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"Then also, you might shoot me, because you think I'm one of those cops."

  "How in the world would I do that?" she protested.

  "OK, picture this. You wake up – all groggy because you've been up half the night listening to music – and this scary guy is sneaking in the door from outside. You know I'm asleep in bed, so you grab your gun and – BOOM – save the day. Then you find out I was having trouble sleeping and just went out on the porch to have a drink and look at the moon. I didn't want to wake you up, but what thanks do I get? You shoot my silly ass."

  "I can think of fifty more, because I've seen them all on the news one time or another. Woman shoots husband because she thinks he is a bear. Husband shoots wife because he thought she was a burglar. But those are by far not the commonest or even the stupidest reason people shoot something. You want to guess what is?"

  "No, I don't think so."

  "OK, people shoot their friends or family, or their own foot, because they thought the gun was empty."

  "Well why were they trying to shoot something, if they thought the pritshan gun was empty?" she said indignantly.

  "Ah Martee, if such a sensible question occurs to you and even makes you swear, there is hope for you. They point and shoot because it is fun. They are just playing. It's a gun. It's exciting. It makes them feel powerful. I can point it at my little brother Joe and scare the crap out of him 'cause he's a little dweeb and I have the gun." He illustrated with his index finger pointed down the porch – "BOOM" – he mouthed, exaggerated. "Oh crap, I thought it was empty. Mom is gonna be pissed."

  "So what do you do? Take it apart so you know it can't hold bullets?"

  "Sometimes, yeah – that's a smart thing to do. But it takes time to put it back together, so you can't always do that. But you can always refuse to trust it is empty. If you treat it like it is always loaded and never, ever, point it at anything you don't want to shoot, then you are probably safe, even if you do sometime mess up and fire it. I mean – I admit I'll be a little pissed if you shoot a hole in the kitchen floor. But how much better that, than if you shoot a big hole in my delicate rear end? Explain it back to me." he insisted.

  "One, don't carry it around with your finger on the trigger. Two, don't point it at anything you don't want shot. Three, don't ever act like it is unloaded. Do I understand OK?" Martee asked.

  "Yes and I'll leave something else for you to decide. Some people will shout a warning, or fire a shot into the ground to warn people off. It's a quaint old custom – the warning shot. However, sometimes it can get you shot too. Sometime a fellow might have a buddy you don't see backing him up. Or you may give them a chance to shoot, because they are faster than you think."

  "The more skill you have, the more leeway you have to warn. But most of the time, especially for someone new like you, if the other guy has a weapon in his hand, it's better to shoot first than to do something noble and give him the advantage. If he has it in his hand, figure he's willing to use it."

  "When you shot the fellow behind Foodland, you warned him to drop it," Martee reminded him. "I remember."

  "Silly me, all that risk and he still tried to shoot me. I could tell he was slow and way too confident in his armor. I was surprised, because he was so close it wouldn't have mattered if the armor could have stopped my second bullet."

  "It wouldn't?"

  "No, Martee. At that range I could have shot him through the head without any trouble. These fellows obviously never have to deal with anyone who has any skill shooting. I'm guessing if it is that rare on your worlds, the police might not have much better skills themselves."

  "That makes sense," she admitted. "It is so hard to get a weapon people wouldn't have any opportunity to become skilled. The people are really obedient, so even the police don't need much skill that way. I've never known them to carry lethal weapons on our home world. It shocked me to see them use them here."

  "How far away would he have to be before you couldn’t shoot for the head?" she asked.

  Rather than say anything, he turned away from her and suddenly his gun was extended in his hand.

  BoomBoomBoom sounded together, so close that when it was over, she could hear the ejected cases bounce off the overhang and rattle as they rolled across the porch.

  The piggy shape on the left had a huge dent dished into the middle and swung lazily from the impact. The center ram had a puckered hole, clearly visible from fifty meters away. The end piggy was hit so hard, it wound its chain around the tree limb twice, before it stopped circling and just swung back and forth, faster than the bent one, closer now to the branch.

