The Interloper

“You know damned well why I am not going to work at NASA.”

Smoke filled the bar as people around her took notice of her tone. The wind howled outside on the northern slope as she sat closer to the stove. Besides the wind, there was the sound of his heavy breathing among the static caused by the unusually intense auroral activity.

“Sammy, this isn’t about me or you; this is about something much more important.”

General George Richards had not called his daughter by that name since before her mother died.

“More important? Everything seems more important than me or us; why should I listen to you?”

Talking with her was like reasoning with a hungry shark in bloody water. George wasn’t equipped to reason with someone that didn’t just take orders. He had promised the President he would try to work with her again.

“Kitten, I tried to keep you out of this, but he insisted I reach out to you.”

“He, who?”

“The guy I work for, you know, that guy that lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

She thought about the recently appointed President after the elected one died of cancer. David was intelligent but not charismatic.

“You never talk about your work, Daddy. If this is some lame trick to get me back into your life…”

The static crash caused her to pull the phone away from her ear. “I want you back in my life, but, It’s no trick. Your report about Charon no longer orbiting Pluto got the President’s attention. He wants you involved.”

Sam thought about her thesis on celestial mechanics. Earning her Ph.D. and discovering one of the most important finds in Astronomy would place her front and center of what is undoubtedly a world-changing event.

“This line isn’t secure, and there are people around. Before I left the observatory, I noticed something strange. I will head to the lower 48 soon.”

George breathed a sigh of relief. “See you soon, baby.”

Sam hung up the phone while glancing around. Between the men playing pool and the TV showing an episode of a reality TV show, she felt like a stop in Roswell was in order.

Her college roommate, who owns a ranch in New Mexico, sounded strange the last time they spoke. She sipped her drink while marveling at the frozen concoction in a goblet made from ice.

I bet Alice would love to see this. She thought.

Alice had sent strange messages that shook her out of her emotional prison.

Her escape from humanity under the guise of studying climate change was terminated by a discovery she made while getting time on the Hubble telescope. Charon was not where it belonged.

Besides Pluto’s wayward moon, there was something much more suspicious. A rare occurrence that happens every 396 billion years is about to occur.

She was sure that a planetary alignment of all eight planets and Pluto’s moon ripped from its tidally locked orbit was no coincidence. As she pondered the odds, her phone alerted her to a text from her father. A military aircraft would pick her up at 07:00 hours.

Dad must have lots of sway. She thought.

Sam headed to the local hotel covering her face from the harsh winds. She peered at the ribbons of light overhead. The aurora never got old. Intense solar activity had ionized much of the ionosphere, making the show more intense. They had witnessed the phenomena as far south as Texas.

Orbs of light danced amongst the ribbons. What the hell, the aurora doesn’t do that, she thought.

The knot in her stomach grew as she thought about Charon’s perturbation and the planets’ orientation. The alignment was predictable. The missing moon was not.

***

The airport in Roswell stood in stark contrast to LAX. There were people, but nothing like the hordes of travelers in California. Alice met her at the gate.

“Hey, what brings you back from the frozen tundra of Alaska?”

Sam glanced at her before reaching out for a hug. “You do, among other things.”

Alice peered into her eyes. “Me?”

Sam’s smirk had Alice questioning everything she thought she knew about her. “What’s up with you?”

The cadence of her clicking heels on the tile floor set the pace toward baggage claim. “Heels, you Sam, heels?”

“I thought about what you said about me being a Tom Boy.”

“Samantha, you should be a blooming model in one of those underwear commercials. You’re hotter than a firecracker, and from what I can tell, you still are.”

They sat while waiting on the carousel to start moving. Sam noticed Alice staring at her short skirt and long legs. “What? I still have legs.”

“You have them. I don’t remember you ever wearing a skirt this short or even caring that you had them.”

“What would you say if I told you I stopped in LA and did some shopping before I came here?”

“I would say, good girl, why this and not those baggy clothes you normally wear?”

The buzzer drew their attention from the subject as a loud humming sound preceded the movement of the circular belt. Sam decided to give her another shock.

Alice noted that Sam’s suitcase was much smaller, and her short dress did not adequately cover her green panties as she bent over to grab it.

Her red hair, juxtaposed with her snow-white complexion, screamed for some sun. Alice hoped she would spend time in the pool.

The old truck lumbered down the ramp toward the highway back to town. “God, I miss the warmth. I wanted to get away from Daddy so badly I decided to study the effects of climate change, forgetting about polar bears and dying from freezing.”

“For the record, you gave quite a show to those of us sitting behind you when you grabbed your luggage.”

Sam smiled, “Not used to short dresses. Did you enjoy it?”

“Was I supposed to?”

