Alien Impulses

Tom watched the video. I could already see that I had him. Perhaps he'd been switched on by Apollo 11 as a boy, or maybe dreamed of taking a tourist flight into space himself. The movie finished and the screen showed a still-shot, an artists' impression (the artist being Hal, naturally) of the two ships leaving the runway at a much-improved Sculthorpe, with a Norman Foster-style glass reception building for passengers and several other orbiters and their steeds on the flight line, ready to go.

The Minister sat back in his seat. "What kind of timescale are we talking about?"

This was where I had to be careful, once more. Too soon and I would look overly ambitious. Too far in the future, and Tom would be unable to make political capital from a project which would reach fruition after he had already left office.

"Six months".

Knowles and the Minister looked at each other. "Six months for what?", Knowles asked, scepticism brewing in his facial expression.

"A flight article ready for a full series of test flights. We think we'll need thirty or so upper-atmosphere flights of the carrier/orbiter combination and then about ten sub-orbital and ten orbital flights before we would allow any passenger or payload customer to become involved."

Tom was smiling knowingly. "Son, I've seen dozens of projects, civil and military, of this complexity and less. I've supported them, moved mountains to make them work, to give them the resources they need. And more often than not, I end up with egg on my face because I got carried away and supported a technology which needed time to mature. Is that what I'm looking at right now? Be objective, would you, I want to know what you think. Are you being too ambitious?"

I put down my laser pointer, closed the laptop and looked him square in the eye. "Minister, I'm prepared to give you a down payment of £5 million towards a perpetual lease of this airfield. The other five million I will transfer in a year from today. If, by three months time, we have not built our facility and have carried out our first engine tests on both carrier and orbiter engines right here at this site, you can keep the five million and we will pack up, pull down our buildings and leave. There won't be a trace of the project left.

"On the other hand", I continued, "if we perform the tests on schedule, and provide a flight article for the first high-altitude tests six months from today, I will expect the government's full support for the development of this site into a major space facility. Could we come to an agreement based on that?"

Tom liked straight-talk, I knew. He liked men to stick their necks out and take risks. I was talking with the right guy. "We could. I need to speak with the Prime Minister, and one or two other people. The Army actually control this site right now, so I'll have to find them somewhere else to do their helicopter training."

"Those exercises happen only twice a year", I reminded him.

"Yes, that's true. Shouldn't be too big a deal. If everything goes to plan I should be able to get you some good news by the weekend."

We thanked each other for the time we'd spent today, and for the long journey, and I returned to my car. "Tom?" I shouted from the car window as he strode over to his Ministerial Jaguar. "Mind if I take the Golf for a thrash down the runway? I've been wanting to ever since I saw it on the satellite image. Smooth as silk, they say it is."

"Be my guest. Just don't take off!" He laughed at his own little joke and, without further ado, I sped off along the perimeter track towards the west end of the runway. I passed derelict hangers, a fuel depot and several other washed-out buildings before swinging left and lining up on the runway.

Hal had been good enough to install a speedometer which reflected the car's new abilities. I put her in first, banged down the pedal and flung the car down the runway. Zero to sixty in about 3 seconds, I judged. By the time we were half way down the long tarmac strip, the speedometer read 204mph and I was certain we were, as Tom joked, about to lift off like a jet fighter. I eased off and let the car coast to the end, turning onto the perimeter track once more and then straight through the gate and out onto the main road.

"Hal", I whispered, catching my breath. "You're a fucking genius."

Back in Wales, I waited for two vital things to happen. The first was news from Tom Fenlon, hopefully full permission to go in and start knocking the airfield about. The second was news of Gemma's meetings and how soon she could come out to Wales. Hal and I worked well, increasingly understanding each other. His financial dealings had gone into overdrive as we accrued greater and greater profits. A single deal could net £1 million, sometimes more, and our coffers swelled impressively. Paying the Ministry would be a snap.

"Hal? How am I going to get to and fro to the airfield, once things get started? I don't want to sell the house... I love the place, and this area, and I wouldn't want to be that far from Snowdonia. Any ideas?"