  "Further than he'd have any chance of returning fire," he assured her, dropping the hammer and sliding the weapon back under his shirt.

  "Is there any chance at all, I can learn to do that?" Martee asked in a small voice.

  "Maybe in about ten years, if I buy you a lot of ammunition for practice," he guessed.

  "What about your military?" Roger asked her. "Surely they have better weapons and tactics than that fool I shot."

  "You don't understand," Martee looked puzzled. "That's it. The police force we have is all there is. There is no separate military. Every place they have found with ruins and wrecked space ships and dead people on old airless planets it was obvious they had fought a war. We have to have police, but nobody wants soldiers, because if there is any one thing they are certain of, it is if you have soldiers they end up fighting. And when that happens in a culture that has good science everyone dies, not just the soldiers."

  Roger was stunned. "So you don't have big weapons?"

  "Like what? How much bigger than this pistol?" she asked

  Rog had been about to describe a strategic weapon like a nuke, realized his explanation of the news the other night must have been past all comprehension and scaled it back to something she could understand for sure.

  "Oh, like a big pistol but so big my truck would have a hard time pulling it and the hole in the end of the barrel this big," he formed a circle almost as big as a dinner plate. "It's called artillery."

  "No, that's… that's…" she had to check her small computer, "…obscene."

  "Yep, it can be, depending on which end of it you happen to be on. And as a buddy of mine pointed out, friendly fire isn't and artillery always has the right of way. I've been on both ends of it. What did you think gave me the scars on my back?" he wondered.

  "A big animal maybe?" she guessed, but her eyes said she understood now and was horrified.

  "Let's finish up here. I can tell this talk is upsetting you for now. Here," he told her, "I'll have you dry fire this a couple times and we're done for today. It won't hurt this model," he assured her. "The firing pin doesn’t connect on an empty cylinder." He pushed the latch forward and swung the long cylinder open. A flick of the plunger spilled the bright brass in his palm and he dropped them in his breast pocket. He closed it and came around beside Martee and laid a sandbag on the porch rail.

  "Now, just rest the gun across the soft bag and look through the sight. See the red dot? It is six seconds of an arc across - as big as you can set it. I wanted it big enough you'd find it easy at first. As you get used to it I'll turn it down to two, maybe even one, if you get good at it." He molded her right hand around the grip and put her left hand on top in a loose over grip.

  "Just squeeze the trigger and try to keep the red dot on the bigger silhouette we hung." The hammer slowly drew back and fell with a snap.

  "Now put your thumb on the hammer and pull it back all the way, until it stays back by itself." It latched back with a click for her.

  "This time when you squeeze the trigger, it will fire much easier. It will give you better control too. Give it a try."

  The hammer dropped with a snap and the gun was visibly steadier.

  "That's good style. You're doing great. Try it again."

  Martee cocked the piece again and renewed her grip on it, squeezing slowly with a look of concentration. The pistol cracked sharply and jerked
back on the sandbag. The target on which she had been drawing a bead jumped back with a loud –TONK! - Then settled down to a steady swing.

  Martee had a shocked look on her face and then looked at him accusingly.

  "You took the bullets out! I saw you!"

  Rog reached in his pocket and pulled the cartridges out. He carefully stood each on the table in a line. There were four of them.

  "Is it empty now?" he asked, with an evil grin.

  "No sir," Martee said, with feeling. "There's no such thing as empty."

  "Smart girl," he said, pleased and gently took the pistol back. "That's enough shooting for today."

  Chapter 10

  "Martee, I'm going into town to check my mailbox. The pins I ordered should be here by now and I have some other stops to make, but I don't think you should show your face in town, do you?"

  "No, I agree. Are you going to stop at Foodland?"

  "I could if you want something."

