The Peer Group
						 A Science Fiction Story
					Copyright 1997-2001 by Dave Laird
		   Originally published in Computorlink Magazine 1997
					Published in Gomer Magazine 1998
			  On-disk copy modified and updated 02/02/2001


Hello Everyone!

Here's a short piece of sci-fi that someone may enjoy... written just this
morning sitting buddha-like over day-old coffee and the ever-present
computer terminal.

							 The Peer Group
							  by Dave Laird

"There it goes again, dammit! I saw it MOVE!"

Anderson drew back from the electron microscope which occupied nearly
half of his infintessimally small workspace, his facial muscles
twitching, but his eyes cast blankly downward, as if he were still
staring through the eyepieces of the microscope. There was something
moving on the piece of debris, something very, very tiny, even at this
magnification!

Very little was known of the origin of the shard of rock, other than it
came somewhere from outer space and that concombinant with its entry
into earth's orbit, whatever IT originally had been had totally
destroyed a manned space station and junk laser worth bazillions of
Euro-dollars.

Although the giant radar domes and satellite trackers on earth had noted
the existence and course of the spherical visitor from space, neither
its speed nor size were sufficient to set off any of the pre-programmed
computerized alarms. According to the Near-Space Control logs, whatever
it was that violently destroyed the space station was a tenth of the
size of your average family automobile, and at least just prior to the
time of the destruction of the space station, it was subsonic.

That is, it was travelling less than 200 miles per hour through space on
the same course, until one of the earth junk lasers, a Mark IV laser
cannon, to be precise, had taken a pot shot at it. The Mark IV, which
had been affixed to the orbital station in near outer space was
originally designed by the Air Force to prevent space junk, asteroids,
or the like from ever crashing through earth's atmosphere.

All that was known thereafter was inconsistent, confusing and even a bit
frightening. Ostensibly what had originally been ruled by the computers
to be a harmless rock approximately the size of a baseball from space
travelling at a consistent speed, suddenly veered from its original
course, increased its speed by some unknown but obviously fantastic
factor totally destroying the earth station and laser cannon that had
just fired at it.

They could have let it go at that, Anderson thought wryly to himself.
But no, they had to send a heavily-armed team of preppie investigators
out where they had patiently gathered up the bodies of the deceased
along with millions of tiny pieces of whatever the visitor from space
had been.

During the preceding weeks, he had been charged with the task of
examining each one of several million tiny pieces of uniformly gray,
semi-metallic space debris, a boring, repetitive task, indeed. It was
when he had found a more complex piece of whatever IT had been, and
mounted it beneath the giant electron microscope, that he first saw
motion.

"Get Doctors Finley and Rasma in here, STAT!" he rapped sharply into the
intercom beside his workbench. "I've got something."

After his supervisors came, the aforementioned doctors, and peered
through the lenses with pursed lips and wrinkled brows, came others-- by
late afternoon over one hundred visitors had tromped through Andersons
tiny work space, peering through the electron microscope's eyepieces.
Each of them more or less said the same thing.. 'nope, never saw
anything like it,' and usually followed by, 'better take it over to
Ritter's lab and look at it under more power.'

By the time most Americans were sitting down to their evening meal,
Anderson, carrying the tiny sample of convoluted gray material in a
airtight case, was being escorted by a pair of armed military guards to
Ritter Laboratories. Although the purpose of having heavily-armed cadets
with their heels clacking loudly in the empty hallways on either side of
him for the ridiculously short trip to Ritters, was unclear, Anderson
knew better than to ask questions.

When they arrived at Ritter Complex less than three minutes walking
distance away, the guards took up positions, one on either side of the
main doorway into the research and testing facility, as if they had been
there all their lives. On the other hand, Anderson thought nothing more
of them, as he eagerly mounted his tiny sample of space junk on the
world's largest electron microscope, and patiently began scanning the
semi-metallic gray substance for any further signs of activity.

He was somehow privately nonplussed, unsurprised when, under nearly its
highest resolution, he discovered he was staring back at intelligent
life.

For there, peering back at him through what appeared to be some form of
viewing device of unknown potential, was an indescribably tiny group of
humanoid lifeforms, and as he watched, one of the beings, a leader
perhaps, angrily lifted up one arm, its middle digit extended, in a
time-honored and nearly universal human gesture of contempt and
rejection.

								  =30=

Dave

dlaird@kharma.net