Phil IV CHECKFLIGHT

Doris entered the neonatal ward looking for her friend Alice and her new baby. She sees a large man in male nurses uniform feeding an infant. Then she recognized him, it was Jake, her Slammers bike gang companion.
During good weather, she at times let down her hair and spent wild times in the sun with what was supposed to be a yuppie bike gang. It was a vacation from her normal boring job at the beauty salon. She had asked Jake what he did for a living and his reply was always, “You don’t want to know.” She had wondered if Jake lived a shady life rolling drunks and beating up unfortunates, or something like that. Jake’s ugly disposition was a put on, she was certain of it, as he could be darn right charming when he chose to be. He was a good road companion who wasn’t pushy with the girls. Seeing him in this setting, as of all things a male nurse, almost took her breath away.
Jake looked up at her and grinned, “Hi Doris, you just blew my cover, Isn’t this little feller cute?” He turned the baby so she could see the tiny squinty milky mouth all bundled up in a white blanket.”
Doris squealed, “It is you, Oh! My gosh; are you really a nurse?”
Jake looked down to his nametag and said, “It says Jake Plummer RN. I wonder how that happened? Do I look out of place away from my Harley?”
“You got that right! Do you work here in pediatrics?”
“Only when ER isn’t busy, things are slow today so they send me to what ever part of the hospital is busiest. Today that’s here with the babies.” Jake said
“I know I’ve never asked, but do you have your own family Jake?”
“No kids my wife died of breast cancer two years ago and I’ve just not been able to give her up. We wanted kids but she was sick a lot and it just never happened.”
Doris said, “I’m sorry.”
Jake looked longingly at the baby and said, “I like the babies though and they seem to like me. Working in a hospital like this doesn’t give a guy a chance to get far enough away from tragedies; I’ve seen a few. So I get out on the bike and make enough noise that I can’t think for a while. Maybe we could get together for a bite in the cafeteria or something? I’ll be able to take a break in a few. ”
“I’d like that but sorry, dad is waiting for me out in the parking lot. I just ran up here to see the baby. What’s that baby’s name”
Jake picked up a chart and read it, “This is Josh Logan.”
Doris smiled and said, “My friend is Alice Logan, and you are feeding her baby. “He is cute.” She pulled a digital camera out of her purse snapped a photo and said, “bye! Gotta run”
* * *
“What do I do?” Dan asked.
Colmotdn again speaks in Dan’s mind, “Move forward into the yellow beam by pushing forward with the left index finger on the control pad, capture it with the left pinky finger and hit the vertical movement button with the right index finger. Don’t worry too much about making a mistake. I will override any control sequence that would result in a collision.”
Dan did as the alien suggested the UFO glided over to the beam, made a capture that he could actually feel as a sensation in his mind. When he hit the vertical movement control the craft popped out of the cave like a jack-in-the-box. As they cleared the top of the ridge everything slowed down and looked different.
“What’s that?” Asked Dan
Phil replied, “Takeoff’s are time shift cloaked to make it difficult to observe the aircraft. We are ever so slightly not here, but somewhere else in time just far enough to make observation difficult. Did you ever see something in the sky, but on second look it was gone? It happens more often than you would ever believe; these little gray guys are to blame. It’s their cloaking technology.”
“Where do we go?” Dan asked again.
“We could take a drive around the planet, buzz by the moon then go Slammers hunting.”
Eddie’s idea of how to spend the afternoon didn’t set well with Phil he asked, “Eddie is that all you ever think about is that long hair biker broad?”
Eddie asked, “Does beer count?”
At this point Seleot interrupted telepathically, “Sir, to make things work Eddie has to be the navigator, Dan’s the pilot, Eddie assists in all else including mission objectives, don’t you think a shake down flight would make more sense right now?”
“What would you suggest?” Said Eddie.
“My suggestion for a shakedown flight would be to achieve orbit in both Equatorial and Polar mode then say . . . Lunar circumnavigation then grab the girl and put in some cerebral implants.”
“You lay off the implants. This is a girl I care about and I don’t want one hair on her head messed with by you guys, ok?
“The data we could collect from her consciousness could be extremely valuable in some places. You do set the agenda for this trip, but your not really going to bring this person into the vehicle without allowing us to remove memories of the abduction are you?” Seleot asked?
Eddie assured Seleot that if he touched one feather on her butt, he was going to throw him out the hatch. Seleot telepathically inquired of Colmotdn, “Do some human females have feathers on their butt?”
Before Colmotdn had a chance to reply Dan engaged the drive and accelerated the craft into an Equatorial orbit, He was amazed it only took a few minutes. He asked Seleot, “Is the object I see off to the right the International Space Station?”
“Yes it is,” Seleot replied but I wouldn’t suggest approaching the ISS it is an area sensitive to public scrutiny.”
“How’s that?” Dan Asked.
“The ISS has several video feeds that are downloaded to public media, we have been in trouble before because of a person named Jeff Challender who monitors and films all anomalous events from these video feeds. He keeps a website of all these events that is open to the public.” Replied Seleot.
“Really! Said Dan”, “What’s its name?”
Project Prove,” said Seleot.
________________________________________
12/28/2005 12:24:43 AM
Couldn’t resist throwing in a plug for my buddy Jeff.
William W. Brownson
http://starshipalpha.com
http://informantnews.com