The Fellowship for Alien Detection by Kevin Emerson

give you ample time.
    Best,
    Alex
    Nope, she hadn’t misread a thing. Haley closed the email. A fresh wave of nauseous discomfort rippled through her.
    She glanced up into the front seat, where her parents were having fun cycling through the radio stations and singing their own usually incorrect and always incomplete lyrics . I would imagine your parents are feeling the same way? Alex had said. Yeah , Haley thought, or, my parents have noooo idea .
    Obviously she hadn’t told them about the email from Alex. That would mean telling them about everything else. And that would mean the end of the trip. But this email was the end, anyway, wasn’t it?
    Because, after the rush of yesterday’s discoveries had worn off, Haley had considered the potential danger she was in. Whether the missing time events and the missing persons were the work of actual aliens or people using aliens as a smokescreen, whoever was behind this was not going to want her finding out more about their plans.
    Plus, Alex had just verified what Haley had learned last night: United Consolidated Amalgamations owned mines in many of the missing time towns she’d discovered. And now Haley had been at least spotted, if not identified, at the Amber mine. So, if she started showing up in other towns with mines, wouldn’t the UCA people realize that she was onto them? And if they did, then what?
    That answer was pretty obvious: She’d end up a missing person like Suza.
    Haley dropped the tablet in her lap and sighed. It was over, and the cruelest irony was that her trip was ending early because she’d actually gotten her story.
    And yet, she’d only glimpsed the surface! Where was Suza? Why were people being taken? What was happening in those towns during the missing time, and what did it have to do with the mines? What was that orange light that everyone remembered? Why was it being put underground? And how, how had a very similar orange light grown into a person right before her eyes?
    Argh, there were still so many questions! And Alex was wrong. There wasn’t nearly enough evidence to go to the police or whoever. Not yet. Nobody was going to be able to see that door in the mine without a warrant, and what judge was going to issue a warrant against a giant corporation based on claims of a shared dream about a glowing light from a bunch of UFO conspiracy weirdos? Sure, Haley had a camera photo, but she’d taken it while trespassing on private property! And she knew from TV that such evidence would probably be inadmissible.
    Not only was what she’d learned not enough for the authorities, it wasn’t going to be enough to publish, either. Sure, it might get her the scholarship, not to mention cause a frothing series of comments on the New Frontiers Mag-Zine site, but it was definitely not enough for a real newspaper like the Times to run it. She needed more.
    So, no, Alex, this was not a relief. It was only failure. Only the glimpse of some huge truth, the shadow of a massive story, one she’d spend the rest of the summer, maybe the rest of her life puzzling over, wondering what might have been.
    She couldn’t give up on it. She just couldn’t. Not yet. And so Haley had come up with a plan in three parts.
    Part One was an email reply to Alex. Haley had thought about begging for more time, but she felt like Alex’s decision was nonnegotiable, so her only choice was to try not to arouse her suspicions:
    Hi Alex,
    I understand about the danger and that we need to turn around. I’m relieved to know I can still have the scholarship and relieved to know that I’ll be out of danger! We are turning around now, and I will update you every few hours about our progress home.
    Thanks,
    Haley
    Part Two of the plan involved a route change: Haley checked her pocket road atlas again. “Dad?”
    â€œYeah?” Allan called over a shiny country anthem.
    â€œHow far to Brownsville?” This was the