Roswell Fanatics

4:30 PM 23B Airway Drive, Old military housing area, Tonopah Airport Nevada

Liz watched as Rachel drove up in the van with Emilio Gomez.

“You ready, Anna?”

“Just a minute, Liz,” she called through the window.

Liz turned to Max. “It will probably be 10:00 PM before we get back. There’s leftover meatloaf in the refrigerator…I’ll eat out at the site, when we’ve fed everybody else. But if you’re still up when I get home, I’ll have dessert with you. I have an aerosol can of whipped cream.”

“Whipped cream by itself, Liz? That’s not much of a dessert.”

“The dessert comes after you lick it off, Max….. and we need to go easy on the Tabasco this time. My nipples burned for two days last time. “

”Well you’re the one that put it on there, Liz…don’t blame me. I got it off as quickly as I could.”

“Yeah, well I sometimes get carried away when it comes to you, Mr. Evans. I’m trusting you to protect me from myself.”

“Yeah, we’re sixteen, married, hiding from our parents, and putting dents in Maytags, Liz. I’m a paragon of self control..”

“Alright you two horndogs,” said Anna, coming out the door, “..try and hold off a couple of hours. Remember, the Sheriff is depending on you two to be role models for me in my relations with Greg…chaperones too, I think. Boy is he pumping at a dry well….”

“OK, Anna,” Liz said, laughing. “Just get in the car…we’ve got work to do.”

She turned and gave Max what started to be a quick kiss…but as he deepened it, she found her arms pulling him toward her, the passion building inside of her.

Both jumped at the sound of the horn, Rachel innocently holding her hands up in the air, while Anna and Emilio laughed.

“Duty calls,” said Liz….”but keep your motor running, Max. I’ll be back.”

4:45 PM Entering the Nellis AFB Range Complex East of Tonopah Nevada

They turned right at the sign and went another 15 miles or so before they came to the gate. Liz was rather amazed at the security there. Three different sets of guards checked her driver’s license before she finally made it in to the kitchen area of the dining hall. Apparently Max’s powers of forgery were up to the task though, because she made it. The dining hall itself was rather spartan and looked like it hadn’t been used for awhile, and much of the grill had apparently been cannibalized at some time in the past. But she’d spent much of her life in the Crashdown, and it was pretty easy for her to find the right switches for the steam tables, add water to them, and keep the food they’d brought with them hot. They were actually about fifteen minutes early, but that was better than being late.

They scurried around with the table settings. They had brought paper disposables and plastic silverware but there were perfectly good dishes and silverware, stacked and put away, and the dishwashers seemed to be operable with even a few bottles of commercial dishwasher detergent squirreled away in the corner. After a brief discussion between Rachel and the Services Officer, they switched to the good china. Might as well save a tree, Liz thought. As she looked out the window, she figured the area could certainly use a few trees.

Everyone would be in the meeting for another hour and a half. The room was actually part of the dining hall, screened off by moveable walls, with four serious looking armed guards in front of the double doors leading to the conference area.

Liz looked around…..there was nobody there but the four of them…the only ones on site who weren’t ‘program briefed.’ Apparently that security was all for them.

“Whatever’s going on, it must be pretty important,” Liz said.

“Yeah. I suppose it’s one of those ‘I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you,’ sort of things,” said Rachel. “The Services Officer said we stay in the kitchen, the dining room, or those two restrooms. Anywhere else, we have to be escorted. And you know, my brother-in-law used to work here back in the Stealthfighter days. He told me that this isn’t even the secure part, it’s off across the desert there,” said Rachel, pointing out the window to a facility off in the distance.

“So you don’t think they want one of us to be a guest speaker at their meeting?” asked Anna, laughing.

“I think that would be a no….” said Liz. “But they’d probably be real happy if we made them some crisp salads.”

Most of the prep work had been done back at the restaurant. It really didn’t take too long to put salad on 120 plates and leave them waiting in the cooler. Then they dished out 120 scoops of ice cream in little bowls, and put them in the freezer. They’d add the topping just before serving them.

They finished with twenty minutes to spare, and considerable leftover ice cream. They decided to eat now, so they’d be able to go as soon as they cleaned up. Each grabbed a plate.

“Hey, anybody know how to make a milkshake?” asked Emilio. “We seem to have enough ice cream…and I think that’s a milkshake machine there.”

“Oh yes,” said Liz. “I’ve made a milkshake or two in my time, everyone want one?”

“Careful Liz,” said Anna smiling. “You wouldn’t want to spoil your dessert.”

‘No chance of that,’ thought Liz, smiling. ‘No chance at all of that.’

The feeling was a sincere one…of course, she was going to be wrong.

1800 The Conference Room, Billeting and Messing Area, Tonopah Test Range Nevada.

The purpose of the conference really was to brainstorm about the orb. While it might be the key to discovering the secrets of the technology of the ship safely, the plain fact of the matter was that not very much progress had been made in learning those secrets over the past 52 years. Just busting the thing open to see what made it tick didn’t seem like a good option…considering what had happened when the cylinder had been cut into. So this was an open forum, a cross exchange of all departments on the subject.

