Those two statements were too contradictory for Vivian's liking, and she closed out of that page and continued her search, bringing up older stories that were too similar to be coincidence.
Even as far back as seventy years ago there were reports of the same things happening. It wasn't just limited to the area around the city, either. All over the world, there were reports of crafts showing up one minute and then disappearing the next.
Some of them were clearly not true and some were the general crop circle, little green men propaganda, but it was very easy to tell the difference between them, and the more she read about the stories that seemed similar, the more she was convinced that there was something going on.
"Now, I just have to figure out where the crafts are going," she muttered under her breath.
It would make sense to assume that they had simply flown back up to wherever they came from, but there were a few holes in that logic. And there were too many other options available for her to just decide that that was what happened. There could be invisibility cloakers or stealth modes at work here. Maybe the crafts had never gone anywhere, they were just hidden.
The men who had reported seeing them had described the crafts as being "smaller than an airplane but bigger than a car" , which didn't do a lot to narrow it down, but definitely made it seem more plausible that someone would have noticed something like that taking off again. Even if it was in the middle of a field.
Vivian's mind was made up. There was no way she could let something like this pass her by. Not when she could discover something that had clearly been stumping people for longer than she had been alive.
Most likely she wouldn't even find anything, and that was okay. At least she would be able to say that she'd tried, right? There was no harm in going to the scene and trying to see what she could find.
When she glanced at the clock and found that it was a good four hours since she'd sat down and already well after midnight, she stifled a yawn with one hand and closed her computer, heading to bed and hoping she could get some sleep with the excitement that was fluttering in her stomach the whole time.
Chapter 4: Displaced
Earth was certainly the last place Carver had ever expected to find himself. It was considered a last resort by his people, somewhere they would flee to only if there was no other safe haven to be found. Of course, that was a very real possibility with the amount of fighting that tended to go on in their galaxy. Entire clans were wiped out every few years and the clans that wiped them out could be next in the blink of an eye.
Resources were scarce at times, and that was actually the number one reason for why there was so much fighting. Holding down fertile land with access to minerals and water and food was harder than it looked, and the Des'kos seemed determined to wipe out the clans that had the best access.
It was one of the reasons why they were at war with them, and Carver shuddered to think what their home would look like if it turned out that they did have to flee to Earth.
Earth, he was rapidly discovering, was not a very hospitable place. Oh, it was fine to support life, but what was the quality of that life? Everything felt dirty and the air was thick and heavy with pollution. Even with the amount of technology that was needed to get through a single day in his home, they managed to keep their air clean and fresh by filtering out anything that was considered a pollutant and only using things that burned clean to power their tech. When burning was necessary at all, that was.
It was considered old tech to use things that needed combustion, and now they worked on cleaner, stone powered fuel, harnessing the inherent energy in gemstones and natural minerals.
But clearly Earth was a few hundred years behind when it came to that kind of advance, and Carver could smell gasoline and fossil fuels in the air.
He shuddered in earnest as he looked out the window of the little cabin he had found and sighed.
According to his father, it had been Kithairin, his grandfather, who had put the plans to move to Earth if necessary into motion. There had been several scouting missions to this planet to see just how well it could sustain them if they needed to flee there, and while the results of those missions and had been dismal at best (Earthlings seemed to barely have enough resources to support themselves, let alone whichever clans were left to flee there), there weren't enough life supporting planets in the universe that they could rule it out.
Kithairin had led a team on a five month trip to Earth after that and had set up any number of safe houses, small, nondescript cabin like structures, layered with cloaking devices and tucked out of the way of the usual paths for humans that they could return to if necessary.
Each house was stocked with dried food and information about the area, the plan being that from the houses, they could figure out how best to blend themselves into society.