Hal had nine different transport ideas, ranging from the construction of a Relocation infrastructure throughout the south of England (which seemed lavish, despite its attractions, and would doubtless be discovered at some point, no matter which fields it was buried under), to taking a daily charter flight from one of the local airports direct to Sculthorpe (which seemed wasteful and environmentally disastrous), to just biting the bullet and driving. I didn't fancy that. Hal's fourth suggestion was almost certainly the best one.

"OK, I like the idea, but how do you produce an entirely electric helicopter?", I wanted to know.

"This is an established form of transport on sixteen major planets", he informed me. "In the same way as the batteries in your car are charged up from the mains or a fusion plant, the batteries in the helicopter are prepared before lift-off and can power the chopper at cruise speed for about seven hours. This would give it a range sufficient to fly to Warsaw. Certainly enough for a daily commute to Norfolk."

I pondered this, impressed as usual. "Daily? Shit, I hope not. I'm planning on doing a lot of this remotely. Are you able to operate in such a way? I'd like to keep you here, if I can."

Hal thought for the usual fraction of a second. "I am one of the extremely few things which Forager cannot duplicate. I contain certain parts which are impossible to recreate."

I was curious immediately. "Like what?"

"The whole Universe", Hal answered.

I had suspected this since I met him. Hal was a quantum computer whose processing power was actually drawn from every atom in existence. These machines were vanishingly rare.

"Hal? What is the maximum amount of your computational power I have ever asked you to use?"

"0.000084 percent", was his swift answer. To call Hal under-utilised would be an egregious understatement.

"I think we need to find you some more things to do."

Gemma called again that night, on the Wednesday. She was free of her meetings and had one lecture she needed to attend in the morning, but could be with me by 6pm, she said. My heart swelled at the very idea.

I gave Hal some more interesting work to do. One job consisted of compiling data on near-earth asteroids and plotting their course, as accurately as current data permitted. He completed this mammoth task, tracking several hundred thousand objects over the next 100,000 years, in about an hour, drawing partly on the incomplete records from JPL and other groups, with the remainder coming from the Takanli Deep Space Tracking System.

"The earth will encounter a total of six thousand, three hundred and seventy objects, plus or minus one percent. 98.3% of these will burn up in the atmosphere. Most of the remainder will break up into tiny fragments which will impact the earth but cause no significant damage. In the next hundred thousand years, six objects of larger than 10km in diameter will hit the Earth, four at sea and two on land."

That sounded fairly serious. "When, and how big", I wanted to know.

"The ocean impacts will cause chaotic effects which are difficult to predict and depend to an extent on the flood defences of the nations in question. Two will cause major tsunami events, larger than that of Boxing Day 2004. One will strike the Mediterranean and cause major localised flooding. One will strike the Bering Sea. The land-strikes will be in central Russia and the Colorado. Local devastation will be considerable."

"When, Hal?"

He gave me dates ranging from 6,790 to 88,680 years in the future. I wasn't going to lose any sleep. "With a bit of luck, Hal, we'll have better surveillance and deflection methods by then". I shuddered to think what chaos would ensue if scientists announced that an asteroid was a couple of years out, or even less. There would be global panic. I remember Carpash, during the Cruiser joyride from Takanli in my first week there, criticising Earth for its short-sightedness in this area, and general under-achievement in space. How right he was. At least for the moment.

I was eating lunch when Tom Fenlon called in person to give us the good news. "The site is all yours, from the first of next month. All you have to do is promise not to make too much noise, and not build anything over three storeys tall. You can do whatever you like to the existing buildings and the three runways. The plans you sent us for a fence look entirely commendable for security reasons. We don't want great hordes of the Norfolk public showing up in the fields around Sculthorpe, seeing what you're up to on testing day."

The man was a gem. He accepted the £5 million deal and the wager I had attached to it, spelling out that he was personally interested in how we fared, and would be keeping a close eye on the project. Once we put the phone down, Hal swung into action, realising a long-dormant plan for the swift and efficient transformation of Sculthorpe. We had six days until the end of the month, then the place was all ours. I had Forager produce me a bottle of champagne, put The Right Stuff on the DVD and drank the whole bottle.

