Alien Impulses

"We are."

"Then what the hell is this weekend about?"

"Staying sane."

"You could jerk off with a bunch of porn and that would scratch the itch, wouldn't it?"

"No, it fucking well wouldn't", responded the devil, angrily.

"What about her feelings?"

"I respect her feelings", he protested. "I've got them too. Just imagine, right, if no miraculous time travel facility magically comes into being... what then?"

"You'll basically never see Falik again. Unless someone develops a lightspeed drive capable of really intense speed, like 30C. She'll be 200 years old or something by the time you get back. Depending on how long all of this takes."

"Right. So, in the meantime, is it not prudent to begin other relationships?"

"Prudent? Have you no morality whatsoever?" argued the angel.

And so on.

There was no conclusion to any of this, of course. It was possible to have strong feelings for more than one person, to say those three little words to a number of partners, and to mean it. Yes, I knew, I preferred the idea of spending my life with one individual lady and loving her wholeheartedly. At the same time, I recognised that the lady in question was about 180 light years away right now, could never reach Earth ('visiting my boyfriend' wasn't a reason which would gain the help of the Holdrian Chrono-Travel team, or even get her a modified Cruiser from the Takanli workshops), and that I might never hold her again. Might never even speak to her. It hurt. Let's be honest.

So, here I was, in a fabulous hotel room with a lovely, smart girl who thought the world of me and was prepared to accept my manifest weirdness. She even liked Hal. This was worth pursuing, not so that I could replace Falik, but so that I could live the normal life of a human being on planet Earth. All the rest was just empty, meaningless moralising. I needed this.

She needed it too, by the sounds of it. We hadn't talked much about her past relationships, but it was obvious she'd had only steady boyfriends, coupling up for a year or more, and not many of those. This was not the kind of girl who normally hung around Welsh pubs hoping to get lucky. She was good-natured, kind, empathetic, extremely smart and unbelievably sexy. My mind flitted back to the French knickers and the wonderful scent of her pussy through the material. There they were, on the floor. I got most of a boner just thinking about her wearing them, getting wet in them, letting me pull them off...

She emitted a little yelp as I pulled open the shower curtain and jumped in. I was on her in moments, kissing her nipples and rubbing my new erection against the hairs which surrounded her pussy. "Jesus... again?" I nodded. She smiled, bent over and let me take her from behind while she leaned forward under the shower stream. I slotted my cock into her and pushed all the way inside. This was to be a quick one, I knew, but my need for her was endless. She hung onto the taps while I fucked her, deep thrusts, a hard, quick rhythm, until I exploded inside her once again, bathing her womb with my cum. There seemed no end to the amount of it I could produce. It began to seep from her opening immediately.

"Thanks, Gemma... sorry to have surprised you like that, but I was just thinking about last night and..."

She stopped me with a finger on my lips. "Any... time.... at... all", she whispered slowly. She washed my penis, I washed her pussy. We kissed, held each other under the warm water. Then it was time to go.

I have never checked out more reluctantly, but the limo waiting outside to take us both home cheered me up. We held each other until we reached her apartment block in Pimlico, and I helped her inside with yesterday's shopping. It was hard to leave her. She was almost crying.

"Hey... next weekend, at the latest. Why don't you come over and plug into Hal, get that work done, and we can take some walks in Snowdonia? I know all the best places. And if the weather is lousy, we can just stay in bed all weekend. Sound OK?"

She nodded, wiped a tear away and kissed me. "Get out of here, flyboy".

Hal was a poor substitute for Gemma, even if his sense of humour developed day by day. We linked up for an all-night catch-up session, reviewing all the information we had on the airfield, looking into potential problems with local planning permission, environmental impact and the like. Hal laid out this information in the clearest way, letting me see the overall picture well enough to know what I wanted to drill down into, to known more about. And the Boffin's implants made sure I learned quickly.

