Illegal Alien

Hask said the Tosok home world had a higher gravity than Earth, but the mothership, of course, was in microgravity now, although during its starflight its constant acceleration would have provided a sensation of normal weight.

Clete was still having trouble maintaining his composure. Flying through space was enough in and of itself to qualify as the greatest thrill of his life, but to have that coupled with actually being in the presence of an extraterrestrial lifeform was almost too much to bear. He’d been gri

And weightlessness! My God, it was everything Armstrong and the other astronauts had told him it was! Once, for his PBS show, Clete had flown aboard the Vomit Comet — the KC-135 jet that NASA used to train astronauts. That had been fun, but this — this was spectacular!

Space travel.

Alien life.

Starships.

He’d come a long way from his poor upbringing in the hills of Te

He was famous, a celebrity, rich, a frequent guest on The Tonight Show.

But he’d always said he would trade all of that to go into space, to know for sure that life existed elsewhere.

Clete had guessed correctly: the lander was indeed fully automated; Hask never once touched the controls. But as the lander maneuvered along the baton’s boom, something caught Clete’s eye. Although it was hard to know what Tosok technology was supposed to look like, a portion of the ship seemed damaged. Clete pointed at it.

’Yes," said Hask. "An impact, as we entered your solar system. To our surprise, much junk at the edge."

"How far out?" said Clete.

"Perhaps fifty times Earth’s orbital radius."

Clete nodded to himself. The Kuiper belt — the source of comets with orbital periods of twenty years or less. "Is the damage severe?"

"Must be repaired," said Hask. "Your help needed."

Clete felt his eyebrows rising. "Of course. I’m sure we’ll be glad to."

The lander continued to approach the mothership, which Clete estimated was three hundred meters long. If its hull had been more reflective, it would have easily been visible from the ground.

Finally, the lander co

"Is the other empty port a spare, or is a ship missing?" asked Clete.

"Ship missing," said Hask. "One was knocked loose during the impact; we were unable to recover it."

Hask floated forward, and both the i

It was cool inside the starship — perhaps fifty degrees Fahrenheit. The weightlessness was utterly intoxicating; Clete indulged himself with a few barrel rolls while Hask watched, his head tuft moving in a way that might indicate amusement. Soon, though, Hask floated down a corridor, and Clete followed, trying to maneuver while keeping an eye on his cam-corder’s small LCD screen. Since the Tosoks had apparently been traveling for two hundred and eleven years, Clete had expected the ship to be roomy on the inside, but there didn’t seem to be much in the way of open spaces, and so far they had yet to see another Tosok.

"Where are the others?" asked Clete.

"This way," said Hask. Every few meters he gave a gentle push off the wall with his back hand to continue him on his way. It was clear which part of the corridor served as the floor and which as the ceiling when the engines were on: the ceiling had circular yellow-white light fixtures set into it at regular intervals. In between those were tiny, much dimmer, orange lamps, which Clete thought might be emergency lighting.

The floors were covered with — well, at first Clete thought it was deep-pile carpet, but as he pushed his own hand against it to propel him along, he realized it was some sort of plant material, with purple leaves. It wasn’t grass; rather, it was more like a quilt of soft Brillo pads. Various possibilities ran through Clete’s mind: that the plant carpeting was responsible for sucking up carbon dioxide, or some other waste gas, and replenishing it with oxygen; that it represented a food source for the Tosoks; or that they just liked the sensation of walking with their bare reet through it. Although he wouldn’t presume to guess much yet about Tosok psychology, anything that helped them get through a multicentury voyage was doubtless to the good.

They finally arrived at the room Hask had been heading for. The door opened, and a puff of condensation billowed toward them, along with a blast of air so cold it gave Clete gooseflesh. He hoped it hadn’t fogged his camera lens.

Inside the tiny room were six other Tosoks, strapped to special slabs, and mostly covered over with red plastic blankets. There were two empty slabs, with their blankets removed; one was presumably Hask’s, and the other must have belonged to the eighth crew member, who Hask had said had passed away. On these, Clete could see that there was a trough ru

"What are they doing?" asked Clete.

"Sleeping," said Hask.

All of them at once? Surely the crew would work in shifts, and—

And then it hit him — they hadn’t just been sleeping for a few hours.

Rather, they’d been sleeping for years — for centuries. This is how the Tosoks endured the long spaceflight: in hibernation.

Clete tipped his camera to look around the room. Illuminated panels were positioned on pedestals next to each slab. Each one had several animated bar charts and X-Y plots on it. Clete guessed they were medical readouts, monitoring the condition of the hibernating crew members. A careful study of the readouts might reveal a lot about Tosok physiology. Some of the panels had what looked like add-on pieces of equipment plugged into them; on others, three-holed co

It wasn’t cryonics — the kind of freezing for suspended animation humans had long dreamed off. Yes, this was cold — well below zero Celsius — but it was nowhere near absolute zero. The Tosoks seemed to have a natural ability to hibernate, just as many Earth animals did.

Clete was wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket; neither provided quite enough insulation against the cold. He looked around the room, still relishing the weightlessness. He found every detail of Tosok engineering fascinating. The only places he saw actual fasteners were where they were clearly meant to be undone for maintenance, like the bolts that secured the chair supports in the lander. Everything else seemed to have been molded in a single piece, mostly from ceramic, although there were a few places where metal was visible.