Cathy forced her bleary blue eyes to stare at the oversized monitor, gave up, and laid her head on the dining room table. Her long, gray, wavy hair fell forward and provided an inadequate cushion for her forehead as well as no comfort for her mental frustration.

 

She sneezed. The dining room must be full of dog hairs again. She was an astrophysicist and not much of a housekeeper, though, at the moment, not even much of an astrophysicist.

 

She stood up stiffly and limped over to the huge, grimy, picture window that took up most of the south wall. After sitting for a number of hours, her legs were a little stiff, her ankles swollen, and her neck didn't want her to make any sudden moves.

 

But the view, even out of a window that hadn't been washed in many months, undid all kinks in her physical frame. Rows of corn, green stalks at least seven feet high, undulating in the wind, behind them the little woods, an expanse of maple trees and thick brush that had provided a retreat for her childhood fantasies.

 

There were claims that watching the waves on the ocean could sooth and calm you, even strengthen your creative powers. For Cathy it was watching the corn stalks wave in the wind that helped her discharge the clutter from her mind.

 

Cathy liked living in this old, rickety farmhouse. She was at home here. Her great-grandfather had been the builder in the family, constructing a medium-sized, three-story, white, shingled house, a massive, three-story, red barn, and wooden fences as far as the eye could see.

 

Her grandfather had been the passionate farmer, rescuing the farm from the bank during the depression, raising hogs and cattle, and growing the grain to feed them. Her father got rid of the animals that were bankrupting him and raised all the grains that would sell, building mammoth grain dryers and silos to store what he grew.

 

When her parents died, Cathy inherited a farm she didn't know what to do with. By then she had tenure at JPL but impulsively decided to move back to Iowa and telecommute.

 

Living at home, in the house she grew up in, on the family farm, turned out to be the best decision she had ever made. There was an incomparable peace and quiet here in the drafty old house a good half mile from the gravel, county-line road.

 

This relative isolation, along with dark skies, did good things for her fifty-something, introverted soul. And Killer, her not entirely voluntary, foster dog, was better off with a whole two hundred and forty acres to terrorize.

 

Actually, where was Killer? He should be demanding his next meal by now. She listened for his incessant barking, but heard nothing other than the wind blowing through the corn stalks, a comforting sound. She went back to the table and sat in front of her computer, hoping for some new insight.

 

Cathy herself was pretty much a loner, preferring a limited number of people or none at all around her. She hated the time she had to spend in Pasadena and honestly did her best work here on the Iowa farm.

 

Right now, the equations still didn't work; they didn't come anywhere near describing the inflation of the universe due to dark energy. It was so exasperating.

 

Back when she had been immersed in that pond of mysterious extra-terrestrial fluid, she had understood everything about dark energy. And now, all she saw in her mind were silhouettes of multi-dimensional geometric figures that limped through space like arthritic mountain goats, pausing only to munch on her careful equations etched in the sky.

 

Too bad. she couldn't interview Killer, that hyperactive little peekapoo, no doubt an offspring of a tumultuous love affair between a psychotic poodle and a bellicose Pekingese. Her friend Linda had asked her to take him temporarily when she had to go back east to care for her aging parents.

 

Cathy had dived into the extraterrestrial fluid to save Killer in the first place. His canine brain had been just as assimilated into the cosmic mind as hers.

 

After the extraterrestrial fluid left for parts unknown, she, Killer, and their rapidly fading memories found themselves wallowing around in the mud. She had been trying to make sense out of what she remembered ever since.

 

Unfortunately, conversations with Killer continued to be a little one-sided, and, so far, no one had demonstrated a successful method for establishing a mind meld between a human and a canine brain.

 

As a practical matter, she still had no idea where Killer was at the moment, though probably chasing cats or opossums or squirrels back and forth around the heritage farm her parents had left in her care.

 

Bam, bam, bam. Cathy thought she could even feel the vibrations through the dining room table, or maybe the whole house was shaking. A meaty hand was pounding on the back screen door. No, not meaty hand—it could only be Jack Cassidy's massive mitt.

 

Deciding to telecommute to JPL from the farm had led to her renting out the fields to her industrious neighbor, Jack Cassidy. She had thought he would plant and harvest crops and otherwise leave her alone. Instead, he showed up at regular intervals with one nuisance idea after another.

 

"Come on in," Cathy yelled as she hauled her skinny frame out of the chair and hobbled over to the kitchen. This was Iowa; people could and did find their own way into houses; you didn't have to meet them at the door. She had been hunched over her computer for too many hours. It was probably a good thing Jack was forcing her to take a break.

