Chapter 18

They concluded the call, then Esther opened her door again. The airman was leaning against the opposite wall, waiting for the phone. She offered the handset to him, saying, "Lawyers! They always want to do things the most complicated way. I am now told Jenny and I have to sign forms. I have told her that it will have to wait until I can travel again. Thanks for the phone, son."

"You are welcome, ma'am. Lawyers get special treatment. I will wipe any record of the call, ma'am."

Thank you again. See you soon."

She returned to her apartment, and closed the door. She thought carefully about her curious phone call, then called Jenny out of her bedroom.

"Jenny, darling, we may be going on a holiday, as I said, so we should prepare a bag each for that. Let's do it now. Treat it as a practice run, like a game, and we can check how quickly we can do it, without missing out anything important. If you have any special item you feel you shouldn't be without, make sure it goes in the bag, and then I shall check it over, to see how well you have done it. Then you can check Mommy's bag, and whoever discovers the most items forgotten about, wins the game."

"That sounds like fun, Mommy. Do I get to choose my bag?"

"Of course. BUT, you must be able to carry your own bag on the holiday trip, so you mustn't load it with unnecessary things. Concentrate on IMPORTANT items of clothing or other gear, including toiletries that you would need for a long weekend trip."

"Mommy, are you trying to make it more complicated, so that you will win?"

"Oh, no. Whatever made you think that?" She smiled. "Well, perhaps just a little bit. I won't add any more rules to your packing. Want to start now?"

"Yeah!" She turned and rushed to the cupboard where their bags were stored.

Two hours later, Jenny was expecting her mother to tell her to get ready for bed, but nothing had been said. After another half hour, she approached her mother, asking, "Mom? Am I not supposed to be getting ready for bed?"

"What? Oh, yes, normally I would expect that, but I think I'd like to add to our game by seeing how long you can stay awake. I bet you will be falling asleep within the next hour!"

"Do I get to do what I want, to pass the time?"

"Well, not exactly anything, by whatever you might do normally is fine by me."

"Can I have crayons and paper to do drawing?"

"Yes, that would be fine. You know where they are: go fetch them. You can sit at my desk to do your drawing. If I sent you to your bedroom, you might fall asleep and I wouldn't know it!"

By now, night was falling, so Esther expected that action would happen before long, if her reading of the phone call was accurate. She fetched and placed handy the two audio headphone sets that they used to listen to music when the other wanted quiet.

It was. Three-quarters of an hour later, she started to feel queasy, and Jenny spoke to her. "Mommy, I feel funny."

"Right. Jenny, put on these headphones, and keep them on. I shall do the same with mine. It may help us feel better."

Outside, the airbase was being circled in the dark sky by five great vessels whose presence was not discerned by the base radars. The craft were transmitting signals which interrupted the radars with the result that the equipment treated the anomalies as clouds in the sky. Admittedly the clouds were coming down to RAF Feltwell and nowhere else, but radars are not sentient. Such facts are not of interest to radars.

The ships landed, and mechanoids started rushing out of the ships and floating to the ground, where they dashed off to various buildings, including the security room. There the mechanoids did a scan and located the signals cables coming into the room, then sliced through them with laser cutters. They also stuck a piece of equipment against the wall of the room. That was a jammer, cutting out all electronic signals being transmitted into or out of the room.

Other mechanoids sealed off the weapon stores by disabling the locks in the closed position, so that it would severely delay anyone getting access to weapons other than hand guns already on their person.

Esther and Jenny were already feeling much improved when there came a knock at their door. Esther opened it, to find a machine standing outside. It spoke to her.

"Personalia Transport Service. Esther Price and Jenny Price?"

"Yes."

"You are to come with us." The machine stepped to one side, revealing a rubber-wheeled cart with two seats fixed within it. "Please board the vehicle."

"Jenny! Grab your bag and come here!" Esther reached in for her own bag, which she had parked next to the door. She slung her bag onto the cart, and waited for Jenny. Jenny hurried with her bag to her mother, and almost stopped when she saw the machine. There was another one at the other end of the cart.

