Special Delivery crept up on the rocket from Earth to drop off its passengers that had taken the small detour to Jiirdrian. The crew transferred ships without any issues and Special Delivery sped off in a direction that was not toward Earth leaving the astronauts on their mission. Mike was observing the residual flux materials in his tattoo runes and those of his companions to assess the amount of flux leaving their bodies. Sebastian had been away from space travel a long time and yet still had his powers to a limited extent before they started on this one. He wanted to gauge the amount of time that they remained. He suspected that they would exhaust themselves more quickly if they were used up but wanted to observe and log the results for himself.

“I suggest that you don’t go all thunderbolt while we are on this rocket ship.” Sebastian said to Rebecca. She gave him a cold look.

“If the prophecy is true then it wouldn’t matter.” Rebecca countered.

“If the prophecy is true then you won’t do it.” Lane said. “Because the ship would explode and kill us all if you did, and that cannot happen.”

Lane had been out of stasis for the deceleration of Special Delivery. He was brought up to speed concerning the perceived situation as they traveled. Mike trusted him more than any other person in the galaxy, and he trusted his counsel as well. Mike had used Sebastian’s ability to read Lane with the mind meld handshake and found that his abilities included illusion and deception. He worked with him to get his runes aligned and showed him where they needed to be to make himself invisible to others. Mike could still see him but only because he could see the flux materials and runes.

“I wonder if that makes you invisible to cameras and stuff like that.” Mike said. “Or if it just makes it so you aren’t visible with eyes.”

“You can still see me, right?” Lane asked.

“Faintly. You are getting much better at that. I can see the flux materials flowing through you and your runes.” Mike admitted.

Being out of proximity of the Special Delivery didn’t seem to immediately deplete the flux materials. Perhaps they would degrade slowly.

It wasn’t long before the backlog of missed radio communications revealed that something had gone wrong on Earth. Jonathan was supposed to keep Huston in the loop when the crew jumped ship to go galivanting around the cosmos. Instead, Paige was sifting through the messages and found that Jonathan had disappeared. She came into the living compartment to get Mike and Lane up to speed.

“Well dang.” Mike said. “We need to look at everything that they sent so we can figure out a response. What if we said that we lost communications?”

“That wouldn’t jive with modern radio communications.” Rebecca said. “The capsule is in constant conversation with satellites that are in constant contact with Huston even while we aren’t. If we tell them that we were just not paying attention to them then we will be busted.”

“What if we say that our microphone was malfunctioning?” Lane asked.

“No good.” Rebecca said. “Part way through the first day they asked us if the microphone might not be transmitting. They asked us to key it on and off while they listen for the pop that electronic communications make when initialized. We didn’t do that.”

“Well, we could just say that we were taking a look outside and forgot.” Lane suggested.

“Do you mean the Steve Martin method?” Mike asked.

Mike and Lane shared an inside joke that nobody else understood. This was common when two juveniles grew up together and then interacted in regular society without growing up.

“I forgot armed robbery was illegal?” Paige asked.

Lane and Mike were amazed that someone was aware of their inside joke. It was a happy and sad feeling. At the same time.

“That’s the one.” Lane said.

“Okay, for real guys.” Rebecca asked. “How do we regain connection without getting into trouble?”

“At first they will just be glad to hear from us.” Todd said. “Let’s start with that.”

“We could have the microphone gain turned down real low to start, and then bring it up slowly while we speak about there being a problem.” Paige suggested.

“Let’s do that.” Todd agreed. “Becca, could you add some electrical crackle interference without getting us all killed?”

Rebecca gave him a dirty look. Her control of the lightning ball had become second nature on the return trip on Special Delivery. She started with a small crackling sound like cellophane crinkling and willed a lightning ball into the palm of her right hand. She pretended to squeeze it like a stress ball. It changed the reverb sound easily.

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“When do you want to start?” she asked.

“Let’s key the mike now, and let the sound go through the connection, and then try again in an hour.” Paige suggested.

“Todd keyed the mike with the volume all the way down, and then slowly turned it up with the lightning ball close to the mic. Rebecca changed the tone and frequency of the popping crackle by changing her grip and getting closer and further from the mic. When the gain was turned up, she closed her grip on the lightning ball as they shut off the power to the microphone and turned down the mic to zero again.

“Now we wait for a response while we think of a back story.” Paige said. “It will be about three quarters of an hour before they get back to us, or more accurately, when we can hear their response.”

An hour later, after getting relieved excitement from Huston, Rebecca made another lightning ball and was popping it when Paige came over the radio with the first words sent to Huston since they had left the capsule 158 days prior. They adjusted the gain on the mic as before except this time when they were transmitting with full power Paige asked, “Can you hear me now?”

