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English
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Published:
2018-10-21
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1/1
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Watch the Sky

Summary:

Sam must make sure the Newcomers (Tenctonese) land on Earth.

Notes:

This was written for the personal, private amusement of the author. I never even intended to post it, but what the hell.

Work Text:

Sam found himself sitting at a very sophisticated console with lots of
buttons, screens and lights. He frowned at it, but inwardly he was
relieved that this time he hadn't leapt into a gunfight or any of the
other unusual situations he'd previously found himself in.

He squinted at the console for a while before it finally began to
make sense. It was a console linked to an orbital telescope by the looks
of things, and it was doing routine scans of the stars, and measuring the
sky. Sam wondered why it needed to be manned if it was automated, as it
appeared to be; then he decided that he was probably there to oversee
more than one console...

He looked around; this seemed to be borne out by the fact that there
were many computers and screens in the room, but he was the only person
there. He looked at the console again, but didn't see anything out of the
ordinary, so he got up and took a look at each of the other consoles in
turn. None of them seemed to be showing anything out of the ordinary
either, so, shrugging, Sam sat back down.

"Sam!" Sam started, looking around for his holographic partner. "Al!
Do you have to keep doing that?"

Al smiled. "You know, Sam, at first I did it because I couldn't
knock, but now I think I'm starting to enjoy it."

"You would. Why am I here?"

"Ziggy says there's a very faint trace of something approaching
Earth's position."

"A comet?"

Al shook his head. "Not a comet. Ziggy just accessed all the
information from this telescope, and she says that it's an alien ship."

"Why didn't anyone notice it before now? I mean, before Ziggy?" Sam
looked a trifle confused as he tried not to mix his tenses. Not that such
a thing mattered when one was dealing with time travel, of course.

"Ziggy says no one paid much attention last time. Apparently this
astronomy student you've leaped into thought it was a glitch and didn't
say anything, and no one picked up on it."

"Oh come on, Al. No one noticed? They must have looked at the data!"

"Do you have any idea how much data places like this receive from
these orbital telescopes? Little spots on star maps could be a printing
error or something."

Sam shook his head. "I don't believe that."

"Yeah, well..." Then something struck the observer. "Maybe they only
noticed it after the ship was gone."

"If it's a ship," replied Sam.

Al ignored that comment to fiddle with the hand link. "Ziggy says
you have to get permission to send a transmission directly to it."

"IF it's a ship," Sam said again, sarcastically. This time Al
couldn't let it pass. "What do you mean, if? You saw a UFO, heck, even
I saw it! They exist, Sam!"

"Yes, they exist. I'm just saying I'm not sure if this is one of
them."

"Well unless you tell somebody, you'll never find out." He opened
the door of the Imaging Chamber. "I'm gonna go back and see if Ziggy has
any more information. Call someone up and tell 'em."

"Who?"

"Just dial 5 on the phone and say you have an unaccountable blip on
monitor two." The door closed, and Sam did as requested.

***

The next few hours were a flurry of activity as everyone appeared and
made calculations. This time, they were definitely sure that something
was out there. "This is a Code Three clearance," said Adams, the head of
the observatory. "No information leaves this room, do you people
understand?" He looked hard at Sam. "You can't tell anyone."

Sam nodded, feeling numb.

"Davis, you plot the data as it comes off the computer, okay? Check
EVERYTHING."

It wasn't until Adams said, "Davis?" that Sam realised the man was
talking to him. "Uh... yeah. Okay."

"We've gotta get someone to give us the go-ahead to signal that
ship."

"IF it's a ship," said Sam, then wished he hadn't, as everyone
turned on him, looking angry. "Uh... I'm just saying we should keep an
open mind."

"Of course," said Adams, going out to call the higher-ups.

Sam plotted all the figures that the computer gave him, and was into his
third hour of doing it when Al arrived. "Sam, why are you still doing
this? You should have sent a message hours ago!"

Sam looked around, but no one was paying him any attention. "I
can't, Al," he whispered. "No one has given permission."

"You can't wait. That ship will pass us by in four hours unless they
know we're here."

"What are you talking about?" asked Sam.

Patiently, Al began to explain. "Ziggy has accessed all the
information you people have collected. She says that ship is in trouble,
and if they can't land on Earth, whatever things are on that ship will
die."

"So we must let them know we're here..." mused Sam.

"Yes! Exactly."

"I'm here to save those... aliens... whatever, then?"

"By sending a message that tells them there's a habitable planet to
land on."

Sam decided not to rain on Al's parade by saying that if there WERE
aliens on the ship, there was no guarantee that they'd be compatible with
Earth's environment. He knew, too, what the mathematical probabilities
were for the evolution of life in the universe... he'd always believed
there WAS life out there, but he still wasn't sure that anyone on Earth
would want to have to face aliens, or even contact them. Believing that
humanity was alone in the cosmic sea was much easier for some people to
handle. "I dunno, Al," he finally said. "It doesn't seem like something
anyone would authorise."

"If they don't, you'll have to do it."

"Me? Al, I can't do that!" Sam got up in protest just as Adams came
back in. "Well?" asked everyone almost in unison.

Adams shook his head. "Everyone wants to contact the ship, but no
one, not even the President, will give the go-ahead to do it. They're
scared."

"They should be," said someone else.

Sam stepped forward. "Come on, this isn't a bad science fiction
movie, you know. This is IT. We have to send a message."

"Do you know what could happen if these things turn out to be
hostile? We will get the blame for bringing them here."

"This isn't 'Invaders from Mars', for goodness' sake!" yelled Sam.
"We have to do it."

"I agree," said Adams finally. "But we have to do it so that we can
deny it later if we have to."

"How?"

"I know," Sam said suddenly. "We don't send a message as such. All
we do is move one of the broadcast satellites a degree or two so that the
ship picks up the transmissions."

"And people in Australia lose their satellite feed."

"Well, hey, we were trying to reach the telescope and messed up a
bit," said Sam.

"No one will believe that," said one technician.

"What if that ship gets 'Friday the 13th' or 'Star Trek' reruns?"
asked another, and both Sam and Adams smiled. Then the man turned around.
"Let's do it. We only get one shot. Davis..."

"Yeah?"

"You punch in the coordinates. Ten seconds, that's all."

"I'm sure it'll be enough," responded Sam, doing as instructed.
"Okay, here we go. Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five..." When
Sam got to three, the hand link began to make very loud noises, and Al
whacked it. "Sam, you did it! Now, the ship crash lands in the Mojave
Desert and a quarter of a million aliens become American citizens!"

"What?" asked Sam.

"Yeah. And the women are really... sexy!" added Al, but Sam wasn't
listening, because he leaped.

THE END