Even before Hal could fill the screen with data, however, the first thing I noticed on my return was that my house had been almost entirely rebuilt. The driveway curved attractively around an enlarged garden, freshly planted with shrubs and featuring red-brick walkways and a trellis for climbing plants. There was a small herb garden near the gate and conifer saplings lined the drive. It was gorgeous, and it was only going to be more comely as the plants grew. Brunel and Wright had apparently erected a marquee structure over the garden one evening, which would probably have appeared to the neighbours as if the forensic investigators had shown up and were searching for bodies under the patio. Not to worry, it was done and it looked glorious.

The white-wood, partially rotted old garage had been replaced with a sturdy bricks-and-mortar affair with an electric sliding door and direct access to the kitchen. Inside, Brunel and Wright had completed a much larger scale model of the spaceplane concept. Our reconnaissance aircraft was out on its second mission -- Brunel had launched it this morning -- taking an even closer look at Sculthorpe and, just to make sure, three other sites which the MOD were interested in getting off their books.

Inside, the house was a design masterpiece. Hal had created a light, spaciously uncluttered home. The stairs were still in the same place, but were now made from tropical hardwood, with a simple, strong banister. The living room was transformed into a 21st century entertainment space. Pride of place was given to the plasma-screen TV, and a variety of gadgets flanked this monster on black wood shelves. There were numerous houseplants, both here and in almost every other room. The upstairs bathroom was a marvel, an oasis of calm. Hal had even soundproofed the room, so that the bather would be undisturbed. The roof was repaired. The driveway was re-laid in fresh, black asphalt. I fell in love with my house, all over again.

As the night progressed, Hal filled me in on various aspects of the mission. Our financial holdings totalled nearly £6 million, surely enough to lease the airfield for a considerable period. He reminded me that our resource costs would be almost zero, as our sole material need was fresh water for Forager and his successors. All Hal wanted to do, it seemed, was get on to the site and start building. I couldn't agree more. We worked up the rest of the designs, another graphic presentation showing a 360-degree helicopter-eye view of the site from different angles, featuring both before and after guises.

Our buildings would be low-lying, largely buried under the grassy areas between the runways. We would erect perimeter fencing which would only be raised when there was a spacecraft out in the open, and then only until the testing phase was complete. The carrier planes would be built in large, underground hangers in the eastern section of the field, with the orbiters next to them. We would launch the aircraft to the East, avoiding the town of Fakenham and reducing noise. We would operate only during business hours, perhaps until 6pm, and no later. It was essential that the local people saw this as an opportunity, not a menace, we agreed.

Gemma called at about 11pm, just to thank me for the weekend and to tell me how wonderfully tired her various erogenous zones were. She promised to come over as soon as her weekly meetings were taken care of, perhaps Thursday night. And she said a couple of things which gave me an almost instant erection. I couldn't wait to slide it up into her pretty, soft cunt once more.

At 4am, having reviewed details of the payload capacity and orbital characteristics of the spaceplane, I called it a night and placed the sleep Inducer on my head. The strange dreams returned. I was missing at sea, floating on a stormy ocean wearing an orange lifejacket. There was fire in the sky, as though we were at war in the Atlantic, during the era of the Wolf Packs. I was in constant fear of the ocean pulling me under, sucking me down.

I woke suddenly and reported this to Hal. "That's the second time. These dreams sure are vivid, but that one was far from pleasant. Anything you can do about it?" He had Brunel take a look at once, promising delivery of an improved model.

It was an odd routine. I felt rested, but it was still dark, now at 5.40am. A busy day stretched ahead. I decided to get an early start and pre-empt the Air Force meeting with a good poke around the local area. Who were these people whose lives I was about to change? What kind of place was this, that I was about to put on the map? World history would remember this little corner of Norfolk, I noted to Hal. We must tread carefully.

I had eaten and was in the car and away by seven. The longest drives in the UK are not from North to South but from West to East. I stopped for coffee at a service station and finally reached the right part of Norfolk at lunch time. Parking the car in Fakenham, I decided to take in a pub lunch and see what I could find out. I was here to get to know these people a bit, after all.

"What can I get you?" I noticed the accent straight away. Sally's soft, Welsh lilt had given way to this earthy, rural sound. We're not in Kansas any more, Hal.

"Pint of best, if you wouldn't mind", I said, trying not to sound too upmarket. I ordered some lunch too, a sandwich.