 

Her kitchen was in its usual condition of slovenly disorder. Funny. As an astrophysicist, she was obsessed with order, trying to find cause-and-effect relationships in mountains of data. But physics was physics and kitchens were kitchens.

 

She only bothered to wash dishes when she ran out of them, but she did rinse things off and immediately take the left-over food out to the compost heap behind the garage. So, there was no stench of spoiled food hanging in the heavy, humid air, just the trace scent of boiled sweet corn and vegetable soup from the night before.

 

It didn't matter anyway. Once Jack stomped into the kitchen, reeking of manure, his odoriferous presence drove out all her kitchen fragrances. Jack, with his long, greasy brown hair and at six foot four and close to three hundred pounds, looked intimidating. Actually, he was, in fact, a harmless, playful, little kitten by nature, though a spontaneous and very persistent kitten.

 

"Can I offer you something to drink?" Cathy asked as she went over to the somewhat dusty refrigerator.

 

"Sure," Jack said. "Got any pop?"

 

Cathy got out two cans of whatever had been the cheapest soft drink the last time she went shopping, handed one to Jack, and motioned for him to sit down at her kitchen table.

 

She didn't have to wait long for his newest enthusiastic idea, which turned out to be a rehash of an old idea.

 

"Cathy," he began while guzzling his can of pop and wiping his lips with the back of his hand. "Let me get rid of that patch of trees out front. It's in the way, surrounded by the fields like it is. It makes for a huge waste of time for me, plowing, planting, and harvesting around it."

 

Cathy shook her head. "No," she said. "I think it's pretty, and I like the trees. I used to play in there when I was a kid." Actually, back then she used to go to these little woods and sit on the ground between the maple trees. She imagined there were all kinds of fantastical creature there, fairies, unicorns, dragons.

 

She had preferred to be alone in her little woods with these fantasy creatures instead of trying to endure human beings on the outside. It was shady and cool there in the summer, almost a different world from the hot, humid weather outside the woods.

 

"Cathy," Jack said. "Please." She could see the veins in his neck and face bulging as his fingers crushed the pop can. He was obviously trying to control himself this time. Previous, long, drawn-out, loud arguments hadn't persuaded her. He must be trying something new to get her to change her mind. Apparently, this was more important to him than she had realized.

 

"My brothers and I can do this in one day, cut down the trees, uproot the stumps, and drag them away. You won't be bothered at all."

 

"You know," he continued. "If you like hiking through woods, there are some much bigger and prettier stretches on the cliffs along the Mississippi—that's only about ten miles away. Besides, what about that big woods that belongs to your farm? It's only about a five-minute drive from here." He looked straight in her eyes.

 

Cathy could see that he was pleading. Maybe it wasn't an unreasonable request. Farmers certainly didn't have it easy at this point in time, and they had to work efficiently and effectively. In many ways, Jack was the perfect tenant. He paid on time; he only wanted to use the fields, not the house or garage.

 

She knew Jack. He was a good person and more or less a friend. They had gone to school together for thirteen years, in the typical consolidated school system with kindergarten through high school all in a one-building complex in the small town surrounded by the farms. Then he had gone off to Iowa State in Ames to major in agriculture and she off to Harvard for astrophysics.

 

Back then, she needed to escape the confining rural culture here and explore the universe. Now she realized that, given a certain knowledge base, her Iowa farm provided her with the sheltered, undisturbed environment where she could let her thoughts run wild and find the explanations to disclose the universe's secrets.

 

There was no reason for Jack to have to make economic sacrifices because of her nostalgia for a walk in the little woods. She never did that anymore anyway. When she wasn't sitting at her computer, she was sitting on the front lawn and looking at the dark sky.

 

"All right," Cathy said and sighed. "You've persuaded me. Go ahead and plow the little woods under."

 

Jack jumped up and hugged her suddenly. "Thanks, Cathy," he said. "I owe you one, big time. We'll get started early tomorrow morning."

 

She didn't know if it was a reward or punishment from the universe, but soon after Jack left, the downpour began. It rained in torrents all night. When Killer returned, he was soaked.

 

~ * ~

 

Right. She wouldn't be bothered at all. That's what Jack had promised the day before.

 

The deafening racket from the chain saws was making her head explode. It was six in the morning and Jack and his brothers had already started. Cathy always got up at five, but that was because she felt especially creative and open to new physics ideas early in the morning. Right now, however, all she could think about was stopping the unbearable noise.

