When Fred had first arrived he had bounded down the ramp from his spaceship, looking sharply around for any sign of the enemy. As he had landed in the...middle of the main car park, (squashing two dozens automobiles and a coke machine during his rather erratic landing) of the largest shopping mall for two hundred miles in any direction, finding the enemy was not the problem. Getting them to stand still was. Fred, who was fairly new at this game, (in fact there had been a lengthy discussion by the. .”“I like it. But I’m not decorative and I’m older – I have little to offer a man. Men my age are usually in stable relationships – and if they aren’t, there is a reason. Men your age wouldn’t want to be seen with me. It would suggest that they couldn’t do better and had nothing going for them.”“So you do without. Do you, um...”“Kanye! That’s not a question you want to ask a woman!”“Why?”“Well...” Lucille got a grip. “They’ll probably lie. There is this weird feature of our culture that any. ..I snapped out of my thoughts and grabbed the bottle of Grey Goose and started pouring it down the drain. At the moment I poured the last of the Grey Goose content out of the bottle, my cell phone rang. It was in my room so I rushed over to answer it.My heart pounded when I saw Gary's number displayed on the caller ID. Shit!"H-hello?" I answered my hands were so shaky I could barely hold the phone."Hey, hey my princess," Gary said."Hi," I replied in a small voice."You ok?"I wasn't sure how to. It was a massive and expensive effort to unravel the secrets of the Hwee spaceship, but they were unraveled! All but one ... the hyper drive itself. The recovered ship provided access to a knowledge base which was useful in gaining an understanding of their history and culture, but was short on technical knowledge. It was, after all, never intended to be more than a small cargo vessel, and a crew who was tied to either a fixed base, or a larger ship, maintained it.It took years to map the.