The Noah Satellite

by Allan E Petersen

  Although their black outfit made it almost impossible to be seen in the dark they still snuck from dark corner to dark corner giving the appearance of ghosts floating through the streets. Pia followed Helga who seemed to be on a mission, seemingly looking for a specific house. Finally she stopped, pointed and said,

  “That one. That’s the house with the children in it.”

  Confused as to why they were looking for a house with children, Pia asked,

  “How do you know there are children in this house?”

  “When sneaking into the yard, they passed two small tricycles on the lawn and when seeing them, suddenly Pia did not need a reply. She asked,

  “What’s the big deal about children?”

  “Remember, Maria asked us to locate children’s books because of the elementary language that also usually identified pictures.”

  Approaching the rustic wooden front door, neither were surprised that it was not locked. True to a small cottage, there was no upstairs, everything, kitchen and bedrooms were on one level. With perfect vision it was easy to locate the children’s bedroom. Two little girls were fast asleep in one bed and cuddled into each other. Luck was on their side. Off in the corner was a small table with five picture books on top. When Helga thumbed through it looking at the printed word she was not surprised to see a language she did not recognize. She whispered to Pia,

  “Do you recognize the language?”

  She pointed and whispered,

  “It looks very similar to the words in the Black Knight that Maria took pictures off.”

  All the books were stuffed into Pia’s back pack.

  Now back in the hall, Pia thought they were going to exit the house but Helga had other ideas. She whispered,

  “We need to get DNA from the parents.”

  “Why, they are just humans?”

  “Maria said that if we saw humans she wanted to know if there are traces of alien DNA in them, just like there is in us.”

  The parents were sound asleep, the father snoring just slightly. Because mitochondrial DNA was requested, Helga silently tip-toed to the mother’s side of the bed. It was easy to pick loose hairs from the pillow and that should have been enough but just because they were on her pillow did not guarantee that they were hers. For that reason Helga pulled a DNA swab kit from her bag and gently pressed the applicator between lips of the mother’s open mouth.

  Back in the girl’s bedroom, one of them was tossing unable to get back to sleep. As she usually did in cases like this, she got out of bed and with drowsy eyes walked across the hall to cuddle between mom and dad. From the doorway she stood stunned looking at two ghosts with large black eyes standing over her mother doing something to her. Sleepy eyes widened and a scream filled the room. Quick to react, both ghosts ran past the scared girl at the same time that mom and dad bolted awake.

  A small gas lamp beside the bed was turned high and both parents saw a frantic daughter running toward them. Through tears of fear, she managed to say that she saw two ghosts doing something to mommy. Holding tight to her daughter she was lifted into bed and tucked in between them. The father said that it was just a bad dream and to get back to sleep. As mom and dad closed their eyes, hers were wide open. She knew it wasn’t just a bad dream. She knew what she saw and it was real.

  Outside, they had only stopped running when reaching a dark corner of another house. Through gasps, Helga managed to say,

  “Boy, talk about a close call. Good thing she didn’t see us for what we really are.”

  Pia, being the younger and perhaps more accustomed to jogging for exercise calmly said,

  “Okay, we have DNA samples and the books. That’s mission complete right?”

  Helga was just as scared as Pia. Although she knew that Maria would be disappointed to learn there were no aliens in the middle of the Siberian Triangle, Pia was right, it was mission accomplished.

  It only took a few minutes of ducking from shadow to shadow and crossing a few streets before realizing they were lost. Although panic did not set in just yet, both understood that they had put themselves in a dire situation. Helga had an idea.

  “Let’s just wait here and I’ll remotely signal the D-wing to come to us.”

  However, after a long time and numerous frantic pressing on the remote, it was painfully realized that it was not coming for them. Pia said,

  “Maybe something is blocking the signal.”

  After searching a few more streets, thankfully Pia eventually pointed and said,

  “I recognize that house. The field and barn are just down this street.”

  With the hope of safely getting out of this strange village, Helga was only too glad to follow Pia.

  Staying close to a dark corner, they saw five villagers walking down the middle of the dark street. At first they looked like a row of zombies until they heard chit chat and somebody was even laughing. After they passed the hidden pair, from a house came two more people to join the strange single file. There was no way of telling the time but Helga drew the correct conclusion when softly saying,

  “It’s at least midnight. Where could they be going?”

  Pia was more interested in reaching the safety of the D-wing than wondering about a small late night parade. She was not pleased to see Helga start to follow the crowd. After skipping silently from dark places to dark places, they observed as more joined the late night walk to the point there were now probably twenty in the long line.

  While following the procession, Pia was getting edgy and on numerous occasions tugged on Helga’s arm and whispered,

  “Mission accomplished. Let’s get out of here.”