Gemma called from the train the next afternoon. I had sorted out my hangover, having forgotten the trick with the purple pill, and Hal had spent the morning showing me hanger interiors and assembly lines for the ships. We were looking at about three weeks to produce an orbiter and seven to construct the carrier plane. By Boeing standards, this was incredible. But Hal was still frustrated. I shut him up long enough to hear what Gemma was saying.

"Great! God, I can't wait to see you... I know, far too long. You won't believe what the design guys have done to the house... what? Didn't I tell you? Yeah, I think its going to be on TV or something. They just went to town on the place... OK, 6.25 at the station. I'll see you there... You what?... You're not wearing any what?... Oh, excellent. See you in a couple of hours, naughty girl."

Distracted but elated, I finished working with Hal and we nailed down the hanger design. There would be a good deal of digging to do, in order that the majority of the structure would be buried underground. Hal showed me a veritable fleet of robots he intended to use, but nothing could be done until he actually got on-site in Norfolk.

"I can hijack existing satellite channels until we have our own", he explained, "but I would a communications bird at the front of our build queue once we get there."

I agreed, providing that it didn't interfere with getting the first carrier and orbiter built. "How are we going to pull this off, Hal? I mean, the Ministry already thinks we're mad with the three-month and six-month timescales for the engine testing and the flight article. If we show up with the full package in two months, they will know something fishy is going on."

"On the contrary", Hal disagreed. "They will think we're particularly efficient. All you have to do is keep them off the base. Permanently."

That was worrying. "I don't think I can do that, Hal. They have a lot invested in this, and I couldn't sell it to them in any other way than as a partnership. They'll want to visit, surely."

Hal groaned. It was a reasonable copy of the human sound, but from him it sounded even more exasperated. I thought at once of Marvin the Paranoid Android from the Douglas Adams books. "I suspected as much. We'll have to implement Operation Red Carpet."

I waited for more, but Hal seemed to want to let the drama build before revealing anything. I ordered a coffee from the kitchen replicator, which resembled a food mixer, and glanced around to make sure nothing too alien was sitting out, waiting for Gemma to find it and wreck everything.

"I've had in mind for some time", Hal explained, "a collection of ruses which would persuade any visitors that two hundred full-time staff work on the site and are involved in building the hangers, aircraft and spacecraft, as well as ancillary structures."

I gawped at him. "And how, pray, do you hope to pull the wool over the eyes of very smart people to quite that extent?"

"Holography. It is an accepted method during entertainments on Takanli and hundreds of other planets. That which is not real is made to appear real."

He talked me through the plan. It was inspired, bold, virtually impossible to unravel and brilliantly innovative. We agreed on the details, by which time I was almost late to collect Gemma from the station. "Right. Now listen carefully, Hal. You've spoken to Gemma before, and she likes you."

"Most gratifying", Hal gushed.

"Quite. Well, I like this girl and I want to keep things sweet. Under no circumstances whatsoever is she to learn that I have ever visited another planet, or even left the Earth. No trace of alien involvement is permitted. None of the machines are to be out or working when she is around. I want you to hide all of them, and anything else incriminating. Got it?"

Hal searched the house, using his wireless communicator, and ensured that all was as it should have been. "Now you've done some major restructuring work, which I love, but Gemma was only here ten days ago and she'll be very surprised by the amount of change that has gone on. I don't want anything else weird to crop up. OK?"

He was silent for a second or two. "Does it appear that you are speaking with one of those electronic toothbrushes with a spiffy LCD in the handle? Do I look like a 'guess your weight' machine?"

I grabbed my jacket and keys. "Alright, alright, alright... keep your... motherboard on."

"I can't believe it!", she gasped, "I hardly recognise the place". Gemma was just as impressed as I was by the new garden and the curving driveway, the new garage.

"Wait until you see inside! They really went nuts. The producer told me to be really honest about what I wanted, so that my reactions would look genuine when they unveiled it at the end. I loved it straight away."

She went gooey over the living room where, I remembered vividly, I had kissed her pussy for the first time. She sat down on the couch, her memory as clear as mine.