  "Would you buy something chocolate like you told me is so good and maybe some things to make salad? The two times you made salad I liked it, but I see the ingredients are almost gone."

  "OK, I'll do that. Will you be good to make your own lunch?"

  "Sure, I'll just heat up some tomato soup like you showed me and make a cheese sandwich. I should really learn to cook a full meal like you do, don't you think?"

  "Yes, but let it wait for when I'm here. I don't want to come back and find the cabin burnt down around your ears. In fact it would probably be a good idea if you stayed inside. That way nobody can surprise you snooping around."

  "I'd be happy to stay inside, but why don't you load my gun up and leave it on the table. Unless something happens I won't even handle it. But I'd feel much safer with it there if I need it."

  "You won't get excited and shoot me by mistake when I come home?" Roger worried.

  "I won't even pick it up, unless somebody busts the door down."

  "I'll trust you," Roger decided, out loud. "I wish you had some practice, but if somebody breaks in you might do OK at arm’s length. Just remember to point at the head, because your guys have that armor. I'm going to get some things in town to replace the plastic tips on the bullets. After I make some of those up for you, it might punch through their armor."

  "I'll be OK. Likely nothing will happen anyway," she said.

  "Martee, what number system do you folks use for everyday? Is it base ten like we do?"

  "No we count in twelves, if I understand what you mean. It's handy to divide both odd and even that way."

  "But the computer is probably binary like ours?" he asked, "zeros and ones?"

  "I think so, but I'm a history professor, not a mathematician," she admitted.

  Roger went in his bed room and got an electric blanket from off the rear of his closet shelf. His cabin had so much insulation, including radiant barrier, that he wasn't sure how much someone could snoop through the walls with an infrared sensor. Even the windows had an infrared-reflective coating. He worried something might show.

  If someone did snoop he hoped he could make them think there were two people in the house. He rolled the blanket up and laid it down the center of his bed. Where the knees would be he bent it and where the neck would be he tied a bootlace around to draw it in. He left it on low and tossed a cover over it to diffuse the image. It's not paranoid to think people are after you if they really are, he reminded himself.

  He opened a metal tool box on the floor of the closet and withdrew the items rolled in foil he had taken off the dead alien. Those he stuffed in a gym bag to take to town with him. He made sure Martee locked the door behind him. It was still disquieting to leave her alone for the first time.

  The mail box service he used instead of a postal office box had some letters saved up for him and a small box with FedEx markings that would be the carbide pins he had ordered online. He went down the street and got the few things he needed at Foodland.

  John the owner's son was working as usual in the afternoon and didn't say anything snide, so the gossip must not be making the rounds that he had a woman living with him. John was a big man in one of the local churches and if he had known about Martee he would have gotten some sort of a dig in. The deputy must really be an honorable fellow he concluded.

  After the errands were run, he went south out of town past where he had turned off with Martee to the campground. Where an oversized mailbox marked the end of a dirt track, he pulled off the highway and engaged the four wheel drive. The drive was so rough that he just let the truck idle up it at a walk.

  Once he was in about a hundred meters in it improved suddenly. The first part was kept bumpy just to discourage casual visitors. He knew his friend Josh would be aware he was coming. The man had shown Roger how to set up the sensors on his own property, so his own security network had to be at least as good. That's why he was standing peering through the crack of the open door, when Roger pulled in next to the man's truck and parked.

  A few years back Josh had left the Middle East on the same plane as Roger, on a stretcher like Rog too and they had briefly been roommates in the same hospital in Germany. There had only been two days they were both unsedated and chatted, before they parted again, but that had been enough time to establish they both expected to end up near Sitra Falls.

  When Roger had asked in the hospital what unit Josh was with, he'd just shook his head amused and informed Rog, "I'm not military. I'm a company techie. We've installed all sorts of systems for the Pentagon, but this time I let them talk me into doing some on site work. 'Safe as home in your living room,’ they told me. ‘We won't be going out in the boonies.' Stupid me, I believed them." That was as much as Roger ever got out of him, before they went their separate ways back to the US.