Sam snickered, “I felt the draft; I knew what I was doing.”

“Samantha Richards, were you purposefully being lewd?”

Sam nodded and then laughed at the ridiculousness of it. “I was, but only for you. Did I get our last conversation out of context? Were you not trying to tell me you wanted me that way?”

Alice weaved back in her lane as she glanced at Sam. “Usually, you are so out of touch you never pick up on my teases. Yes, I want you that way. I have since school. What changed?”

Sam unbuckled her seat belt scooting over to the middle of the bench seat. “Keep your eyes on the road. I don’t want to die on some desolate road in New Mexico.”

Sam felt her hand on her leg as her fingers trumpeted toward the edge of her skirt. Alice glanced at her to make sure her touch was welcome. “Don’t get too distracted. I really don’t want to crash into a stray cow,” Sam said.

“I am gob-smacked, honey. Why the sudden change?”

Her long red hair blew around in the wind from the open window. She tried to corral it before responding to Alice.

“When mom died, part of me died too. Dad went into military mode and raised me like some young recruit instead of his daughter. I don’t know how to love, and this overt expression of affection for you was a gamble that kept me up night after night. Even this perfume was a hard choice.”

“So, this short dress and such is for me to enjoy?”

“My heart is for you to enjoy if I read my cards right. I need love.”

Alice pulled off the highway into the driveway of an ice cream fast food place. “Let’s get some ice cream before we leave civilization altogether.”

Dust passed the truck as the wind from a storm cloud caught their attention. “We hardly ever get rain this time of year, and look here, this is the third day in a row.”

Alice was amused to see the ice cream drip down the front of her dress, disappearing in her ample cleavage.

“Damn, you’re hot.”

“This ice cream cooled me off. Are you still hot?”

Alice glanced at her and smirked. “Never mind, you’re right. You do need some love.”

Sam smiled, “Oh, you meant…”

Alice nodded as they turned onto the road leading to the ranch.

***

Two weeks passed when Sam returned to the airport and headed to DC.

“Why didn’t you come straight to DC?” George asked.

“Because you wanted me to. I have a life, Daddy, and I am not some freaking soldier.”

George grimaced as he thought about what he would say if she was a soldier. He also recognized that stubborn streak she inherited from his wife.

“I’m sorry, Kitten. I didn’t know any other way to raise you other than the way I did. You need to trust me now. The reason you are here is damned important. You have kept the Joint Chiefs and the President waiting while you went gallivanting around with your college roommate.”

She glared at him before she realized that he must have spied on her.

“Sorry, Dad, I needed something you can’t give me. I am here now. What’s the big deal?”

Thanks to having access to several agencies, George knew what she had been up to. He also knew that she was emotionally damaged by how she was raised.

“I know you don’t want to work for NASA, but I need you to corroborate with some scientists and make some sense of a few things.”

Her anger morphed into curiosity as she nodded in agreement.

***

Dan, the lead scientist, and others provided her with raw data without divulging their thoughts. It took little time for her to stare at him and then the others.

“What the hell happened to Triton?”

Dan smiled as he glanced around the room at the others. Dr. Richard’s reputation lived up to their expectations. “Yeah, that’s what we wondered. How does a moon that orbits retrograde of a planet suddenly change its orbit and its distance from the planet?”

Sam was again given time on Hubble to study other bodies in the area. A couple of Neptune’s other moons had also been perturbed.

***

Dad was absent when she informed the President and his advisors of her findings.

“Dr. Richards, are you suggesting that a micro black hole is meandering through our solar system?”

“I never said black hole, Mr. President. Something able to perturb small bodies like Charon or Triton and others is moving them. Pluto no longer has a moon, and Triton is now orbiting Neptune as we suspect it should instead of going in the opposite direction like it had been for billions of years. What could have caused this is the million-dollar question.”

“Dr. Richards, does the alignment of the planets play into these phenomena?” Glenn, the President’s science advisor, asked?

“Who knows? I wasn’t around 400 billion years ago. My guess is that it doesn’t. I think that something we can’t detect by conventional means is heading this way. If I am correct, Saturn’s rings might tell the tale.”

The President put her on his advisory panel, giving her access to whatever or whoever she needed. Sam headed to the VLA (Very Large Array) to focus the radio telescope on the area. While invisible to the light spectrum that an ordinary telescope can see, the VLA could detect different wavelengths.

Sam was at a loss when the rings of Saturn were not perturbed in the allotted time. The trajectory of the interloper to date had been predictable. Zachery, the lead at the VLA, focused his dishes, searching for a needle in the proverbial haystack. A large object warping space seemed to be heading to Jupiter.

Training Hubble on the invisible interloper proved worthless until Europa was eclipsed by an enormous orb.