"I had a rather good time on this couch last time I sat on it". She grinned mischievously. "You should market this, could make even more money...", she spelled out the words in mid-air, "the orgasmic couch... Come Home, Sit Down, Get Off". I had a good laugh about that. "Any chance of some more of that?" she wondered, parting her legs slightly. She was wearing a short, summer dress and tank top which accentuated her fabulous breasts. I could see all the way up the inside of her thighs, where white cotton panties hid her mound.

"I should think so." I joined her on the sofa and we kissed, slowly and tenderly, like people who had learned each other a little, were confident enough to just be themselves. I teased her at length, tickling the inside of her thighs with probing, soft fingertips, coming close to the fabric of her panties but denying her the contact she craved. Instead I lifted up her tank top and sucked lovingly on her hard nipples. They were firm and brown, standing up from her breasts like little mountains of sensitivity. She moaned and giggled as I sucked, licked and gently nibbled on them, willing my hand closer to her secret places but allowing me to take my time. We had the whole weekend, four days, together. There was plenty of time.

"Want to continue this upstairs? The bedroom is rather transformed as well." Gemma nodded, pulled off her tank top and followed me upstairs.

"God, you naughty boy, I'm soaking", she whispered as we reached the bedroom. "I suppose I'll be pretty much soaking all weekend."

"I hope so", I grinned, as I opened the bedroom door. Gemma gasped and immediately jumped on my massive bed and lay back, instantly noticing the mirror which covered over half of the ceiling.

"Oh... my... God." She waved at herself in the mirror. "And some home decoration TV show put this on for you?" she asked, unzipping her skirt.

"Er, no. This I added later. What do you think?"

She stretched out like a lazy cat, wearing only her panties, enjoying the enormous space the bed offered. "I think we're going to have a really good time." She crooked a finger at me and motioned me to the bed.

Her first orgasms were quick, needful, almost desperate. Although she didn't yet want to share it with me, I had the strong suspicion she masturbated most days. I wondered if that included this morning, and was about to ask when she pushed me back and started gently licking my penis. It quickly grew to its customary hardness and length and she pressed it against her face and kissed it lovingly. "Hi there", she whispered. "Sorry I've been away for a while... I hope your boss has been treating you well", she grinned at me and licked my tip. "I'm going to treat you really well", she purred. "I'm going to show you how much I love you... and how much I love him", she glanced at me.

Her mouth was just heavenly. I let her please me, stroking her back and playing with the soft hairs around her cunt. Her wetness permeated everything there, matting her hairs together and forming a delicious layer on her outer lips which I played with. "You know what happens when you blow me like that, Gemma", I warned.

"Just getting you warmed up, baby. I want your first orgasm inside my pussy. Then your second in my mouth. The third in my bottom. I want you to fill all of my holes. If you can do a fourth, and I'm fairly sure you can, I'd like that back in my pussy. Each hole can take turns. How does that sound?"

"Perfect", I smiled, as she went back to sucking me. After a minute more, without bringing me too close, she straddled me and rubbed my glans against her cunt.

"How many times do you think you can come?", she asked as she slid down onto me. "I mean, I had dozens or orgasm in London last weekend. I think I owe you a few extra". She began a steady, slow rhythm, accepting my huge cock into her body for the first time since Sunday. "God you feel good", she breathed.

"I'm not sure", I said, stroking her back and cupping her ass in my hands. "I've come six times in one day once, but that was a while ago." I was remembering the outrageous concert orgy during my first week on Takanli, when I had shot my sixth load into some girl while watching Falik getting balled senseless. My thoughts didn't stray far from Gemma, however. Her strong pussy muscles were gripping me, slipping up and down on my erect shaft.

"I want as many as you can give me... six would be nice... two in each hole", she grinned as she put a hand between her legs and brought herself to a delicious, cock-squeezing orgasm. I spun her over and made love to her, lying between her legs and kissing her constantly. I needed to come, and she knew that, and it was OK. "It is only your first one... I know there is more", she smiled, kissing me. "Give me your cum, right up inside me". I loved it when she talked dirty.