Be glad you didn't see the first version of this. It was truely bad. I think this stroy idea needs a lot more words than I'mused to writing. I guess I'm out of the habit of writing anything but flash stories.

 

References Travel Slow

Space has two speeds: slow, very slow and fast, very fast. Quite often they occur at the same time.

"What’s new?" Jo asked as she entered the room.

"Not much, conservative news is reporting it as another government program failure and the liberals are saying that a tax increase is needed to enhance the program," Dem said.

"What program?"

Dem turned, "This one. Didn’t you hear. That report of an asteroid some amateur called in a few days ago that we didn’t confirm. It’s real." He brought up the display. "The software ignored it because it was traveling at over two hundred thousand KPH and extrapolations of its path didn’t put it anywhere near earth. It swung around Jupiter a few days ago and changed its path, to match the ecliptic."

"Where’s it headed?"

"That’s the second thing. It’s accelerating, actually decelerating. We can’t predict with certainty but if I had to guess it’s heading to earth. Even at that speed it will take a few months." Dem turned from the screen and looked Jo in the eyes, "Ready to great our alien overlords?"

 

* * *

It took only a few days to establish contact. They had been monitoring our radio and TV signals so knew our languages and formats. "They want what?" the newly appointed space ambassador of the UN asked.

"The Webb telescope. They need to monitor some event but while they are decelerating as fast as they are their systems are offline."

"They want to buy it?"

"Lease actually. For the duration of their stay in our system. They have made a generous offer. Solid state fusion."

"Solid state fusion?"

"Sort of like the old cold fusion idea but this works. Their description is you have a solid of a particular alloy that varies across the length and you inject certain mix of elements, mostly hydrogen and helium isotopes with a little lithium, and the whole thing heats up.

"And they give us that for the use of the Webb.

"Plus a prototype after they reach earth. The Secretary General wants a recommendation."

* * *

The alien vessel orbited in the Van Allen radiation belts. It did not appear to affect them or they had impressive shielding. It did keep humans from visiting the ship. The aliens declined to meet physically with humans. They said that the possibility of biological contamination was too great.

"Does it work?" the ambassador asked.

"It appears to. Injecting the gas mixture they supplied got it to over a thousand degrees in only a few minutes. Building one is going to be a bear. The alloy changes composition racially in only a few nanometers. Still this is basically free energy. It may take us ten years to get it right but it going to put the current energy companies out of business."

* * *

"The aliens are leaving."

"When?" the ambassador asked. "They didn’t tell me anything."

"Now. They cut off all communications about an hour ago and their small ships headed for the mother ship. They started their motors or whatever they have about ten minutes ago and are accelerating out of orbit."

"Why?"

There is one more piece of information. They had just repositioned the Webb to a new orientation and shortly there after they cut comms and recalled their ships. They are accelerating at two gees and increasing. We are working on establishing data links to the Webb but in the meantime a lot of earth based scopes are looking at the region the Webb had been observing.

* * *

"We know why they are leaving. Another ship is coming in. Direct to earth.

The ambassador looked at the screen. An alien obviously a different species than the first ones started talking. "You are to detain the Rosfrenti ship. Failure to do so will result in severe penalties."

"We don’t have that capability. Surely you can see that," the ambassador said.

"Yet you aided them in detecting our arrival. If not for your help we would have been able to catch them."

"They rented a telescope from us. We didn’t know why."

The ambassador terminated the link to the alien ship. "We’ve been had. The first ship was a bunch of thieves. They go from system to system and simply steal resources. Since we had the Webb and they could use it to search for their pursuers they traded us some old tech. Fortunately we are so backward the cops, so to speak, can’t really fine us for anything valuable. Plus we are cooperating and giving them better data on the route of the Rosfrenti’s ship so they are heading out as fast as they can."

"Do we have to give the technology back?"

"No. They know that is impossible unless they stay around to monitor us. They are going to pick up some raw materials from the asteroids and call it a fine. We did help them located some asteroids that should make that job easier."

End