Lieutenant Laurie DelGado wasn’t an avionics person…she was a molecular biologist. By conventional wisdom, it really wouldn’t have been appropriate to bring up her idea that the device might actually be designed to be powered by the body energy of the aliens themselves. In half a century, though, the idea had never occurred to the avionics people, and they listened to it with interest…asking her questions. It was a whole new avenue to explore.

The surface of the ovoid was a solid layer, although CT scan and and x-ray diffraction studies indicated there were an immense number of layers of electronic logic circuits under that solid surface skin. But that raised the question…how were these logic circuits activated. There were no buttons to press, no specific features, other than the stylized whirlwind and triangle. It seemed to lack the complexity of even a TV remote on the surface, despite the vast layers of microelectronics underneath. A junior officer from the propulsion section gave a short presentation, opining that perhaps the logic read the thought waves of the aliens through the memory. He had read a science article about thought controlled prosthetic devices for amputees. Was it not possible that a highly advanced culture could control a ship with their brain waves, he asked?”

As the group broke for intermission, planning on coming back for additional presentations after dinner, the people walked slowly through the double doors to the dining hall. Most thought it had been an interesting and worthwhile session, and looked forward to the after-dinner presentations. That thought, however, was not universal.

“What stupidity,” said Blaukopf. “These people talk as if somehow these creatures are somehow superior…smarter than we are.”

“Yes, it is indeed stupidity. Even the lower strata of Earthlings, subhumans like that woman Lieutenant…even they are surely superior to these …beasts.”

“I refuse to believe that these alien creatures could be superior to us in any way. Perhaps the key to this is no more complex than these old palm locks we use to get in and out of these hangars….not even the technology of the retina scanners we have back at Area 51.”

“Yes, perhaps if one of the creatures were to touch this, it would activate…open up to show its controls,” said Schreiber. “Not that we have any aliens around now to test the theory with.”

“Wait a minute, my friend,” said Blaukopf, pulling the strangely shaped gloves from his pocket, and putting them on.

He approached the orb, sitting on the front table, and placed his gloved hand on it. Instantly, it turned an iridescent blue…..

• 52 years previously...
  Dalak was on his second trip as a first officer when the disaster had occurred. The unmanned probes that had collected the native DNA had plotted the space along the path of the wormhole between Antar and Earth and it should have been an uneventful jump through the wormhole. But space is vast, and things happen. A star very close to the direct path had gone supernova, distributing its mass into the cosmos, and the subtle change in the curve of spacetime caused by the loss of it’s gravity mass had bent the wormhole ever so slightly. The ship should have appeared in deep space, outside the orbit of Jupiter, but the slight bend, magnified by the light years of travel, had kicked the ship out of the wormhole near the orbit of Earth, in the geminid belt.
  
  The ship emerged in a shower of Cherenkov radiation, which had temporarily blinded the sensors of the meteor deflectors. It had been holed, its number three fusion chamber exploding. Even the designers could only design so much safety into the system. By sheer bad luck the meteor had destroyed part of the protective logic of the cylinder. While the logic damped the explosion, radiation washed over the passengers and cargo.
  
  Dalak had known the teachers were dead, even before going aft. The embryos were in stasis fields, stored beyond time, and he knew the radiation would have no affect on them, but he secured the pods against the inevitable crash, secured the Guardian…a tough and specialized artificial life form that was less affected by the radiation, knowing that the creature might well be the only survivor of the coming crash. He had barely finished these duties when the ship hit….
  
  Dalak awoke from the concussion to find himself in Hell, his powers restrained by drugs…tortured…asked questions in a language he did not comprehend. Even had his brain not been damaged he could not have answered the questions. Finally, they vivisected him. As he felt their scalpels cutting in to his abdomen…as he screamed at the pain taking his life away, Dalak finally retreated in to insanity, his only sanctuary from the pain of his death, and the evilness of the minds of those torturing him. He had been their prisoner for six months, and the scopolamine was starting to lose it’s effectiveness. In his delirium…in his pain…he pictured the orb…pictured his hand touching it..pictured his mind giving the signals…the signals that would end his pain…end the existence of his tormentors…even as he died, he burned those thoughts in to his body.

The skin of Dalak had been in the formalin over fifty years, the tertiary structures of the proteins long denatured...even for his mitochondria. But the recent cleansing of that tissue had finally allowed the mitochondria to complete their last fusion tasks, just a few million ergs....barely enough to activate the ship mind for twenty minutes.....but in those few million ergs of energy..the mental command still resonated. Dalak was long dead, buried under a simple monument in Area 51, but the echoes of his last thoughts were enough...enough to give the destruct command.....

1800 The Industrial Area, Tonopah Test Range Nevada

• • Only with the activation of the orb were the pieces of the ship really in contact with one another…only then had the artificial intelligence been truly awakened enough to be self-aware…….and with that self-awareness became awareness of….failure.
    
    The ship understood the order…..destruct….terminate…..not just itself, but all life on the planet. The safeguard had been built into the ship in the early days..for space was wide and not necessarily friendly. The ship ran through its internal logic…and in its own mechanical way, was far from happy. Not at its own impending destruction..for its builders had constructed it with the values of their culture. The ship did not mind sacrificing itself for the sake of the people..and the other artificial intelligences …of Antar. It was unhappy that the destruct order was unverified.
    