  A few weeks after Roger moved in he was surprised by a knock on his door. There stood Josh, leaning on a cane reading some sort of instrument in his other hand. "Damn it Rog, you don't have any security around this shack at all, do you?" were his first words. "We'll fix that." He acted as if they had been bosom buddies for years, instead of barely acquainted. Rog was used to it now, but it put him off that first day. Fortunately, Josh was oblivious to his moods.

  When Josh was done Rog had a security system around his cabin worthy of a nuclear facility. It was a bonding experience, because both men could expose their hyper-vigilance to each other without criticism. Neither found any scenario for which planning should not be considered, from cricket infestation to alien military invasion.

  The house wasn't much bigger than Roger's, but there was a tower sticking up from a concrete pad next to the house and a variety of antennas mounted on the end. There were other less common forms, that looked more like a clothes line to the uneducated eye, as well as some dishes and spiral shapes.

  Josh pulled the door full open as he approached. "Hey, Roger, it's good to see you. Come on in. You should call though. I've been out in the woods and just happened to come back in not a half hour ago. If you'd been just a little earlier you'd have missed me."

  He was shorter than Roger, but wider too and by custom almost always wore a hat, such as the bedraggled wool cap on his head now.

  "Normally I would have, but some things have changed. I don't think it's as safe as it used to be, for you to know me. It's good you haven't called in awhile. Better not to have a record of me calling you now. In fact it would probably be better if you don't e-mail me either."

  "Whoa baby!" he laughed. "If you are in that much trouble, I hope you at least made some good money out of it."

  "I haven't yet, but I do anticipate a very positive upside financially soon. When that happens I'll remember the help you've extended so many times."

  "Ah and do I detect a possible request coming for such assistance right now? What can Joshua do for ya, buddy? Sit down – sit down."

  Rog dropped on a kitchen chair and Josh served coffee without asking.

  "I need the electronic wizard today. Is he available?"

  J
osh pantomimed taking off one hat and donning another.

  "There, the electron wrangler version of Josh at your service – no job too big, no job too small," he said cheerfully.

  "Josh, I have some stuff wrapped up in aluminum foil in the bag. I want to be sure there isn't some kind of signal being radiated from them that could be tracked. Once we are really sure of that, then a couple of the pieces need studied. But I don't want you to peel the foil off until you are sure you have it shielded, so nobody swoops down on us. Can you do that?"

  "What are we talking here, friend? Is this military gear we shouldn't have, or is it real black stuff? Chipped, or radiant by its nature? How hot is it?"

  "If I tell you, promise you won't kick me out right away, until you hear me out. I don't think you'll believe me."

  "Oh crap. This must be really bad stuff. If I wasn't stupid, I'd tell you to just get it out of here. What kind of sensor platform would you expect to be watching for the signal? Aircraft? Ground vehicles? Drones? Spy stuff?

  "Anything from high orbit to guys on foot. If you want to take it to a different location to crack it open, I'd understand that too.

  "What are the two objects you wish to study, after we determine they are not screaming their location to someone?" He suddenly had a different, very formal tone, to his voice.

  "Three actually, one is a gun of some sort. I have no idea if it is a normal propellant firearm, but it does have a barrel with a bore. The second item is an electronic weapon similar to a Taser, but it operates wirelessly. No darts or air. It looks like a garage door opener.

  The third item is a small computer like a PDA. It has limited memory and can operate in a wireless mode. It uses an unknown language and is capable of voice recognition. But it may not have any English files, or recognize English speech. I suspect it is a binary operating system, but the culture that produced it uses base twelve math for everyday stuff, like money and time."

  "We use base twelve for time and it wasn't that long ago it was used for money too, at least in the UK. That goes back past the Babylonians, but I'm not aware of anyone else using base twelve today."