Chapter I 

The Encounter

I've got some time to kill while I'm waiting here for Lilly to decide whether she's going to help me get back home or not, so I thought I'd try to put this whole strange episode down on paper. I'm not sure now if I'll ever see home again or if it will still be "home" when I do get there. If Einstein was anywhere nearly correct in his theories, travel at light speed can muck things up a bit.

My current companion can help me, but, she wants to know what's in it for her. She's not just going to give me a free ride back. She's a trader and makes a pretty comfortable living at it from what I can tell. I am of no value to her at all on the outbound trip. "Dead weight," she says, so, she has to be assured that there is something at the other end of the trip that she can haul back which would turn a profit for her. Dead weight? I've gotta get more exercise.

Lilly is what I call her. It's the name of an old girlfriend. Lilly was a head strong, confident, no-nonsense person. Lot's of fun when it was time for fun, but all business when she was organizing a deal.

I have no clue what this woman's real name is. I probably wouldn't be able to pronounce it anyway. A white male from New England, North America, Planet Earth yet, has no hope of imitating the sounds of a language born on a planet in some far distant corner of an unknown galaxy. I'm not even certain that she is female in the sense that we know females.

Another thing to consider is the "When." Although Lilly has never been there, she does know where the little, blue-green, clay and granite sphere we call Earth is. She can get me there, but getting me there at about the same date and time as when I left may be a bit tricky. You see, when you routinely outrun the speed of light you also travel though time. So down through the generations the adverb "when" has lost its meaning. I guess what I'm saying is that, to the best of my ability to understand the situation, these beings have no word for, or even a concept of, "when".

But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

If only I had gone to the "Ugly Dog" that Friday evening after work and had a couple of beers with the guys from the shop. If I'd done that then I wouldn't have been driving down North Stone Road toward Suffield because it would have been easier to go up the hill on Rt 20 West to Copper Hill Road, and down passed the golf course. But, "if wishes were horses. . ."as they say.

One of the things I like about late fall in New England are the cold, crisp, clear nights. One of the things I hate about living in this part of the country in the fall is that it starts getting dark around five o'clock.

A cantankerous old New Englander once said.
"Nothing like winter in the North East, where the sun comes up at 10 AM and set's at noon!"

I was driving up Rt. 187 from East Granby heading north toward Suffield, Ct. It was around 4:30 or so. A particularly cool evening too as I remember. The radio said that the temperatures were going to drop into the thirties and there was a frost warning. As I veered left off of Rt. 187 onto North Stone Road, right where that old, dilapidated tobacco barn is set back into that unused hayfield, I saw someone scurry off to the left where the field grass is about knee high. Two things struck me as odd. The first was, Where could this person be going? There isn't much off that side of the road except that old barn.

The second thing to strike me as odd was, that this person wasn't wearing a coat. Not exactly dressed for this weather. I was thinking. Must not be from around here.

I slowly braked , powered down my window and asked if there was anything wrong. This "person" turned toward me and I could see it was a young woman. She was about thirty feet or so away and she looked scared and confused. I opened my door and slowly crossed the road to her side.

"Are you ok?" I asked. "Do you need a ride?"

As I took a couple of steps toward her I could see that she was shivering.

She was dressed in what appeared to be a one piece coverall kind of garment. Long sleeved and just the slightest of a V neck. It was a dolphin grey color. There were no pockets, zippers or fasteners of any sort that were obvious. I found myself distracted by the thought of how one gets into or out of this garment.

"Could I call someone for you?" I asked. I took my cell phone out so she could see it.

She stole a fleeting glance toward the barn, took a couple of steps away from me and stumbled to her knees. She put one hand out on the ground to steady herself but rested there for a moment. 

Walking toward her slowly, I circled around so that I would be in her line of sight as I approached.

"Do you need help? Do you need to use the phone?" I asked while holding out the cell phone again.

I took a couple more steps toward her and she looked up at me. I stopped walking towards her at that point and stared at her in amazement. I don't quite know how to describe it now but her eyes were like green glass.

I am well aware of what colored contacts can do. This girl was not wearing colored contact lenses. Her eyes were like nothing I had ever seen before. The whites of her eyes were a bluish white but the irises were a bright, beer bottle glass, green.

"Spooky", is what I was thinking. This chick is spooky looking.

I glanced back toward my car parked at the side of the road. When I looked back at her again she had a kind of hopeful, pleading look in her eyes. As she started to her feet I offered her my hand. She grabbed not my hand but my forearm, between my wrist and my elbow. "A good strong grip." I remember thinking. I noticed then too a faint but somehow familiar smell. Like hot metal, or the smell of arc welding when the welders tourch first touches and begins to fuse the metal.

I helped her to her feet. Standing full upright she was a little over five feet tall. She appeared to be in her mid twenties. Her hair was of a golden red color that I have never seen before, and worn short , close to her head. Eyes a little slanted, ears pulled slightly back. "Pixie like." I was thinking. Small frame. (No cushions.) She looked at me again and now it was indecision and worry I saw in those spooky green eyes. I got the feeling that she was trying to make up her mind about something. She hugged herself then and shivered again. Whatever this suit is that she's wearing it's obviously not thermal, I thought as I took off the windbreaker I was wearing and held it out to her.

"Put this on. You'll catch pneumonia." I added. She looked at the light jacket for a few short seconds, her eyes met and held mine briefly and then she took the wind breaker from me and in one fluid, graceful motion, shrugged into it. She looked towards the old barn again, then back at me. I saw now a look of certainty. She had made up her mind about something and was going to the next step. I thought then of a military officer or a top level business manager.

"You h-haulp, peez?" She stammerd.

And then she turned and started off across the field.

"Ok." I remember thinking. "I'm going to have to take a look anyway. There is obviously something going on over there. My curiosity has been piqued now. I've got to take a look."

This young girl certainly didn't seem threatening at all. She appeard to be focused and determined. I had the sense that she was on a mission.  Over the years I've developed a pretty keen sense for trouble. I'm not saying that I've always avoided it. I have, in fact, been at the root of my share of episodes involving trouble. But those are stories for another time. I'm just saying that I've almost always been able to sense "trouble" before I get in up to my hips. I have been wrong once or twice, but this just didn't seem like trouble to me.

I followed her through knee high field grass toward the barn. I watched as she slipped through a ragged hole in the side wall at one end of the structure where some old, rotting planks had been pulled away.

  To be continued.