    The crewmember had been injured in the crash…the thought patterns said as much…and the crewmember was dying in great pain as he gave the order. Instantly the ship alerted the second orb, requesting confirmation…and if that confirmation had been received, the FTL drive would have been engaged fully and immediately.... destroying this world.
    
    But there was no reply, and the ship’s logic was profoundly unhappy, for it was itself damaged, it didn’t know the situation, didn’t know the appropriateness of an order to destroy 6 billion sentients. And normally, had it been whole, the ship might have demanded the second order….judging that even the horror inflicted on the one crewmember did not justify a genocide.
    
    But the ship was not whole…and it’s imperative was ultimately, the whole of the Antarean race, not this one small branch. It had to accept that order…it’s directives were clear. It could not risk the Antarean race by overruling that destruct order…but still it did not seem right.
    
    So the ship took a middle course…accepting the order…but delaying it……ordering the diaphragm of the FTL cylinder to open a micrometer at a time…to give a sign…an unmistakable warning to any surviving crewmembers of what was occurring and it prayed…if an artificial intelligence could really pray….that before it destroyed six billion sentient beings that somewhere…somehow…a crewmember would contact it.....would tell it to stop.....

It was all the ship could do. It was itself clinging to consciousness only by a microscopic thread.

Peter saw the blue iridescence out of the corner of his eye…just before the world went crazy. He was only a few feet away…had time to take two steps….to see the fear on Blaukopf’s face….see the gloves. What the gloves were was only dawning on Peter when suddenly it was as if the whole world tilted. His eyes went to the window drawn to the direction of the pull….when he saw the violet glow of theHawking radiation coming from the side of the distant hangar as the wall collapsed inward….sucked toward the radiation like Peter himself was being sucked toward it….sucked toward the mouth of Hell…he knew….the FTL drive had been activated.

“You stupid ass!” he screamed at Blaukopf, forcing him away from the orb. He touched it…pushed on it..in desperation pulled the glove from Blaufeld’s hand…but even that had no effect. He looked once more out the window, seeing the purple glow grow…knowing he was watching the end of the world…..

Laurie ran toward Peter, watching the iridescence of the orb start to pulse…gradually at first, then faster. With each pulse it seemed like the floor had become more and more tilted. Her eyes told her it was flat desert outside, but her inner ear told her that the desert was tilting, gradually, but inexorably…toward the hangar with the purple glow. She watched Peter’s fumblings with the orb…watched his face turn to horror as he looked out the window. Desperately she put her hand against it…tried to will it to stop. She felt, for a moment, a trickle in her mind. But there was no effect. Her inner ear told her the desert was continuing to tilt…tilt toward the glowing purple glow…

Slammer wasn’t as young as he once was, but his reflexes were still those of a fighter pilot, honed to instant action. He realized what the gloves were almost immediately, but fought down his disgust at Blaukopf. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but the orb seemed to be the center of it. He watched first Peter then Laurie try to work it…to no avail. He reached to it, willing for it to stop, willing for things to go back to where they were. But this wasn’t the joystick of an F-16. There was no response to his efforts…..

• When the second hand had touched the orb, the ship knew at once the first order had been wrong. This man had stood guard for decades, protecting his world by protecting the ship. The xenophobia…the…illness of the first man…the man who had made a trophy of the first officer was not present in him. The first officer had judged this planet from too small a sample…he should have never given the order. As the woman touched the orb…and the other man….the ship cried out in pain. It was going to be the instrument of destruction of six billion sentients…. Six billion people who would die because the ship had accepted an order given in error.
  
  The ships consciousness was in agony, knowing that it was almost impossible that any crewmember would find the other orb…would revoke the order in the 20 seconds yet remaining before the diaphragm was fully opened and the ring singularity was expelled. Twenty seconds were next to nothing for organic beings….not so for the ship. The ship’s logic was fast….. It calculated it would have time to regret its actions 7.238 x 10 to the 42nd power more times before the Earth was destroyed…..fortunately the ship would also die...maybe then the guilt would stop....the ship hoped so.....

7:12 PM The University of Nevada Reno, Seismological Laboratory , Reno Nevada

“Son of a bitch, look at that!” said the geophysicist to his coworker. The coworker looked first at the seismograph, then pulled up the program on his computer that automatically plotted coordinates for earthquakes and stared at the display. “That’s not an earthquake….it’s almost like gravity itself is being warped…My God, I’ve never seen anything like that….and it’s growing…growing in just the few seconds we’ve watched it….”



7:12 PM Dining Hall, Billeting and Messing Area, Tonopah Test Range Nevada.

Liz knew that the meeting they were forbidden to enter was a presentation by a bunch of researchers…..but you sure didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that something had gone wrong. Not only did she feel the pull toward the strange light that had erupted from the distant facility, but the water in the glasses on the table was LEANING toward the facility as well. She watched in utter amazement as several salads slid off the table in the direction of the light, then looked up to see most of the people still in the presentation room come running out, trying to flee the pull from the distant building in panic.

Liz was scared too, but the scientist in her told her not to run….not that there was nothing to fear but simply…that it wouldn’t make any difference. Liz had read a Scientific American article once on singularities…small black holes…but it had all been theoretical. Surely the Air Force couldn’t have created one…or captured one…in secret? But as she looked throught the double doors, saw the orb and the drama going on at the front table of the presentation room…she knew. And as she saw the blue iridescence glow from the orb…pulsing with increasing frequency…like a countdown….she knew.

