<<Now, Captain, do you get Earth TV here?>>
Michelle sat in a seat designed for someone far smaller, watching a small flat screen TV with a faintly blue hue. The sheet from the bed was fashioned into a crude sarong, and she was drinking some water from a clear plastic-like bottle.
The Captain was curious and stayed with her. It found the human amazingly diverting, so was learning things about the humans every second.
Michelle was watching a BBC documentary on eastern European girls being smuggled to the United Kingdom as sex slaves. She had a germ of an idea.
<<Captain, can you make clothes?>>
A moment later, a technician arrived and answered.
<<Yes, but we have limited resources for textiles.>>
<<I don’t want a huge wardrobe, but a few items would make me feel a little more comfortable.>>
She described what she wanted, so together they managed to find information and designs on the vast database they had accrued by interface with the Internet. The Captain was pleased, as they had all this wealth of knowledge, so for the first time, here was someone to help them understand it all.
<<Captain, perhaps if we could make just one or two other little things?>> she said, looking at the $20 bills.
3.
“Sheriff McGuire?”
Steve looked up to see two Air Force Officers at the door of his office.
“Yeah, Colonel Robertson?”
“Jim Robertson. We spoke on the phone. This is Major Kyle Bennett, my number two. The Major is also a Doctor.”
Steve noted the coiled serpent insignia on the Major’s uniform.
The men shook hands and Steve closed the door to his office.
“You mentioned an artefact?”
Steve passed over the mask.
The Colonel looked at it and his colleague went pale.
“Anything else?”
“Nope, just my sergeant lying dead a short distance away.”
“You said it was natural causes, but you also said that there were signs of medical intervention?”
Steve explained everything as they went over to the Morgue to look at the body. Steve had held up the release of the body for a few hours just so the military could examine the evidence. They had been very interested to see it, having flown down from Nevada especially.
Kyle examined the body thoroughly and looked at the Colonel. He simply nodded slightly, to which the Colonel nodded once in reply. The Major then took several photographs before they returned to the office.
“Sheriff, it is important that you tell no one about this. Let the body go for burial or cremation, whatever the family desire. Kyle has taken blood, fingerprints, and a DNA sample, so there is nothing to be gained from upsetting the family further.”
Steve immediately informed the coroner’s officer to arrange release of Dunwoody’s body to the next of kin.
“So, I ain’t stupid?” he asked when he’d finished the call.
The colonel was looking at the artefact. He was certain now.
“No, I’m convinced that your sergeant managed to extract someone or something from the flood, and he died doing so. It is possible that this person was not a human, or even from this planet. Note the formation of this mask, clearly not designed for any human face.
“But they obviously tried to save him in return, but failed. Just forget it, his time was up, so this is one investigation that you will have to just pass over to us.”
“Can you tell me the truth, were they really aliens?”
Jim Robertson stared at him, and frowned.
“If I say yes, then you will get worried. If I say no, you won’t believe me. You already know the truth, so I will simply say that I don’t know for certain, but I have an open mind.”
Steve smiled and nodded. He understood now.
He passed over the rest of the file he had started, including the Polaroid photographs, watching as the Major slipped them into his briefcase.
“Sheriff, you did the right thing. You can go back to your life and forget all about us.”
“So Mike is dead, for sure?”
“Oh yes, your Sergeant is dead.”
Steve was content with this and, when the Colonel left, he breathed a sigh of relief. It was someone else’s problem now and he wasn’t mad after all.
The two Air Force Officers were quiet in the car. The driver was a sturdy NCO who had been on their team for six years.
“Jim, why do you think they broke their own rules on this one?” the Major asked.
“Hell, Kyle, I don’t know, but the theory that the cop saved one of them from a flash flood is highly reasonable. My question would be, why use their medical superiority to let him die?”
“Are you thinking what I think you are thinking?”
“We know they can replicate themselves, we saw that in Utah in ’89. So, it’s reasonable to assume that they have the technology and knowledge of human physiology so that they could reward the cop by replicating him and then discard the old and useless corpse. They never attempted heart surgery, why not?”
“Perhaps they hadn’t the knowledge.”
“Possibly, but why should they if they could replicate? Keep him alive long enough to create the clone, then transfer the personality and mind of the cop when ready.”
“I never saw the Utah ship, what happened?”
“There was an accident. It sounds silly, but one of their craft hit some power lines. There were five aliens on board, all dead, but in a special unit, a clone was being created of another alien, and it was almost complete.”
“Didn’t the evidence disappear?”
“It was taken to a hanger on Base X, but in the morning it was gone. No one remembered it. I had to leave to speak to the General, and I had the videotapes in my bag. We still have that evidence, but nothing else.”
“So, what do we do?”
The Colonel took out some photographs of Sergeant Mike Dunwoody; one that had been taken many years before, when Mike had been a rookie in the NYPD.
“Get these to our computer specialists. Have them make a composite of how he would look as a young adult, say twenty-one or so. Circulate the results, fingerprints, his blood type and DNA to all our people, I have a feeling that Sergeant Dunwoody will be back.”
Michelle was working out.
Her new body utterly amazed her. The aliens hadn’t been kidding when they told her that they’d made certain improvements. They had built a set of weights for her and even a crude running machine. She had managed to bench-press almost twice the load she had managed at her best as a younger Mike, and that was not inconsiderable. Her stamina was truly unbelievable, as she was able to run for an hour at a very rapid pace without tiring.
She had overseen the construction of a few items of clothing, taken from the many Internet sites and TV recordings the aliens had logged in their databases. She had decided to be smart and not a tramp. All her clothes were on the conservative side, but somehow managed to emphasise her feminine shape in a far more effective manner than the more obvious low cut tops, or short skirts.
Their technology could duplicate anything. She was able to supervise the production of the most fashionable styles in the most luxurious fabrics - even synthetic leather, silk and satin.
The underwear had been the most difficult, but they had managed to construct one white and one black lacy bra, and a couple of pairs of panties. She had two dark skirts, a couple of plain white blouses, and one jacket. There was one ‘little black dress’ and a pair of leather trousers and a matching leather jacket. One silk nightdress marked the limit of their resources, with the exception of one pair of black leather high heel shoes.
The leotard she wore for the workout was simple yet comfortable. She stepped into the refresher unit, stark naked.
This unit cleaned and refreshed without water. It cleansed all her pores, and her hair was left feeling freshly shampooed and dried without the hassle of either.