“Well, I can’t imagine how you were able to keep your cool.”
“Simple,” I said. “All I cared about—all I thought about—was your happiness.” This last part I almost choked on. I turned my face away from her. Couldn’t let her see me start to lose it.
She put her hand on my cheek and turned my face back, close to hers. “They made you too human too, didn’t they? I think that’s why I fell in love with you.” She kissed me long and full.
Turner left us alone for quite a while. What did they find to talk about? But at least it gave Stella and me time we needed. Ours would definitely be the strangest of relationships. A real space “Oprah.”
Finally Turner came in, looking tired but happy to be in his element again, and working hard. He gave us a progress report.
He said he’d help recalibrate tilings for the Earth/Mars beam. He had a tentative timetable. They expected to be ready in twenty-five days. After a few hours to beam the whole kit and caboodle to Mars, and a few weeks to be sure the new complex was working correctly, they’d have the Arizona complex self-destruct, obliterating the trail for busybody Earthlings.
Turner was all starry-eyed about how they were going to do it. “They’ll switch that gravity generator from push to pull,” he explained, “set it on a feedback loop and raise it from one g to infinity in less than a second. The place will implode. Of course the gravity generator, along with everything else within a 500 yard radius, will turn to plasma. When that happens the generated gravity will also disappear and the shock wave of everything snapping back to one g will create an explosion like a nuclear bomb, leaving a crater about a mile wide.”
Turner warned us that things might get a little sticky in the investigation following the blast. A bit of intrigue and some instant phony science ought to keep the scientific community happy with the idea that the blast had been caused by a Johnny-come-lately chip off the old Anti-Christ block.
We laughed, relieved that there was an end in sight. We raised a toast to Alice and the looking glass, and made a solemn vow that we would keep our secrets forever.
Soon after that I said my goodbyes and returned to the welcome reality of my life—tame and gray though it now seemed. But with Stella nothing would ever really be gray again.
And that’s my story.
“You didn’t go watch the explosion, Kirk?”
“Nah!”
“Well, OK. Thanks for your story. Of course, we’re going to have to cut it way way down, you know.”
“Oh sure. I know that. But just remember what I said about Stella being a classy dame.”
“Sure, sure. Just one question.”
“What’s that?”
“If the secret of this whole thing is so sacred, why the hell are you telling all now, only two weeks after the explosion?”
“Off the record?”
“Sure. The paper doesn’t give a shit. I’m just curious.”
“Well, Dr. Turner figured we need people to get used to the idea very gradually. Eventually, though, they’ll need to know. We’ve only got one hundred years before they visit us from Mars. In that time we have to do enough self improvement so we can meet Stella’s people almost as equals, or at least as more than insects. After that it’s on to Venus, then eventually even the stars could be ours. But we have to make good use of the next century.”
“But why break the news in our paper? You know we don’t project an image of overwhelming credibility?”
“Still off the record?”
“Yeah, sure. What the hell.”
“Well, eventually we re all going to have to face the fact that there are aliens on Mars. Too bad this didn’t all happen back in the time of Wells or Burroughs, eh?”
“Why is that?”
“ ’Cause people already believed it back then. But anyway, two things we don’t need now, as the truth sinks in, is interference by the Feds, or for the public to panic. The beauty of spilling the beans in your paper is that it’s the perfect foil for official denials, and for ‘official’ investigations. After more than a century of zero credibility on the UFO thing, it’s super ironic that the only well informed people will be people who read trash.”
“But, everything you’ve told me is true, isn’t it? Or isn’t it?”
“For the most part. But it’ll be unrecognizable by the time your editors get through with it, so who’s the liar once your rag hits the streets?”
“I think my boss wouldn’t like your attitude.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. We wouldn’t have it any other way. The more that actually, officially qualified people ignore the story, the better.”
“Whatever. Well, I gotta get going. Thanks for meeting me here, Kirk. Just one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“If the Anti-Christ was really the last chance for survival for your aliens, why didn’t they do like NASA used to do at the dawn of space exploration?”
“What did they do?”
“Send up two probes, in case one failed… Say, Kirk, you don’t look so good.”
“Excuse me. I’ve got to get back to the observatory now.”
“OK. So long. Your check will arrive in two weeks. Hey! Slow down, man! You’ll have an accident!”
Dedication
This story was inspired by, and is dedicated to the memory of Robert Rusk Rigor III, my father-in-law and the most remarkable southpaw I’ve ever known.