Chapter 3

“But, Daddy,” she said. “It’s so far.”

She looked so close to an earthling it wasn’t funny ... I mean, no scales, no green skin, no huge head or skinny arms. She had four fingers and an opposable thumb, five toes and 206 bones in her skeleton. However she did have 25 chromosome pairs in cell nuclei and in a small DNA molecule found within individual mitochondria ... just enough difference to insure further investigation if she were to be Typed. What she didn’t have was a hymen ... no female had one. And she had an extreme aversion to clothing.

Because her planet had no axial tilt there was no physical seasons. No one lived in the permanent ice zones at the poles ... no, the poles were too cold, the ice too thick to support life. The equator was too hot and as ancient earth maps said ... Here there be Dragons. Her people resided in a band between the very cold and the very hot ... like Goldilocks said, it was just right. Covering the body was unnecessary ... so they didn’t. Sandals? Yes. Feet are tender no matter where you’re from.

Clothing? No.

Her planet was the oddity that our scientists said was impossible ... every 79 Earth years the planet swapped stars. The two stars were so slightly different in size that the only difference was in the industry of the people. The smaller star was cooler and people became inventive. The larger star was slightly hotter and the people spent a great deal of time in the shade ... and they played ... a lot.

The inventors invented radio; the players listened.

The inventors invented television; the players watched.

The inventors invented telephone; the players gossiped.

The inventors invented ships ... both planet bound and space worthy; the players cruised.

They invented interplanetary drives... 5 percent of the speed of light. Really fast. Five percent of the speed of light is a tad over thirty three million earth miles an hour; a tad under 300000 kilometers a second. The end of the Sol 3 solar system (that’s us) is about 122 astronomical units (AU) away from the sun, where one AU is 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). That’s about three times as far out as Pluto, which is about 40 AU from the sun, or about six times farther away from Earth than Neptune’s orbit.

The players all said, “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Accepted science is the bugbear of the scientific community. Sometimes the proponent of a false but widely accepted theory must die before the truth is allowed; Piltdown Man. And sometimes the opponent of a genuine fact must die; The Pope.

One must understand that there are always ‘Those who say’ no matter the subject ... but! Those who say are being proven correct every year; Many dinosaurs were bipedal.

She was one chosen ... foolish girl; she learned Earth languages by listening to radio broadcasts of Earth shows. So ... she ... and many others ... were cryogenically frozen, bundled into Artificial Intelligence (AI) controlled speedy ships and sent off to see what was what as obtains to the mysterious Sol 3 (us).

Truly ... the operative word in the previous paragraph is Intelligence. Since the majority of her passengers were female, the AI had reprogrammed herself.

(Shall we refer to her as Jane? We shall.)

Jane had figured out where the builders of her body ... and systems ... had gone wrong and repaired or replaced the faults ... almost as soon as she was launched. The astronomers were shocked beyond belief when the five percent programmed speed suddenly increased to 25 percent and continued to accelerate.

A journey speculated to take eons, took 9 years ... half the speed of light.

This is NOT to say they weren’t noticed ... no stealthy approach.

We saw Them coming.

Them being the speedy ships. And We were ready for Them. The first orbital encounter coincided with the beginning of the Perseids meteor shower.

The Perseids are the most popular meteor shower as they peak on warm August nights as seen from the northern hemisphere. The Perseids are active from July 13 to August 26. They reach a strong maximum on August 12 or 13, depending on the year. Normal rates seen from rural locations range from 50-75 shower members per hour at maximum.The Persesids are particles released from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle during its numerous returns to the inner solar system. They are called Perseids since the radiant (the area of the sky where the meteors seem to originate) is located near the prominent constellation of Perseus, the hero, when at maximum activity. WIKI