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"Yeah, what is that?"
"I found your SUV. It's in a big room down in the belly of the spaceship.
There is a little red sports car down there also. I asked and it was
apparently owned by a third guy that was here. I haven't found any sign of
him."
"Yeah, you won't either. The Grays dismembered him before you woke up. There
was nothing left of him when they were done. It was gruesome and I had nearly
put that sight out of my mind, thanks for bringing it up." I nudged her a bit
humorously and a bit seriously. It had been a horrid sight.
"Oh. I didn't know, sorry."
"Forget it. So you found my truck, huh? I had figured they left it on the side
of the road."
"Go figure." She smiled and hugged me. "Happy birthday. I didn't realize how
old you were until I
saw your license."
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"Old! I'm not old!"
"Compared to me you're ancient." She laughed.
"How old are you, then?" I asked, smirking. "What, fourteen, fifteen . . ."
"Smartass! I will be twenty-three in December. Keep it up and I won't show you
the other present I
made you."
"What other present?" I shrugged my shoulders.
"This one . . ." Mikhail, turn the bathroom wall into the viewscreen showing
the alternate engine room.
Okay, Tatiana.
She had been teaching Mikhail personality it appeared.
The bathroom wall resolved into the screen we usually used for navigation and
an image of one of the rooms in the belly of the alien ship appeared in the
field of view.
What's this, Tatiana?
It's a warp drive!
She grinned back at me.
"A warp drive! Does it work?" I verbalized.
"Why of course it does, Steven! Well, we think it will. It hasn't been tested
yet."
"How does it work?" I was astounded.
"It uses the Alcubierre warp theory with a van den Broeck bubble and some
Clemons field modifications," she said knowingly.
How did she know about Clemons?
I accidentally thought on the top layer of my mind and it was communicated.
How did I know about Clemons? Mikhail told me. He is apparently some American
physicist and is responsible for inventing the propulsion system for the U.S.
Air Force vessel that shot us out here. The Grays know all about him for some
reason.
On a deeper level of my mind I immediately thought of Senator Grayson from the
SSCI. During his abductions they must have learned all of our National Defense
secrets. This was no good, but there was nothing I could do about it right
this second though.
"So, the Grays knew how to make a human-designed warp engine?" I asked
Tatiana.
"Sure they do. They don't need one since their engines are thousands of times
faster and more energy efficient. But they are easier to build than it is to
repair the alien space drive."
Mike! Why didn't we think of this?
We should've thought of it after all, I had all that knowledge downloaded into
me. I was beginning to realize that having knowledge and being smart were two
different things. I would have to get Mike to work on improving my cleverness,
wit, and general problem-solving abilities.
Sorry, Steven. It never occurred to me. Perhaps you were sidetracked with the
other problem we have been working on.
"How long have you been working on this?"
"Only about a week or so. It was hard doing it when you weren't around, since
you are always around. I got chances here and there when you would go off to
the bridge by yourself. What are you doing up there anyway? Oh well, doesn't
matter. I would've asked for help but I wanted to surprise you with it. You're
surprised, right?" She looked concerned only about the surprise.
Tatiana had a knack for saying a lot in one breath. A lot of times she would
only seem interested in the last thing she would say. Until later, of course,
when she would ask why I never answered her question. Women!
"Surprised! I had no idea! This is great. How fast does it go?"
"Well, why don't we sit down and eat some cake and then we'll try it out. But
my initial calculations suggest that it will go about thirty-seven hundred
times the speed of light. We should be able to get home in a few hours.
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Mikhail and I made some modifications to the field coil design that made it
about ten times faster than the Clemons design. But enough of that, blow out
your candles before they melt the cake!"
"Uh, okay." I bent down and blew on the candles. They wouldn't go out.
"Ha, ha, ha." Tatiana giggled like a schoolgirl.
Mike, make sure they go out this time when I blow.
Okay, Steven.
"I must be getting old," I put on a show for Tatiana and then blew the candles
right out.
Tatiana frowned. "Aww! You cheated. Cheater." She punched me on the arm and
frogged it pretty good.
"Shit!" I cursed and punched her back, but not nearly as hard.
CHAPTER 15
We decided that we would warp back directly to the Moon and contact the people
who we'd learned lived there. It made sense that if they were the ones trying
to defend the Earth from the Grays then the Moon was where we should take our
ship and all the knowledge we had discovered. The Grays apparently knew almost
everything about the human race that there was to know. Neither of us liked
that. If they ever decided to conduct a final invasion, they would have more
than enough information not to mention technological advancement to totally
wipe us out. That brought up another point. Why hadn't they wiped us out
already instead of playing with us for thousands of years? Nothing made any
sense. What was the Gray motivation? Why were they toying with us and
abducting us and killing some of us? It didn't matter. Tatiana and I didn't
like it, and it had to be stopped.
We dropped out of warp on the far side of the Moon and I'll be damned if there
wasn't a huge lunar base there. Three warp ships with U.S. Air Force markings
met us with full force. Fortunately, Tatiana had the foresight to suggest we
sit in our safety chairs and had them materialize before we warped. We had to
take evasive maneuvers to keep from being blasted back out into deep space
again. There were no g-forces this time since we were inside a warp bubble and
the spacetime inside the bubble was simple one-gravity space. The alien's
quantum string spacedrive would allow a ship to travel much faster but it
required some type of inertial damping system. I think I like the warp drive
better.
So we didn't really need the chairs. One of the vessels fired several warp
missiles at us. We warped past Mars and up out of the ecliptic plane and were
still being pursued by the missiles. Mike flew the ship and I had a
communications system set up and began hailing the Earth ships. Tatiana found
the weapons and blasted one of the warp missiles off our tail. We finally went
to maximum warp speed and left the other missiles in our space dust!
We warped out a few minutes and then went back to the Moon. This time I
continuously hailed the
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