"Are you travelling through?", the young barman wanted to know. He didn't look older than 25, but handled the pump deftly.

"In a way. I'm going to visit the big airfield at Sculthorpe. Ever been out there?"

He hadn't, but some of his mates liked to motocross with their bikes on the circuit just by the runway, he said. No-one was quite sure whether the place was legal, he said, but a lot of people went up there with their bikes at the weekend.

"Do you see lots of planes, or is it closed down?"

"Not a lot, no. The Army have it now, and they've got helicopters they bring over about twice a year. The lads practice jumping out of them, or something", he explained, finishing the pouring of my pint and handing it to me. "Sounds like a lot of fun", he added with a grin. He struck me as the kind of lad who didn't get a lot of action. This place seemed kind of small. Living where I did in Wales, I knew the type of town well.

"How do local people think about that? Isn't it noisy?"

He shook his head. "Nah, there's a big tract of farmland between the town and the base. Can't even really see it from here, unless you climb up the church tower or something", he chuckled. "Doesn't bother anyone. Why you want to know, anyway?"

I toyed with the idea of lying, but decided I'd better gauge a local reaction. "Well, I'm thinking of buying the place", I announced. He looked at my quizzically.

"Buying it? What you want it for, then?"

I smiled. "I want to send people into space, right off that big runway." The barman started laughing, began serving someone else. Well, that was pretty much the reaction I expected. I took a table and waited for my sandwich. The place was pretty empty, save for a couple of older chaps at the bar, the kind who had spent decades in there and were part of the furniture.

"'scuse me, young lad, but did I hear you say you're heading over to the old RAF station?" He pronounced it 'raff', as those who have been in the services often do.

"That's right. I'm meeting with some officials from the MOD." I, however, pronounced each letter separately. Didn't want to sound too familiar.

"And you want to launch... what was it", he nudged his partner and winked, "space ships, was it?" The two of them had a good chuckle. OK, I thought, since you asked.

"A two-stage system runway-launched system. We'll be lofting eleven tonnes into low earth orbit with each flight", I explained.

"Orbit!" he cackled, "bloody orbit! We had the bleeding Yanks here for years and they wanted to drop damn great atom bombs on the Russians from over there, and now this fella wants to go into bloody orbit!" They found the whole thing rather amusing.

I smiled despite myself. Part of me wanted to throttle these two under-educated idiots and curtail their selfish, unimaginative teasing. Another part wanted to buy them a pint and ask just why it was so preposterous. I did the latter.

"Up into space, eh?" he asked a few minutes later. "Why would anyone want to go up there? Cold and dark, isn't it? Got to wear a helmet so as you can even breath. Isn't that so?"

I agreed, but said that the environment could be made remarkably comfortable. Tourists would want to go, I explained. "You've spent time in the air, haven't you?" He nodded, slightly grave.

"My older brother was one of the 'few' in the Battle of Britain", he confided. "I joined up after the war, navigator on the bombers."

"What was the highest altitude you've ever reached?" He thought for a second and said he reckoned about 39,000ft in a 747 going to visit his daughter in Australia. "And did you enjoy the view from up there?"

He became expansive, a torrent of recollection making its way to the surface. He had seen the tiny little islands dotted around Indonesia, the deserts of Turkey and Iran, the endless blue of the Indian ocean. The images had stayed with him, and always would, he said.

"How about going up a hundred miles and more?" I asked him. "You can see whole continents laid out from up there. A whole ocean in one view. The curvature of the Earth. What do you think you would make of that?"

The two old men looked at each other. The talkative one fell silent, stared at his pint with a far-off expression. His partner put down his pint, looked at me and said, "well, son, that sounds like it might be worth seeing."

There was a single security guard at the gatehouse who looked like he had one of the most boring jobs in the world. "Yes, sir, you're expected. The Minister is in the control tower over there", he pointed. "Mind if I search your vehicle quickly, sir? Security and everything, you understand."

I did. He couldn't help remarking on the unusual engine setup, having popped the hood. "One of those new biofuel things, is it?" he asked.

