Red Dot: Contact. Will the gravest threat come from closer to home than we expect? Read Online Free Page A

on herself. Looking like aliens in their shiny flight suits and black helmets, the F-16 pilots eyed the passenger jet for a couple minutes before smoothly peeling off and out of sight.
    Come on Mr. Pilot, say something
, Claire thought.
    Sobs, pleas, and moans steadily rose in desperation and volume from around the plane. By now, panic was nearly out of control. Every few seconds, one male passenger nearby in economy class repeated in an even, almost matter-of-fact voice, “I don’t want to die.”
    Claire took a deep breath and muttered, “Well, shit.” She pulled her Presidential Space Policy Team ID badge out of her purse and stopped a passing flight attendant. She wasn’t sure what she could tell the passengers, but figured almost anything would help ease the spreading terror. She explained to the attendant—a young, black woman with almost the same calm, reserved look on her face as she’d had at the start of the flight—that she was a government official who dealt with the extra terrestrial craft, and that she might be able to provide information to calm the passengers. The flight attendant immediately took Claire’s hand and led her to the doorway between economy class and first class. After introducing Claire, the attendant gave her the microphone.
    Claire’s knees wobbled and she almost lost her resolve when she looked out over the passengers. More than a hundred tightly packed, terrified faces stared at her from inside the plane’s aluminum tube body, sharpening a feeling of claustrophobia and vulnerability. The roar of the jet engines now sounded ominous.
    “My name is Claire Montague, and I’m on the Presidential Space Policy Team,” she said, trying to speak slowly. “I was actually on the first team ofscientists that discovered D9, the space craft.” The passengers looked at her in silence, desperately hoping to hear something reassuring. “I know from data we got just hours ago that D9 is 800 million miles away from us, and on its present course, won’t reach Earth’s vicinity for more than a month.”
    “But what about the red dots?” half a dozen passengers asked almost in unison.
    An older, female passenger near the rear of the plane called out, “It said on the Internet a red dot in Canada or somewhere gave off a gas that killed fifty people.”
    Claire’s jaw dropped. A young man with short hair, apparently in the military, turned to the woman and said, “But I saw there haven’t been any casualties, except for the ones caused in accidents by people getting
away
from the dots. Even by people trying to get
to
the dots.” Several other passengers affirmed that report.
    Amid the murmur of voices, Claire said, “Ladies and gentlemen.” For just a moment, and despite the grim situation, she couldn’t help feeling amused that, standing in the aisle with a microphone in her hand, addressing the passengers, she felt like a flight attendant. “Listen, there’s going to be a lot of conflicting information out there. But stop a second. Our airplane is not diving up or down or right or left. The airplane is flying normally. The lights are on, the air conditioning is on. The systems are functioning normally. I’m confident we’ll get into Dulles Airport as scheduled, and then we can contact our loved ones.”
    She herself didn’t feel as confident as she asserted, but the edge was gone from the passengers’ panic and terror. Partly it was because of the explanations given by Claire and some of the other passengers; partly it was just the act of addressing the crisis rationally, which steered people away from an ever-accelerating plunge into fear and irrationality.
    Claire handed the microphone back to the flight attendant and started back to her seat. She’d taken only a couple steps when a woman with two children seated next to her grabbed her, painfully pinching the flesh on Claire’s forearm.
    “What are they like on D9? Are they like us?”
    From up and down the plane, other