The Twelve Stones (42 page)

“
There’s this card. It’s from around the time Mr. McCray disappeared. This was probably his girlfriend at the time.”

Kline snatched the photo away from his assistant and examined the two people in it with a critical eye.

The brunette was beautiful, her fierce and sparkling blue eyes popp
ing
out of the photo. The other Kline easily recognized as the man from the desert. Both were smiling, and both held each other as couples do when they’re in love.

“
If he’s disappeared for the last six years, it’s unlikely she knew anything about it.” Kline mused out loud.

Geoffrey completed the thought. “It’s possible he still has feelings for her…”

“
I think it’s a good time to go ask her. Find what you can on Miss Harper, and perhaps she will be appropriate enough leverage on Mr. McCray. If we fail to persuade the young man with his former lover, then we drop her out of the chopper. Understood?”

Geoffrey quickly nodded,
tapping
on his PDA as he looked for information on
the girl
. Kline’s idea was a good one, and Geoffrey cursed himself for not thinking
of
it sooner.

“
Search parameters have given me the name of one woman, in charge of the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence
at the Allen Telescope Array in Hat Creek
,
California.” Geoffrey skimmed the website and found a picture of the director. Showing his PDA to Kline, he smiled. “That’s her.”

Kline clapped his hands in victory.

“
Excellent
.
T
hen
you and I will go find this woman and
see what she knows of
her last boyfriend.” Kline raised himself off his chair, putting on his jacket with an excited expression on his face.

Geoffrey also got out of his chair warily, unsure if he really was walking out of the trailer alive.

“
Mr. Tate,” Kline said conversationally as they exited the trailer and headed towards Kline’s waiting helicopter. “Remember that you are only alive right now because I deem it so.
Once more, d
o
we understand each other?”

Geoffrey looked back into the beady eyes of Rupert Kline. The only chance he was going to take on the man’s promise was by following the orders he was given and hoping he could stay valuable enough. If he at all failed in finding this girl, Geoffrey would place himself on the first jet to Brazil.

Chapter Thirty

Emily pulled h
er
car into her space at the Allen Telescope Array. The commute had gone quicker than normal this week.

Every Monday morning, she drove three hundred miles north from her home in San Francisco and stayed at the complex
,
decoding signals from outer space for four days out of the week. The co-founder of Microsoft had spared no expense on living quarters for the scientists and programmers, so Emily never minded her commute. The Allen Telescope Array (or ATA
,
as it was known) had become a home away from home, a place where she could concentrate on work and only work. As the years went by, Emily found herself stuck in a routine, working as hard as she could,
then
returning back to the home Alex and she had once shared
. It was a place
where she could decompress, forget about numbers, star charts and ETI’s (Extraterrestrial Intelligences) for a moment. It was
a place
where she could drink a bottle of red wine and wonder privately to herself where her life was going. Then
,
each Monday morning, it started all over again, with her drive back up to Hat Creek.

Over the years, her work began to concentrate more on what
the complex
considered legitimate science. SETI only used about ten percent of the telescope time
,
and much of that processing was done on a distributed computing grid. People at home who wanted
to
,
could download the Allen Telescope’s observations and examine the data itself for
a
lien
signals. As the distributing computer power project grew, her duties changed. Now
,
she mostly charted quasars
and
gamma ray bursts as she peered deep into the universe
,
hoping for some explanations
.
S
omehow, looking for the ETI’s had become a distant priority during her tenure at the telescope.

Every morning, she received a set of briefing papers, going over the schedule and recapping the various experiments currently being run at the Allen Telescope Array. The last item on the briefing papers was always news on the search for
a
lien
life, but as always, the skies remained silent. Emily never gave up hope that she might see something in the briefing that might encourage the search for life, but every morning, she was disappointed.

As she arrived to the complex, she picked up the day’s packet, scanning the schedule, making mental notes on who she would need to talk to over the next few days. She turned to the last page, where SETI outlined their progress. She alway
s secretly hoped for some earth-
shattering revelation, but, as always, she sighed, tossing the booklet aside, after reading the weekend’s entry for their search for extraterrestrial life: “No significant signals detected.”

Her project assistant and college roommate Christina Ip entered her office. Christina had graduated from Berkley with honors
,
along with Emily
,
and had taken a job with her at the Allen Telescope Array. Whereas Emily remained skeptical, but ready to believe in the face of real evidence, Christina had talked non-stop about the possibilities of alien life since the day they had met.

“Got today’s briefing packet?” Christina asked, waving the loosely bound sheaf of papers.

“Nothing on the scope
,
Christina,” Emily replied, not looking up as she responded to her e-mail. “Same as it ever was.”

“You are so negative!” Christina pouted from across the room. “Sheer numbers say we’ll hear from somebody eventually
.
J
ust gotta have faith!”

