Bower was pleasantly surprised to meet a female captain of a warship. Both she and Elvis introduced themselves. Bower shook hands with Captain Lovell, while Elvis saluted.
Stella kept her distance, but she was on the deck of the ship with its rough, painted grit surface designed to keep sailors from slipping in the wet. Stella looked magnificent against the drab, battleship grays surrounding her. Her red fronds glistened in the sunlight.
Bower was sure Stella was aware of this amiable exchange and hoped the pleasantries would put the alien at ease. In shaking Davidson’s hand, she could feel his fingers trembling slightly. It had to be nerve-wracking to put on a pretense of civility with a massive alien creature looming blood-red behind them.
The film crew were wearing NASA polo shirts.
“Dr. Anish Ambar,” said an older man, speaking with a distinct Indian accent. His face was kind, his skin a soft shade of brown. He was impeccably groomed, with a neatly trimmed mustache and short black hair. Soft grey highlights peppered his mustache but his hair still retained its youthful vigor. “Director of Astrobiology with SETI, based out of Mumbai.”
“It’s a pleasure,” Bower replied. She went to introduce herself, but Dr. Anish continued speaking.
“Dr. Bower, we are deeply indebted to you and your colleague for preserving the life of this remarkable creature.”
Bower turned to one side, “Dr. Ambar, this is Stella. Stella, Dr. Ambar.” There was a nice introversion in a formal introduction. Bower hoped Stella picked up on that, with the repetition of both names making it clear these were proper nouns.
Over the past day, Bower had observed how the alien could alter its apparent height by flexing or softening the blades that carried it onward. Here, on the deck of a US warship, the creature raised up on the tip of its blades, giving it an impressive height of almost ten feet. Its medusa-like head of scarlet fronds swayed like a snake sampling the air with its tongue.
The cameras were rolling, catching footage of the majestic red blades and the swarm of creatures at Stella’s heart.
One of the cameramen stepped out to get a clear shot of the alien and Stella reacted, bristling with her fronds stiffening like sword blades.
“You’re going to have to put those away,” Elvis said. “She may think they’re weapons.”
“Of course, of course,” Dr. Ambar replied. The cameramen didn’t have to be told, they took the cameras off their shoulders and held them next to their thighs, still recording but without appearing threatening. Lovell and Davidson looked uncomfortably nervous.
Stella ambled closer to Elvis and Bower.
“Easy girl,” Elvis said, his hands reaching out and touching her sharp spear tips. Stella responded, her fronds wrapping gently around his hand like leather straps. She relaxed her legs as well, allowing the fronds that held her up to flex and settle on the deck. The NASA film crew caught the interaction on video, and Bower could see Dr. Ambar was fascinated.
“If you’ll excuse us,” Captain Lovell said. “We need to get this deck cleared and report in to the task force. The alien craft is no more than seventy nautical miles out and I want to make sure we’re not in breach of our obligations.”
Both Bower and Elvis went to speak at the same time, stunned by what they were hearing. Elvis let Bower continue.
“I’m sorry, could you explain?”
Lovell and Davidson had already turned. They climbed a set of stairs leading from the flight deck to the com-tower. From there, they wasted no time in disappearing inside the bowels of the ship.
“It’s OK,” Dr. Ambar replied, seeing the concern on Bower’s face. “We should be fine here, they just want to dump the Osprey.”
“Dump the Osprey?” Bower said, confused.
She looked back. Several sailors dressed in chemical warfare suits were working with a low-profile, heavy-duty tractor to push the Osprey toward the edge of the ship. The flight crew from the Osprey were standing to one side, watching as the squat looking vehicle with beefy tires pushed on the wheels of their aircraft. One wheel on the Osprey slipped, crashing with a thud on the edge of the landing deck and Stella flexed.
“Green light,” Elvis said, remaining in physical contact with the creature to provide some reassurance.
The tractor repositioned itself, pushing on the front wheel of the aircraft and the Osprey plunged overboard, disappearing over the side of the ship and splashing into the water.
The NASA film crew discretely recorded Stella’s reactions from several angles, watching as she again bristled defensively at the sharp crack of noise and the motion of the tractor.
Bower walked to one side and looked down the length of the ship as crewmen and women dumped various pieces of military hardware over the edge of the USS William Lawrence. Although she didn’t recognize most of the equipment being dumped, she did catch sight of a platform-mounted Gatling gun. The gun was easily the size of a compact car, with a large steel plate at its base and some kind of radar dome near the multiple gun barrels. The crane released the Gatling gun and it plunged into the sea, disappearing beneath the waves in a burst of spray.
“What’s going on?” Elvis asked.
“We’ve been in contact with the mothership,” Dr. Ambar said. “They’re coming to get her.”
Bower heard that. She jogged back over. She didn’t know whether to be excited for Stella or wary.
“You’re using her as bait?” Elvis asked, clearly defensive.
“Not as bait,” Ambar replied in his distinct, Bombay accent. “She is a peace offering. We are trying to show this interstellar alien species that all this was a mistake. Returning Stella is a goodwill offering, something to let them know we are sorry for what has transpired, we’re making amends. This is a repatriation.”
“You’ve been in contact with them?” Bower asked, seeking clarification. “So you can talk to them?”
“Not so much talk as make declarations. They understand far more than they let on when they speak back.”
“But they talk back?”
“Yes. But their replies are often just a bunch of nouns thrown together. There’s no grammar or syntax, just blunt nouns and the odd verb. After we made it clear one of their kind had survived they sent a floater. We observed the craft enter our atmosphere about two hours ago, over water rather than land.”
Dr. Ambar pointed behind the ship. “We should get our first glimpse of the rescue craft from somewhere over there. In the meantime, the USS William Lawrence is under orders to demilitarize. They’re throwing all their weaponry overboard along with anything that could be mistaken as a weapon.”
He paused for a moment. His voice sounded introspective, sad.
“But they’re leaving. They’re abandoning the petulant children of Earth.”
“I don’t understand? Why would they leave?” Elvis asked.
“They said they have what they came for.”
“What did they come for?” Bower asked.
“We don’t know. We were hoping you might be able to help us figure that out. I have my own ideas but nothing concrete. If they came to examine our intelligence they’ve surely concluded we’re barbarians. We have overreacted, we’ve ruined our first contact with life from beyond this small orb.”
“What were the pods?” Bower asked. “Did you get to examine any of them?”
“Yes,” Dr. Ambar replied. “But they broke down rapidly in our highly oxygenated atmosphere.
“We were able to examine some of the organic residue. In nature, there are roughly twenty or so amino acids that make up the bulk of the proteins we observe in the animal kingdom, but we know of over five hundred amino acids in all. These alien creatures and their pods incorporate roughly three hundred of these acids in their biology, making them distinctly unique from any form of life on Earth.”