Dark Energy by Robison Wells

you said they’re salamanders.”
    â€œIt still doesn’t explain why they look human, though,” he said thoughtfully. “As soon as we can we’re going to get a DNA sample. But given how hard it’s been to convince them to go along with our security measures—the fences and the guards with machine guns and numbers we’ve pinned to their chests—I don’t know how long it’ll be before they let us take their blood.”
    â€œI have to say that I’m proud of you, Dad. You didn’t just lock them up like in E.T. You’re behaving much more like Close Encounters of the Third Kind . Good job.”
    â€œThere are people who want to tackle them and perform tests,” he said. “The only reason we haven’t done it is because we don’t know how many of them are in that ship. People here are scared, Aly.”
    â€œThey don’t have weapons, do they?”
    â€œWe don’t know what they have. A lot of them are carrying packages, and we don’t know what’s in them. The only tech that we’ve seen from them is that translator. And that’ssufficiently advanced to make us all nervous.”
    â€œBut they seem nice, don’t they? I saw the game of charades where they drew lines from their brains to the vice president’s brains.”
    â€œYou saw that, huh? Yeah, they definitely want to tell us something. We just need to figure out what. So, how are things with you? Are you married to a doctor yet?”
    â€œThey’re not doctors here,” I said. “Politicians.”
    â€œYikes,” he said. “You don’t have my permission to marry a politician.”
    â€œI’ll try to restrain myself.”
    â€œHey, Aly. I’ve got to go. But I’m going to call you back soon. I’ve got a job for you to do.”
    â€œSeriously?” I said with too much enthusiasm. “I mean: Okay. Call me soon.”
    â€œLove you.”
    â€œYou, too.”
    I hung up the phone and looked up into the expectant eyes of my roommates.
    â€œHe said he had a job for me to do soon, which I’m going to translate into me and my two roommates will have a job to do soon.”
    I tried to relay the conversation as word for word as I could, but Dad hadn’t really given me a lot of hard facts. Still, his guesses were better than most people’s facts.
    â€œThat makes sense about the pigment in the skin andhair evolving out,” Brynne said. “If they were always on a ship. I wonder if it was dark on the ship, or if there just wasn’t any UV light—maybe their artificial light is harmless.”
    Rachel nodded. “It would also explain why they seemed surprised by dirt. But still—what’s the purpose of a ship if they never leave it? Do they not have a planet of their own? Are they completely self-sustaining? Do they never have to stop somewhere to pick up supplies?”
    â€œAlgae,” Brynne said. “I’ve read about it for long space voyages. Produces oxygen, and they can live off it. They recycle their body water.”
    â€œTheir pee,” I said. “That sounds less gross than ‘body water.’”
    â€œBut nothing is completely sustainable,” Rachel said. “You don’t pee out as much as you drink. Your body consumes calories that it doesn’t give back. They’d have to refill on supplies somewhere.”
    â€œMaybe that’s why they came here,” I said. “Maybe they were passing through and saw a planet with people similar to them, and they accidentally crashed.”
    â€œIt seems hard to accidentally crash something that big.”
    â€œIt seems harder to fly something that big,” I said.
    Brynne tapped her tablet screen. “By the latest count, they’ve passed the four thousand mark. Aliens who have come out, I mean.”
    I opened my laptop back up. “Are they all still standing out in the