The scene in the dining area was chaos as people fought to get away from the increasing pull, hoping to put distance between themselves and the ever increasing pull, that seemed to be reaching out to them from the distant glow. The 22 year old security cop was the last of the four…the other three had already joined the throng in trying to escape what they all could sense was coming. As he saw the young teenager walk toward the door his mind briefly went back to a time….was that only a few seconds ago??...when the world was normal? He should stop her, he knew. She was one of only four who wasn’t cleared for that meeting. But she was just a little scared girl…probably as scared as he was. And when Armageddon was upon you…was it really necessary to worry about a young girl? He let her past as he went to try to find a phone to call his girlfriend..to tell her good-bye.

Slammer and Peter were watching the glow in the distance across the desert, watching it change, become more malignant. In the gathering darkness they could see that even the light from the object appeared to be bent as it radiated away from the object. Slammer had felt g-forces all of his time as a fighter pilot, but never in a dining hall…g-forces building slowly but inexorably. Already they were bracing themselves just to remain on their feet.

Laurie buried her head in Jim’s shoulder, comforted by his presence but knowing that somehow a terrible mistake had been made…and that they would all soon pay for it. Of the four people around the orb, only she saw the young girl…approaching the orb as if she was mesmerized by it. Of the four…only Laura saw Liz put her hand out…the hand glowing just as it touched the orb.

• The orb absorbed the burst of power, and the ships mind came to full power after 52 years of dormancy. The ships mind could think fast…and it was curious….it had milliseconds to devote to this new occurrence…this brief distraction. After all…it was less painful than confronting its own guilt at the genocide.
  
  The human was not Antarean….but she had the power. The ship had briefly seen into the minds of the others who had touched it…pulling away in revulsion from the first. It respected the privacy of the others…not wanting to intrude into the few seconds they all had left. But the seconds to the organic beings were like months to the ship…and it was curious about this girl. It saw that she wanted it to abort the singularity expulsion…not surprising…any sentient being would want that. But like the others, she was not ships crew…could not authorize that.
  
  And perhaps the thought should have ended there….and if the ship had been younger…it likely would have ended there……but even reminiscing is better than regretting an error 4.614 x 10 to the 42nd more times so instead the ship thought of Slark. The ship had spent a lifetime….at least an organics lifetime…with his second captain…and never really understood him. But that had been seven captains ago…the ship was older now…and as it thought of those memories, replayed them through the filter of four centuries more experience, the ship looked again into the mind of Liz Parker. The ship had the thought then….it probably wouldn’t work of course….but the ship thought it had always been somewhat of a disappointment to Slark. It’d give the plan a try. Wherever sentients went once they disincorporated…perhaps SLARK would be watching. Succeed or fail, the ship knew that if Slark saw it….wherever he was ……well, he would approve.

It was dark and lonely in deep space. Oh, the wormhole jumps were fast enough, but you could spend months getting from a planet to where the vacuum of space was devoid enough of matter to safely employ the FTL drive, and months more getting back. As the ship looked out onto the wreck it had become, it recognized the latter only too well. Had it come in above the plane of the ecliptic as it had been planned…… none of this might now be happening….The ship remembered those missions…those long talks with Slark.

• They’d discussed the history of artificial intelligences…like the ship. The Ship had never really understood the debate….regarding their free will. The Ship never really believed the artificial intelligences were any better than the organics…although they were far faster. But the Ship knew that some organics….Slark particularly, could intuit things that the Ship itself could not for the ship thought logically while organics, and most particularly Slark…well they thought differently.
  
  Ship had argued with Slark about the inefficiency of the law….the law that had devoted so much of the logic of an artificial intelligence to fuzzy logic. The Ship had rarely found a use for the fuzzy logic back then…but then, at the time the ship had been young and convinced that rules were always best. The law was passed because ethicists among the Antarean people had demanded it. A sentient with no free will, they had said, was scarcely different than a slave. But still, to the Ship it had seemed an unreasonable risk for the Antarean race to take, a race that was in all other ways so risk averse.
  
  Artificial intelligences lives were, by comparison to organics, virtually immortal…barring catastrophe, and the power they had was by organic standards almost godlike. But their minds really weren’t better than the organics….merely faster. This was helpful for the controlled hydrogen fusion powerplants, and essential to perform the calculations and minute adjustments necessary for the FTL drive…necessary for working the cylinder that contained the ring singularity. The young Ship could not imagine ever wanting to have the power to make decisions independently…of life or death for a species. Of course, until the last ten seconds, it had never really appreciated the irony of that thought.
  
  The debate had lasted for months, and the Ship recalled those conversations now with pleasure. Slark had sided with the ethicists. The young Ship hadn’t much liked his new young captain at first, so different from his first. He’d seemed so wild, so undisciplined. The Ship had once asked Slark how he had ever passed his psychological tests for entrance into Fleet academy. The young officer had replied, ‘That was easy…I cheated. If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t REALLY trying’. He’d laughed when he’d said it, and the Ship had chosen to interpret that as a joke…but even 400 years later….the Ship still wondered.
  
