Chapter 23. Surprising Answer.

Roxie settled down at one of the command center stations to study the recording of the alien contact. She played it in slow motion to watch every aspect of the strange alien's face, but it didn't reveal anything. It wasn't until she ran it in super slow motion that she caught sight of something to the side of the alien's face, something completely unexpected. She increased the magnification until she had a decent image of the object. That's when she smiled.

It was later at the communal meal that she revealed what she had discovered. "I think I've found why the alien didn't destroy your ship."

Everyone stared at her as if she had gone bonkers.

"I increased the magnification of the alien encounter video and found something that proves my theory."

"What?" Jack asked, his eyes focused on her as if they were lasers.

"I'll let you decide," Roxie said with a subtle smile.

They all went to the command center and watched as Roxie replayed a more magnified version of the encounter video.

When Jack saw what she was talking about, he reacted with a grin. "Fascinating!"

"The alien has something that looks like a cat?" Jessica blurted.

"It sure as hell looks like that, and it explains why they didn't attack us."

"That has to be it," Lorrie said. "I remember that the alien asked why we had a cat."

"Exactly," Jack said. "Who would have ever thought that this would save us."

"We owe our lives to whoever included cats on our mission," Natalie said. "It makes me wonder if someone at Houston knew about the aliens' customs."

"There are many questions about all of this," Jack said. "I'm not sure that we can determine all the answers, but we certainly have plenty of time to work on it."

"I wonder if we'll ever get back to Earth," Lorrie said. "We nave no idea how safe it is."

"We don't even know if it's safe to orbit it," Natalie said. "We don't know what happened there. Was it a result of an alien attack?"

"Maybe it was a world gone mad when they realized that aliens were out there not happy that humans had messed with their planet," Roxie said.

"I think we had better play it safe until we know for sure about what happened," Jack said. "We're safe out here. Orbiting Earth would be particularly dangerous because we could be easily destroyed with a missile."

Everyone reluctantly agreed with his assessment of their situation.

Roxie wasn't finished with an analysis of the alien encounter video. She came to a new even more interesting conclusion, which she decided to only reveal to the female crew.

It was during taking a shower with Jessica that she revealed her conjecture. "I think that the alien in the video is a female."

Jessica stared at her for a moment before replying. "What makes you think that it's a female?"

"If you stare at it for a while you can see the female features like the lips and the eyes."

"I'm not sure if that would be significant. Maybe this species is only feminine, or the females are in charge."

"The mystery we have to solve is why Earth fell into an apocalyptic disaster."

"It's possible that the revelation of a superior alien species caused a dystopian societal break down."

Natalie, Lorrie and Roxie showed up.

"Hey, are you two hogging the shower unit?" Lorrie yelled.

They stepped out of the drying unit.

"We were having a discussion about the gender of the alien we saw in the video," Jessica said.

"How in the hell could you determine its gender," Lorrie asked.

"Roxie thinks it's a female," Jessica said.

"That would suggest that this alien species risks the lives of their females by sending them out on crazy space missions just like our male superiority nuts do."

"That's one of the reasons I think she's a female," Roxie said.

Jack appeared at his door to the shower unit. "Are you gals having an argument?"

"No," Jessica replied looking at him without protecting her modesty. "Roxie believes that the alien in the encounter video is a female."

"I can believe that. Females are destined to be the masters of the universe."

"Maybe they are on some ET based society," Roxie said. "But they sure as hell aren't in ours."

"Oh, I don't know," Jack replied. "I think that women have made amazing strides at being equal."

"Equal has a double meaning, but perhaps you're right."

"I'm not an expert on gender equality, but I think that women have achieved equality."

Roxie smiled.

Without any reaction, he turned and entered his quarters.

"That's interesting," Roxie said. "He didn't seem to be affected by the fact that we're naked."

"Maybe he doesn't care," Lorrie said.

"I doubt that." Jessica said. "I believe that he's just being the gentleman that he is."

"Maybe we are all becoming jaded by the serious situation we're in," Lorrie said. "We have no idea how screwed up Earth is."

"Shit!" Natalie proclaimed. "We could end up living on this ship for a boringly protracted time. This ship isn't all that well designed for privacy."

"My concern is that he doesn't become depressed," Jessica said. "It's best that we don't react to any situation involving him because we don't know how it would affect him."

They agreed to her suggestion, but it wasn't that simple.