The Mars Project, Julie Steimle [read aloud txt] 📗

that it wasn’t exactly fair to keep you in the dark like we have. And I was also thinking that maybe you could help us, if ever the time comes, with ground liaison work.”

Zormna sat back, cocked her head to the side and said, “I’m sorry, but maybe you need to say that again. What exactly are you after?”

Finding it difficult to fight the instinct to tell her to forget it, Jeff managed to rephrase his general request. “We aren’t after anything specifically right now. I was just saying that we want you included instead you just waiting for news on the sidelines all the time.”

Zormna’s usual skeptical stare twisted into a bemused grin. “You finally trust me.”

She caught herself laughing as she had never really thought that he ever would let go of the past.

Jeff scratched the back of his head as he looked the other way, feeling unusually sheepish. Then glanced back at her. She still seemed amused as well as speechless at the idea, but her chuckles had started to subside.

“Look. We meet together every Monday morning and usually discuss projects we’re working on,” Jeff started to explain. “We have several projects going on right now that are pretty big, including research on the FBI branch that has been following us. So far we haven’t broken through their system, but we think we have found one of the instigators and possibly a link to who killed your great aunt.”

Zormna looked up at him. But instead of seeing a desire for revenge as he would have expected, he noticed wonder and curiosity in her eyes. Mostly, there was wonder at why he had changed his mind about including her. 

Jeff rose from the couch with a gesture for her to follow. Going to the back hall, he led her into the office where ‘Aunt’ Mary was listening at the radio. Zormna closed the door, peering around the room. It was different from the last time she had been in there. There was a stack of egg-crate foam on the floor, which Jeff ignored as he walked to the back of the room and went to a modified PC that looked a little beat up. The white noise playing in the room was louder, coming from a digital recorder. Next to it was one of Jeff’s instruments—his banjo, which was probably played and recorded when he was home. Aunt Mary talked occasionally to the other side of the line, speaking in codes of Arrassian and sketching down responses. Jeff flipped on the switch to the computer. It started up in a big whir.

“You’re using their computer system?” Zormna whispered in disbelief while peering at him with a definite skeptical grin.

Jeff shook his head. “We use their basic framework to make things compatible, but all the storage and speed is ours. If anyone were to search this place, all we would have to do is take off our easily-removable computer component, and it would become nothing but a B-grade junk heap.”

Shaking her head, Zormna watched Jeff start up the program that was supposed to be email. He punched in his pin number then waited. The computer pulled up the email account like all others Zormna had seen, but then Jeff took out one of the old fashioned three-inch disks from a file box next to the computer and inserted it into the drive. Then he punched a button on the end of the disk that normally wasn’t there.

The computer screen unscrambled into a completely new picture.

“Very nice.” Zormna admired his handiwork with complete approval.

“What I do best,” he said, still typing without looking up. He continued typing until he pulled up a file he had culled from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

“This man is an agent for the FBI. He is right now integral to a project that is apparently so Top Secret,” he said, “that to get assigned to it, you need special clearance. And it is headquartered nearby.”

Zormna looked at the DMV photograph and narrowed her eyes. “He’s familiar.”

Jeff punched a few more buttons. A new image flashed on the screen, enlarged. “How about this picture? I got this one from the FBI’s main computer.”

Gaping at Jeff, Zormna shook her head and said with a bit more discomfort than he expected, “You busted into their computers? You’re crazy.”

“From one hacker to another, I can’t believe you said that.” He then pointed. “Look at the picture.”

Glancing at it, Zormna stopped her breath. Her eyes grew wide. She started to breathe shallowly like she was frozen in fear. “I know him.”

“His name is James Sicamore,” Jeff said, leaning back in his chair, not quite taking in her reaction. He just stared at the picture as he recalled out loud everything he had read. “He’s originally from Texas, but his parents moved around here ten years ago. He’s thirty-two, single, and has a reputation for overworking.”

“How did you…?” Zormna started to ask, not taking her eyes off the screen.

“Luck really,” he said with a small laugh. “I happened to bump into him at the grocery store. I over heard Agent Palmer talking to him, so I found out his license plate number and his credit card number. At this moment our computer is keeping track of his credit card purchases. I figure I can triangulate where he is stationed right now by where he most frequently shops.” Smiling up at her, he added, “Most people don’t go very far when they are hungry.”

Zormna’s face was ashen. She stared at the man’s image as chills ran up her arms. A throbbing pain stabbed into her temples.

“Oh, I’m sorry. You really do recognize him.” Jeff’s eyes fixed on her face. “He was there at the….” He couldn’t find the words to describe the place where Zormna had been taken to when she had been kidnapped the year before.

Zormna nodded.

“He gave me an apple. And that apple was drugged,” she muttered. “I don’t know why I trusted him, but I think that moment is what cost me my memory.”

She clutched her head, which throbbed harder now, pounding as if it was trying to beat away the memory.

The room was silent. The music had stopped, and Aunt Mary looked over from her radio, staring at Zormna cautiously.

Jeff immediately rushed to the door. “I’ll get some aspirin.”

