Laser Light

Chapter 8

Two days later....11th September

When Tracy arrived home from work on Thursday afternoon her father came with her.

Shannon had stayed away from school the last two days as she came to terms with the loss of her father. Tracy and Grace had insisted she stay with them.

"Grace, Shannon, can you come out here please," Tracy called.

They all sat down at the dining table.

"Shannon, I made a couple of phone calls today on your behalf," Philip said, "Because you will turn eighteen in six months the Department of Family Services does not need to place you into foster care if you have somewhere you can stay with a responsible adult, like a close friend."

"So Grace and I would love to have you come and live with us," continued Tracy, "until you're eighteen or as long as you want after that. Would you like to do that?"

Shannon didn't answer, but with tears in her eyes she walked around the table and gave Tracy a huge hug.

Grace could barely contain herself. "Oh wow, this will be so cool! Shannon, now we can hang out all the time. We can be like sisters. Thanks Mum, thanks Granddad."

The girls ran off to Grace's room to talk while Phillip and his daughter remained at the table.

"How do you do that, Dad?" Tracy asked, "Whenever bureaucracy is involved you always seem to be able to instantly sort it out. Like the other night. How did you get the police to immediately rule Dr Rozman's death as accidental without any sort of investigation?"

Phillip smiled. "Because my dear daughter, I have 'powers'."

Tracy sat back in her seat. "I believe you," she sighed.

Two weeks later....25th September

Tracy had just delivered a plate of biscuits to Grace and Shannon in Grace's bedroom and was about to walk off when she heard the girls talking. The door had not latched shut and she could clearly hear their voices.

The funeral for Carl Rozman had been a week earlier and had been well attended by members of staff from the research facility. It appeared that the alien entity had indeed somehow travelled along the tachyon particle beam and made it to Mars. Bennett had told Phillip via a radio link that after the dish had been destroyed he had briefly seen an image of a crystal cluster floating in the air above the remains of the dish. Phillip had instructed him that he and his team were to stay well away from the area. He didn't explain the reason to Bennett, but he was worried that the entity might try and 'possess' any humans who came near it, and although it had never been definitely confirmed one way or the other, it seemed likely that the mysterious dish structure was not terrestrial. It had mostly likely been constructed by an unknown race thousands of years ago and had been covered and uncovered repeatedly by the shifting Martian sands. How the alien entity, originally found on the moon thirty one years ago, had been on the moon instead of Mars was a mystery.

"Dad, do you know if the tachyon particle beam actually did travel faster than light to Mars?" Tracy had asked her father.

"We don't know," Phillip had replied, "So we're going to reconstruct the TPG and carry out another test, a safe test this time. Dr John O'Brien is going to head up the project. Tracy, the school holidays start in a week. Do you think Grace might like to spend some time working with Dr O'Brien on this project? I think she would have a special interest in this. A very special interest."