[Liz]

Being the Governor of Paradise these past seventeen years has been an easy job, even joyful. In so many ways this place lived up to its name.

But I feared that may change.

"You wanted to see us, Liz?" Mora peeked around the open door to my office.

Mora's two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Luna, slept peacefully draped over her mother's shoulder. I waved her in. Gan followed, pulled along by their two rambunctious older children. Ben, now ten years old, pulled on one arm, and Eve, now eight, on the other. These ages were in Paradise years, which are only three-fourths as long as an Earth year. I still find myself thinking in Earth years sometimes, where Ben would be seven-and-a-half and Eve would be six.

My office was relatively small, especially for the 'Queen of Paradise', as Gan sometimes teased me, but the view was wonderful. I occupied a part of the original habit dome built by the early terraform team. With its grand windows overlooking a green forest on one side and a brushy grassland on the other, it was perhaps the only truly impressive building on our world.

The official designation for this planet was Tau Ceti Four, but we have not called it that for as long as I have been here. We named it Paradise. At first, though, it was nearly Paradise Lost. I vividly remembered the tension of those days. Mora and Gan emerged as the heroes. If not for them, the blight would have destroyed our world.

Eve yelled, "Gram!" when she saw me and bounded my way. Not to be outdone, Ben did the same. I nearly fell backward out of my chair as they both jumped up into my lap.

"My, aren't you two getting big." I was their Godmother and felt blessed to also fulfill a Grandma's role. I sometimes spoiled them, but that was a fun part of the job.

Ben pushed his sister aside to claim more of my lap. Eve pushed back. Soon the squabbling ensued. Ben was bigger and stronger, being the older one, but Eve was not willing to concede anything to him.

Mora came around and snatched up Eve into one arm, while still holding a sleeping toddler in the other. Gan took Ben aside by his hand.

Mora let out an audible breath. "Sorry, Liz. These two have been at each other lately."

I smiled. "They bicker like siblings." It was then that I noticed the bruise and scabbed cuts on the side of Ben's head, partially obscured by his bushy brown hair. I pointed at the wound. "What happened here?"

Mora rolled her eyes. "He's got scrapes and bruises all over. Someone dared him to jump off the river bridge."

Ben beamed as if this was a great accomplishment. I tried to hide my grin. "He will be a handful as a teenager, I would wager."

Gan sat Ben down in a chair at the small conference table in my office and held him there. After a stern look from his father, the boy ended his struggle but the twinkle in his eye did not fade. Ben's features seemed to be a blend of his mother and father, somewhere midway between Mora's dark hair with tanned skin and Gan's light brown hair with light skin tone. But he had twice his father's natural charm. That boy would be a handful indeed and probably trouble for the girls.

Jack Smith, my Security Chief and Gan's friend, leaned back in his chair at the table and snickered. He was ex-military and looked the part: large, solidly built, short graying hair, and numerous tattoos. He could be very intimidating if he chose to be. Like me and Gan, he came over on the Ark Hope colony ship some seventeen Paradise years ago. But unlike Gan, he brought a wife and children with him.

Gan shrugged off Jack's wordless tease. Based on our informal conversations, Jack had experienced the same kind of thing with his sons.

Gan turned back to me. "What's up, Liz?"

I took a deep breath and dropped my grin. "There is a serious matter we want to inform you of before tomorrow's cabinet meeting."

Mora served as Terraform Director, a cabinet-level position. She was here before the Ark Hope arrived. Gan served as Public Utilities Director. They fell in love and married soon after he arrived.

Eve, sitting next to her mother, stuck her tongue out at her brother. Ben started to jump up in response, but his father held him back again. Eve ended her taunt on sight of her mother's pointed glare. My smile came back. Despite the distractions they sometimes caused, children put our work in perspective. As Governor of Paradise, I allowed, sometimes even insisted, the presence of children in official governmental meetings. Among other things, their presence took the edge off of heated debate. It was not unusual for a Councilwoman to present an impassioned plea before me while a baby nursed at her breast, or for a young child to play beside a Councilman as he listened to a debate. Rarely does anyone mind. If so, they can run against me in an election, but no one else wants my job.

Mora gave her viewer to Eve and Gan gave his viewer to Ben. The children eagerly accepted the handheld electronic devices. This should keep them occupied.

I leaned forward at the table. "Do you remember a discussion we had over seventeen years ago after we finally eradicated that dreadful blight? It was you, Mora, that speculated on the origins of it."

Mora nodded, shifting the sleepy little girl she held from shoulder to lap. "All too well, Liz. I thought the blight was put here long before we arrived by some unknown space-faring alien race, a terraforming tool meant to wipe out all existing life on the planet so that it may begin anew."

