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

frightened passengers reached out to Claire with questions: “Do they have super weapons?” “They’ve already told the government what they want, right?” “When are they coming for our guns?”
    Claire felt she didn’t have anything else useful to say, but the flight attendant looked at her intently with a furrowed brow that said “Don’t go.” So she turned to the other passengers and started talking with them one by one, not so much answering their questions as showing that it was possible to talk about their fears with a sympathetic person.
    After about half an hour, the plane started to descend to Washington. D.C., and Claire pulled away from the still-worried passengers to take her seat. She tried to call her sister and other friends and family, but couldn’t get through the clogged system. As the plane got lower and lower, she looked out her window for any sign of what was really happening. From several thousand feet up, there were no indications of anything abnormal. The Pentagon, the Washington Monument, and other landmarks stood out from the sinewy boulevards and green parks, with their trees and grass, as usual.
    Then a small plume of smoke about a half mile from the Pentagon caught her eye. Then another, closer to the horizon, and then another. As individual vehicles became distinct, she saw the flashing lights of numerous emergency vehicles. Traffic was at a standstill at some intersections, with masses of cars bumper-to-bumper. And Claire thought she saw several cleared-off spaces with tiny red dots in the middle sail by as the airplane approached the runway.
    When they landed and taxied to the terminal, Claire tried to reach people on her phone, and searched her email for messages. Eventually she found one that had evidently gotten through right after the red dots started showing up.
    It said: “Report to Denver One immediately.”

D ENVER O NE
    T he landing was smooth, and the plane arrived at the terminal right on time, belying the drama during the flight. Deplaning started as a slow but orderly process, as usual, but shouting and shoving matches soon broke out as passengers struggled to quickly manhandle carry-on luggage from overhead bins and squeeze into already crowded aisles, often while trying to make phone calls at the same time.
    “God damn it, you about broke my shoulder!” a young woman blurted at an older man who had lost control of a heavy bag he’d pulled from the bin.
    “Can you wait one fucking second?” a rotund man in a business suit hissed at another heavy-set man, who was trying to push into the aisle in front of him.
    Some flight attendants and a few passengers, like Claire, tried to help and calm the passengers, with limited effects. Once everyone was in the jet way, the stampede was on. People rushed as fast as they could through the packed walkway, pushing slower passengers and tripping over baggage. Some people left their carry-ons behind; although the airport baggage system was operating normally, many passengers even left their check-in luggage at the airport.
    The actual, visible appearance of something alien completely upended the tenuous peace of mind most people had settled into soon after the news that D9 had been spotted. That was partly because that calm was based on some hopeful self-delusions. Maybe the scientists were wrong; maybe D9 wasjust a space rock. Maybe it was a spacecraft, but wouldn’t make any contact with Earth. Maybe it didn’t even know Earth was there. And anyway, they said it wouldn’t arrive for weeks. A lot could happen. Maybe it would explode or change course. Maybe … who knew?
    The sudden appearance of the mysterious red dots destroyed all those delusions. “They” knew humans were there, and had started to interact with people on Earth. And for some reason, with tangible evidence of alien life in front of people, it was hard to maintain fantasies of a peaceful and friendly contact. A flood of rumors about mass death and