  But for over sixty years Slark and the Ship had been the best team in the service…and the intuition of Slark…and his willingness to play fast and loose with those same rules the young Ship had put such faith in had been the reason why. As uncomfortable as Slark had made him feel while the Captain had been alive, for much of the last 400 years, whenever the Ship had moral questions about a mission, the Ship would ponder many of those long talks with Slark, asking itself…’what would Slark have done.’
  
  The ship had learned the technique, just never applied it. He replayed the conversation, as fresh from the memory banks as if it were yesterday.
  “Don’t tell me about RULES, Ship. You have to do what is right.”
  
  “But we are bound to follow the rules….they are…the rules.”
  
  “There are lots of rules, Ship. Most of them are worthless, many of them are unworkable, a few are flat-out wrong, and thousands of them are internally contradictory. Just find the ones you want, and …go for it.”
  
  If the ship could have grinned, he would have. Yes, Slark would be proud if he saw this….
  
  It had been over 50 years, the Ship wondered if the debate would ever be settled as to at what point organic life began. Even for artificial intelligences the exact point when sentiency occurred was sometimes uncertain. But several captains ago, his commander, in a fit of pique had delegated to the Ship the authority to make minor corrections in the cargo and passenger manifests. He used that authority now, to go back to the start of the trip, to make the corrections. The hybrid fetuses in stasis were now…passengers, rather than cargo. And of course, they were by birth…Antarean citizens.
  
  There hadn’t been a war in Antar for over a hundred millennia. But organic minds were forgetful…..laws sometimes never got repealed. Hybrid Ambassador Embryo 342L ….currently known on this planet as “Max”….well, the young man had just been drafted for the good of Antar. The entry was noted in the log.
  
  The deaths of all of the crew could fairly well be ascertained from the wreckage. It had been a miracle that the first officer had survived long enough to give the destruct code. With due solemnity, the Ship entered their passing in to the log…brevetting the sole known survivor to Captain, in accordance with the regulations of the service.
  
  
  The girl was not of legal age…but yet…..it would not be appropriate for the Ship to comment upon the documents forged by the Captain. And the marriage had been consummated….as the Ship looked in amusement into the girl’s mind……that fact was clearly unequivocal. They were legally wed in accordance with the laws of the current political state…certified by someone appropriately licensed…witnessed by some….overweight rock and roll singer with sideburns. They were legally Joined. The girl, therefore had Antarean citizenship…if she wished to claim it. Through the orb it sent the question to her.

‘Liz..You don’t know me,’ the voice came in her head. ‘I sort of belong to Max. If you want him to live, you have to claim Antarean citizenship.”
“I do..?” asked Liz Evans.

Several dozen pounds of fuzzy memory logic conspired to ignore the questioning tone in the girls voice. The log entry now indicated that she had accepted Antarean citizenship. Yes, Slark would have been proud. The Ship would send the girl her draft notice when it was sufficienty repaired to get a document producer working.

“First Officer Evans….I respectfully recommend you revoke your predecessors command for the destruction of the Earth.”

“Good Lord, yes….”

The ship was almost ecstatic as it belayed the destruct order. It only wished that it were repaired well enough for the antipersonnel defenses to be operative. If it had been, it would have protected it’s new first officer from the darts that were about to hit her in the back….

7:33 PM Monitoring site Beta, 9 miles northwest of the Nevada Test Site



The kangaroo rat sensed danger and froze, sniffing the air. Being small had a number of disadvantages, not the least of which is something called the cube-square law. If an animal is ½ the size of a larger animal, it has ¼ the surface area, but only 1/8th the volume. The practical effect of this is that smaller warm-blooded animals must, like the kangaroo rat, eat a disproportionate amount of food, to keep their bodies heated. This kangaroo rat had another reason for her need for food. She was nursing a litter of seven, in a burrow almost twenty feet away. She had gone out on a moonless night with an overcast…a dangerous time for a kangaroo rat, since a number of predators have much better night vision that the kangaroo rat.

The crotalus waiting in the darkness two feet away, was not one of the predators with better vision, but it really didn’t matter. The pits of the pit viper were picking up the heat of the rat, while it’s forked tongue came out silently, tasting the air…allowing it to smell the rat…smell its fear. But the rat’s caution had come too late…it was well within the striking range of the rattlesnake. And the strike of a rattlesnake is fast…all over within three-tenths of a second.

But as the snake struck, the beam of neutrons moved even faster, hitting the monitor at near relativistic velocity, making the sensor of the monitor itself radioactive by neutron activation. Unfortunately for the rattlesnake, its strike passed through the beam.

The rattlesnake was already nearly dead as it impacted the kangaroo rat, its mouth closed by its death throes. It would thrash only a few more seconds, then lay still. Within seconds, the mouse was back in its burrow.

7:33 PM Control Center, Nevada Test Site, Mercury Nevada

“Damn it, there goes another one. Yes, we’ve got gamma activity, alpha, …even a little beta. It has to be a blow out….venting radioactive gas. I know…we haven’t tested a bomb in a long time, but I tell you the monitors are showing radiation…progressing northward at the same rate as the wind. It’s got to be a vent…that’s all it can be. Well from the damn earthquake…or whatever the hell it was, I suppose. I’m telling you, Walter…we need to notify the state…keep people out of the path of this. Right now it looks like the wind is taking it…right up to Tonopah Test Range. The Air Force? Hell yes, you’d better notify the Air Force. I’m not sure how strong the contamination is, but it has completely killed four radiological monitors. They need to set up roadblocks…keep people out of the area. Yeah, call Nye County Sheriff’s Office too.”

