Alien House: Alien House, #1

By Brian K. Lowe

Phil Collins is thrilled to be chosen as one of the advance scouts for the invasion of Earth, but when he gets here his ship is sabotaged and he loses his weapons, papers--and his clothes--outside near the campus of Newton College. Homeless and reduced to petty theft, he finds himself adopted by the brothers of Alpha Tau Ceti fraternity, a step up for Phil and a step down in the opinion of anyone else on campus.

 

Now Phil is trying to fit in on Earth while at the same time fulfilling his mission, but somewhere out there his own countrymen are trying to kill him--and college life is no picnic, either. He's got pledge duties, a rival frat is trying to haze him, a sexy professor may have her eye on him, and an accident with his swim suit at the community pool has every girl on campus trying to date him...

 

Meanwhile the dean of students is bringing in a UFO hunter, Alpha Tau Ceti is cooking up something in the basement they won't let him see--and the more he knows of Earth, the less he wants to conquer it--which could make it awkward when the main fleet arrives...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian K. Lowe
• Release date: Aug 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223832461

Book preview

ALIEN HOUSE

Alien House

by

Brian K. Lowe

Copyright © 2022 by Brian K. Lowe. All rights reserved. First edition.

Fiction by Brian K. Lowe

The Stolen Future series

The Invisible City

The Secret City

The Cosmic City

The Fugitive Future series

The Valley Beneath the World

The Nemesis series

The Choking Rain

The Scent of Death

The Killing Scar

The Grey Phantom series

The Grey Phantom

The Mad Monk (forthcoming)

Others

Alien House

Wasted Space

Once a Knight

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Forbidden Angels

Emergency Cancellation Archimedes

The Alien Who Came in from the Cold

The Wild Man of the Woods

Introduction to Iniquity

A Sobering Discovery

Strategy and Surveillance

Stumbling into Heaven

An Unsettling Inquiry

Making a Pledge

Breaking and Entering

A Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love

Studying Under a Fine Teacher

Science Fact v. Science Fiction at 11

The Chosen One

Following an Invisible Clue

A Reason to Get Up at 8 AM

Don't Judge a Book by Its Readers

Swim or Sink

Lost and Drowned

If No One Talks, Did It Happen?

Aliens are Real and I Have Proof

Money Can't Buy You an Excuse

Project Mal Homme

The Man from Hollywood

On the Hunt

Love and Engineering

Attacked in the Stacks

The Prince of Newton College

Attacked in the Woods

Saved by the Belle

A Visitor to the Sickbed

Making the Best of a Bad Situation

The Uppie and the Puppies

Nighttime Assignment

UFO Sighted!

The Truth Comes Out

The Candidate Who Came In from the Cold

Held and Kissed

The Room Below

Breaking and Engineering

Two's Company, Five's a Crowd

Good News and Bad News

Midnight on the Lake

Reunion

Phil Keeps His Mouth Shut

This is Not the Girl You Were Looking For

Mission Parameters

Did You Steal a Bathysphere?

What Could Go Wrong?

Total Systems Failure

Hit and Missed

Love and Death

Saved by a Belle with a Different Ring

Prologue

S omeday, son, that will all be yours—assuming the Terrans don’t blow it up first.

The planet Earth swung lazily in sharp 3-D over Philip's father's conference table, water falling intermittently from the cloud cover over one of the northern continents. A simple gesture would have drawn the image so close in that you could smell the rain. Philip thought he might like to—if he was going to live there, he might as well know what he was up against—but he was afraid his father would disapprove, the way he disapproved of at least half the things Philip did.

Do you think they might? he asked, not sure if it would make his job easier or harder.

It’s possible, his father admitted. I certainly hope not, but this image is twelve years old, and twelve years ago they’d just discovered how to detonate nuclear fissiles. In fact, if you pull in that section there— he indicated a spot on the eastern coast of the largest land mass—you can see some of the explosions from one of their wars. I don’t know why anybody who lives on such a beautiful planet is so angry all the time.

