“This is amazing! This sort of thing has not made for many ages. Where I come from, time is not measured by gears and springs. This is an art of the far distant past. Imagine how much time it must take to make such a device!”
“You could fix this to your waistband with a chain and put the watch in your pocket,” Baron said.
Tak, mesmerized by the device, continued to look at the gears going round and round.
“Is the case on this piece solid gold?” Baron asked the shopkeeper.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Solid twenty-two karat. It’s from Switzerland.”
“Have you a gold watch chain?” Baron asked.
“Of course.” The clerk produced a thin, black-velvet-lined drawer with many chains, in silver and gold, and laid the drawer on the glass.
Baron looked at his alien. “Which of these do you like?”
“This one.” She held it up as though it was a treasure.
The shopkeeper attached it to the timepiece.
“How much for both?” Baron asked.
“Well, you know, the price of gold has skyrocketed.”
Engaging in the fun of bargaining, although it mattered not, other than the fun of it, Baron said, “You bandit! You did not pay those prior prices for these pieces. We can always come back next year if we decide to come back again, when the price goes down, when you still have this unsellable relic.”
There being no other business that day, or almost all week and, with a poor European economy and few customers, the shopkeeper quickly came to a reasonable price for the two pieces.
Baron was content with the bargain. Tak, mesmerized with what she considered a priceless antique, accepted his magnanimous present.
“A small present for my favorite alien,” he said when they were out of the shop.
Tak flushed at the wonderful present from her new lover. She gave him a hug “Thank you, Baron! This will always be very special to me.” She attached the watch chain to her waist band and let the watch drop into her pocket. She took it out a few times to admire it.
***
In Berlin, Baron showed her into his office, a two-room suite, with only a single secretary. She was attractive, tall, blonde, and forty, with amazing efficiency. Her name was Ingrid.
Tak was sitting in front of Baron’s desk, behind which was a large window of the city, when Ingrid came in with papers in hand. She handed them to Baron for approval. He looked at them and seemed pleased.
Baron looked at Tak. “I have something for you.”
He handed her the documents, a certificate of birth, marriage certificate, and a passport. All were obtained by Baron’s influence, and all were recorded in official records in case anyone checked. All were fraudulent, but very official. Tak looked at them strangely, not having any idea what to expect. She read the passport with her picture. It read, Baroness Von Limbach. “It’s me! I’m a baroness!”
At a sidewalk café near the Berlin office, they sat outside for a light lunch and to watch the people go by.
“Tak, I have a decision to make, or perhaps I should say you have one to make. I absolutely insist on being your guide on Earth for the duration of your stay. I will take you wherever you want to go, or if you do not know, I will take you where I think you would like to go. But I know you are not here to see the tourist spots of mountains and canyons, but people.
“Now, if you like, I can allow you to join me in my business, which I think you will find informative and interesting. However, I must have your absolute assurance that you will keep all details of what you learn a secret from everyone on the planet.
“The choice is yours. Would you like to accompany me on some business and learn a bit about how the Earth business works, or would you prefer to simply learn more about humans that are not engaged in any such activities? Either is fine with me.”
“I’m quite sure I should go should with you on your business,” she answered. “And I will keep what I learn a secret.”
“Very well, that is settled.”
As they sat at the café, they saw many high-fashion women out shopping, walking right by the table.
“I don’t understand something. Earth females want to be treated as equals to males, right?” Tak asked.
“That is so.”
“Then why is it that the females paint their faces and nails but men do not?”
“Good question.”
“Is it that the females would be less attractive to the males if they did not use paint?” she continued.
“That is so.”
“Would I be more attractive to you and others if I painted my face?”
He looked around at a huge department store just nearby. “Why don’t we go into that store to a makeup counter and find out?’
“I would like to try that.”
“You alien females are all the same, always worried about your looks.”
***
Ralls and Klara headed in the direction of Germany, where a few witnesses had seen the Rolls Royce going. After a time, they saw a group of men wearing reflective green vests, the road hazard kind. The nearest had a stop sign in hand. The traffic was reduced to one lane traffic. By a hand signal to another man fifty yards down the road, the traffic was be allowed to pass from one direction, then the other direction was allowed to pass. There was enough room on one side of the road for a lane of cars to pass, but not enough for two lanes, especially with all the pieces of equipment involved, occasionally coming into both lanes. There were no cars in front of them when he arrived, but a few were building up in a queue behind his car as he sat there.
Frustrated by the delay, Ralls sighed and tried to relax, looking about. He tried to see what the cause of delay was. There were two, huge dump trucks filled with dirt, with one dumping its load into a huge hole in the ground. The other truck was waiting its turn to dump its load.
Ralls realized that this was most unusual. He pulled over his car to the shoulder of the road and got out with Klara. The man with the stop sign did not seem to mind, as Ralls was not holding up traffic.