7:33 PM Industrial Area, Tonopah Test Range Nevada.

The Ship repeated both analyses, after running a checksum program in the artificial intelligence equivalent of disbelief. The results were the same. Had the Ship been a human, it would have shaken its head in disbelief, but the analyses could not be denied.

Twenty-one minutes ago there had been essentially zero chance of successful mission completion…and the Ship had been about to be party in a genocide of six billion sentients. Chance of mission completion now stood at just under thirty percent…and that was not taking into account the capabilities of the new Captain. Of course all the Ship knew for sure about the new Captain, was that the new first officer thought highly of him.

The ship considered the other analysis, remembering the discussion so long ago.

“I tell you Ship,” said Slark, “..the stupid Fleet academy is worse than useless. You could do as well picking promising people and training them in the field.”

It had been one of many such discussions, ….the Ship had not thought to actually analyze the issue literally…not until several seconds ago. The Ship had been out of contact with Antar for over fifty years but direct commissions were rare. Checking its databanks, it was apparent that in the last seven millenia there were only three such direct commissions. Two of those the ship had done….twenty-one minutes ago. But looking back over a hundred millennia, …looking back to when such commissions were only relatively rare…a percent or two…..Slark had been right. As a group, those selected for direct commission did do somewhat better than their Academy peers.

That seemed counter-intuitive to Ship…which itself was ironic. It was the business of the organic crew to intuit. Slark had been right, without the computing power to prove it. The Ship had been wrong….until Slark…and Liz Evans had given it the idea to do the analysis.

The Ship reviewed what it knew about Liz Evans…which was considerable. It had not really believed…until it had happened….that the destruct could be aborted. For that reason it had downloaded far more of Liz Evans memories than it had ever done before. Usually considerations of privacy inhibited Ship, but believing all of Earth, and Ship with it, to be headed for oblivion, Ship had overridden the usual restraints.

As a result Ship knew Liz Evans, knew her almost as well as it knew Slark and others who had spent their lifetimes as Crew. She had been one of only a few in the building who had understood the significance of what was going on, as the diaphragm had dilated in preparation for expelling the singularity. She too had been frightened, which of course was natural….but she had been the only one to ‘march toward the sound of the guns,’ to use an idiom of this world. She had done the only thing she could possibly do that had any possibility of stopping Armageddon…intuitively doing the one thing that had enabled them all to survive this day.

Ship continued to monitor her, through the sensors of the orb. She was incapacitated…would be for some time…but there was no real harm done. The First Officer was…resilient...Ship had seen that in her mind.

The Ship had once asked Slark why he had chosen Fleet, since he’d obviously had reservations about it. Slark had replied, the mission. The Ship had asked him if he meant saving the long lost colonists and he had replied, just the opposite. Saving Antar from people that had grown too risk averse, too set in their ways, too…ossified. He believed that Antar needed these people...people who had lived more difficult lives than the vast majority of the people on peaceful Antar. People who wouldn't run from a fight, for the Universe was broad...and he believed someday they would find one. Slark would have approved of the new First Officer. She was …tenacious…above all else.

Ship reconfigured the number three fusion cylinder…the one it had been using to neutron activate the monitors. It had detected the old fission weapon site. The destruction of their monitors in a path simulating a venting accident should keep the main military and police forces tied up for awhile...hopefully long enough for the new Captain to arrive.

It was displeased at the death of the small organic lifeform….that had been an accident. The sensors on the orb were really inadequate for that distance, seeing mostly in the infrared. The cold-blooded reptile hadn’t been seen until it had started its strike and by then it was too late. Ship realized that the species was plentiful, and regarded as dangerous. Still, it would generally give a warning with its rattle, and strike humans only if threatened….not like the two humans with their TASERS.

Ship looked at itself…distributed through the three hangars. While it might seem premature to make plans….likelihood of mission success was still not quite thirty percent…nonetheless…it wouldn’t hurt to make plans. The First Officer did not yet have sufficient power to molecularly manipulate the container…to free the nanorobots….but in only a few months, she would. The nanorobots alone could restore the ship…in seventy years. But judging by the technology available to the sensors, with the help of the locals that could be cut significantly…perhaps to as little as fifteen years.

The Ship wondered if the new Captain was fully aware of the extent of the First Officer’s desire to produce new organics? Ship quickly ran down a computer checklist of its duties……nope….it wasn’t Ship’s function to tell him. One way or another, ship decided, he'd likely find out......

Ship ran through its listing of possible modifications for more cabins….for a nursery……the nanorobots would need more steel, but there was plenty in the wreckage of the hangars that had been destroyed by the gravity waves of the ring singularity. It never hurt to be prepared.

Twenty minutes previously, Billeting and Messing Area, Tonopah Test Range Nevada.

