Illegal Alien

All the arrangements had been made. Hask and Clete would fly up to the mothership, get the rest of the Tosoks, and then land in United Nations Plaza. There was going to be some delay aboard the mothership — Hask lacked the vocabulary to explain exactly why that was — so they would not be returning for about twenty hours.

Frank, meanwhile, would be flown by fighter jet direct from the Kitty Hawk to Washington, where he’d brief the president, who was already miffed that the meeting was taking place at the UN rather than on the White House lawn, as fifties SF films had predicted. They would both then fly to New York; other world leaders were making their way there is well. All in all, Frank was pleased: humanity was handling first contact much better than he’d expected.

The alien lander lifted off the flight deck, its deep green form stark against the pale blue sky. Frank waved as it rose higher and higher. Two F-14s provided an escort — as well as an opportunity to observe the alien ship in flight.

Inside the lander, Clete was getting it all on videotape. No live transmission was possible, unfortunately — the lander was shielded against radio waves, preventing Clete from broadcasting out, and there was no way of using the equipment on hand to interface his camera with the communications system employed by the Tosoks.

Although the four mirrored squares along the pointed bow of the shield-shaped craft did indeed turn out to be windows, Clete found he got a much better view through the wall display inside the ship. The lander rose up, higher and higher; the Atlantic Ocean receded beneath them, and the sky quickly changed from blue to purple to black. Soon Clete could see the east coast of Central America, and then the west coast of Africa as well. He was literally shaking with excitement — his whole life he’d wanted to go into space, and now it was happening! Adrenaline coursed through his system, and when he caught sight of his own reflection in the wall monitor, he saw that there was a huge grin spread across his face.

The lander continued to rise, and soon it passed over the terminator, into Earth’s nightside. Above, the real stars were rock steady; below, the constellations of city lights twinkled with interference patterns.

Soon the ship was in orbit, and the invisible hand stopped pressing against Clete’s side — he was, after all, sitting sidesaddle. He felt himself grow weightless, and his heart pounded even harder with excitement.

And then, there it was — floating majestically in front of them.

The mothership.

It was indeed gigantic. Almost all parts of it were flat black, making it hard to see against the backdrop of space. It seemed to be baton-shaped, with a bulbous habitat module at one end and what appeared to be an engine at the other. That the engine and the living quarters were so far apart suggested to Clete that the power source was nuclear. He’d have to get his colleagues to look over starplates they’d made in the last year or so; in all likelihood, the alien ship had come toward Earth tail first. Most ideas Clete had seen for starflight proposed a continuous acceleration to the halfway point, turning the ship around, then continuously decelerating until the destination was reached. Astronomers might well have inadvertently recorded the fusion exhaust of the braking starship — and from its spectra, something could be gleaned about Tosok technology.

Hask said the Tosok home world had a higher gravity than Earth, but the mothership, of course, was in microgravity now, although during its starflight its constant acceleration would have provided a sensation of normal weight.

Clete was still having trouble maintaining his composure. Flying through space was enough in and of itself to qualify as the greatest thrill of his life, but to have that coupled with actually being in the presence of an extraterrestrial lifeform was almost too much to bear. He’d been grinning so much that his cheeks hurt, and he felt positively giddy.

And weightlessness! My God, it was everything Armstrong and the other astronauts had told him it was! Once, for his PBS show, Clete had flown aboard the Vomit Comet — the KC-135 jet that NASA used to train astronauts. That had been fun, but this — this was spectacular!

Space travel.

Alien life.

Starships.

He’d come a long way from his poor upbringing in the hills of Tennessee.

He was famous, a celebrity, rich, a frequent guest on The Tonight Show.

But he’d always said he would trade all of that to go into space, to know for sure that life existed elsewhere.

Clete had guessed correctly: the lander was indeed fully automated; Hask never once touched the controls. But as the lander maneuvered along the baton’s boom, something caught Clete’s eye. Although it was hard to know what Tosok technology was supposed to look like, a portion of the ship seemed damaged. Clete pointed at it.