Trespassers: a science-fiction novel Read Online Free PDF

appropriate recovery time. Instead, they all hit him at once.
    Those three life-altering events were the following: His wife was on the verge of leaving him. He was teetering on the brink of losing his job. And he was one clumsy step away from bankruptcy. He was in the Bermuda Triangle of life.
    In his stupor, he formulated what seemed like a perfect plan. He would take a few deep breaths, stagger to the nearest bar, and proceed to drink his problems away. Phase two of this plan involved removing his wedding ring and letting be what would be . . . a sort of casual-sex Russian roulette. His wife had two feet out the door, and he couldn ’ t bear another second of standing on the porch, calling her back. He would have enough dignity to let fate decide.
    Bruner ’ s meeting with Stanton was purely chance. Had he sat down on a different bar stool that evening, he very probably would have awoken on the floor, next to a hungover, twenty-something Washington intern, surrounded by discarded undergarments. Instead, he awoke with full funding for a project that had been, to that point, simply a good idea that he poked at people from time to time. This time, it turns out, he poked it at the right person. Stanton fell for the idea. It was probably just the challenge of it, but he listened to Bruner ’ s ranting about the way things should be done, and he turned the concept into a whole new agency, headed by Bruner.
     

5
The Ones Who Got Away
    New Guy pulled the black SUV off the road and parked in a grassy field behind a small wooden building that bore a faded sign reading WAFL 1260 - WAFFLE RADIO . In the passenger ’ s seat of the SUV, Mindy looked up through the windshield, using Web ’ s binoculars to admire the alien ship hovering above. She pulled the binoculars down to compare this image with the empty sky she saw with her naked eye. When she lifted the binoculars again, the spaceship was gone.
    “ Two five five one, ” Web said, in case she had forgotten.
    “ I have to put it in again? ”
    “ Every time you take it away from your face. ”
    Mindy pressed in the code with her thumb and returned the binoculars to her eyes. There was the ship again, pushing slowly through the air, settling into its parking spot.
    “ Before Stewart joined the Limestone Group, ” Web explained, “ all the trespass ships used to be taken to a restricted storage facility in Roosevelt, Montana. But Stewart pioneered the concept of using vertical landmarks as holding stations. That saved a whole lot of time and resources. ”
    Stewart carefully eased the massive alien ship forward. Out a side window, he watched the red-and-white poles of the broadcast antenna get closer and closer. He pulled the controls into a locked position, and the ship settled into place, next to the tall metal structure. It was one of those skeletal antennas that jabbed at the sky. This particular antenna was attached to a small two-bedroom house that had been converted into an AM radio station, mostly broadcasting syndicated talk shows.
    The ship hung invisibly in the air, halfway up the antenna. It would stay parked there until someone from the agency returned to move it. Antennas and water towers were now the preferred parking spots for quarantined spaceships. These ships weren ’ t being permanently confiscated. They were just impounded until their owners completed the proper paperwork to reclaim them.
    Stewart checked over the gauges to make sure everything was in order. Five blinking lights in the bottom right corner of the console had been bugging him. They could have been a dozen different things, but he had an uncomfortable suspicion about what they were.
    “ Web, did you get any cold energy from the ship on the way over? ” he asked.
    Web opened his laptop and began the search. “ Give me a second — I ’ m checking . . . Yeah, four pulses — maybe five. ”
    Stewart grimaced. This could be bad. His suspicions were telling him something was dropped