Alien Hunter: Underworld by Whitley Strieber Page A

Menard.”
    She considered that. “Where, then?”
    â€œYou figure it out.”
    â€œOh, no. No way.”
    â€œOtherwise, we don’t have a prayer.”
    â€œI’ll be getting out now. I’ll hitch to the airport.”
    â€œNot gonna happen.”
    â€œHe’s a criminal. We don’t need that kind of a complication.”
    â€œYou don’t want a former lover in your hair.”
    â€œHe wasn’t my lover.”
    â€œIf you say.”
    â€œDamn you!”
    He said to Geri, “Last year we got a device from you people called a MindRay. A number of people who relied on it paid for that mistake with their lives. Now I saw that your stun gun, or whatever it was, didn’t work either. Why?”
    â€œI think that there’s something about Earth’s magnetic field that throws our devices off.”
    â€œAnd yet you got here from another planet. That worked. Why?”
    â€œIt doesn’t always.”
    â€œWhere is Aeon?”
    â€œI don’t know how to tell you.”
    â€œHow far away? In light-years, say.”
    â€œYour year is half as long as ours, so … twenty-four of your light-years.”
    â€œAnd how long in actual travel time? In the ship?”
    â€œAbout half a day—or six of your hours—to reach jump, then a second or so, then movement into your orbital zone, a couple more days—about two Earth days, total.”
    â€œThe part of the journey that involves movement across light-years takes a couple of seconds?”
    â€œIt’s a wormhole,” Diana said. “We think it’s near Saturn. We’ve detected powerful gravity waves from there.”
    â€œSo is there one, or are there many? How many ships can come here at once?”
    â€œWe control the other end of it. Mostly, anyway. A few crooks get through. Obviously.”
    â€œSo your control isn’t very secure?”
    â€œI am sorry to say that it isn’t.”
    â€œWhy not? What’s wrong?”
    â€œThat’s complicated.”
    â€œTry me.”
    â€œCorruption is one problem. Illegal crossing another. Mainly, it’s illegal crossing.”
    â€œWhy Earth? Why even come here?”
    â€œCriminals come here, rebels come here, not decent people.”
    â€œOf course,” Diana said. “Just our luck.”
    â€œWe only engage with species on our own level. The crooks go for the lesser ones because they’re helpless.”
    â€œOkay, so why are the crooks here?” Flynn asked.
    â€œTake your DNA, your stem cells. That stuff has markets all over the galaxy—a healthy, smart species like you people. Plus, Earth is a beautiful planet and it’s incredibly rich. You can live here in serious comfort and luxury, and on most planets, that is not the case. Earth has a rep for being a really fun place to be. But the only legal travel here is for scientific or social engineering purposes.”
    â€œSocial engineering?”
    â€œThe ones you call the grays are increasing human intelligence by creating a question around themselves that you can neither bear nor answer. They do it with the UFO and abduction mysteries, which they will never allow to be solved. Such questions increase logical intelligence, which gets into the DNA. Two more generations of this, and your average human is going to have the intelligence of what you now consider a genius.”
    â€œAnd what about grays? What sort of social engineering do you do?”
    â€œWe don’t have the resources or the skill. They’re very advanced.”
    Now that he’d gotten her talking comfortably, he shifted to critical questions.
    â€œThe criminals here can make themselves appear human. How many are doing this?”
    â€œNo idea.”
    â€œYou’re like that, aren’t you? This isn’t the real you.”
    â€œThis body is so nice. It’s soft and it smells good and it’s so sleek and curvy.”