 

Then it stopped and Cathy heard Killer's high-pitched yapping. Ordinarily she registered his never-ending barking as annoying, but compared to the chain saws it was a pleasant symphony. Or, it was until Jack's meaty fist started pounding on her back screen door.

 

"Cathy," he yelled. "You have to keep your little dog in the house."

 

Cathy walked over to the back door. "Where is Killer?" she asked.

 

"Racing around the trees," Jack complained. "He won't let us cut them down. He keeps jumping on the leg of whoever starts his chainsaw and then tries to bite through the overalls."

 

"I'm sure he can't bite through the cloth," Cathy said.

 

"He can bite through our socks or get lucky and bite under the pants legs," Jack said. "But what I'm afraid of is that he could get hurt when a tree falls or if he jumps into a chain saw."

 

"I never understood why you got that psychotic little mutt anyway," he continued.

 

Cathy shook her head. "I don't have a lot of friends," she said. "So, when my friend Linda asked me to take care of her dog when she had to go care for her parents, there was no way I was going to refuse. But thanks for thinking of Killer's safety. I should have kept him in the house this morning. I'll go get him."

 

This proved to be more difficult than she thought. She walked through the muddy cornfield next to the front lawn over to the little woods, noting it took her half as long as it had when she was a child.

 

Killer was whirling around like a canine tornado, squawking more loudly than usual. Cathy realized it was a mistake to have followed Jack out to the cornfield without first putting on the heavy garden gloves she used when she tried to give Killer a bath.

 

Today Killer, often a pristine-white vision of canine loveliness, looked like a mud-caked demon. "Come, Killer," Cathy called. As usual, Killer didn't pay the slightest attention to her. She didn't take it personally. Killer had never paid any attention to Linda either.

 

Cathy ran over to Killer, who, strangely enough, didn't run away from her, instead ran circles around each tree. For a second, Cathy felt touched. It looked like Killer cared about the trees as much as she did. But Jack was right; Killer was in the way and might get hurt.

 

She ran over to Killer, grabbed him from the back, surprised him, and scooped him up. Killer resisted more than usual, wriggling violently, trying to free all four paws or at least scratch Cathy with them, turning his head to try to bite Cathy's arm. What concerned her though was his sudden, high-pitched, heartrending howling.

 

Cathy struggled, slipping in the muddy cornfield, but managed to get Killer back into the house and shut all the doors and windows.

 

For Cathy the rest of the day was an unbearable, acoustic torment. The painkillers she had in the house didn't have the slightest effect on the pounding in her head. The chain saws screamed, Killer howled, and her head throbbed.

 

When the chain saws stopped, the loud tractor motors began. Once the trees were cut down, Jack and his brothers pulled the stumps out of the ground and dragged them out to the gravel, county-line road.

 

Mercifully, the noise stopped at sundown. Cathy peered out her dining room window and saw a huge muddy ditch where the little woods had been. Killer was still howling, and so Cathy let him out. She hadn't been able to bathe him all day, and so it didn't matter if he added a further coat of mud to his fur.

 

Killer dashed away faster than Cathy could remember him ever running. He headed straight to the mud hole that had once been the little woods.

 

It occurred to Cathy she hadn't eaten anything all day, but her headache kept her feeling nauseated. So, there was nothing she felt like cooking. She sat down in front of her computer and wondered if she could distract herself with a few astrophysical musings.

 

Two quiet hours were a great help. A few random ideas did in fact run through her mind, but just as she thought she saw a vague, but perhaps promising, connection, she heard Killer whining and scratching at the door.

 

She opened the door and Killer trotted in, a little mound of mud on four legs. He opened his mouth and dropped something on the kitchen floor that looked like a long, thick, lumpy, metal rod.

 

Cathy ran over, picked it up, and scraped some of the mud off. Under the mud, the rod was bright red and about one meter long. The lumps looked like joints. She couldn't tell what it was made of. It was heavy and solid. At first she thought it looked like a femur, but there were too many joints. The joints themselves allowed more than ninety degrees of mobility.

 

Killer ran back to the door and whimpered. Cathy never let Killer out at night, but she couldn't stand the thought of his whining at the door for the next eight or more hours. She turned on all the lights in the dining room, opened the back door, and Killer ran out. So she grabbed a flashlight followed him, taking the heavy red object along with her.

 

Killer dashed off like an Olympic sprinter, but Cathy kept stumbling over corn stalks. She could see the light from the dining room well enough, but there was no moon, it was cloudy, and the sky was dark. Her flashlight didn't provide a lot of light in the field.

