West of Nothing

40. The Third Kind

"It's alive and it came from outer space. Is that not the definition of an ET?"

"Parts of it are alive," HotDamn clarified. "But you said yourself, it's built like a robot."

"So that would make it, what, a UFO?" Doogie said.

"It doesn't fly," Mason pointed out.

"What?"

"It can't be an unidentified flying object because it doesn't fly." It sounded funnier in his head.

Skunkworks made a contemptuous pfft sound. "Alien, UFO, whatever. We find one example of an advanced technology we can't explain and now we're postulating the existence of a whole galactic civilization to account for it. While we're at it, why not throw in transporters and warp drive?"

"An extra-terrestrial origin does fit the available facts," Goat said.

Skunkworks turned to Goat in shock. He held the materials physicist in high regard and had once remarked that he had an engineering mindset, the highest form of praise in his vocabulary. So this admission came as something of a betrayal. "You can't be serious. You're not buying into this horseshit, are you?"

"I'm not buying into anything. I'm just saying it could explain some of the data we're seeing. Like the isotope anomaly for one. Simply put, the specimen does not appear to have been made from materials found on Earth."

"Where'd it come from then? Planet Krypton?"

"Somewhere else in our own solar system probably. Its isotopic signature is similar to what's been recorded from comets. That would place it in the Kuiper Belt, the zone of icy bodies out beyond the orbit of Pluto."

"You're saying there could be aliens virtually on our doorstep? Maybe they've got a base on Haley's Comet and come by to wave at us every seventy-five years?"

"I'm not implying there are aliens currently inhabiting the Kuiper Belt, and this is all just conjecture anyway. But if there was another sentient race in our nearby light-cone, it's perfectly conceivable they might have sent out robotic missions to other star systems like ours. Starting with a few self-replicants, they could boot-strap their way to larger artifacts and outposts. The icy bodies of the Kuiper Belt would provide all the raw materials they need and construction could be done a safe distance from the inner planets on the off chance higher order life had developed. One of the first things they'd build is a laser receiver so new schematics could be beamed down from the home system. So long as they were careful, their presence would be virtually undetectable by a pre-spaceflight civilization. Reconnaissance of the inner planets could be done through a swarm of micro-probes like our little X-Bot friend here. The whole process would take millions of years, but that's insignificant to the machines."

"That does make sense," HotDamn said. "If there were Martians living in caves on Mars right now, their first exposure to humans wouldn't be John Smith from Seattle but a remote operated rover."

"I get the whole probe idea," Doogie said. "But why use bugs? Why not rovers or drones?"

"Bugs are perfect," Corny jumped in. "They can get much better coverage than bulky rovers and be mass produced in large numbers"

"Why not go even smaller then?" Doogie suggested. "Maybe blanket the planet in smart dust?"

"Too passive," replied Corny. "You want something that can move independently without having to wait for a lucky breeze to come along."

To Mason, this all sounded like science fiction—and probably was. Then again, the whole experience on the Bridge had an aura of unreality to it.

"For the sake of argument, let's say it was an alien probe," Doogie said. "Then where are the rest of them? Surely, the aliens wouldn't send just a handful of bugs to survey an entire planet?"

"Maybe there are a lot more out there," HotDamn said. "It does look a lot like a spider if you don't examine it too closely. And now that the major governments are aware of them, they may be actively suppressing the information."

"Even if we were dealing with alien probes—and I'm not saying we are—what would the aliens hope to get out of it?" Doogie asked. "They must have a purpose."

"Maybe probes are only first wave," Johnny said. "Next wave they send in ground crew."

"Ground crew?" Mason said. "Like in baseball?"

"Yes!" Johnny replied excitedly. Baseball was his true sporting passion, not ping pong. "Ground crew makes clean sweep before teams take positions on field. Like gardeners."

Mason's head was reeling. "So the X-Bot could be part of a global invasion force bent on turning the planet into a vacation spot for alien tourists?"

"Now this conversation has gone from being preposterous to just plain silly," Skunkworks said. "If we're quite through here, I have some real work to do."