Esther picked up her daughter and placed her in the cart, then handed her bag to her. "Sit, Jenny, and hold on tight." She stepped aboard and took the other seat, with her bag on her lap.

The two mechanoids grabbed handles at front and rear of the cart, and started rolling along, with the cart firmly fixed between them. They speeded up, only slowing down where the corridor turned. When they got to the outside door of the building, it was already wide open, and they shot straight through into the darkness.

Esther felt fear, but not for herself. It was fear for her daughter's safety, as they careered in pitch darkness. She did not know that the mechanoids could see at any frequency they desired; the duo were perfectly safe, particularly so as no human could observe them except with heat-seeking equipment, but every other human on the base had their own problems at the moment.

Within a couple of minutes they slowed to a stop on the main runway, by the side of a waiting Landership. The mechanoids rose up on their antigravity gear, getting to the level of the open but unlit hatch. The glided into the hatch, which closed behind them.

The internal lighting came on, at a subdued level, so that the human and Malan could see what was happening. The ship spoke to them.

"Welcome aboard your Landership, for transport to orbit. Please go with the mechanoids and transfer to the seats in the passenger cabin. The mechanoids will take your luggage and hold it for you."

Though they did not feel it, the ship was already on the move, gliding faster and faster down the runway, until it fired its rocket engines. They burst into action, pointed flames searing out as the ship accelerated into flight. Staff at the base, now starting to recover from the nausea and disorientation they had been feeling, began to notice something large taking off under rocket power from their runway.

It charged off and up into the sky. A moment later, another did the same, then another, until five objects had taken off from the base's main runway in a roar of raw rocket power as one after the other they soared into the dark sky, lighting up the nearby village of Feltwell with their trailing glare.

In the base, the commanding officer had been roused from his bed, where he had taken himself when the nausea hit. This time he was disturbed by the noise. This racket was much noisier than a jet bomber take-off. "What the HELL was that?"

He grabbed his phone and re-iterated his question to the command centre.

"Sir, we are just trying to work it out. We were hit by nausea and confused thinking for a while, and now the sound of rocket take-offs. Someone counted five of them taking off from the main runway, but nobody saw them arrive. Our radars have no record of such big aircraft coming in, and the Brit radar also say there was nothing there, until they took off. These weren't small rockets, sir. They were powerful shit, and it looks like they went right up into orbit. We can't understand what happened, or what they were, sir."

"Right. Get me a line to Lackland HQ. Are all personnel accounted for?"

"Ugh, we haven't done a head count yet, sir."

"Do it. I want to be able to answer questions from the folk in Texas, and they are going to ask a LOT of questions."

The intelligence staff did their head count by pinging each person's phone for a response to confirm they were still there. They noted no return by Lt. Price's phone, but when they did a location check of that phone, it showed up in their own department.

They finally remembered she was the one whose phone was taken off her when she was confined to base, so they sent a man to check her presence in person. He phoned back in a few minutes to say her door was open, she was not in her apartment, and neither was her daughter, Jenny.

The base Commander demanded, "Find her!"

The security personnel supplemented their numbers with other men and women, and organised a search of all parts of the base. Even so, due to the darkness outside, it took nearly half an hour before they reported to the commander.

"Sorry, sir. She cannot be found, nor can her daughter. They are not on the base. We have even checked empty premises. We also got the floodlights on, to scan the ground outside the buildings, but nothing, except for scorch marks on and near the main runway."

He queried them: "Do we have any local contact details related to her; some place where she might have gone during the excitement?"

They checked their records. "Sir, she has a girlfriend among the locals: A Charlotte Brown. We have the address."

"So, what are you waiting for? Get that checked, to see if she is sheltering there. That Price woman is in big trouble when we find her, I swear." He had another thought about the events. "Damn. This going to be worse than Rendlesham Forest in 1980!"

In the Landership carrying them upwards, Esther Price and Jenny were now beyond fear, and were in awe of the machines that were transporting them from the base that had been home for so long. The mechanoids that had brought them to the ship now stood mute, each in a corner of the cabin, their sole task now to act as baggage handlers.

After some time – Esther had lost track of time in her excitement, and never thought to check her phone – the ship made an announcement.