Free Trespassers: a science-fiction novel by Todd Wynn, Tim Wynn Page A

sandwich. ” He slid out of the booth. “ I ’ ll be back in a minute. ”
    “ Mustard? ” Web asked.
    “ Yeah, ” Stewart replied as he headed for the door, too preoccupied to actually hear the question.
    Stewart crossed the parking lot and slipped into the passenger ’ s seat of the SUV, where he placed a call to a pleasant chap named George Roman. Stewart didn ’ t like to think of himself as having a boss — maybe just a friend who was farther up the ladder — nonetheless, that ’ s what George was, Stewart ’ s boss.
    “ Gooood afternoon, ” George said into the phone.
    After a few pleasantries, Stewart explained the situation and officially requested authorization to take the trespasser to a remote facility for questioning. This would require a translator and additional security to be dispatched, and it required George ’ s approval.
    “ You don ’ t have any proof that those were actually aliens that were dropped from the ship, though, ” George observed, still making up his mind.
    “ No, but we don ’ t have any evidence that they ’ re not. ”
    George wasn ’ t fully convinced, and he knew he wasn ’ t going to be. Questioning by a field agent was not unheard of, but it was rare. The normal protocol would be to turn the trespasser over to a holding facility for a light slap on the wrist. George trusted Stewart, but he had learned to keep a tight rein on him. “ I don ’ t want to send an interrogation team just to find out that the pilot tossed five bags of trash overboard in the middle of a cornfield. ”
    “ The pilot was sedated, ” Stewart argued. “ There had to be someone else on that ship . . . someone who ’ s not still on that ship. ”
    “ Okay, ” George conceded. “ You can do the interrogation . . . but this probably isn ’ t anything. ”
    Stewart was George ’ s discovery — his apprentice. When George first happened across him, Stewart was a twenty-one-year-old kid, in college because his parents had paid for him to go. Stewart could have breezed through the textbooks, but that didn ’ t interest him. Past the walls of the school, in the wide-open expanses of the real world, that ’ s where Stewart wanted to be. He knew his life wasn ’ t going to take place in a pile of stale books. This attitude didn ’ t sit well with the university, and the professors dismissed Stewart as yet another lackadaisical underachiever.
    When George visited the university to interview students for a handful of entry-level government assignments, he had the misfortune of forgetting his briefcase. On the elevator ride back down to retrieve it from his car, he had the fortune of meeting a slacker named Stewart. That short elevator ride would change both men ’ s lives forever and reshape Earth ’ s relationship with alien visitors.
     

10
Water
    Jin ran the tap in the kitchen sink, filling a glass he had found on the counter. It was Rusty Wallace in the number 2 car, and Jin set him next to the other collectable NASCAR drivers, all filled with water and sitting in a line. He dropped two drops from a silver bottle into each. Vaccination or not, no one was allowed to eat anything for the first eighteen hours after landing on a planet. Water was all that was allowed, and the drops helped with the body ’ s transition to the new environment. Without them, the water rumbled in the pit of the stomach, like spoiled fruit.
    Jin took a sip from the Jeff Gordon glass and set it back on the counter. There was always a heavy, metallic twinge to that first sip — not from the water itself, but from the treatment. A metallic twinge was better than spoiled fruit though, and Jin knew this first hand, having experienced both. He gathered the other three glasses and headed upstairs.
     
    Upstairs, Lyntic was looking through the drawers and closets for anything that might assist them on their mission. Jin appeared in the doorway and set a glass of water on the dresser for her. Lyntic looked up and