“Acknowledged, Lieutenant; twenty hours.”
Hayes turned to Weathers, “Captain, if you still have floaters coming up, I would expect you to wait as far into the twenty-two hour window that we now have.”
“I will, Lieutenant.”
Several minutes and a half dozen butterscotch discs later, “Say, Captain, I just had an idea; this may sound crazy, but how about you put that uniform back on and take your floater to the other towns and try to convince them that the Fun Ship is now loading. It just might give them the jolt they need and get you out of here quicker.”
Weathers slowly turned his head and stared at Hayes--like he had just fallen out of a tree.
Weathers stood up and yelled, “MADIGAN!”
He then headed for the stairs as Madigan came from the back of the floater where he and the pilot had been resting, “GET LANDIS UP; WE’RE OUT OF HERE.”
Hayes backed away from the floater as Weathers tapped the lock plate and the stairs swung up. Two minutes later, the floater was disappearing to the east.
Hayes resumed his normal seat on the sidelines, watched the remaining floater lift for the Gregory Falls, and Susan trudge back into town to try and assemble another group. There were still thousands of Foresters in Watts, but they were locked in a battle between fear of the aliens promised future and fear of the promised death. Only Susan and a couple of other sky watchers were totally convinced of what would arrive with the next day.
Hayes slumped to the ground so he could rest his back against the seat and closed his eyes; the long rotational period of Forest was turning into a bad case of what used to be called jet lag and was now known as system switching.
There was no one around except the couple and their child at the other end of the seating area. There were no locals lining the field. Ames and Twisst were town hopping; it was just the silent bulk of the Santana, the warm sun, and the gentlest of breezes.
His mind slid down that soft path to a restful doze and images felt more than seen of Archer and the girl he was getting so serious about. She liked to tease him a little and would, occasionally, lick his ear--just like that--
“UH, WHAT!”
He jerked awake with the feel of a warm, wet tongue in his left ear. After flailing for a second and wiping his wet ear, he saw that Bad Attitude was his current tease. She had jumped back at his startled response, lying low on the ground, and looking at him.
“I have a girlfriend back home that would not approve of another girl doing that. Come here!”
He waved his arm and patted the side of his leg; she came over and lay beside him while he got the beef jerky pouch out of his bag. The smell and her chewing brought the puppies to the party and he gave them each a stick to chew on. When they had finished, he picked them up and started stroking them. They were a bit uncertain about this treatment but managed to put up with it with less and less concern as the days had passed.
##
“Ready!”
Wills entered a command at his console and CeCe’s chair configured for close maneuvering.
This time, she hung face down in virtual open space as they dropped almost straight down toward the sunlit face of Forest. Numbers hung in space to the side of her expansive view and indicated just under a thousand kilometers to the designated target area and decelerating through 10kps. She waited until they passed 300km before reducing power to the AG ring from 60 percent to 50 percent. At this rate of deceleration they would come to a complete stop 5km above the surface. She spent the remaining seconds lining up for a vertical descent to the rocky point just south of Watts.
“Landing struts down.”
“Landing struts coming down.”
The 200 meter diameter circle of virtual pads appeared in her vision.
“All landing struts indicate down and locked.”
She backed the power down to 45 percent at 50km and watched the ground coming up; the impact indicator was dead on her selected site.
#
Word had spread that the big alien ship was on its way down, and the game field was crowded again. Hayes sat on his usual seat holding the puppies and scanning the sky; Eva and her parents had joined the gathering, and Eva was standing next to Hayes’ knee, looking up where he said the ship would appear.
The sky was cloudless and there was nothing to focus on, so Hayes just let his vision wander in the general area until a small dot appeared.
He pointed at it and yelled, “THERE IT IS!”
Translation was not required and the Foresters followed the line of his arm to a dot that was now a disc that was growing larger by the second. Hayes had been on the Weasel twice during its rebuild, so he was well aware of the size of the thing that was dropping almost straight toward them; he kept shifting his gaze between the growing bulk in the sky and the expressions of the locals.
Hayes figured the Weasel was still a couple of kilometers up when the locals started to get the idea of just how much sky this thing blocked out and their depth perception started to provide accurate information. Expressions started shifting through the spectrum from anticipation to alarm.
Hayes stood and raised his free hand to gather attention, “DON’T WORRY, I KNOW THE PERSON THAT IS FLYING THIS SHIP AND SHE IS DOING A PERFECT JOB.”
A nearby male turned to him and asked, “The one person bringing this vessel down is female <question>”
It hadn’t occurred to him that that would be a surprise, “Yes!”
##
The area CeCe was falling toward had been tested by remotes and determined to be solid
