Free Time to Time: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (Ashton Ford Series) by Don Pendleton Page A

all began with man on earth, then suffice it to say that he
foraged for food and forgot about the fineries. We are here today as evidence
of that, if that it is. And now our long-lost brothers-in-kind have found us.
Evidently their ancestors fared better than ours, (because they still have the
technology of survival in space that ours lost. They would approach us with
great care and discretion, not with bands blaring and arms outstretched to
these primitive throwbacks who cannot even find peace among themselves.
    To
continue the scenario, put yourself there for just a moment and try to relate
it to something in your own experience. You live in Omaha and you discover as
an adult that you have a long-lost sibling who was stolen from his cradle by
Gypsies. You learn that he is alive and living as a terrorist in the Middle
East; he is a religious fanatic committed as a holy mission to the destruction
of the Great Satan, Uncle Sam. Already he has bombed school buses and killed
hundreds of innocent people. What are you going to do—and how are you going to
approach this wild man, if at all?
    We
could go on with many such scenarios, one for every theorist who has ever
thought about the problem.
    I
really do not know what good the scenarios do.
    We
are being visited.
    Our
visitors are vastly superior to us in many ways.
    They
probably have the capability of destroying us one and all overnight.
    Even
our governments around the world are afraid to admit that they are here or that
they even exist.
    Our
scientists too, by and large, scathingly ridicule any suggestion that they do
not know all that there is to know about everything in the universe. Since they
know nothing whatever of the technology that brings these visitors to our
world, obviously these visitors exist only in the minds of self-deluded
persons.
    I
shall speak later of two prominent spokespersons for the scientific
establishment who best exemplify that turn of mind, and I will give you samples
of their reactions so that you may see for yourself the depths to which the
human mind can travel in trying to shape its own reality. For now, just trust
me that it is true, subject to later verification.
    Our
educators are in the same boat as the scientists; by and large they are
essentially one and the same and their behavior is the same for the same
reason.
    Ditto
for the churchmen, for different reasons but with the same result.
    So
to whom do we turn to get the truth?
    There's
the rub, my friend.
    There
are none to turn to.
    You've
got to figure it out for yourself, and your very survival may depend on how
well you do that.

Chapter Thirteen:   National Anathema

    Donovan had said to
me: "Why should we conquer you?" And he started to say more, as
though to answer his own question: "We already..."
    "Already
what?" I'd asked.
    "Already
love you," he replied.
    Doesn't
really fit, does it. I call that a recovery from a near blunder. He almost told
me more than he wanted me to know.
    So.
Already what?
    Already
conquered us?
    Already
own us?
    Already
what?
    I
was quietly pondering the question when Julie emerged from the bathroom wrapped
in a towel. The sight of that immediately tossed my mind back to that   encounter beside the pool with Penny Laker,
and I was mentally rehashing that weird experience when Julie playfully slapped
my bare bottom and pushed me toward
    the
shower. She seemed totally collected, refreshed, in charge of herself again.
    I
doubted that a mere shower could have that effect on me, but I definitely
needed the shower. I spent about twenty minutes under the stinging spray, by
which time I was at least beginning to think rationally, and I emerged to find
a Spanish omelet and scalding coffee awaiting me at the dining table.
    Evidently
she was as hungry as I, and we consumed the food with a minimum of
conversation. Each time our eyes met she smiled and dropped her gaze as though
embarrassed by the encounter. And she kept checking and adjusting her towel. I
finally