"Yes, that's right", I lied. "Very efficient. You should look into it." Actually, I knew that biofuels were a terrible idea and had just succeeded in doubling the price of food in some parts of the developing world. But fixing that was all part of my plan. Hard to launch into space, though, if you didn't have a runway. I thanked the guard and drove through to the control tower where I parked the car and took a look around.

The airfield seemed vast. Originally, three runways operated to fly off the big strategic bombers of the United States Air Force. They had been tasked with flying nuclear bombing missions into Europe in the event of a war with the Soviet Union. I was delighted to be considering a more peaceful, productive purpose for them. There were numerous other buildings scattered around, which might have been barrack buildings or workshops when the base was at its height. 10,000 people had worked here, I knew. Now it was almost eerily silent. Not for long, I mused to myself as I climbed up the steps into the control tower.

"Ah, excellent". This must be the Minister, I thought to myself. He had a slightly supercilious air, was almost certainly ex-services himself, and strode towards me with the confidence of someone who has faced much greater challenges than those posed by a rich rocket scientist. "Find the place OK?"

"Yes, thank you Minister. Pleasure to be here."

"Oh, God just call me Tom. Everyone else seems to." Tom Fenlon has been Her Majesty's Secretary of Defence for two years, and was almost universally popular with the three services. He had fought tooth and nail against base closures, notably forcing through amendments which would keep the big submarine base at Faslane open, and had secured a larger establishment of the new Typhoon fighter-bomber for the Air Force. He had risked his job countless times to get Britain's forces what they said they needed. But today his role was different.

"So, Howles here", Keith nodded in my direction, "tells me you've got a scheme for using the runways at Sculthorpe."

"That's right. Actually, I'll only be using the main runway, but I'll need pretty much unlimited rights to the whole site if the plan is to be realised."

"Well, why don't you tell us what you have in mind? You know there's more belt-tightening going on, Whitehall orders and all that. Normally we'd just sell these places to housing developers and have done with it, but after Howles told me the basics, it seemed that the big long runway and the", he looked around, through the tower's windows at the swathes of farmland, "rather isolated location might well suit your purposes."

"Indeed. Well, I have a presentation here if you would give me just a moment to get set up." The minister, Knowles and two aides who had not been introduced, probably security people, waited in the tower while I grabbed the laptop and scale model from the car. Getting the two up the stairs was a bit of a struggle. I longed for a Relocation system, I really did.

"By Jove!", exclaimed the Minister. "Does that thing actually fly?" I made a show of puffing a bit as I plonked down the scale model on a table by the window.

"I wish it did, Tom, so I didn't have to carry the damned thing around!" I got a laugh and settled down to begin the presentation. "What you see here is a two-stage system. The carrier plane", I gestured towards the massive, six-engine aircraft, "will have the orbiter attached using high-tensile metal struts on its upper fuselage." I used a laser pointer to indicate this. "They take off as a unit under the carrier plane's power and ascent to about 80,000ft."

The Minister whistled. "That's a long way up. Have you tested the engines to that kind of altitude?"

"Well, no, not yet. We need a proper testing facility, which I am hoping will be about a quarter of a mile over there", I motioned out of the window towards the body of the airfield. "Once built, we'll be able to work up the engines to that kind of performance."

"Very well. Press on, then. I want to hear about the orbiter."

"Well, Tom, this is the really remarkable bit. The orbiter is thrown loose from the carrier plane by a suite of pyrotechnic charges. The carrier turns away, leaving the orbiter on its own path, and then the little fella fires its engines. That", I promised, "will be an experience for anyone on board".

"What kind of fuels does it burn?"

"Liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Gives it a hell of a kick. For a lightweight ship like this one", I motioned at the orbiter model once more, "we're talking 80,000ft to orbital velocity in under seven minutes. It will be a hell of a ride."

The Minister was bouncing up and down on his heels. "I see!", he exclaimed. "Quite a system. What about recovery?"

I played a video of the planned re-entry system. "We're developing some new heat-resistant materials which will readily withstand the heat of re-entry", I boasted confidently. "Then, the orbiter will return here to Sculthorpe and land like a conventional aircraft on a tricycle landing gear, with an optional arrestor parachute, like the space shuttle."