Gan added, "And I speculated that the aliens might be surprised when they come back to check on their project and find us here." His eyes widened. "Liz, where are you going with this?"

"I think they know we are here now." I turned to my Security Chief. "Jack?"

Jack stood up. "A few days ago we detected modulating microwave transmissions and high energy neutrino bursts. The microwaves were the same frequency that those blight devices used before we fried them."

I interjected, "I ordered the detectors installed on satellite and ground stations not long after the blight incident."

Mora asked, "Is there a natural or man-made explanation?"

Jack shook his head. "Nothing that we know. The transmissions came from outside the heliosphere on the side away from Earth. An Earth origin spacecraft would not come from that direction." With a click of a button on his viewer, a chart of the solar system came up on the office view-screen. "The transmissions repeated over and over, each time coming closer to Paradise. Then they abruptly stopped. The track of the transmission sources is shown on the chart." A dotted red line traced a path from outside the solar system toward Paradise.

Gan stared at the chart. "That is still not enough information to conclusively conclude there was an alien spacecraft."

Jack nodded. "True. But we sent out a shuttle to investigate. The pilot took this picture just before she died."

He touched his viewer again and a sharp image of the unknown spacecraft appeared on the screen. Silvery-blue in color, it had an elegant form, very much unlike the dull grey boxes from the Earth Space Agency. The heart of the craft was shaped as a triangle disk with three strange fins extending from the points. A circular disk stood above it supported by long rods, presumably a communications array. A cylinder extended below it, probably part of the propulsion system. Several slender booms jutted out from the sides, maybe holding analytical instruments.

Gan studied the image then jerked his head around to Jack. "Wait. Did you say the pilot died?"

"Yes." Jack dipped his eyes. "The object exploded as she locked on to it with radar. An intense flash of gamma rays killed her."

Gan asked, "An unshielded burst from a fusion drive?"

"No. The energy level of the gamma rays was too high. Only an antimatter explosion would do that." He put down his viewer. "There was not much left of the craft, but we did retrieve a few pieces. The materials were unlike anything we have seen before. We think it was an unmanned probe, err rather, an un-aliened probe. Somehow we triggered a self-destruct."

"Antimatter? We humans have not yet figured out how to reliably contain it."

"Exactly."

Everyone stared at the image in silence. Even the children stilled, as if they knew this was somehow important.

I leaned back into my chair. "So far all this has been kept secret. I plan to bring it up in tomorrow's cabinet meeting and then to the Council. Mora, we would like your help with the presentations."

Mora nodded weakly. This was going to boil the political pot. I knew this kind of task was not to her liking, she would rather advise from the background. But her matter-of-fact scientific style has come through for me in the past and she holds a great deal of esteem before the Council.

Gan put a hand to his chin. "With what we know so far, we might be able to make a rough guess as to where this probe came from." He retrieved his viewer from Ben. The boy stuck out a lower lip at the loss of the device.

"Let's assume these aliens do not have faster than light technology, either for travel or communication. Also that the probe could accelerate at two-g, not unreasonable with an antimatter type drive. By comparison, the Ark Hope only accelerated at one-quarter-g when it came over. Let's assume a sequence of events where the aliens somehow received a signal that something destroyed the blight micro-machines, and that this signal traveled at the speed of light, radio maybe? They then immediately launched this probe to investigate."

Gan tapped his viewer for a few minutes, doing the calculations as everyone watched him. "With these assumptions, and they could be way off, the probe came from somewhere roughly four Earth-standard light-years away." He looked up. "On a cosmic scale, practically next door."

Jack put the solar system chart back on the screen and zoomed out. He pointed. "There. Two star systems roughly four light-years away. And from the direction we tracked the probe." He tapped his viewer. "We don't know much about these stars."

I asked, "Gan, can you then estimate when the aliens might show up themselves?"

"Well, it is reasonable to think the probe sent a communication back saying someone else is on this planet. They actually may not know yet since it would take about four years for them to get the signal. Then, presuming they send a ship accelerating at only one-g, because two-g's might be too much for their bodies, that is if they have bodies..." Gan continued to tap on his viewer. "With all these assumptions, and again, this could be way off, a bunch of aliens might show up here in roughly fourteen Earth-years, or nineteen Paradise-years. Hopefully, carrying welcome baskets."

I took a deep breath. We had no idea if these aliens would be friendly or not. They did care enough about this planet to send a long-range probe, but it did not bode well that they gave it a self-destruct function. I hoped I had the courage to face them when they come.

"Then we have that much time to prepare."