I Will Love You Forever

Chapter 1, part 4: Meddlers

In the clearing, Lu was lying snuggled close to Ken, reflecting that his timing hadn’t been slow, after all. It had been just about perfect. When he got up to relieve himself on the far side of the clearing, she stretched luxuriously, sat up, and began to dig into the basket for a still-cold bottle of beer.

* * *

The object hurtling toward the clearing didn’t change visibly—at least on the outside—as it passed the moon’s orbit, but it was very active, internally. Systems continued to evaluate data coming from the planet. Radiation sources indicated primitive nuclear energy generation. It wasn’t detecting coherent gravity waves, which would have been the only thing to indicate real danger to the probe. Once a civilization started tinkering with gravity, they had to be approached very differently.

After impact, it would have to move quickly to hide itself. The impact alone would release enough energy to draw considerable attention.

It now had a solid grasp of the language, as far as it could tell, and a pretty good grasp of social and mating customs, as well as conflict resolution. Once it was safely hidden, the hardest part would be over, and it could take its time about making peaceful contact.

* * *

“Zack, are you really sure it changed its course? It looks steady to me.”

“Positive. Want to scan it?”

“No!” Jill was horrified. “We’d be in big trouble if we did that, Zack.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think the system that records that information comes through the same array as the telemetry. We can see it here, and we can control it, but we can’t record what happens.” He grinned at her. “I think we should scan it, before it burns up and hits, and we only have a few seconds.”

“Zack, don’t even think about—O my God.”

Jill spoke the last words prayerfully as Zack flipped up the protective cover, charged the scanning pulse, and hit the execute button.

They both looked up at the secondary screen. There was a visible flare from the pip. It wasn’t much, but at several thousand kilometers, anything visible was significant. On the tertiary screen, an image began to form. It seemed to be made largely of metal and liquid. It was clearly something with a complex structure, but nothing made any sense.

“We are in so much trouble,” Jill whispered.

“What are you worried about?” he said. “No one will even know we did that, and we’ve just collected evidence on an alien artifact. You know that can’t be anything else.”

“Zack, what if they find out?”

“They won’t!”

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