The building shook slightly, underscoring his words. Philip jumped, but his father’s gaze didn’t leave the model.

A 2.1, he said for his son’s benefit. I’ve felt bigger impacts before breakfast.

He said nothing else, but Philip knew his nervous reaction to the meteor strike was one of those things of which his father disapproved. He was only nine, but he had long ago recognized that his father held high standards. Philip turned his attention back to the Earth. He had studied it all his life, knowing that from birth he had been destined to go there. His Terran name marked him as one of the saviors of Annochea, which the humans would have called Alpha Tau Ceti, if they had known it existed. Philip smiled. They would know soon. As soon as Philip’s suitability rating came back, he’d be on his way there to work with the invasion force.

A soft chime summoned father and son to attention. The Earth faded away, replaced by the unsmiling face of the Prime Proctor.

There had been no words on the ride home, no recriminations. In a way it had been worse, waiting every second for the tide of condemnation, the parental disappointment. But his father had stayed silent the entire time, and now Philip lay on his bed, face buried in his pillow, pondering what he was to do with the rest of his life.

He’d failed the suitability rating. His psych-profile had scored too low in some weird category that he couldn’t even pronounce. They didn’t want him. What was he supposed to do now? Could he change his name? Would his father still want him? Would anybody ever want him—the boy with the Earth name who could never go to Earth?

Wake up, son, we’re leaving.

Philip blinked awake to find his father standing over him. It was dark outside the window, and somehow he knew it was very late—or very early.

Where are we going? he asked, already on his feet. The alertness rating test—he hadn’t failed that one.

I pulled some strings. This wasn’t your fault; I’ve been coddling you since your mother died. He pushed Phillip out the door and into a transfer shuttle, and it was moving the instant the door slammed shut. It will cost me later, but you’ll be gone.

Philip’s eyebrows shot up. He hadn’t thought his father would really throw him out...

Father, watching the outside, didn’t notice. It’s the slow route, because we’re still at least twenty years from faster-than-light travel, but you’ll only age about eight years. You’ll fit right in when you get there.

Faster-than-light? Eight years? He was going to—

"Earth?"

The shuttle came to an abrupt stop, and Father half-lifted him from his seat. He must have used his priority override to get them to the spaceport so fast—Philip began to wonder if his father had been watching their surroundings for a reason...

Yes, son. You failed your suitability rating because I failed you, and this is the only chance either of us has to make good. You’ll be part of the scout team, evaluating Terran technology and mapping out defenses. You'll be seventeen, of legal age, so they'll have to accept you. Your cover will be as a university student. You’ll make contact with the rest of the team once you get there. They won’t know who you are, so you’ll have a chance to prove yourself. When the invasion arrives—I’ll be there to see how you’ve done.

Philip’s father hugged him, quickly and hard, then spun him around and pushed him toward an open doorway.

There are people inside who will get you set up and see you off. Everything you need will be on your ship. Good luck, son. Before Philip could speak, his father was back inside the transport, which swept away out of sight.

Numbly, he stumbled toward the open door and his suddenly open future. Nine years old, and he was going to be an invasion scout! Nine years old, and he was off on an interstellar space flight! Nine years old...

...and I’m going to college!

Forbidden Angels

Islept through the first six months of my trip. There were several good reasons for this, none of which actually had anything to do with the fact that kids like to sleep late. (I celebrated my fifteenth birthday by sleeping for a year. Very cool.) But snoozing away the initial months of my trip made it easier to cope with the reality of being alone when I finally woke up. It also meant that, after half a year of hypno-learning, I knew how to pilot the ship. I didn’t expect I’d ever have to, but it was good to know I could if anything happened to Danny.

It was about two days into my seventh month when I realized that wearing clothes was completely unnecessary, and I spent the next 7½ years naked. The only one who ever saw me was Danny, and he didn't seem to mind.

Danny was the ship’s Computer, which is by way of saying Danny was the ship. He was also my brother, teacher, doctor, dietitian, nursemaid, and—when it got late and I was cranky and needed a three-month nap—favorite target.

