to a lounge with chairs, sofas and coffee tables. Some people were watching TVs that lined one wall. In another corner was a pool table — or Jason thought it was until he got closer and saw it was a hologram.

“Holographic pool is sooo awesome,” said Michael. “You can also do foosball, bocce and ping-pong. I’m going to grab something to eat. You want something? It’s free. Just hold up your finger for the DNA check.”

Jason was, in fact, starving. He followed Michael to a snack bar where he confronted six vending machines full of hot and cold foods and beverages. He studied the machines and, in spite of the fact that he hadn’t eaten all day, he finally decided all he wanted was a coffee. He got in line behind a lab tech wearing a ball cap, who got a grape soda. When the tech turned around, Jason stepped back in surprise. Heavy but hairless brow, extremely high forehead and thin hair. It was an Yrrean.

“Uh, hello,” said Jason.

“Excuse me,” the alien replied in a thin, raspy voice. As the Yrrean hurried away, Jason saw that along with the grape soda, the alien was carrying two bags of corn chips. He frowned to himself.

We’re going to kill their whole species with our advanced processed foods.

Jason got his cappuccino and went over to examine holographic pool in more detail. He desperately wanted to sneak back and get a closer look at the Dalite ship, but he imagined himself being shot by pulser blasts or frozen by a tractor beam if he did.

Michael motioned to him. “McCauley called. She’s ready to take you home.”

Home? Jason had nearly forgotten about going home.

“I . . . thought they would get me a car. A rental car, or something.”

Michael frowned and then ripped off a bite of his burrito with frightening energy. “I guess it’s not ready yet. You get to ride with Miss Congeniality.”