Zormna nodded and started to follow him out, though she staggered. Her balance often failed when her head hurt so badly.

He darted to the bathroom across the hall, throwing open the medicine cabinet. Jeff shook his head and muttered to himself that it was a mistake to have shown her the picture, that he had done more damage than helped. When he turned from the bathroom, Zormna was standing in the doorway shaking her head.

“No, Jafarr. It was not a mistake to show me his picture,” she said. “It put a name to the face I sometimes see at nights. It is worth the headache.”

Jeff cringed, apologetically handing over the pill bottle. Zormna took the pills then headed back to the surveillance room. She glanced back at Jeff for a moment and raised her eyebrows. “Are you coming?”

Jeff sighed, though he looked like he caught her headache when he nodded. “Yeah, but uh…” He reached over and closed the door before she could enter. “I think maybe this is enough for today.”

Zormna’s face fell. “You’re not cutting me off already, are you?”

Shaking his head slowly, Jeff said, “No. I just think that perhaps we’re going a bit fast for today, and you’ve seen enough.”

She scowled. But then she shook it off and asked him squarely, “Am I still allowed to be part of this? I mean, I can’t exactly go back after seeing that, even if I get headaches from it. I don’t want to be sidelined anymore.”

Jeff closed his eyes with a chuckle. As he opened them, he smiled at her tenacity. “Of course you are welcome. We’ll need that Surface Patrol access to get us back to Arras.”

With a laugh, Zormna gripped her head again though this time she walked toward the kitchen.

“I think I’ll just go get a glass of water for this,” she said, holding up the container of pills.

Jeff nodded as he watched her leave. He opened the office door, going back to the computer that displayed Mr. Sicamore’s image. Pressing one button, he closed the file then switched the computer to display its credit check surveillance. The most recent purchase was in the city at a local coffee and doughnut shop. Jeff pressed his lips together, wondering what Mr. Sicamore’s intentions were.

*

Agent Sicamore walked into the dim room holding the four-cup tray and the box of mixed doughnuts. He set them quickly on the back table for the diligent radio listeners and their supervisor who had been spending hours and hours in the dark looking at nothing but stars inside black space. 

“Anything new?” he asked, peering over at the four video screens.

Their supervisor pointed at the far screen on the right. “These ships here have decreased in number. The others continue on schedule. I think they might be catching wind of us.”

Agent Sicamore shook his head. “If they were catching wind of us they would have destroyed our satellite.”

“Sir?” a man on the right said, lifting up his hand.

“I don’t think these people are the type to let things go,” Agent Sicamore murmured, not quite responding to the operator.

“Excuse me, sir?” the machine operator tried again.

Agent Sicamore looked down. “Yes, what is it?”

“I think I’m catching something,” the operator replied.

Agent Sicamore leaned over. “What is it? What are you hearing?”

The man tried to adjust the volume. “I thought I just ran across one of our old radio signals from Earth, but I’m positive that these are not Earth origin.”

“What do you mean?” the Agent Sicamore asked.

The radio operator explained. “The messages are in English, and some are in French. It changes occasionally but these messages seem to be coming from the near moon and are directed to the planet, or ships coming from the planet.”

“Can you put it on speaker?” Mr. Sicamore quickly said. “I want to hear it.”

The man nodded then flipped a switch.

<<Zeta fifteen, receiving me?>> One end buzzed.

“That’s the planet,” the radio observer said.

Mr. Sicamore nodded.

<<Zeta fifteen. What’s your status?>>

“That’s the moon.”

They listened, waiting for the response.

<<Delays, sir. Requesting to escort shipment out of fields, sir.>>

“There!” one of the radiomen pointed to a sleek space craft flying out from the planet. Its shape curved, bending its reflective surface so that they could hardly see it except for the warping of the stars it reflected. “That’s the source of the transmission.”

<<Request denied. Alea Salvar requires that you report in and switch ships before accompanying the shuttles.>>

They listened in suspense during the long pause.

<<Acknowledged. Request docking, Zeta fifteen.>>

The ship approached the moon as all the other sleek ships that they had observed before. It was good that they had modified scanning equipment that allowed them to see the contours of the ships, otherwise they would have missed them.

<<Enter access code.>> A pause. <<Permission granted. Zeta three Damor.>>

The ship on the screen flew beyond the visual ability of their satellite, blocked by the moon, but for a second, it looked white. And there was a visible symbol on the side almost exactly the same shape as the mark on Zormna’s shoulder.

“They have a base on the moon,” Sicamore mumbled. “And they speak in English as part of code. Why?”

The radio operator interrupted. “Sir, they are using Earth languages. I have heard French, Latin, Greek, German, Chinese, and Russian so far.”

Shaking his head, “Why would they do that? Why use our languages as code?”

The supervisor shrugged. “Maybe it is a decoy. To make us think it is activity from our world and not alien.”

Sicamore nodded, thinking that was probable.

Raising his hand again like a schoolboy, the radio operator said, “Maybe we weren’t expected to be able to hear the message. Maybe it was set up to secure the line from someone else—someone not so proficient