by Bob Blink
“This is an incredible breakthrough,” I said. “But it is a bit worrisome as well.”
“You mean because a key is in the device to make it work?” replied Naiya. “We will have to make sure the communicators don’t fall into the wrong hands.”
She seemed to have shared my concern. The past week we had been careful to keep all keys under strict control where it would be next to impossible for the wrong people to get possession. If I kept this device with me, a key was within reach of anyone who was able to get his or her hands on the communicator. Fortunately the key wasn’t obvious in its close fitting slot on the side of the device. One almost had to know what was there to recognize it. That made it possible someone could have the unit and not realize they held the secret to opening the tunnels. It wasn’t much protection. I wouldn’t want to count on the secret remaining hidden too long. That meant Naiya was right; we had to be very careful with the devices.
Naiya still hadn’t had a chance to show me how the unit worked, and sitting up front it wasn’t a good time for her to try. Naiya sat in the seat next to Mike, while I sat in back. It would appear more normal to passing cars if a man and woman were in front. Not that there were many to see our seating arrangements. Traffic was very light this late at night.
“Did Al say anything about playing with this thing?” I asked. “Are there any of the controls I shouldn’t mess with?”
“He’s tried about every combination imaginable,” she replied. “Nothing to worry about. While he doesn’t understand what some of the controls are for, he doesn’t think there are any that could be dangerous.”
I had enough familiarity with the alien equipment to figure out most of the controls myself. The small screen, invisible when the device was off, was dimly lit at the moment indicating the device was active, but not connected to any of the other units on its network. When Carol showed me earlier how to connect to the second unit that she held, the screen on this unit had brightened showing Carol’s face and torso. There was some means for the device to pick up video, however I was unable to see anything that resembled a lens. Around the end of the screen a series of eight small colored squares were evenly spaced. Four of these glowed faintly purple and one was a solid blue. The other three were currently dark. Simply by pressing one of the glowing squares I would open the connection to one of the other devices. If there was something to identify which of the other devices corresponded to each of the squares, I hadn’t figured it out. I was running strictly on memory. Carol’s unit was the second dot clockwise from ‘noon’. The blue square I had decided corresponded to our unit. Pressing it had no observable effect. The other four glowing dots corresponded to the other devices Al had activated. One was the unit to be left with Ed, the other three were still inside the complex. Carol had one, and the other two would be sent to the downtime offices. The dark squares corresponded to additional units that could be activated.
I learned that one of the larger pale buttons to the left of the screen caused all of the dots to go dark. At first I thought this might have disabled something, but now I was of the opinion the dark dots represented another set of eight possible units. Perhaps on another network? I wondered if that made any sense. Pressing the same button a second time brought back the original configuration. Below the screen were two controls that acted like variable slider settings, although nothing moved. I was able to adjust the brightness of the display and the volume of the sound coming from the device. The four other controls on the lower left I hadn’t figured out. I pressed them all, but so far nothing had happened. I even tried pressing two or more simultaneously with equally unsuccessful results. I could see no way to remove the key module, although there must be an easy way to do so. Like most of the alien devices no off/on switch seemed to be present, but since the device had activated when Al had inserted the key module, I suspected whatever caused the key to be released would also power the unit down. It was clever. The same unit probably worked on all of the planets the aliens visited. Simply by plugging in the module for the appropriate site, they set up both communications and carried the activation for their time system.
“Do we have any idea of the range of these things?” I asked Naiya who had received the demonstration from Al when he had brought them to Carol.
“We have no idea,” Naiya responded as we continued north on the freeway. “We will be getting further from our tunnel entrance than any of the other facilities are from theirs, so I guess we are going to be the test case,” she added from the front seat of the automobile.
We stayed within the speed limit, as we didn’t need any attention focused on us. Each of us had switched identification documents and were now carrying passports and driver’s licenses in names other than our own. It was something one of Mike’s people had worked up during the past couple of weeks as a contingency. They even had valid credit cards in the new names. I hadn’t thought I would ever have a need for such a gimmick, but now it seemed fortuitous planning.
I was getting hungry again. For now, I’d have to live with it. We had stopped briefly just outside Seattle at a drive-through hamburger joint and grabbed burgers, fries, and drinks. Naiya had eaten inside the time complex before she and the others had come for us, but Mike and I hadn’t eaten at all as the colonel’s guests. The burger took the edge off my hunger for a while, but now I wished I had grabbed a couple while the opportunity had presented itself. Maybe we would see something up ahead at Bellingham. This late I had my doubts.
“Did Doc say how long the sleep function he added to the medications would last?” I was curious how long we had before we could expect our disappearance to remain undiscovered.
“Doc hadn’t been able to experiment, but he suspected it would put them down from four to six hours,” Mike responded.