  What Pia did not understand about Helga was that she did not want to go home. Go home to what? Boredom? No, this was exciting and so while ignoring sound advice, something she shouldn’t have, with adventure stirring she continued to follow the villagers.

  At the far end of the village was that large mound passing for a small mountain. It soon became clear this was where the nightwalkers were going. From a distance, Helga watched as one by one they disappeared into a cave in the mountainside. Pia was looking in the other direction, toward the safety of the D-wing when Helga said,

  “Come on. Let’s see what they are up to.”

  Pia didn’t want to follow her into what a young and fearful imagination saw as the gapping mouth of a fire breathing dragon ready to devour them. As she watched Helga disappear into the cave, her mind silently whispered good advice, ‘don’t follow her’. Unfortunately her legs did not hear that advice.

  Once in the cave, they walked through a short tunnel that eventually led into a massive cavern. Although it was well lit, because of night vision glasses that instantly adjusted to the light, they didn’t notice any difference. At least to them, through the lenses everything was well lit. Staying to the shadows they saw the objective of the long march through town. Surprisingly, the chamber had the appearance of a schoolroom. They saw twenty desks with twenty adults now sitting like all good children should, looking straight ahead as if waiting for the teacher to walk in. Again Pia tugged on Helga’s arm and indicated her desire to get out of here. That was when the teacher showed up.

  When seeing the teacher, the only reason their eyes didn’t pop out of their sockets was that the night vision glasses held them in place. After a few deep breaths trying hard to stem shock and fear, Pia managed to whisper,

  “Okay, that’s an alien right?”

  In reply, all a shocked Helga could manage was frantic nodding. Pia added,

  “Tell me you are taking pictures of all of this.”

  She whispered back,

  “Remember what Maria said, that a recording is automatic as long as we are wearing the glasses. So, yes, it is being documented.”

  Years ago when Helga was a servant to Duchess Josephine de Mayer-David on her private island, she had seen the Great Gray female known as Kalian many times before she was murdered. She knew what a Great Gray looked like. Although
this alien was tall, skeletal and bore some of the traits of a Great Gray, she understood that it was not the same species.

  The head was proportionate to the body but the back of the skull was massively elongated, looking very much like ancient pharaohs of Egypt and some high priests from the ancient Maya civilization. The face was long and narrow looking as if stretched out of proportion. Wearing a tight grayish outfit there were no distinguishing features indicating gender. Helga thought it was an androgynous appearance. When he raised his skinny arms to greet the class, they saw six long skinny fingers on each hand.

  Crouched low and looking at the class, they heard the alien speak in a language they did not understand. The alien spoke a short phrase and the class repeated it. Sometimes it was just one word repeated over and over again and sometimes a long sentence. Whatever the alien said, the class repeated.

  With the shock of what they were looking at somewhat diminished, dangerous thoughts invaded Helga. She wanted to know what was in the rest of the cave, specifically behind the alien. By the time Pia realised that Helga was sneaking away from her and going deeper into the cave, it was too late to grab her arm.

  Although the tunnel was long and dark, with their night vision capability it was not a concern. When considering the size of the mound, after what seemed like an impossibly long walk they eventually came to a large chamber. Straight ahead were three small airplanes. One was a tri-plane, the type that the Red Baron flew in the First World War. The other two looked like a modern day Soviet single engine Cessna.

  Held spellbound by the impossibility, Helga swung her head from side to side determined to get it all recorded through the lenses. When Pia saw boats, in a stunned whisper she said, “Boats? How did boats get into the middle of Siberia?”

  Helga pointed and said,

  “You might also want to question how that got here.”

  She turned and was stunned to see a large submarine with a Japanese insignia of the Rising Sun on the side. Next to the submarine and small by comparison was a wooden boat looking like a Chinese Junk. Against a far wall were five different flying saucers. They were all so different in size and appearance that they clearly belonged to different alien species. The ancient cars and trucks in the middle of the cave all seemed tame by comparison. Before Pia had a chance to ask, Helga said,

  “Yes, it is all being recorded.”

  After what they considered was a complete recording of things that didn’t belong, it was agreed to get out of there. As Helga whispered,

  “Maria isn’t going to believe any of this anyway.”

  What they didn’t realize was that they had exited the chamber through another entry. A few minutes later Pia noticed that they were in a tunnel with a slight downward direction. She knew something was wrong. Helga agreed and thought it best to turn around. Perhaps going up the incline might be the better choice.

  A few minutes later they stopped and looked into another huge chamber. Because of their lenses they didn’t know if it was lit up or were looking into a dark chamber. Pia took a chance and lifted the lenses just a little bit. She reported to Helga,

  “We can’t go in there, it’s all lit up.”

  They were looking at what appeared to be endless rows of cubicles with countless coffin sized capsules all in a long row. Pia was reminded of similar capsules found in an Anunnaki cave a few years ago. The only thing she knew for sure was that this was not an Anunnaki cave.