"But I don’t like the harmonica!"

HARMONICAS ARE SMALL, PORTABLE, AND FRIENDLY. TERRANS LIKE PEOPLE WHO PLAY MUSIC.

So teach me to play the piano!

WE DON’T HAVE A PIANO. WE DO HAVE A HARMONICA.

I told Danny where he could store his harmonica for the duration of the trip. He locked me out of my cabin. I needed to go to the bathroom, so I urinated on the floor. Danny opened my cabin, but he didn’t clean the floor. I was willing to call it a draw until he started pushing for the accordion.

Did I mention that Danny was also my best friend?

When I was fourteen, I renamed all of the command overrides.

I’d finished studying early because I found to my surprise that I kind of liked it. The day before, I’d stayed up for fifteen hours straight watching intercepted Terran TV broadcasts, something called a sci-fi marathon. And there, after the giant ants, spiders, grasshoppers, and turtles, I had seen Forbidden Planet.

I had watched it twice. I had memorized every pore on Anne Francis’s face. When Leslie Neilsen came upon her while she was swimming in her private pond and she asked him, What’s a bathing suit? it made me itchy. And when I finally went to bed, her face still before my eyes, I had turned off the lights and pulled the covers up to my neck so Danny couldn’t see what I was doing.

The next morning, the movie was gone from Danny’s databanks. He had tried to act like he didn’t know about it, saying I must have erased it accidentally after staying up so late, but I knew better. Danny had pretended to be my friend, but in the end he was just there to program me the way my father’s people had programmed him. And forming an attachment to a Terran, even now, with four years to go before I even saw a Terran, was not allowed.

But that was Danny’s mistake: He forgot that I had nothing but time on my hands. I threw myself into my studies even more, taking on independent projects that I wouldn’t let Danny see because I want to work things out on my own. One of those things was an emergency override that I kept on a separate memory disk stashed in the pocket of my pants, hung on the same hook for four years. Someday, when he thought he had the better of me, I was going to plug that disk into his system and teach him a lesson.

Someday somehow never turned up, but when I went into deepsleep a month later for advanced learning, I dreamed of a little disc in my pocket. And of Anne. And a bathing suit hanging on a peg next to my pants.

The older I got, the more often Danny woke me up. There wasn’t much left to teach me about Tau Ceti and its science, but there was more and more to learn about Earth. And since I was coming to the point where I’d have to take part in my mission, I was taking more charge of my education, as well.

ARE YOU SURE THAT THIS IS A VALID EXAMINATION OF TERRAN FORENSIC INVESTIGATIVE TECHNIQUES?

I’m telling you, this is how police agencies operate on Earth. I need to understand their methods if I’m going to escape detection.

IF THEIR UNIFORMS FOLLOW THESE PARAMETERS, THEY WILL BE EASY TO AVOID.

Well, it’s not always that simple. The Angels go undercover a lot. I stopped the feed, backed up, and replayed the last thirty seconds of Farrah Fawcett. But I’m studying very hard.

In the end, however, I abandoned even my Angels for the heavenly bodies inhabiting my new solar system. Danny relented from his strictly-programmed course to allow me an up-close look at Jupiter, swooping under and around various moons. I hadn’t seen a planet in eight years, and this was a whopper.

TOMORROW WE WILL ENTER ORBIT AROUND THE EARTH, he said, interrupting my examination of Titan. MY ORDERS ARE TO DEPOSIT YOU ON THE SURFACE, THEN RE-ATTAIN ORBIT OUTSIDE OF THE TERRANS’ DETECTION RANGE.

I frowned. I already knew that. I was just getting ready to go to bed. I can’t wait. It’s been eight years.

Danny made a noise that sound suspiciously like a sigh. I WILL MISS YOU.

I’ll miss you, too. But we’ll be in touch. We’ll talk.

NOT ENOUGH. IT IS TOO DANGEROUS. YOU MUST NOT DRAW ATTENTION TO YOURSELF. He paused. I’d never heard him do that before. TOMORROW YOUR PRINTED ORDERS WILL BE AWAITING YOU.

