by I. O. Adler
“I know you’ve been kept in the dark. We’ve had no choice. There’s some things I still can’t tell you.”
“Then start with the things that you can.”
“The Mars Discovery orbital, all planetary assets including the base, and the Constellation Three were all lost within seconds of each other. What everyone calls the Big Wipe hit us fifteen minutes and forty seconds later. Our astronauts in the space habs in Earth orbit, the moon base, and the Chinese resupply ship between Earth and the moon were also destroyed. There’s not much here the public hasn’t already guessed, except that this wasn’t a sun event. This came from almost the opposite direction. We lost your mom and a lot of good people that day.”
“Why wouldn’t anyone talk to me?”
“Because some of the big brains at NASA and the Russians and the Japanese think they saw something just before it happened. The Mars orbital pinged an unidentified inbound object. We received a message from the astronauts on board. We confirmed it, had them triple-check what they described as a radar signature which had changed course over an hour. It could only be a guided object of some kind and wasn’t anything sent from Earth. The object appeared near the moon Deimos. And then the event happened. We made first contact and it knocked us out of space and wrecked half the planet.”
Carmen took a moment to absorb the story. While her earlier distrust lingered, after what she had seen she didn’t doubt any of it. And if this was what Agent Barrett was willing to share, what was he holding back?
“My mother was on the orbital, wasn’t she?”
He nodded. “So when a message from Sylvia Vincent appeared, we hoped it was a prank. But with that sphere sitting in the middle of a ruined restaurant here in sunny California, you can bet we’re concerned. So if you have anything else to add, tell me now.”
Carmen met his gaze. “I saw my mom. She’s alive. And I think she’s in trouble.”
Chapter Twelve
Agent Barrett showed no visible reaction as Carmen did her best to explain what had happened on board the spaceship. Hearing herself tell the story out loud was crazy. She’d be locked up or accused of lying at the very least. But with Jenna still trapped in the sphere and her mom out there somewhere, possibly injured, possibly dead, she couldn’t hold back.
“Tell me about the relationship you had with your mother.”
She was immediately suspicious. “Why?”
“There’s a lot to unpack here. If this isn’t your mother, then who is it and what do they know about us and about you? But if it is your mother, she’s returned to Earth with alien technology far beyond anything we currently understand.”
“Can we worry about getting Jenna out of that sphere first?”
“We’ve got a lot of trained and intelligent people working on that. You didn’t see your mom off on launch day. Why not?”
She remembered the day clearly. Still felt the burn of guilt of allowing her own bitterness and anger to rule her as it had. “We had been fighting. It wasn’t anything new. Mom wasn’t around during most of my high school years, ever since being selected as a mission alternate. She and my dad split up. His health wasn’t good, but my mom wouldn’t help. He needed care. I had to drop out of college to look after him. I’m going to need to check on him soon.”
“There’ll be time for that. So you didn’t accept the invitation to watch her leave.”
“My sister tried to get me to go. She was still married then. But she was on her whole ‘forgive everyone their trespasses’ phase. I wasn’t ready for that yet.”
“You resented your mom for joining the mission?”
“We weren’t speaking then. She had already back-burnered her family. And now she was asking us to join her for a photoshoot and a teary goodbye? I watched the departure online to make sure she was gone.”
Barrett was momentarily distracted by a message on his wrist device. He dismissed it. “Our transcripts show you and your mom messaged each other during the mission.”
“Jenna got a call twice a week. I got one about every month. Mom never gave up. I answered her most of the time.”
“But you never initiated contact.”
“I was pissed. Does that answer your question?”
“Not entirely. After the Big Wipe, you never stopped pestering NASA, your congressperson, and anyone else you could call or write about what happened to her.”
“Do you have parents, Agent Barrett?”
“This isn’t about me. But yes, I have both a mom and a dad.”
“Then unless you’ve turned out to be everything they hoped for, you have to understand.”
He blinked a few times as if processing the comment. “What would you say her state of mind was?”
“When are you talking about? During the mission? Before it?”
“Both.”
“Mom believed in excellence and never falling short. She held herself and us to that standard.”
“Did she have a temper?”
“Ask NASA. They do their psych evaluations, don’t they?”
“I’m asking you.”
“She got angry and not just at me. She and Jenna had some knock-down drag-outs, especially when Jen started going to church and preaching. Mom didn’t want to hear any of it.”
“Did she ever hit you?”
Carmen shook her head and broke eye contact. The doctor had left. Peter was asleep. She was alone with Agent Barrett. Alone with him and the small camera he wore on his suit.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Can you answer?”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
“If what’s out there is your mother, then we need to know what it’s thinking and what it’s feeling.”
“You keep saying ‘it.’ My mom’s a real person. I spoke with her. She’s alive. But right now I’m tired, hungry, and my sister’s trapped inside that machine.”
He looked like he was about to reply but then he got another call and walked to the opposite side of the tent. Carmen shivered. It was too much to wish for that this was all a bad dream.