They had decided to lead the people in Huston on for a few more hours before sending any real data or information. Jonathan had disappeared shortly after they changed ships and didn’t relay any information like they had planned on. Mike was worried about Jonathan, but Sebastian assured him he would likely turn up later. He was good at disappearing, and it was most likely his own doing, and not nefarious people abducting him.

“To what end?” Todd asked. “Why would he just run off like that if he was an important part of the plan?”

“Jonathan is a little bit shady like that.” Sebastian said. “We didn’t know what happened to him for fifty years.”

“You didn’t look for him though, did you?” Lane said.

Sebastian shook his head. “Nobody was sad to see him go.” Sebastian said. “Jonathan had always been... well not a loose cannon, but always self-serving. Nobody went looking.”

“Self-serving how?” Todd asked.

Sebastian rubbed his chin in thought before answering. “Do you know of the flying saucer crash outside of Roswell? Well, that was in 1947. Jonathan had been tasked with finding the prophet. He wasn’t the only one who was on the committee to find the prophet, but he didn’t work with the others. He went off on his own and disappeared. In 1947 when that sheep farmer outside of town found that weird stuff in his pasture, he called the police to investigate. They called the military. Jonathan had given them intelligence indicating that it was a spaceship and leaked it to the media. He even worked with the military for a while giving them tidbits of alien tech and information. We figured that he was trying to get some help from the US government to find the prophet. And in retrospect he probably was. But when the story and the coverup got blown out of proportion he went into hiding.”

“He was in Roswell the whole time.” Mike said. “That’s not a particularly good hiding place. How come nobody found him?”

“Well, we weren’t looking for him.” Sebastian Said. “It’s easy to play hide and seek when you are the only one playing.”

“How did he get the spaceship?” Mike asked. “If he is so unreliable then why was he entrusted with that?”

“We didn’t know he had that.” Sebastian said. “We only found out about that when Mike came to New York.”

“But he had it in 1947?” Lane asked. “Did you think that he must have misplaced it?”

“He didn’t.” Sebastian answered.

“Obviously.” Lane said.

“He didn’t have it.” Sebastian clarified. “The wreckage was staged there. He must have gotten help.”

“From whom?” Todd asked. “It had to have been from somebody who had it.”

“Why didn’t you say something a couple of years ago when you found out about the ship?” Mike asked.

“At first I thought he was bluffing, but then when I found out that the craft was legitimate, I didn’t want to discredit him.”

“Let me get this straight.” Rebecca said. “When you found out that one of the abductees that was charged with finding the prophet had a real live interplanetary spaceship on Earth and hiding in Roswell New Mexico, you decided not to tell anybody that you didn’t know that he had it? And worse, you didn’t think to find out where the... Where it came from?”

“It seems obvious that I should have done that now, but I didn’t think about it then.” Sebastian explained.

“Why not!” Todd practically yelled.

“He doesn’t have any fuel anyway. He can’t do anything with it.” Sebastian said.

“You don’t know that.” Todd yelled. “Do you expect that he can get a whole spaceship smuggled onto the planet, but not fuel?”

Sebastian shrugged.

“He has help.” Lane suggested. “Extraterrestrial help.”

Everyone grew quiet as they contemplated the struggles, and what they needed to do.

“We need to plan on doing all this stuff without any outside help.” Mike said. “I think I can get our Billionaire on board. We need to find the people who we trust and go from there.”

“How do we do that?” Todd said. “We don’t even know how it works, let alone how to build it or run it.”

Mike thought for a long time before letting any of them in on the secret. They had been through a lot, but if Jonathan is a bad guy, then he would have a tough time finding people who he could trust. He needed people who were looking to do good, not people who were...

“Did you ever do that mind meld handshake on Jonathan?” Mike asked Sebastian.

“I did.”

“And?” Mike asked.

“Jonathan is self-serving.” Sebastian said. “He is looking out for himself.”

“Right, you said that.” Mike said. “Did you get the impression that Jonathan thought that he was the prophet?”

“Holy shit.” Sebastian swore. “He did think that. He probably still does. That was the main reason that we kicked him out of our group.”

“Is there any way to talk with the people who were staying in Roswell?” Todd asked. “I think they might be in on it.”

“I don’t know how to get to them unless we can get back there, or covertly get a message through Huston.” Paige said.

“Fire up that communicator that you used to talk to Rubin the first time.” Rebecca suggested. “There has to be somebody there who can help us.”