Over the next hour James and Laurie discussed the discovery with Neal and Madeline. Madeline was fairly incredulous at first, but that part of Neal that had been so keen to find one of the meteors had also been equally aware of what his original equations about their makeup had suggested. It was not long before the conversation moved away from whether the meteor was a natural occurrence and on to what to do about the strong possibility that it wasn’t. Based on the object’s description, Neal had posited three theories of what it could be.

First, it could have carried some kind of bomb, possibly thermonuclear, but it was unlikely that none of the eight would have detonated, so the group seemed to consider this possibility moot. Second was that it bore some kind of pathogen: a virus, or some other biological or chemical weapon. Laurie had responded immediately, “Yes, we thought about that, Neal, but surely if you wanted to disperse a pathogen effectively you would detonate the delivery device in the air.”

“Maybe they did? Maybe this is just the remains of the capsule?” said Neal. Madeline wondered how they had so easily gotten to a discussion of ‘they.’ It had just never occurred to her as she had worked on the probe that it might find something…unnatural. But even as she struggled with this thought, Neal was moving on to his last, and most outlandish theory.

“My third thought is both the most ridiculous, and yet … perhaps … also the most plausible of the three.” Madeline stared up at him, the radio silent as they all waited for his next words. “Well,” he continued, “they may have been … landing capsules. For some kind of … machine.”

James was instantly on the defensive against this seemingly preposterous thought, “Wouldn’t they have landed on land, then, Neal?” he said.

“Well, no, James, they wouldn’t, not if they didn’t want us to know they had come.” said Neal, Madeline still flinching each time anyone said ‘they.’

Neal carried on, “If they wanted to arrive covertly, they would have planned to impact on water, but near to land. And they would have planned to leave what little evidence there was of their arrival in the most hard to reach place possible.”

They could all see the same image in their minds: while they had been working on the probe back in Florida, Neal had posted a giant world map on the coffee room wall. On it he had marked with red pins the locations of each of the impact sites. It seemed so clear to them all now, so perfect how they had all landed in the deepest and most inhospitable waters in their given part of the globe. They had joked about it at the time: couldn’t make it easy for us, could they.