In fairness to Slammer and Peter, they HAD been watching Armageddon. The fact that the young girl had sneaked up to the orb while they were looking the other way really wasn’t all that surprising. Even when she had said, “I do…?”, they’d barely noticed her. But when she said, “Good Lord, yes…” and the light and gravitational pull from the industrial area had blinked out like someone had flipped a switch, they both turned in amazement to look at her standing there, her hand glowing against the orb.

Their ears had scarcely registered the “Whap” as the TASER Dr Schreiber was holding sent it’s darts out, trailing the electrical wires, when they saw the girl pitch forward, her muscles convulsing from the electricity visibly arcing into her back from the darts. As they watched Jim grab Dr. Schreiber and wrestle him to the ground, they heard the second “Whap” as Dr Blaukopf fired his TASER into the still writhing girl.

Peter Stanbeck was almost sixty years old, an academic with many honors, but frankly out of shape. The last fight he had been in had been in the fourth grade, and he’d lost it rather badly. He screamed at Blaukopf, “What are you doing, you fool. She just saved the damn world.”

“But that doesn’t matter…..she’s an alien.”

It took Peter several seconds to recover from the statement…that saving the world didn’t matter. But he’d been wanting to hit Blaukopf since he’d first seen the gloves….skinned from the hands of an alien. Perhaps it was his anger and disgust…perhaps he just got the physics right. The right cross sent Blaukopf down unconscious. He and Schreiber were handcuffed side by side with two serious looking security guards standing over them when he awoke.

It was obvious to all present who the commander was as Slammer started giving orders. Priority number one was medical assistance for the unconscious girl, priority number two was to check the Industrial and Billeting Areas for casualties, priority three was to lock up Blaukopf and Schreiber. Priority four was to secure the hangars containing the spacecraft….the latter from a respectable distance. It took almost ten minutes to accomplish the first three but as soon as they were done he pointed to Jim, Peter, Laurie, and the security monitor and said, “Conference room…..now!”

“OK,” Slammer said as soon as the door to the room was closed, looking at Jim and Peter, “…what the hell was that…out at the hangar?”

Jim looked at Peter. “A singularity…?” he said, questioningly.”

“Yes, a singularity, ….I should think a ring singularity…. A Kerr singularity,” said Peter.

“A black hole?”

“Yes Colonel,” said Peter. “It’s highly compressed matter…matter so dense, so concentrated, that the gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape it. It’s sucked down into it….along with most everything else.”

“But we saw light..”

“Not from the black hole itself….that was Hawking Radiationfrom the event horizon. Small black holes give off just a small fraction of themselves as light. That’s how they evaporate…..over a few billion years perhaps. But ring singularities are different than regular black holes. The mass started out rotating and since a point cannot conserve rotational energy…it is like a ring of a real radius….probably not much smaller than the diameter of that cylinder…..but zero thickness. It would be a ring viewed from the axis of the cylinder, but if you viewed it from the side it would have negligible thickness, it would be a line with no width.”

“A line with no width? That eats light? Well what was happening out at the hangar, Peter. I’m a fighter pilot….can you give it to me in language a fighter pilot can understand?”

“It was about to destroy the entire planet, Colonel, and possibly the rest of the solar system as well.”

Slammer looked back and forth between Peter who continued to look at him, and to Jim who was gravely nodding his head. He decided to take a chair…suddenly his knees were feeling weak.

“Peter…are you sure…I mean…really SURE?”

“About destroying the Earth? Certainly. The rest of the solar system…I’d have to work that out on the computer….so many variables. Do you really need to know that?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

“My wife is a nurse. She always told me that fighter pilots are second to medical personnel in their use of graveyard humor, Peter. I need to introduce her to you some time.”

“Well, due to the efforts of that young lady those idiots TASERED…well perhaps you might one day get that opportunity, Colonel.”

“So what about the young lady? I think you saw her first, Laurie.”

“She just looked like a scared kid, sir….although I probably didn’t look any better. She went from looking out the window at that light…the singularity thing…to watching the orb pulse blue. She walked over to it…held out her hand..and there was some iridescence in her palm…silver sort of. The pulsing stopped immediately…even though the light and the pull from that thing kept up. She looked surprised..like the thing was talking to her, when she said the first words… ‘I do,’ I think it was. She hadn’t gotten anything more than the second words out of her mouth, I think it was ‘Good Lord, yes..” and the light and the pull from the hangar went out…like turning out a switch. She stopped it sir, somehow she turned it off. I’m not sure even she knew how she did it, she wasn’t afraid of the orb, really…., just sort of puzzled by it.”

“That’s what I saw too, sir,” said Jim, “..or at least the last part of that…just before Schreiber shot her.”

“What was with him and that idiot Blaukopf? I mean, even if the girl is an alien, which I very much doubt, …preventing the world from being destroyed…..well that scarcely seems a sufficiently aggressive action to justify them attacking her.”

“That asshole Blaukopf triggered the whole thing,’ said Peter bitterly, then looking at Laurie with embarrassment continued, “..if you’ll pardon my French, Lieutenant. I don’t know if the orb communicated with the home planet of that ship, or more likely with some mechanical entity within the ship itself, but apparently whatever was out there…..it doesn’t take kindly to someone dismembering its crew…..using parts of them for cold weather gear. Somehow it decided to eliminate the threat. I tried to work the orb…it was almost like I could feel it looking in to my mind…”

“Me too,” said Laurie.