“Yeah, by the time our bones have turned to dust
,
maybe.” Emily looked up from her computer to look at her friend
.
“
H
ow was the weekend?”

“Boring
.
W
e
had a few
g
amma
r
ay
b
ursts
go off last night, but we missed ‘em, cause we were on the wrong side to see ‘em pop off. The folks in Australia caught some of it, but for the most part
,
we’ll only be seeing afterglow by the time they rise over the horizon
,
which should be
…
” Christina checked the clock on the wall, “
i
n about a half hour or so. We might even get to see something interesting.”

“Sure, just like the last
500
or so of those we’ve observed.” Emily replied, sounding bored. “Anything else I need to know
?
”

“Not really…” Christina trailed off as she looked at the schedule in her hand. “Just another week in paradise
,
looking for little green men!”

“If you’re gonna continue with the cheerleader crap, can you at least wait till after I’ve had some coffee?” Emily grumbled. With her commute, Mondays always hurt the most.

“I could make a Starbucks run
,
” Christina offered.

“No need for that. I’ll take whatever they’re trying to pass off as coffee in the kitchen.” Emily stood up from her desk, walking towards the door. “It’s not like we have a lot to do around here anyway.”

Christina winked at Emily. “Hey, you never know. Today could be the day we’re contacted by aliens.”

Emily laughed. As much faith as she had in the idea of life on other planets, the next four days on her schedule were telling her a different story. If there was life out in the great beyond, she probably wasn’t going to meet them today.

Chapter Thirty-One

The helicopter approached the Allan Telescope Array at a brisk
215
miles an hour. The mid-morning sun glinted off the Plexiglas windows as Geoffrey sat in silence
,
watching Kline gaze out the window down at the natural bowl
-
like formation of the valley below them.

Hundreds of large
,
shiny
,
metal satellite dishes were scattered randomly throughout the valley
,
leaving little to no room for the large helicopter to land. The pilot banked once again
;
the gentle breezes that seemed so calm on the ground might as well
have been
gale force winds
,
the way they were playing havoc with his controls. The pilot clicked his microphone, enabling himself to talk directly to his passenger’s headsets.

“Sir, there isn’t much in the way of a landing area here.” The pilot’s voice was tinged with fear. He’d heard how Kline had erupted on the mine foreman earlier that night. Gossip like that always traveled fast.

“What about the parking lot?” Kline called out as he pointed down towards four squat buildings on the other side of the
v
alley. Clearly the nerve center of the whole operation, Kline thought to himself. The buildings were small, none any higher than two floors
,
and were centered neatly on a vibrant courtyard filled with flowers and trees. The parking lot was located a few hundred feet away from the buildings
,
filled with cars parked under carports. The tops of all the carport
s
had extensive solar panels on top of them, feeding power to the hybrid cars and trucks parked below them. With the spaces all covered with the solar panel carports, there left little room available for the large commercial helicopter to land.

“There’s a spot there over in the corner,” Geoffrey added helpfully. Kline shot him a look, and Geoffrey sat back in his seat once again.

“Can you land there?” Kline asked the pilot, his words hissing through his headphones.

“It’ll be tight. If I can’t make it, I’m aborting
,
”
t
he pilot replied nervously as he smoothly guided the several
-
thousand
-
pound vehicle over to where Kline was pointing. He nosed the stick of the helicopter
,
settling in a precise hover over the free area.

The helicopter settled into a hover, its tail rotor hanging precariously close to high
-
voltage lines. The pilot swallowed as he lowered the collective inch by inch as sweat poured off his brow.

On the ground, the gentle breeze that rose and fell through the valley was regarded as a welcome respite from the hot day for many. For the two ton craft hovering in midair, it could spell disaster at any moment. The breeze gusted, and the tail rotor of the helicopter was pushed slightly into the carport. The clanging and screeches of metal against metal shook the entire helicopter. The pilot instantly yanked the collective up
,
bringing the helicopter back up a few hundred feet as he struggled to control it. The tail rotor had been damaged slightly, but it wasn’t enough to kill them all. He was not trying that landing again
,
no matter how much Kline paid him.

“Idiot!” Kline screamed at the pilot, who ignored his boss as he struggled with the aircraft
,
attempting to keep them in one piece. He whipped around
,
looking for his assistant. Geoffrey was clutching the safety handrail, his face white as a sheet.
Useless,
Kline thought to himself.

“Get us closer to the ground!” Kline yelled into the mic.

“I don’t know if you were watching, but if I try a stupid stunt like that again, we’re all gonna end up as
a bunch of pasty red smears down there
,
”
t
he
pilot roared back
.
“We need to find an airport
;
that’s where we’re…ack!”
Kline’s forearm clamped down on the pilot’s throat, cutting off his words
.
The businessman
leaned forward
,
whispering into
the pilot’s
ear.