 

Fortunately, she stopped at the edge of what had been her little woods before falling into the new ditch. The holes where the stumps had been were quite deep, and it looked like Killer had dug at least two of them even deeper.

 

Killer popped up out of a third hole with another object in his mouth. He dropped it at Cathy's feet. She waved her flashlight over it. It was the same red color as the first object Killer had brought her, but it had a different shape, round with indentations.

 

Before she could examine it more closely, Killer brought her another rod, shorter than the first one but with something like claws at one end. Killer kept bringing her these strange objects. Now she wondered if he was digging up some kind of garbage dump. That, however, wasn't possible, unless it was garbage more than a hundred and fifty years old. The farm and the little woods had been in the family at least that long.

 

These objects, though, were the result of a technology that didn’t exist that long ago. Vague, fleeting memories from her immersion in the alien fluid made her wonder.

 

At least Killer had stopped whining. He was making some kind of noise, but more like humming. Cathy assumed she was fantasizing, but she thought she could detect a strange melody in Killer's crooning.

 

Killer kept bringing her strange metal objects and laying them at her feet.

 

She looked at them again in the beams of her flashlight. Suddenly she was certain she knew what they were, alien objects, produced by technology not from planet Earth.

 

She started thinking: What should she do? Show anyone what Killer dug up? Pictures would spread out over the media and everyone would come to the farm, serious scientists and conspiracy nutcases, science journalists, and tabloid exploiters.

 

She pictured hordes of journalists driving around the farm, tearing up the cornfields with their vehicles. Hundreds of strangers would dig more and more holes. People would be pounding on her doors and windows. Security forces would put the whole farm under quarantine while they snooped around.

 

Horror. Pure horror. How could she possibly work under such circumstances? Why was she obligated to tell anyone? Who needed to know about this?

 

Actually, everyone. She was a theoretical astrophysicist, a scientist. She had devoted her life to trying to understand the universe. She couldn't keep clues secret that would add to humankind's knowledge base. That was completely against her professional ethics.

 

Who knows what these objects would turn out to be made of? What if they contained foreign or not so foreign DNA? This would be proof human beings are not alone in the universe.

 

Yet, if she hadn't let Jack uproot the trees, no one would have discovered these alien remains. If there were alien body parts here, they could also be in other places, just like dinosaur bones. Once you discovered one set, it was only a matter of time until you found others. She wouldn't be destroying any evidence if she just didn't do anything to publicize it.

 

Besides, maybe the things Killer dug up were all a hoax. Then the hordes would destroy her home for nothing.

 

No, she could rationalize keeping this secret.

 

She would get more flashlights and place them around the ditch. She would dig the holes even deeper. Actually, Killer could probably help her. She would place all the alien parts in the deepest holes. Then she would get out her garden tractor with its snowplow attachment and push all the mud she could from between the rows of corn into the holes. She had all night.

 

Jack would want to dump more soil over the former woods anyway so he could plant corn there. He needed a flat field without deep indentations. She would tell Jack that she started filling in the holes in order to get closure about the loss of her woods.

 

Maybe it was her imagination, but Killer seemed sad while she was thinking about what would happen if she reported the alien body parts. As soon as she decided she would keep this discovery secret, he perked right up and barked happily.

 

As she turned around to go back to the house for the flashlights, she heard a thunk coming from the other side of the ditch. She aimed her flashlight and saw a miniature grain dryer, about four feet high and one foot in diameter.

 

Killer suddenly stood up on his hind legs, held his front paws together, and stared at the dark sky. It looked like he was praying. Little machines exited the alien grain dryer and started collecting the parts Killer had dug up and putting them in the alien grain dryer. Then they climbed into the holes and brought up more objects that they also put into the container.

 

Cathy hoped she wasn't hallucinating. "What's going on?" she asked, not seriously expecting an answer. She also didn't get one directly, just a feeling from Killer that everything was all right, that the aliens were grateful to be able to rescue their ancestors. Somehow, the digging activities had activated a sentinel function, and the aliens came to recover the remains of ancient spacefarers.

 

It was frustrating not to get more of an explanation, but Cathy also felt gratitude coming from the aliens via Killer. The little robots worked for several hours, and then climbed into the gray grain dryer, which disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.

 

Killer barked loudly, and Cathy saw one clear equation in her mind, a description of one aspect of dark energy inflating the universe.

 

"Come home, Killer," she called. "I have to do some work before I forget the thank-you from our visitors." And she and Killer walked back to the farmhouse.

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