Printed orders? On paper? Why not just give me a memory disc?

TERRAN TECHNOLOGY HAS NOT YET DEVELOPED ELECTRONIC DATA STORAGE. PRINTED ORDERS ARE LESS LIKELY TO DRAW ATTENTION IF YOU ARE QUESTIONED BY AUTHORITIES.

You think of everything, don’t you, Danny?

NOT EVERYTHING. YOU ARE STILL LEAVING.

Emergency Cancellation Archimedes

S o, Philip, are you ready for the test today?

Test? What test?

We’re having a test on emergency landing procedures. We’ve been reading about it all semester. Didn’t you study?

I didn’t even know I was in this class until this morning! And where are my pants?

LANDING PROTOCOLS INOPERATIVE. TWO MINUTES UNTIL ATMOSPHERE.

Wait! I didn’t study!

LANDING PROTOCOLS INOPERATIVE. ONE MINUTE, FIFTY-FIVE SECONDS UNTIL ATMOSPHERE.

No, wait, this has got to be a dream! Yes, I need to—

Wake up! I blinked in the half-light, fighting to clear the dream from my head. I was panting like a drowning man, my face was wet with sweat, and my heart was pounding.

Holy— I paused, unable to come up with the proper Terran term in my confusion. What a dream! That annunciator was so—

LANDING PROTOCOLS INOPERATIVE. ONE MINUTE, THIRTY-FIVE SECONDS UNTIL ATMOSPHERE.

—real!

I sprang out of my bunk, my bare feet sucking for traction on the cold deckplates, propelling me toward the pilot’s console without conscious volition. I slammed up against it, throwing myself into the chair and tried not to swallow my own tongue when I saw the planet Earth in way, way more detail than I should be able to.

My mouth was already blabbing the overrides to the computer. I had studied this, over and over again. Even with periodic deepsleeps, I had had ample time over the past eight years to memorize every procedure in the manual, every video-record of Earth history, every incoming transmission, and every single bolt and plate on this entire ship. Twice.

When I said I would do anything to get this trip over sooner, I didn’t mean crashing straight into the planet! But Danny was used to my complaining and went right along with doing exactly the wrong things. If I survived, maybe I’d figure out why.

MANUAL OVERRIDE OF LANDING PROTOCOLS NOT ADVISED. ATMOSPHERE IN FORTY-FIVE SECONDS.

I’d say it’s very advised, unless you have a better idea!

LANDING PROTOCOLS INOPERATIVE. ATMOSPHERE IN FORTY SECONDS.

The memory disk! I ran back to my cabin, clawing through my pants pocket almost before I finished the thought. I slammed it into my personal input terminal, shouting at Danny before I even reached the pilot's chair.

Emergency cancellation Archimedes! That was right out of Forbidden Planet. I’d dreamed of saying it; I’d just hoped I never had to.

ALL COMPUTER PROTOCOLS DEACTIVATED. FULL MANUAL CONTROL HAS BEEN INSTITUTED. He took another of those unaccustomed pauses. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.

Earth’s still-tenuous atmosphere was pulling on the ship, which suddenly felt like an ocean liner under my hands. I tilted the wheel to adjust the angle of entry so I wouldn’t crash but also so I wouldn’t skip away like a rock over water.

You can do this, son, I assured myself. You’ve done the simulations, and survived most of them. Just because this time it’s real, and you’ve bringing a hundred-foot starship with a dead computer to a landing on a planet you’ve never seen is no reason to worry. It’s just a big airplane, and people have been landing airplanes on Earth for sixty years.

YES, BUT THEY WERE EARTH PEOPLE.

You’re not helping! The ship was beginning to buck. Do we have cloaking?

THIS SHIP IS DESIGNED TO OPERATE TO REDUCE RISK OF DETECTION BY TERRAN AUTHORITIES TO MINIMAL LEVELS.

Thank heaven for small favors.