Ralls walked up to the hole in the ground. It was ten feet deep and being filled with dirt as they watched.
Klara asked the crew superintendent what had happened. She then turned to Ralls. “He does not know what happened. Some driver reported this huge hole in the road, and this crew is filling it up. He said that the dirt from the hole is missing. It is not stacked up anywhere, nor is there any debris. So they are having to truck in loads of dirt for the fill.”
“What on earth could have caused it?” Ralls asked, as though she might know.
“I’ve no idea,” Klara said. “If these highway repairmen do not know, I certainly do not. But where the dirt might have gone is the real mystery.”
“I wonder if this huge hole is related to our mystery woman and her fast vehicle,” Ralls said to Klara. “A large hole in the road and many yards of missing dirt. A seventeen-thousand-mile-per-hour female. Are they connected?”
Klara answered with a question. “Why would a female pilot that can go seventeen thousand miles an hour want to make a huge hole in the highway?”
“Where’s the dirt from the hole?” Ralls said. “Both events are very strange. I am going to find that woman. I think she may have some answers.”
CHAPTER 12
The next stop for Tak and Baron was Paris. He flew her there, now that she had identification to show at the airport. At their hotel, during a petit dejeuner, Baron suggested one of two ideas for the next leg of her Earth adventure.
“We could go by car south to the Loire Valley to stay at one or two converted castles and sample the fabulous cuisine, or to try the rapid train down to the south of France and then on to Spain.”
“How rapid?”
“It’s called Train à Grand Vitesse. The speed may be nothing like you are accustomed to, but it averages 300 kilometers per hour, which is 186 miles per hour, in case you haven’t converted to metric yet.”
She
chose. “Let’s do the train.”
“Very well, we’ll leave tomorrow morning. I suggest Paris to Bordeaux where we can have a wine tasting.”
***
In the wee hours of the next morning, five Muslim men, dressed in dark clothes and hunched over so as not to attract attention, cut through the bottom of a security chain-link fence and snuck up to the rails of the Train à Grand Vitesse railroad in an unpopulated area south of Paris. Through the fence they dragged a four-foot-long oxygen cylinder, a special torch, two hydraulic cylinders, a small car battery, a small bundle of rods that were three feet long, and a sledge hammer.
At the train rails, one hooked up the oxygen cylinder to a hose from a device resembling a pistol that held a special, three-foot rod so that oxygen would flow through the gun and out through the special rod. The rod held eight different thin strips of metals, including thermite, which only partially filled the diameter of the three eighths inch copper rod, so that the opening would allow the oxygen to flow alongside the metals. The metals, with ignited oxygen, created an exothermite reaction of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit out of the end of the rod, which would melt anything. The rods would expend rather quickly, in about a minute. It was not a very efficient device, but devastatingly effective as it could cut through metal, concrete, or anything else.
The battery was set nearby and the operator of the gun made ready with leather welding gloves and goggles.
One turned on the regulator on the oxygen cylinder, and the gun was ready. He opened up the regulator to 100 pounds per square inch, which would maximize the reaction and temperature over and above the normal 65 pounds. The operator pulled the trigger. The flow of oxygen could be heard hissing from the end of the small rod that was fitted into the gun. He took the electric striker, which was wired to the battery, and held it to the end of the rod, creating sparks.
Whack! was the sound of ignition, and several feet of sparks began to blast out of the end of the rod, a scary thing to work with. The man with the rod holder held it up to one of the rails and pulled the trigger all the way.
Whoosh! The flames came out of the end of the rod loudly and menacingly. The operator held the rod up to the top of the rail again and began a cut. In less than a minute, the rail was severed. He repeated the operation on the other rail. He then walked down the line with his assistant carrying the oxygen cylinder and battery. He cut off the spikes of the rails on both sides until he was one hundred paces down from the starting place, adding new rods as they were used up. He then cut both the rails at that spot. One of them whacked the train rails with a sledge hammer to loosen them.
The group then placed the two hydraulic cylinders, one near each cut in the rails, set to push outward, fitted just below the top of the rails. He adjusted the cylinders until they were tight against the section of steel just below the top of the rails. The hydraulic cylinders were connected to each other with a hydraulic line and then to a reservoir and pump, already connected to each other and the pump in advance, so as not to have to bleed the system in the field. The same battery used for ignition of the torch was then hooked up to the hydraulic pump and then to a receiver with a switch. A cell phone was hooked up to activate the receiver. All was in place. When the remote receiver was activated by cell phone, the pump would start pumping hydraulic pressure into the cylinders, pushing the rails apart, as they were now no longer fastened down.
All that was needed was the phone call.
The terrorists scurried away, taking the equipment that did not need to remain.
***
They intended to take the first train, but Baron was a bit slow that morning, after another marathon session of alien sex with Tak. And, with a traffic jam on the way there, they arrived a few minutes too late for their scheduled train. He bought tickets for the second train and decided to burn up the time by taking a coffee and relaxing in a café in the station.