That meant the colonel and his troops should still be in a sleep controlled by the medicines. I wasn’t sure anyone could wake him if they tried. We had never made an attempt to bring someone out of the drug induced sleep caused by the medications. The fact they would still be asleep made it unlikely anyone would be looking for us yet. Even after they came to and discovered that Mike and I had slipped away, we hoped they would decide we had gone back inside the complex. The missing guards would hopefully suggest as much. The colonel might still cover all bases and put out an alert with the police. This close to the border would mean the police would in all probability inform the security at the U.S.-Canada crossings. A lot depended on how secret the government was trying to keep things. On the other hand, police help could be ensured simply by claiming all of us were wanted for some criminal activity like the colonel had threatened earlier today. The FBI had a long list of crimes they wanted to talk to me about. There would be no real need to explain the true nature of why we were being sought. At least this car was registered to the consulting business, so none of our real names appeared on the car’s paperwork or registration. That would help if we were stopped.
“Do all of the ID’s we have indicate we are Americans?” I asked.
“Correct,” Mike replied. “It was a lot easier to set them up that way, and it seemed safer to show U.S. citizenship rather than that of the country we were entering.”
That made sense in a way. If a check were being made at the border, it would be less careful by the country we departed from. The country we were entering, in this case Canada would be more careful. If the passports indicated Canadian citizens, they might discover we weren’t in their database. I doubted they had every U.S, citizen in the system, and visas weren’t required to enter the country for U.S. citizens. Up until recently a driver’s license would have been enough. I was hoping we wouldn’t even face that much of a check. We would be using the back route I had taken a couple of weeks before.
“Does Ed know we are coming?” I asked Naiya. We would be checking into the facility in the morning. If we stayed on schedule we would be getting there very late and would have to check in somewhere for the night if he didn’t.
“No,” she replied. “We didn’t have a chance to contact him.”
I thought about what we had with us. No extra clothes had been brought along. Only the things we wore. That meant some shopping after getting settled. We would need to have luggage and clothes to make the trip to Europe believable. New clothes weren’t going to be a big deal. For a man and his wife on a trip to the continent, mostly new clothes wouldn’t be unusual. Mike would travel separately. No reason to link us together. Beside, there was reason for him to remain undetected. The plan called for our trip to be discovered by the authorities later. That meant we would be traveling on our real passports when we crossed the ocean. Mike would not. He was certain his fake papers would stand up. I hoped he was right. We had a little money. Ed would remedy that shortage soon enough when we got to Vancouver.
Mike and I also each had a pistol. I had been happy to have one until we got out of Seattle, but now the guns could be more trouble than they were worth.
“We probably should dump the Glocks,” I suggested. They were the Glock 23 model, using the .40 S&W cartridge. I didn’t really like them despite the fact the Glocks shot very consistently once one got used to the dart-pistol trigger. I preferred something with a thumb safety. Having all the safeties linked to the trigger just didn’t sit well with me. These were what Mike’s men had carried, so that’s what we had now. None of the pistols could be traced back to our people, so it would be simple to get rid of them if we elected to.
Mike didn’t say anything, but nodded his head. There would be plenty of opportunity when we got out in the country after turning off highway 5.
Bellingham surprised me. Roughly a mile before the turn off we would be taking, we came upon a small shopping center with a McDonalds off to one corner. Surprisingly it was still open. Mike pulled into the parking lot where we got out and stretched for a couple of minutes and then switched drivers. He had been doing the driving duty since we escaped from the residence. It was my turn. Besides, he hadn’t driven the back route before. I had been down the road a couple of times, although never in the dark.
Feeling better with a bit more food inside my stomach, I drove eastward in silence along the country road. I had seen only one car since leaving Bellingham. A lot different than the number of cars that had traveled with me the last trip. We had dumped the two pistols in a watery ditch about ten miles back. Naiya and Mike were both dozing, although my wife would wake periodically and look around. Checking to see how I was doing, she would then settle back and drift off again. It was eerie driving through the blackened countryside in the middle of the night. I knew there were sporadic farms and ranch house off to the side of the road. They were far enough back and without light at this hour so that it seemed we were the only people in this vast open countryside. The lights of the car illuminated the narrow road a few hundred feet ahead of the front of the car, but the light failed to penetrate the murkiness off to the sides at all.
Surprisingly, I found the turn-off without any trouble, and switched onto the northbound gravel road around 3:45 in the morning. The crunching of the gravel woke Naiya, who sat up and looked around. Mike still slept soundly in the back.
“Have you seen anyone?” she asked sleepily.
“Nothing for more than an hour,” I informed her. “I doubt we will see anyone until we get near the main highway inside Canada.”
“Do you think anyone will be at the border crossing this time of night?”
I had wondered the same thing. It had been unattended every time I had crossed, and all of the people we had sent into Vancouver this back way while moving some of the computers and equipment had reported clear sailing. The lights from out car could be seen for miles though, so we would be announcing our approach if anyone bothered to look. I would feel better if it were closer to sunrise where we could approach with the lights off. I had even considered pulling off to the side of the road and waiting a couple of hours. Waiting had its risks as well. Everyone at the residence should have passed through the sleep period Doc had programmed into the medicines. That meant the colonel would be trying to figure out what happened and where we might have gone. I would feel better being in Canada before he had a chance to take any action. Naiya agreed when I raised my doubts to her. So we continued on.
