Our transport device sat in the middle of the grass covered quad. Students and scientists who had worked on the project to send the device to Freedom crowded around the object. As of yet it was still unopened as various tests were being conducted.
“When did you bring it in?” I asked the first person I came in contact with that might have an answer.
“It landed, right here, on its own,” was the quick answer and he went back to checking his personal communications pad and discussing data with those around him.
“It just landed here?” I questioned a student who looked like she might have a bit more time for me.
“Came down completely shielded. We saw nothing coming from Freedom. In fact we saw nothing at all until it showed up here. I was part of the group scanning for it. We didn’t even get a blimp or anything even when it entered our atmosphere.”
Ted Johnson, one of the team leaders, saw Sally and me and broke away from the crowd around the returned space craft and walked toward us.
“Looks just like what we sent,” Ted said as he gave us both a quick hand shaking. “But it’s not,” he added. “We may have made a pretty stupid mistake.”
“How so?” Sally asked.
“Well, we needed shielding in order to get this thing to Freedom without it being shot down by Earth or Oaxion.”
“Sure, anything without some sort of cloaking device wouldn’t have made it half way to Freedom. Both sides would have fired upon it.” I said.
“Well, we were pretty proud of ourselves when we came up with the answer, and it obviously worked but it came back better then we made it. We should have been able to, at the very least, detect it breaking into our atmosphere and we saw absolutely nothing until it shut off its cloak and by that time it was sitting here. It could have sat here for days with the cloak activated; the only way we would have found it was if someone had walked into it.”
“And our cloak wasn’t that good?” Sally asked.
“No, the beings on Freedom must have first reverse engineered our shielding and then improved upon it.”
david blankenship 