On the walls in the café were two big screens TVs, for the waiting train riders, showing a soccer game.
There was a commotion in the terminal. The TV monitor screens switched from soccer to an overhead view from a news helicopter of a spectacular train crash on the TGV track. None of the train cars were in their normal position. One was standing up, another upside down. One was across the tracks and upside down, and some were crushed. None of the passengers could be seen moving, and they could bloody bodies all about, looking very dead.
The news channel reported as the helicopter flew above the carnage. “...a short while ago, the TGV train from Paris to Marseille was derailed. It was traveling at 300 kilometers per hour. As you can see, cars flipped, spun, and tumbled. The number of dead is not known, but it is believed that there were 285 passengers plus crew aboard the train. A local hospital is said to have received the first few passengers, all of whom were dead on arrival or died shortly thereafter. The death toll is feared to be very high, and it is feared that all may, in fact, be dead. Just minutes after the incident, an anonymous call was received by a Paris news stations, claiming it was done by al-Qaeda in retaliation to the French law prohibiting Muslim females from covering their faces in public...”
“We were scheduled to take that train and we would be dead if we had,” Tak said.
There was little to say as they watched, in horror, the carnage and suffering as shown on the news.
Train travel was suspended, although no one wanted to take another train at that time. As they needed to change their plans, the two headed back to the hotel to see if rooms were available. They could then decide what to do, having just missed death by a lucky few minutes’ delay.
***
Baron took her to Le Jules Verne Restaurant in the Eiffel Tower for dinner that evening. As they sat, Tak wanted to discuss the terror attacks.
“Tell me more details about these terror attacks, Baron. Is this something that’s going all over the planet?”
“Yes. In the recent past, there have been tens of thousands of bombings, many of them suicide bombings, killing hundreds of thousands. This particular attack appears to be a way of making a statement that those who are not Muslims, who they consider infidels, cannot prevent Muslim women from covering their faces in public. The Muslims have a tradition of making the women cover their faces in public. Some require the women to cover their entire body and head in a black or blue robe called a burqa. Some require a scarf called a hijab. France passed a law forbidding the covering of faces with the burqa in public in 2011. This act of terror is a protest, or so they claim.”
“To get attention, these people kill innocents?” Tak said in amazement.
“It seems to be the only way they can get any attention.”
“All of that killing just because the government passed a law that forbids women from covering their faces because of a religion?” she asked.
“Exactly. Or at least that’s their excuse. Killing is what they have in mind, and any number of excuses will do. The vast majority of the killings are done by Muslims. Many make whatever war they can with their primitive tools against non-Muslims, whom they call infidels, or non-believers, whom they also accuse of being without faith.”
“Are any of the Muslim countries advanced with space probes and electronic inventions?”
“Yes, but religious fanaticism is fueled by ignorance. However, religious fanaticism and ignorance are not confined to Muslims. There are Christians who murder medical doctors for performing abortions. Many Christians pray daily for minor favors from their God.”
“How many Muslims are there?”
“About 1.6 billion, or about a quarter of the world population.”
“That is a huge number of humans, considering that this warring pits so many humans against others. Are they all bad people?”
“Not at all. Many are wonderful.”
Still in shock at having come so close to death, she said, “Baron, it’s a good thing that I wasn’t killed in that terrorist attack. The captain of the starship might have done something about it.”<
br />
Baron was all ears. “What would that be?”
Tak thought a moment. “Well, there are two schools of thought. The first is that since my murder would not have been targeted at me specifically, the captain might decide not to intervene and just write my death off as an unfortunate casualty of an anthropologist sent on a dangerous assignment to a primitive and barbaric planet.”
“What is the second school of thought?”
“Eradication of humans.”
Baron could not let this go and thought he might get more out of her on this. “Could you be a bit more specific on how the captain might eradicate humans?”
“Well, there are quite a few options available to a starship captain. An angry response would be to steer a couple of large asteroids into your planet, one for the each hemisphere. That would do huge damage and cloud the planet with dust for years.
“One would be to blast your sun to create a solar flare so huge it would burn your planet’s surface and destroy all human, animal, and plant life.
“Or he might blast your planet’s core by firing down a volcano with a strong laser that would reach the core and heat it up to the point of neutralizing your planet’s magnetic field which is necessary to protect your planet from radiation and gamma rays from the sun. This re-alignment of the magnetic field would create volcanic activity on a major scale, spreading volcanic dust in the atmosphere, which would include sulfur dioxide. The sulfur dioxide would mix with rain, become sulfuric acid rain, and destroy most all life remaining. In that case, there would be a cloud of the gas around the planet for several years, blocking the sun and chilling down the surface. That would be my favorite. The best English that I can come up with is that these options would create a fresh start, or a do over.”
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