We could never fix it, and the Colonial Union and the Colonial Defense Forces had a strange aversion to having their ships potentially explode ninety-three times out of a hundred. Eventually the research was abandoned.
But there were still the small, very light vehicles we created with the prototype engines attached to them, currently stored in a warehouse module of Phoenix Station. They would be the perfect way for me to get to Earth both in a hurry—because I would only have to travel as far as the nearest Lagrange point—and undetected, because the sled was very small and could skip very close to the atmosphere of the planet. It was, in short, perfect for the mission.
As long as I didn’t explode.
I did not explode.
Which, frankly, was a relief. It meant the hard part of my trip was over. Now all I had to do was let gravity do its work and just fall to the ground.
I unlatched myself from the sled and pushed off, getting distance from it. Its fate would be to burn up in the upper atmosphere. I did not want to be there when it went.
My own trip through the atmosphere was thankfully uneventful. My nanobotic shield held perfectly well, the turbulence was mostly tolerable, and my descent through the lower reaches of the atmosphere was smartly managed by my parachute, which landed me, light as a feather, in a small park on the Virginia-side banks of the Potomac River, outside of Washington, D.C. As the nanobots that comprised my parachute disassociated into dust, I reflected on the fact that I had become a little jaded about falling to the surface of a planet from space.
This is my life now, I thought. I accessed my BrainPal to confirm the local time, which was 3:20 A.M. on a Sunday, and to confirm that I had landed near where I wanted to be: Alexandria, Virginia, in the USA.
“Wow,” someone said, and I looked around. There was an older man, lying on a bench. He was either homeless or just liked sleeping in the park.
“Hello,” I said.
“You just fell from the sky,” he said.
“Brother, you don’t know the half of it,” I replied.
* * *
I came across who I was looking for several hours later, having brunch at an Alexandria restaurant, not too far from her home, which I did not visit even though I knew where it was, because, come on, that’s rude.
She was sitting by herself on the restaurant patio, at a two-seater table near the patio’s sidewalk railing. She had a Bloody Mary in one hand and a pencil in the other. The former she was drinking; the latter she was applying to a crossword puzzle. She was wearing a hat to block the sun and sunglasses, I suspect, to avoid eye contact with creeps.
I walked up and glanced down at the crossword puzzle. “Thirty-two down is ‘paprika,’” I said.
“I knew that,” she said, not looking up at me. “But thanks anyway, random annoying dude. Also, if you think butting into my crossword puzzle is a good way to hit on me, you should probably just keep walking. In fact, you should just keep walking anyway.”
“That’s a fine ‘hello’ to someone who’s saved your life,” I said. “Twice.”
She looked up. Her mouth dropped open. Her Bloody Mary slipped out of her hand and hit the ground.
“Shit!” she said, flustered, at the spilled drink.
“That’s better,” I said. “Hello, Danielle.”
Danielle Lowen, of the United States State Department, stood up as a waiter came to pick up her spilled drink. She looked me over. “It’s really you,” she said.
“Yes it is.”
She looked me over again. “You’re not green,” she said.
I smiled. “I thought it might make me stick out.”
“It’s throwing me,” she said. “Now that I see you without it I recognize how disgustingly young you look. I hate you.”
“I assure you it’s only temporary.”
“Will you be trying purple next?”
“I think I’ll stick with the classics.”
The waiter had finished cleaning up the spilled drink and broken glass and ducked away. Danielle looked at me. “Well? Are you going to sit down or are we going to keep standing here awkwardly?”
“I’m waiting for an invitation,” I said. “When we left off, I was told to keep walking.”
Danielle grinned. “Harry Wilson, will you have brunch with me?”
“I would be delighted,” I said, and stepped over the railing. When I did Danielle came over to me and gave me a fierce hug, and a peck on the cheek.
“Jesus, it’s good to see you,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said. We both took our seats.
“Now tell me why you’re here,” she said, after we sat down.
“You don’t think it’s just to see you?” I asked.
“As much as I would like to, no,” she said. “It’s not like you live down the road.” She frowned for a moment. “How did you get here, anyway?”
“It’s classified.”
“I’m close enough to stab you with a fork.”
“I used a very small experimental craft.”
“A flying saucer.”
“More like a space dune buggy.”
“A ‘space dune buggy’ doesn’t sound very safe.”
“It’s perfectly safe, ninety-eight percent of the time.”
“Where did you park it?”