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The rest of the day seemed to pass in a blur of finding things out. Now that I'd found out about the aliens, Cindy saw no reason to try to hide any more information from me. She and Mike took me to the basement and showed me the linkup the station had with the Aekea Observatory's huge telescope in the Western Mountains. As she explained, a contact at the observatory had tipped them off to the strange activity of a light source about a week before I came. It seemed to be in several places at once, and the radio telescope's reading of the regular frequency it was letting off showed that it was indeed the same thing, not many of whatever it was. Theories about wormholes and even stranger things abounded, untill the observatory had relized that the frequency could only mean one thing...a machine, probably a spaceship. That led to a fearful night when it seemed a fleet of alien spaceships were surounding us...but when morning dawned, someone relized that the ship might seem to us to be in many places at once, if it could travel faster then the speed of light! We would only see it when the light reached us...and that made the ship's movement nearly impossible to track. All that could be done was calculate how far away its nearest approch was...and as Mike said, that was too close for comfort. Since we didn't know how fast it could go, we wouldn't know when it was comeing untill it got here. Understandably, the observatory had insisted on a news blackout of the whole thing, with only a few of the GAIA 9 staff (namely Cindy, Mike, and now me) knowing about it, and threatened with big trouble if they let it out.
As I looked at the star maps on the computer screen, I felt worse then I had behind the file cabinet. What worry was the Sniper now, when doom could come to us all from the sky? I hoped it wouldn't come before Halloween...I did want to go to the Halloween party. It would be my first ball, for I had been afraid to go to the Aniversary Ball earlier in the year... Then I understood. "Halloween!" I said loudly. Both Cindy and Mike looked bewildered. "It'll come on Halloween! Everything always goes wrong then!"
That led to a long discussion, with Mike insisting that we break the blackout, and me and Cindy trying to talk some sense into him. Finally Cindy's "What good would it do for us to go to jail?" seemed to get through to him, and he let up. But getting back to work was out of the question now, and we went through the day without doing much. I checked out Old Archie and found nothing wrong. Mike stayed in the basement, fiddling with the telescope linkup. I don't know what Cindy did, but I think she spent most of the day staring out her window or typing madly on her laptop. At least that's what she was doing every time I peeked into her office! And we were all very glad when five o'clock came and we could clear out.
But trouble wasn't over, in fact it had just started. Cindy and I had done some shopping, and were lugging our bags of groceries to the North Gate to load up the car. However, we couldn't get out. Leon was blocking most of the gate, looking very put out and pompous, and a gaggle of police and an ambulence were blocking the rest.
"Come on, let's get back to the station, we'll never get out," Cindy hissed in my ear, looking rather pale. It was too late though, for we'd been spotted and Leon was strutting toward us.
"Hello, Cindy dear," he said, then barked, "Who are you?" at me.
I put on my best poker face and rummaged in my pockets for my ID card. I disliked Leon, and had ever since the day I arrived in Barton for the first time. Then he had blocked the East Gate as I tried to walk in, and had demanded my name and the password. I had stared at him, lost for words and very scared, and he had stared back. Finally he burst out laughing and marched off. Later, I learned that the last time Barton had had a password was five hundred years ago.
But this time I could beat him at his own game. Finding the card at last, I whipped it out and waved it in front of his nose. He snatched it from me, glared from the card to me, grunted, and threw it back. "You'll have to wait," he grunted. "Car accident. It ought to interest you, Cindy!" He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the gate. Indignent at his rudeness, I scurried after them.
I could just see past Leon, but what I saw was enough. A car was sideways in the middle of the gate, its back crushed into a wall. Next to it lay a bloodied body, which must have been still alive, since the paramedics were busy over it.
Cindy gasped, then groaned. Leon, however, chuckled. "Yeah, another one. Driver missing, just like last one. Nobody seen them, might as well never been there. And take a close look at the license plate, Cindy. Recognize it?"
Cindy put down her bags and buried her head in her hands.
Leon chuckled again. "See that G9? Another station car. And this time it's going to be a lot harder to keep quiet. You should make your people be safer drivers... They really shouldn't hit kids."
Peering past Leon again, I could just barely see the car's license plate. The number did start with G9! I didn't know exactly what Leon was talking about, but I could guess. And I didn't like what I was guessing at all.
"Can we get through, please?" I asked loudly.
Leon glared at me. "Go ask them," he said, jabbing an armoured thumb in the derection of the police. "I want a chat with Cindy...alone."
I hesitated, not wanting to leave Cindy with him, but she nodded and said "Go on," so I asked the most important looking policeman if we could get through. I put on my sweet and childish face, and after I showed him my ID, he said we could go as soon as the ambulence took "that poor girl" away.
I went back to tell Cindy. She seemed to be arguing with Leon, but oddly, she was nearly wispering, while he spoke in his normal loud voice. "Cindy dear, we have a deal," he boomed. "I'm sure you know how important it is...and even more so after this."
"Leon, I can't do...that...for you...forever," Cindy said.
"But you will," Leon boomed again, "or the deal is off...and you know what will happen then, don't you, dear?"
I couldn't stand seeing Leon intimidate Cindy like this. I didn't have a clue what they were talking about, but I was going to teach that big bully a lesson. "The policeman says we can go now," I lied, "but he wants to talk to you first. He wants to talk to you right now."
Clearly glad to escape, Cindy grabbed her bags and hurried off. Leon shouted after us, "Remember what I told you, Cindy!"
The policeman was understandably bewildered by Cindy thinking he wanted to talk to her. As they tried to clear things up, the paramedics carried the girl who had been hit to the ambulence. As they lifted the stretcher in, one moved, and I saw her face. The eyes were closed and there were cuts and bruises on it, but I recognized her at once. She was the girl who had laughed at me from atop the arena. She was the girl who had staged a fake Sniping.
"Cindy!" I almost screamed. "That's the girl...the one with the air rifle and fireworks! When we were eating, and she set that up..."
Cindy looked, and although she had been pale already, her face turned pure white. The policeman nodded sadly. "I kept telling her to stop, but she could never understand," he said. "We even tried to arrest her a few times, but she always got away. Even though she was slow, she was smarter then most of us... And now this happens." He glared at Cindy as if it was all her fault. "I'm not telling you how to do your job, Miss Donovinh, but maybe you should investigate this for a change. It's pretty close to home, I must say!"
Somehow we managed to get back to the car. Finally, when we were driving through the dark forest, with the radio blaring an all-music station, Cindy explained things.
The first "accident" had been the one at the West Gate that had driven me and Yama to enter Barton by means of the train tracks and the closed South Gate that day long ago. A car owned by GAIA 9 had smashed into the wall and badly hurt an old lady. No driver was found, and nobody had seen one fleeing. The incident had been quickly hushed up, and all seemed well. Now, however, the same thing had happened again, only worse.
We were both very subdued when we got home, and went to bed after a quick, silent, supper of sandwiches. I don't think either of us slept, and I know that I didn't! I had too much to think of and worry about...the aliens, the car crashes that I was sure wern't accidents, Leon's bullying of Cindy, and the nagging worry of the Sniper...
It's been a week, but I'm still losing sleep over them. Cindy refuses to talk about any of them, and changes the subject whenever I bring them up. All I can do is worry...