In the end, I had worried for no reason. We continued down the road without incident and crossed into Canada without any sign of other people, let alone border security. As we rounded a long sweeping turn about an hour later, the car lights briefly outlined the old decaying structure the always told me I had crossed the border. Some of the tension that had been building up melted away, and we soon could see light cross traffic ahead that signaled we were approaching highway 401. Turning west, we drove less than fifteen minutes before the sign for a Marriott appeared off to the side with a neon vacancy sign lit. I took the next turnoff. Naiya woke Mike as I navigated the twisty maze of side roads leading to the hotel. We had to wake the night clerk, but within twenty minutes we were in our rooms. Tomorrow would be another busy day.
--------------------
Mike called Ed at home from the pay phone in the diner while Naiya and I finished up breakfast. It was 8:30 AM, and the few hours of sleep had done wonders. Before leaving the room I had tried the little communications device and had no trouble getting Carol. So far we remained in range. That was good because it meant Ed would be able to act as a relay point if we found the device wouldn’t work as we moved even further from the tunnel entrance. I pretty much expected communication to drop out as our group moved to the other side of the globe. Without something to relay the signal, how could it get back to the tunnel?
Carol had another surprise for us. Following her instructions, Naiya pressed a couple of buttons on the left face of the device in sequence. Carol’s face disappeared from the screen to be replaced by a remarkably clear picture given the small size of the main view-panel from the control room. Carol’s voice remained as she explained the mother ship hadn’t deviated from the expected course or schedule, although the dot that indicated the utility ship had merged with the larger dot of the mother ship more than ten hours ago. So now they knew for certain, I thought. I wondered if John’s man was alive when they found him. After explaining where we were, we agreed to attempt a conference net a bit later after we had hooked up with Ed. Carol indicated the other devices would be in the hands of Dave and Fred, so we could give the system a complete check.
“He’ll be at the office when we get there,” Mike said softly as he slid into the booth across from me. “He’s curious about what has happened, however we didn’t dare go into any details on an open line.”
I paid the bill and we made our way outside and across the parking lot to the car. The lot was only half filled with cars this morning, a sign the tourist season was slacking off as fall approached. I resumed my driving duties and we made our way back to highway 401, turning onto the highway from the same street we had exited the previous evening. The highway took us to the exit we needed. From there it was only ten miles to the facility.
The rest of the morning was extremely busy. As promised, Ed was waiting for us when we arrived. We moved into his secure windowless office, protected by the same devices we had in Carol’s office back in Seattle. It didn’t take long to walk through the events of the previous day. Naiya gave him the alien communications device and took a few minutes to walk through the controls. Both Mike and I watched. Mike hadn’t had a chance to experiment with the device, and I wanted to see if I had missed anything in my attempts to figure out the controls. Afterwards we made the conference call that worked as advertised. For the first time ever we could communicate between time eras as easily as if we were on a city to city call. How we could have used this device the past few years.
Carol had no idea what might be happening outside the entrance, but assumed it was the site of significant activity. Al had a theory that the device would support video monitoring of the outside area if he could just figure out how
their video units operated and interfaced to the devices. He would be working on it. He could experiment with other tunnel entrances. If they got the system working, a way to set something up without risking unwanted entry from the troops outside would have to be figured out. A call the previous evening from Thomas indicated they were back on the trail of the missing alien, but so far had only found where the creature had been, not where it was hiding currently. He suspected they were a couple of days behind it. Carol warned him that time was running out.
After the call to Carol we made an international call to the number Jeff had given Carol and Naiya the other day. We used a ‘Phone-To-Go’ Ed had purchased a few weeks ago. The era of throw-away phones was working to our advantage. After the completion of the call, the phone that Ed had provided for this would be ditched and never used again. Even on the improbable chance someone picked up on the call, there was no way it could be traced back to us. I assumed Jeff had things under control on his end. He was in military intelligence after all.
Jeff wasn’t available immediately, but the voice that answered asked us to call back in ten minutes. When we did, Jeff answered.
“You made it out of the country okay it seems,” he said, his voice clear enough he could have been in the next room.
Mike explained briefly where we were and the status. He also told Jeff about the little trick Doc that had cooked up to put them under, which earned a chuckle from Jeff.
“I had our people check. So far there are no alerts in effect for you guys. They must know you have escaped, so they either think you are back inside like we hope, or are being quiet about their search. Either way, you shouldn’t need to worry about being checked at the airports. Just the same, call me back before you board for the international flight. I’ll know if anything has changed by then.”
Immigration would have no reason to flag us when we passed through in Europe unless we were added to the watch lists. He detailed which flights to take and the hotel in Berlin we should check into. He would meet us at the hotel there after we arrived.
