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ASO-2

ANOMALOUS SPACE OBJECT–2 struck planet Earth after its million-year trip, landing precisely where it was expected to land—in a section of the North Sea just off the coast of Scotland that had been surrounded by NATO ships—American, British and Dutch. Below the water one British and one US submarine were holding the perimeter around a French deep-sea exploration submersible. Ships from the Russian Navy and the Chinese Navy looked on from a barely discreet distance, their surveillance equipment all atingle.

But the meteorite played a trick on all of them. The seventeen-pound object hit perfectly in the target zone moving at about ninety thousand miles an hour, but like a rock slung sidearm toward a pond, it skipped.

The first skip carried it six miles.

The second skip carried it just two miles, but that two miles took it to the Isle of Islay where it struck a rock outcropping—still moving at fantastic speed—and broke apart.

Homeland Security Task Force 66 immediately diverted every resource at its disposal—the international naval force and their marines, land-based police and military forces—and turned the sleepy Isle of Islay—pronounced “eye-la” and best known for sheep and Scotch whisky—into something between a war zone and a bad action comedy. Within an hour the coast of Islay was beset by dangerous-looking ships, while helicopters buzzed around like bees who thought Islay was their hive.

All the activity brought the islanders out of their homes and fields and businesses to see what was going on. Once they had deduced that the military and police of several nations were all searching for a meteorite, out came the metal detectors and the sifters and the shovels. The locals might not know what the rock was, but they knew it had value.

Yet it was not greed that caused the biggest problem, rather it was kindness. It was young Delia Macbeth, fourteen, who saw her little brother, Sean, just three years old, playing with a chip of dark rock. The chip was oddly shaped, in that if you held it a certain way it looked a bit like Mickey Mouse. Sean was sucking on the rock and at first Delia did the proper big sister thing and took it from him. Then Sean started bawling, so Delia did the easy thing and gave it back.

After all, it was just a rock, and if Sean wanted it that badly . . .

Search teams swept the lower half of the island and eventually recovered sixty percent of ASO-2.

Sixty percent.

The other forty percent was scattered across fields and woods. And about three ounces of it was in the greedy fist and slavering mouth of a three-year-old with a notoriously bad temper.