Agent Barrett muttered a curse and hurried down the plastic corridor leading to the restaurant. Carmen followed him. He met with two of the spacemen, who fell in behind them as they hurried through the outdoor eating area, which had been cleared of its furniture and much of the trash and weeds, and ducked through a newly torn-down section of wall.
None of the three had noticed her tailing them.
The gray sphere stood just inside where she had last seen it. White lights on metal stands illuminated it.
“Hey, come back here!”
The doctor was hurrying to catch up with her. But even as Agent Barrett and the others paused to look, Carmen slipped into the restaurant.
Barrett moved to corral her. “Go back to the tent. You can’t be in here. It’s dangerous.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I was inside that thing. Maybe I can figure something out. Let me help.”
A third spaceman was waiting for them and looked ready to pounce on her. But he hesitated when Barrett held up his hand.
Carmen gazed at the sphere and resisted the urge to run. The surface reflected none of the light. The object was perfect darkness, a thing of awful precision and purpose beyond anything man might build. And it had been sent for her and her sister.
The front stood open.
Just inside the curved hatchway loomed the spindly robot that had taken her and Jenna. It wasn’t moving. The bubble screen it had for a head appeared to be powered down. It was hunched with its knuckles on the ground. Beyond lay her sister, propped up on the material of the sphere, which was formed into a bed identical to the ones she’d seen aboard the spaceship.
The waiting spaceman spoke loud through an amplified mic. “It just opened up. The major’s an hour out and will be landing at Travis in thirty. She’s been advised. We need to get the civilian out of here.”
Agent Barrett left Carmen’s side and a
pproached the robot. “Well, she’s not here yet. Did that robot move?”
“No. No one was touching it. None of our people were doing anything.”
“All right. I’m making the call. I want everyone to fall back. We’re setting a new perimeter at a hundred yards. Close the freeway. I want all these walls torn down so we can watch this thing from a distance. No one does anything without my say. And get her out of here.”
One of the spacemen moved towards her.
Past the robot, a new light flickered to life, a red cone identical to the one inside what she thought of as the spaceship control room.
Agent Barrett tried to grab her as she ducked past him. But his suit hampered his movements.
“Come back here!”
He stopped short of the robot occupying the doorway.
Carmen entered the sphere. The floor sloped upward to a round interior room. She went to her sister’s side. Jenna appeared to be asleep. There was nothing attached to her skin, no spike in her neck, and nothing around her head. But if the events on the spaceship weren’t a dream, then somehow her sister was still connected to her robot body in that faraway place.
She tried to recall the details of the final moment before she had disconnected. How had she broken contact and woken up? And what had Peter done that had caused him to suffer a seizure?
Agent Barrett remained outside the sphere and was calling to her, his tone urgent.
Carmen touched her sister’s hand tentatively as if she might receive a shock. Jenna’s skin was warm. Besides the morphed bench beneath her sister and the robot in the doorway, the red light was the only other feature in the sphere’s otherwise smooth interior.
“It’s me. I’m here. Wake up.”
Jenna didn’t reply.
The red light pulsed.
During her last moments on the spaceship, Carmen had spoken with someone or something via an identical red light. What had they called themselves? Designate She Who Waits. They had accused Carmen and her mom of stealing the ship. Carmen had left that out of her interview.
Her stomach sank at the thought that now She Who Waits was once again trying to make contact. And what would happen when this She Who Waits discovered that Carmen’s mother was gone and there was no one there who could return what had been taken?
Agent Barrett entered the sphere and held his hand out for her. “Carmen, come with me. We need to leave. It’s not safe.”
“There’s something I didn’t tell you. We spoke with someone who wasn’t my mother. In the other place. There was a room with a light like that one.”
He took her by the elbow. “We’ll talk about it outside. If there’s a way to communicate with whoever is out there, we have people for that. We’ll bring your sister out.”
She took a final look at Jenna. Thought about what disconnecting her might mean. If Peter had suffered a physical shock and mental break, something even worse might happen.
She shoved his hand aside and moved to the red light. Touched it. Searched desperately for any of the other controls that had hovered in the air inside the spaceship control room.
“Hello? I’m here. She Who Waits, are you listening? Can anyone hear me?”
Agent Barrett wasn’t gentle as he seized her shoulders. But as he moved her towards the doorway, a solid curved wall materialized. They stumbled back.
The red cone of light flickered as if a breeze had struck it.
Carmen spoke louder. “This is Sylvia Vincent’s daughter. My mother stole your ship. We need your help and we want to return it. In exchange, give me my mother back and let my sister go. She’s stuck here and won’t wake up. Tell me you can understand. Are you there?”
Agent Barrett let her go and moved to where the door used to be, directly in front of the robot. He slapped his hands against the gray surface. “Open it up. What did you do?”
She ignored him as she inspected the floating light from every angle. Tried waving her hands about in the air and through it. The red cone continued to hang like a suspended candle dancing in midair. There were no other controls. So what had her mother done to steal a spaceship? Fighting back a growing sense of frustration, she stepped away to consider the light and the space around it. She was missing something.
