There was a longer pause. “You serious?”
“Never more so.”
“Jesus. I never expected… son of a BITCH!” He was fully awake now, and very excited. “What do you need me to bring?”
“Whatever you can. We need to connect my box with some sort of portable artificial intelligence so they can talk turkey at each other. I would suspect you should pack along some sort of high-power modem, a handful of cables, a little of this and that. I have no real idea what you’ll need, so I’ll leave it up to your discretion. You’re probably gonna need to hardwire something, and you know how good I am with a soldering iron.”
“Yeah, about as good as I am with a torque wrench. I’ve got just the thing, but I’ll have to sneak it away from the lab. Can I bring a camera?”
“Lemme check. Hey,” he said, addressing the screen. “Any objections to my buddy bringing his camera? And what do I call you?”
“I have no objections; Meier wasn’t believed, and you won’t be either. My designation is useless for anything but maintenance purposes. Call me what you like.”
“Billy Meier had other problems. I think I’ll call you Mycroft, then. I don’t suppose you’ve read any Heinlein?”
“I have no visual receptors, no, but I am familiar with the name from your broadcast media.”
“Don’t that… Kermit, Mike says camera’s OK. Bring it on.”
“Mike?”
“It’s the obvious, don’t you think?”
“I guess so. Give me an hour, and I’ll break my buns getting out there.”
“I’ll expect you when I see you coming.”
After hanging up, he checked on the two aliens. They were still seated on the couch, avidly switching between channels; the tall one seemed to want to stay with MTV, and the shorter one was arguing in favor of “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.” Occasionally they blew quick puffs of air through their split upper lips, making a sound like a horse’s snort.
“Excuse me, boys,” Bubba said when he caught their eye. “Might I assume that you both have a name of some kind, or are they useless for anything but maintenance?”
“I beg parton?”
Bubba chuckled. “No doubt, I know I’d like to. What do I call you?”
“Oh. Names in your language are not so. For pronounce in Anglish is much hard.”
“Well, I just hate to say ‘Hey, you.’ ”
The alien shrugged. “You give us Earth-names for now, maybe perhaps?”
“Doubtless.” He thought for a bit. “How about Ike and Tina?”
There was a burst of static from Mike. “It might be more appropriate to call them Stan and Ollie.”
“You might just could be right. OK, Stan and Ollie it is. Boys, we haven’t been properly introduced as of yet, and as this is first contact between you and us, it behooves me on this auspicious occasion to welcome you to Earth and King William County. Mike,” he asked, turning to the screen on the kitchen table, “can these gentlemen’s systems absorb alcohol?”
“No, but it will do them no harm, either.”
“Well, then, by God, have a beer.” He twisted the caps off three Anchors and handed them out. Raising his own bottle, he said, “May your cesspools never run over.”
Both imitated his gesture, and Ollie (the taller one) said something in his fluid language. Bubba asked Mike for a translation, and the box said that by the closest equivalent it meant “May you always keep your feet free of the grasping tentacles of the Wailing Beast.”
“Thank you kindly, Ollie. I’ll certainly do my best.”
Stan and Ollie went back to their cultural debate, and Bubba went back in the garage with the screen.
“What’s the story on those two, Mike? They seem to be nice enough boys, but they apparently don’t know too much about maintaining that ship over there.”
“They are minor functionaries of the branch of our government which surveys the remote areas surrounding our sphere of influence. Their job is to investigate the levels of technology and culture of the indigenous races and to prepare reports for their superiors. They mean well, but they are by no means mechanically inclined. I think the term ‘paper shufflers’ would be the best description, although technically, they’re my superiors.”
“Well, that explains a few things. Are we about to be offered membership in the Galactic Confederacy?”
“No. To my knowledge, nothing of the sort exists.”
“Then why buzz around this unimportant little system?”
Mike paused. “Have you ever known of any bureaucracy that could keep its hands to itself?” It buzzed. “They’re less interested in information than in looking busy when appropriations time comes around.”
“Gotcha. Pretty much the same here.”
“I have news for you, it’s pretty much the same everywhere.”
“That’s a depressing thought. On more technical matters, what am I going to need to get that Bird back up in the air?”
“A well-equipped machine shop, a small amount of fairly high-density matter for reaction mass, and the proper tools. I can do most of the rest myself.”
“How dense?”
“Iridium or osmium would be best.”
“Hard to come by. Dinosaurs ate all the iridium, and it killed ’em off. Don’t know of anywhere I can get osmium at this hour.”
There was another burst of static from the screen. “Of all the mechanics we could have chosen, we have to get a wise-ass.”
Bubba laughed. “How about lead? It’s only about half as dense, but I got plenty of it here.” He pointed to a stack of old car batteries in one corner of the shop.
“As long as it’s clean, it will do nicely.”
“I’ll set Stan and Ollie to breaking up the cases and pulling the plates out. I’ve already drained and flushed ’em, so they’re clean.”
After explaining to the two aliens what needed to be done, Bubba uncovered his machine tools. “OK, Mike, what kind of parts are we going to have to make, and what are we going to make ’em out of?”
“We’ll need several three-dimensional cams, the precise measurements for which I can’t give you until I can do the conversions.”
“Three-D cams? Don’t think I can cut ’em on a lathe, so they’ll have to be machined. Hmmm… how smooth do they have to be?”
“Not very, they rotate in a plasma bottle rather than against another surface. The space inside the bottle is shaped, and as the cams rotate, the shape alters.”
“Never mind the rest, I don’t have the math. What’s wrong with the ones you have now?”
“They have become distorted by the pressures that maintain the plasma bottle; they’ve flattened along one axis and have bulged along another as a result. They’re no longer precise enough to take us a long distance.”
“In case I can’t get ’em down to the closest mil, can it be compensated for?”
“The on-board system can, yes. Most of my memory is replicated in the ship, except for the AI portions, and it handles almost all of the drive and navigation functions.”
“Well, all we can do is wait for Kermit, then. He should be along in a few minutes.” Bubba thought for a while, then said, “You mentioned that I’d been chosen. What’s the deal? I mean, I know I’m a bit above the average, but you must have been monitoring any number of people besides me. How’d I get picked?”
“You were known to us, as were several hundred others with similar qualifications. You’re a member of Mensa, Citizens Against the Crime of Silence, the ACLU, and a number of other politically-oriented organizations. What set you apart from the others was your founding of and longtime involvement with SauNA.”
“Saucer Nuts of America? Why that?”
“Your interest in UFOs indicated that you’d be more apt to accept our presence without running in circles, screaming and shouting. The fact that you’d given your organization that name indicates that you’d be less likely to make a big deal out of it to get your name in the papers. We don’t mind certain people being aware of us, but we do hope for discretion. Your mechanical aptitude goes without saying. You’ve been on our list for quite some time in case of a situation like this one.”