  When looking at the closest pods, Helga noticed what appeared to be identification tags attached to the incubation chambers. For the sake of a clear recording, she stepped closer to the pods. Pia, ever the cautious one whispered,

  “No. You can’t go in there. It’s all lit up and somebody will see you.”

  Truth be told, Pia was not worried about being spotted by ‘someone’ so much as spotted by ‘something’.

  As true as that sage warning was, at least to Helga what they were doing was exciting. A craving for adventure now pushed good judgment to the side and she took that first dangerous step into the chamber. She missed the logic that weighed the difference between calculated risk and recklessness.

  Pia stood at the entrance of the chamber watching Helga, a dark shadow of a figure slither to the closest pod. The best she could do was stand guard and watch her rash partner take a preventable risk. Helga inspected the first pod but all she could make out was that it was metallic and sealed. There was no way of looking inside it. Then, as if wanting to make sure the recording on the capsule was clear and legible, she stared at it for a few seconds. Pia was at the entrance frantically waving at her to come back. When Helga thought she now had a clear recoding of what looked suspiciously like Egyptian hieroglyphs, she turned to the safety of the tunnel and saw a scared Pia franticly waving her back.

  Instead of sneaking straight back to Pia, she again scanned the chamber and saw something of great interest over by the far wall. Over there were long rows of cots with aliens supposedly sleeping on them. Sleeping or in a coma, it didn’t matter to her. Another reckless thought pushed safety to the side. She couldn’t resist. Only for the intent of the recording, she turned in that direction. When she disappeared between the pods, Pia’s frustrated eyes were cast to the ceiling.

  Between two metallic chambers and while crouched down, she scanned the long row of sleeping aliens. There were hundreds, almost countless numbers of them. It was then that another reckless thought seeped through the safety net. Back at headquarters when Maria saw the recording, Helga knew she would ask why she did not get a DNA sample. Reaching into her bag she found the DNA Swab kit and with delicate steps inched toward the closest sleeping victim. Looking down on it, she saw that it looked just like the one back in the other chamber, the teacher. Delicately reaching down to the sleeping figure she lightly ran the swab across thin lips. Suddenly large black eyes opened.

  Perhaps an experienced spy or soldier might have known instantly what to do but she was neither of those. Panic clang a loud warning bell and fast feet took control. While charging past Pia, a loud warning echoed through the tunnel.

  “Run!”

  This time good luck was on their side. While running headlong through the tunnels they managed to locate the classroom and there was no need to stop running. The exit and safety to whatever this mound really was, was dead ahead. Fast feet continued with the panicked escape.

  Although it was wrong and it was not supposed to happen, everybody in the class including the teacher was stunned to see what appeared to be two black ghosts racing past them. As if confused, they were all frozen to the spot and wondering what was happening. That all changed when the teacher saw a herd of his own species chasing the ghosts. Suddenly the humans as well as aliens were in hot pursuit.

  Now hidden somewhere in a dark corner between two houses, Pia caught her breath and demanded,

  “What did you do?”

  It was a proud reply.

  “I got Maria another alien DNA sample for her collection.”

  When they turned to make their way back to the barn and the D-wing, they looked down the street and to their horror saw lantern lights come on in all the houses. Seconds later the street was swarming with a montage of humans all carrying lanterns and torches. Helga asked,

  “If there is no electricity or telephones here, how did they all know to look for us so fast?”

  Pia understood that whatever method of communication was used, it was instant and didn’t matter. They were in trouble and that mattered.

  It was tricky and loaded with good luck but finally they were racing across the meadow toward the barn. Once reaching it and still in panic mode, they didn’t bother to swipe away all the hay on top of it. When the canopy opened a lot of hay fell into the cockpit. This was not the time for a lengthy pre-trip and to be neat. Helga grabbed the controls and piloted for a quick escape to the forest. The hay left on the outer shell of the D-wing suddenly found itself in midair and drifting lazily to the ground.

  Now safely
hidden in the dark forest, both took a second to catch their breath. Looking back down into the village they saw it was all lit up with searching torches. Helga, knowing that she had been reckless, sheepishly turned to Pia and said,

  “Whew, that was close huh?”

  Pia was not about to forgive the recklessness of waking up one of the aliens for the sake of a DNA sample and therefore barked.

  “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  Helga knew Pia was right. She accepted the reprimand and turned the D-wing toward the dark forest. Slowly at first, they passed between the narrow gap of the ground and the dome of the Siberian Triangle.

  Now zipping through the dead forest toward safety, albeit somewhat dangerous and reckless, Helga grew proud of her accomplishments. This was the excitement and adventure she had craved for a long time. Pia had a different take on the assignment and hoped she would not be given another mission with such an inexperienced partner.