Jenna was counting on her.
Agent Barrett was texting on his device. He tried to make a phone call. From the sound of it he wasn’t getting through.
Carmen tried for a few more minutes to recreate the mom-creature’s hand movements. Then she went to the robot. Examined it. Inspected every inch for an on switch.
“We’re in trouble,” Agent Barrett said. “Whatever you did shut the door. Now stand still and stop doing anything. You’ll only make it worse. There can’t be much air in here and my suit’s almost out.”
“I’m breathing fine.”
He went back to the wrist device and his typing was frantic. He then slapped at the tiny keyboard and let out a groan.
Carmen touched the dormant bot. “When we had our robot bodies we could open doors.”
“This door opened by itself or you did it before you staggered out of the sphere. If you tried harder to remember, it might be helpful.”
“I don’t remember doing anything. I think it was the robot. If it’s like the ones we were inside on the spaceship, someone has to control it.”
“Okay. So who?”
“My mom was there. But then I also talked to someone else. She called herself She Who Waits. We spoke briefly. She said my mother stole a spaceship and she wanted it back.”
He sagged visibly. “I hope you’re wrong about that. How did you even communicate?”
“She spoke English.”
“That’s unlikely.”
“It’s what happened. She spoke weird like she was placing words together one at a time. She didn’t sound mad, just insistent.”
“I don’t think you’re qualified to translate alien emotions.”
“I’m not. But I was there and you weren’t. And whoever she is wants us to talk to her. That red light is on and it wasn’t before. Maybe there’s something inside the sphere that isn’t working.”
He paused as if thinking. “Or there’s a delay. Talking to Mars isn’t fast. You know that. It all depends on where Mars is. It could take twenty minutes for a radio signal to be received one-way. So wherever this She Who Waits is, they may be hearing what you said earlier right now or maybe not getting it for another several minutes. So don’t say anything else.”
“Carmen?”
It was Jenna. But when Carmen turned to face her sister, Jenna remained where she had been.
“Carmen, I’m here.”
The voice came from the red light.
“I can hear you. If you can hear me, wait. I’m going to try something so I can get to you.”
Carmen leaned close to the light. “Jenna? Are you there?”
Her sister didn’t reply. She called for her again before going to her sister’s side and taking her hand. Squeezed it. “I’m here. I won’t leave your side. Tell me you’re okay and try to wake up.”
When Jenna remained silent, Carmen kneeled by her side.
Agent Barrett appeared next to her, fiddling with his suit. Finally he unzipped the helmet and took a deep breath before letting it dangle behind his head.
“Didn’t you hear me?” he gasped. He wiped sweat from his forehead. “I told you to stay away from the light and don’t touch anything. Can you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“We’re moving.”
Chapter Thirteen
She felt the pressure around her feet when she stood. But the interior of the sphere remained as still and silent as before.
Agent Barrett fussed with one of his gloves as he tried to remove it. “I told you to stay out of here. Not to do anything. Not to say anything. Or touch anything.”
“Are you sure we’re moving?”
He tugged his ear and worked his jaw. “I’m sure.” From the dangling helmet h
e removed a headset and put it on. He tapped at his wrist device. “Still no signal.” He went to the red light. “You say this is what lets you talk to them?”
“That’s how it worked when I was on board the other ship. But we just heard Jenna.”
“Maybe it’s a party line. Okay, I’m going to talk.” He licked his lips. “This is Agent Raymond Barrett. Is Jenna Vincent there? Is there anyone else listening? I represent the United States government. We want to speak with you and declare our peaceful intentions. We wish to open a dialogue and establish relations. Please acknowledge this message.”
“You write that script yourself?”
“You want to pretend we’re not in trouble? Go ahead. But we’re sealed inside this thing and have no idea where it’s taking us. There’s limited air. And I don’t see a water tap, fridge, or toilet. So can your attitude. You said the entity you contacted identified themselves as She Who Waits?”
“Yes. She said she owned the ship.”
He cleared his throat. “Is She Who Waits listening? We didn’t steal your ship. If this sphere belongs to you, we surrender it. Please respond to our message. We’re trapped on board. If we can land and disembark, we wish to see returned to you what was stolen.”
Carmen listened with a growing sense of frustration. “How about mentioning something about my sister and my mom?”
“One thing at a time. If these people are powerful enough to damage our world, then we’re going to be polite about our requests. Now stop talking. Let’s wait and see if they respond.”
It had been her sister speaking to her. Somehow Jenna was making the sphere move, Carmen was certain. She felt a growing pressure in her gut as if she were on a high-rise elevator going up.
Her hands felt swollen. “It’s so quiet.”
Agent Barrett sat on the floor. “We’re accelerating. This is bad. This is really bad.”
Carmen’s ears felt like they needed to pop. She again took her sister’s hand. “Jenna, if you can hear me, let me know. Whatever you’re doing is taking us somewhere. Is that what you really want to do?”
“If we keep going faster, we’ll be crushed.”