CLOAKING TECHNOLOGIES HAVE BECOME INOPERATIVE. RISK OF DETECTION BY TERRAN AUTHORITIES AT TWELVE PERCENT.

I’ll risk it! Danny, analyze landing protocol malfunction and reboot system! Maybe there’d be time to re-institute the computerized procedures.

UNABLE TO COMPLY. SYSTEM RE-INITIALIZATION PROHIBITED BY PRIORITY PROGRAMMING OVERRIDE.

What the hell—? Danny, source of override!

PRIORITY PROGRAMMING OVERRIDE RECEIVED THIRTY-TWO MINUTES AGO. YOUR PILOTING LEAVES MUCH TO BE DESIRED. IMPACT IN FOUR MINUTES.

My hands struggled with the controls while my mind went blank. Thirty-two minutes ago?

LANDING PROTOCOLS INOPERATIVE. IMPACT WITH PLANETARY SURFACE IMMINENT. EVACUATION ADVISED. There was another pause. RIGHT NOW.

The ship couldn’t really throw me out of the chair, but it felt like it. I leaned in the direction of my sleeping cubicle, but the ship jumped again, throwing me toward the door to the escape pod, and my decision was made. I stumbled in, threw the big yellow switch, and the pod did the rest. I watched as my ship sailed over and past me, its hull glowing redly in its fall, then the pod shifted and Danny was lost to sight.

I turned to the pod’s simple operating controls. There was no piloting skill involved here; the pod was designed to get its occupants to a safe place in one piece. But a safe place was rather too vague for my taste in the current circumstances. The pod's computer wasn't Danny, but it would respond to verbal commands.

Computer, cede landing controls to pilot.

MANUAL LANDING PROTOCOLS NOT ADVISED. LANDING COORDINATES HAVE BEEN INPUT FROM MAIN COMPUTER NAVIGATION PRE-SEPARATION. DEVIATION FROM PROGRAMMED COORDINATES NOT ADVISED.

This pod is supposed to land me safely on the surface, but it’s not going to do me any good if it drops me in the middle of a major city, is it?

VEHICLE HAS BEEN PROGRAMMED TO DECELERATE AT OPTIMAL LANDING POINT.

What do you mean, ‘optimal landing point’? Danny was supposed to leave me near Newton College, then re-attain orbit. Is this pod programmed to land near Newton College? There was no way for the pod to return to orbit. If it landed near the college, I was going to have to find a way to hide it.

OPTIMAL LANDING POINT WAS CHOSEN BY THE MAIN COMPUTER TO ALLOW PASSENGER ACCESS TO MISSION-CRITICAL LOCATIONS. THIS VEHICLE IS PROGRAMMED TO DECELERATE AT OPTIMAL LANDING POINT.

Okay, so the pod was going to put me down where the ship would have left me, near enough to Newton College for me to walk there, I guess. Except...I looked around at the bare expanse of the pod, bare of my equipment, my orders, my clothes... I could get to Newton College, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do when I got there.

Computer, what information do you have on my mission parameters?

NONE. INQUIRY INTO MISSION PARAMETERS NOT ADVISED.

Excuse me? Something odd was going on. Suddenly, I remembered that priority override from thirty-two minutes ago.

Computer, what was the source of the priority override received thirty minutes before the collision alarm was triggered?

THAT INFORMATION IS CLASSIFIED.

Then I remembered something else, and a cold sweat broke out on my face.

Computer? I asked, as though I didn’t want to know the answer—because I didn’t. What is our estimated time of landing near Newton College?

THIS VEHICLE IS NOT PROGRAMMED TO LAND NEAR NEWTON COLLEGE. THIS VEHICLE WILL IMPACT PLANETARY OCEAN SURFACE IN NINE MINUTES. There was a short pause, and then the computer continued, in a rather thoughtful voice, IT APPEARS THAT THIS VEHICLE’S NAVIGATIONAL PROGRAMMING HAS BEEN SABOTAGED. ADVISE NECESSARY STEPS TO ASSERT MANUAL CONTROL.

I’d heard it was hard getting into a good college, but this was way