“Zachery, what is that thing?”

He shook his head.

“I can tell you what it isn’t. It’s not some random rock just passing through. It changed its trajectory, skipping Saturn while heading for Europa.”

The room fell silent as Sam tried to swallow the knot forming in her throat. “There’s intelligence at work.”

“It would seem so,” Zachery said.

***

“It’s orbiting Europa?” The President asked.

Her father was in this meeting which surprised her.

“Not only is it orbiting, it is doing something to the moon. We have detected jets of water towering far above the surface.

Glenn did not believe what he was hearing. “Are you suggesting there are little green men at play, Dr. Richards?”

Sam glanced in his direction when she saw her father biting his lip. She heard his voice as if he were talking out loud. Not a hill to die on. She thought. Her father was a master of knowing the fights to fight and the battles to leave for fools.

“Mr. Warnock, I only suggest this is not a natural occurrence. We see a deliberate action by a life form, robot, or drone. It’s not made by humans, so; we must conclude that a form of alien intelligence is at work.”

The tension that statement caused was thick as the fog on a San Fransisco bay night.

“Dr. Richards, what do you think it might be doing?” The President asked.

Sam peered at him thoughtfully, noticing his wavy blond hair and pleasant smile. His blue eyes were drilling into her when she responded. “I think it might be harvesting its resources.”

“Resources?”

“Water, Mr. President, Europa we believed to be rich in H2O.”

“Dr. Richards, surely you don’t think that thing is stealing water?”

Sam bit her lip again before responding to Warnock.

“Europa is moving into a higher orbit. Either it’s changing its orbit because that thing is tugging it further away or, using classical Newtonian physics, it has less mass, so it’s moving higher.”

***

Samantha found herself heading back to the VLA via a short stop in Roswell.

She went into town to see the craziness of the annual pilgrimage of many alien-seeking people. Alice was tending to the animals with the Vet, leaving Sam to explore the city for herself.

Once in the crowd, she followed the stories and the tin foil hat variety until an old man approached her.

“Excuse me, miss, some little guys told me I would find you here and that I should give this to you.”

She glanced at his weather-worn face before catching a glimpse of a shiny object in his hand. Reaching for it, they both felt an electric shock. She witnessed a vision of a cave, some strange-looking people, and this old man.

Pulling her hand away, she held the metallic object before witnessing the smile on his face.

“You saw them, didn’t you?”

Her wide eyes and pinched lips were only part of her reason for not speaking. She nodded, smiled, and finally asked him if he wanted some money for his trouble.

“I ain’t a street person Miss. I’m just poor.”

The old man vanished into the crowd before she could dig in her purse. That night she showed the medallion to Alice, who offered her a gold chain to wear around her neck.

Nightly visions of the little people were quickly accompanied by echoes. It took little time for the sounds to turn into voices she could understand.

A text from Zachery had her flying back to the VLA.

The interloper was moving, and it was headed for Earth.

***

“Mr. President, Europa appears decimated by that thing, and it’s headed in this direction.”

The facts were indisputable. The Earth and the interloper seemed on a collision course.

“What if word of this thing gets out?” Glenn asked.

“Riots, people acting stupidly, and God only knows what else they are capable of. The interloper has started to reflect light. It’s only a matter of time before some amateur astronomer finds it and makes a video. We need to put the national guard on notice. George, I think it’s time you and your daughter pooled your resources, and you show her what you are working on,” the President said.

Sam peered at her father across the table as he nodded at the President. Later that afternoon, the General, an avid pilot, took control of a military Learjet.

“You want to fly this thing, Sam?”

“I never got my rating for Jets pop; the King Air is as far as I got.”

“Now is as good a time as any; follow this course.”

“Vegas?”

“No, about a hundred miles north of Vegas.”

Sam swallowed hard; she knew that area contained the fabled Area 51.

“Dad, what are you getting me involved in?”

He glanced at her, exhaling as if blowing the last bit of cigarette smoke from his lungs.

“My world. The President gave you the same clearance as I have. If that thing heading this way is as powerful as you believe it is, you need access to what I manage.”

She looked at him while adjusting the air speed to compensate for bumping into the jet stream.

“And that is?”

“1947, little green or gray men and the technology from there. That craft that crashed near your friend’s ranch was no weather balloon. It didn’t crash. We shot it down.”

Sam flipped the autopilot back on while staring at her father. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Kitten, you were no normal child. As much as I wanted you to have a life outside my world, you were destined to be involved. That trinket around your neck is not from this planet, and I think you know that.”

She sat silently while holding the medallion.

“It was meant for me, wasn’t it?”

George nodded. He had seen something like that before. His daughter and that relic were destined to be the Earth’s Last Hope.