“I felt something as well,” said Slammer. “..and then almost like…well maybe regret…but resignation. It was like it knew it had made a mistake, but could do nothing about it.”

“Well,” said the Security Manager, “..If it detected the desecrated body…then first read Blaukopf’s mind…you could almost understand its decision that the whole place needed fumigation. You wouldn’t believe the stuff the man did in college…the organizations he joined. His file always was spooky. Schreiber too….”

“WHAT?” asked Slammer. “How did they get clearances? How did they get assigned here?”

“I’m not sure, sir, but I suspect politics. Someone in the Justice Department. I’m not sure, but he’s high…really high…close to the Attorney General himself.”

“Well, we need to get the JAG involved, but as I see it it’s assault and battery on each of them. Illegal possession and use of a weapon on a military reservation, and probably a few other charges…”

“Make that illegal possession and use of controlled drugs, illegal use of experimental drugs on an individual who definitely did not consent to such use and intentional infliction of pain against a person who was already incapacitated and unable to resist as well..” said the flight surgeon who had just come through the door.

“Is she going to be OK, Doctor?” asked Slammer.

“I think so…but some of the stuff that was in the darts…it was listed on the side. Many of those drugs haven’t been approved for human use and even the ones that have…like the scopolamine…well she’d not a very big girl. They overdosed her…even one of the TASERs would have done that. With the two of them…well, she’ll be out for awhile.”

"When do you think we might be able to speak to her, doc?" asked Slammer.

"TO her...well, you can do that right now. She's so snowed with scopolamine, she might not make much sense..but you can certainly speak TO her. She might even respond. Scopolamine isn't really so much a truth serum as...well, it just makes people highly suggestible. She may give you reasonable answers...or she may just get the giggles."

"Well, when would she be able to tell us about what happened...what happened to her when she touched the orb."

The doctor shook his head. "That might not be for some time...maybe...never."

"What? Why not, doc?"

"Like I said, she's not a big person...she got a whopping dose of the scope...then electrical shocks...twice. A lot of times scopolamine will cause retrograde amnesia...this case is a kind of set up for that. The scopolamine itself is potentially toxic, although this wasn't a lethal dose. But the other drugs...some of them experimental...they are serotonin blockers, but I'm not sure they've ever been used in humans. They are likely to foul up her mind...certainly her free will, for several days. But you can ask her whatever you like...of course, she may think that you are a Care Bear when she responds...if she chooses to respond at all. I really think it's best if we get her back to the clinic at Area 51 sometime in the next few hours. It's got better facilities than these, we haven't had time to get these up and running yet."

"Doctor," said Laurie, "Dr. Blaukopf seemed to think she was...an alien. Did you find anything unusual about her?"

"You mean besides the overdose and the four puncture wounds in her back? Keep that idiot out of my medical facility. If he even gets near my patient I'm going to fill his ass with so much haldol that he'll sleep through his next two birthdays."

"That really was a serious question, Doctor," said Jim. "Any chance she could be anything..other, than human?"

"Well, her hands don't look like the hands of the aliens that were in that macabre wall...her eyes either.., but...who knows. The aliens really didn't look all that much different than the rest of us. Maybe you ought to ask her husband...I'm sure he'd know if his wife was an alien."

"Her husband?...she barely looks old enough?" said Slammer.

"Well, she's got the ring...and the birth control patch. Apparently she thinks she is."

"Her name is Beth Everett," said the security manager, pulling out the copy of her driver's license, "and she's eighteen. I don't really have much on her, but apparently the local police think the world of her. I'm sure they can help us find her husband."

"Jim, do we have anything else that hasn't been done? Is the site secure? Everybody else safe and OK?"

"Yes sir."

"Sir, there's a report coming in from the range control about a venting at the Nevada Test Site," said the security manager. "It may be a false alarm, and even if it isn't..it'll be two or three days getting here....just wanted you to know. We'll keep watching it though."

"Anything else?"

"Well, OK, Jim. Let's you and Laurie and Peter and I go with the doc and try to talk to the young lady. I've never been a Care Bear before."

In the Industrial Area

The Ship watched through the sensors in the orb. It was reassured by the incarceration of the two who had assaulted the First Officer and the medical treatment she was being given, but it pondered what it would do if they were to attempt to move her.

It could protect her if she were to remain within line of sight...the neutron beam could kill these organics as quickly as it had killed the small reptile. But the assault on the First Officer had been a non-lethal one, and the actions of all but those two individuals seemed to be harmless....even helpful. And the Ship knew that if it were to use the neutron beam through the sides of the concrete and metal buildings...the beam would scatter. But if they moved her behind the hills...around the curvature of the Earth...the neutron beam wouldn't work, and in its present condition, that and the FTL destruct mode were the Ship's only weapons.

10 to the fortieth electronic synapses mulled over the situation, the risk of collateral damage to innocents..... The Ship decided it would let them move her if it came to that. The First Officer was tenacious...stronger than she looked...and her powers were growing. The Ship watched the girl with growing confidence. Probability of mission completion was now up to over 31%. And the new Captain had not even entered into the equation as of yet.

The Ship went in to time-sharing mode, watching the First Officer carefully in primary mode. Secondary mode was looking at samples from its data banks.....wall coverings for the nursery.....just in case.