Bobbie had to brake hard to avoid hitting the thing as it landed. It sat down right in the middle of the two-lane county road that ran past her West Texas farm and on to the New Mexico border. Visibility was poor in the almost-new moonlight, especially with the willows hanging over the road. But she had gotten a good look at it before pitching her old pickup sideways to avoid the crash so there was no doubt in her mind. Incredible as it seemed; that's a friggin’ flying saucer! she thought. The craft was silver, round, and maybe 50 feet across. It had flat, sloping sides running up to a flat top and a kind of shelf-like ring running all the way around the bottom. And then, of course, there were the obligatory brightly colored flashing lights coming from no discernible source. It could be nothing else. She half expected to see little green men at any moment.

      She was not disappointed, as they appeared almost immediately. A rectangular door on the sloping side facing her flickered momentarily, then became a black nothing. Three of them stepped through this blackness and down onto the asphalt. Holding their hands out in front of them to shield their eyes from her headlights, they started towards her.

      Bobbie tried to restart the old Ford pickup but it wouldn't. "Of course," she yelled, as she jumped out and started to run back towards the roadhouse she had left just minutes before. She got all of two steps before they hit her with what she would always remember as the "Green-light-death-ray-thingy". It lifted her several inches off of the ground and held her. She could feel the power of it. Bobbie waited for the death ray to crush her to the size of a grapefruit. She did not scream. Bobbie was no wuss. I'm not giv'n the little green bastards the pleasure, she thought.

      The green marking light of the transport beam did not crush her. Instead, it began to slowly float her back towards the spacecraft and the outstretched hands of the little green men. Struggling wildly now, she cried out, "Ahhhhh. Crush me, crush me, crush me please," as she feared that what was about to come was going to be far worse.

      As it pulled her up to the black door the green light turned Bobbie horizontal and passed her through, feet-first. She was surprised at the sight of the lower parts of her body simply disappearing into the machine. Even when almost completely inside she could not see into the thing, just the blackness of the door. Then she was in and able to see the well-lighted interior clearly. Suppressing the instinct to scream suddenly became much harder. I know a friggin’ morgue when I see one, she thought, they have them in the TV cop shows all the time. I was right. The little green men are going to cut me up, probably alive!

      The green light floated her to the center of the round room and laid her gently onto the rectangular block that stood there. The light then reduced itself to five small U-shaped restraints which secured Bobbie's ankles, wrists and head to the table. A sheet of blue light then shown upwards from the foot of the thing and started moving up towards her head. As it passed along her body her clothes simply disappeared. The room was cool, the table down right cold. Bobbie lie there alone, trapped, naked, freezing and terrified as to what was going to happen next.

***

      Bobbie Jo Hankins was a cowgirl. A semi-pretty 27-year-old brunette with a five-foot six-inch body that her boyfriend Jack seemed to enjoy. This despite the sinewy muscle and slightly weathered skin the hard Texas farm life had bought her. She could ride and rope and shoot, fight if she had to, and bulldog a calf for branding as well as any hand she hired. Her friends often called her 'Nails'. Bobbie was divorced from her high school sweetheart. She had married at only 18, right after inheriting the farm when her Pop died. She had never known her runaway Mom. The marriage had produced no children. They'd tried, but after two years the doctors had said she couldn't. Just as well, she had thought at the time, seeing as how things had not worked out with the two-timing, caught him doing my best girlfriend, couldn't work a lick son-of-a-bitch. Only the Victorian era Middle-American morals and values she carried from her father's gentle upbringing had deterred her from "Shootin’ the sucker".

      Fate, however, had been kind to Bobbie and had granted her a second chance at love. His name was Jack. And this very night, after giving her the two best years of her life, he had proposed to her. Right there in the Roadhouse. Right at the same table where they sat every Saturday night. She had been touched by the cowboy's fumbling attempt at romanticism. The ring he’d offered her had been gorgeous. WAY beyond his means. He had even gotten right down on one knee in front of her and everything. Bobbie loved Jack like no other man she had ever known, but she had said no. Then they had fought, because he didn't understand why. She couldn't tell him it was because she knew how much he looked forward to having a family.

      Bobbie knew Jack was aware of her love for him. Being together forever and raising a bunch of kids was all he ever talked about. Big white house on the hill, picket fence, two cats in the yard kind of stuff. He was the prototypical American dreamer. She had just never had the guts to tell him that she couldn't have kids. She knew how much it meant to him and was afraid she would lose him if he found out. She had made several attempts to broach the subject early on in their relationship but the fear of losing him had always stopped her. After a while she had given up trying, simply burying her head in the sand and pretending the problem didn't exist. But it did. So tonight, when he had asked her to marry him, she had panicked. She knew she couldn't say yes under false pretenses and she knew she couldn't explain why. Not now. Not after having kept the truth from him for so long.

      Unable to see any way out, she had given him some bullshit about how she had been down that road before and wasn't about to make the same mistake again. Then, trying to bluff her way through it, she had leaned her chair back on two legs, put her boots up on the table, crossed her arms smugly across her chest and said, "I just don't want to screw up a great relationship by getting married."

      Lurching to his feet, jostling the table causing the Budwiser bottles to spill, one rolling off and crashing to the floor, he had painfully howled, "What do you mean screw things up? I thought you loved me? How could getting married screw up what we have? I thought this was what you wanted!"

      He had been right, of course. There was nothing Bobbie wanted more. She knew that she was the one who had screwed things up by not being honest with him from the beginning. She knew that her time with Jack was over. She had kept her secret too long and now it was too late to tell it. If she said yes without telling him the truth he would never forgive her. If she tried to tell him now he would feel deceived and used and would never speak to her again. Jack was as straight as an arrow and square as hell, his two most endearing qualities as far as she was concerned; he would never understand. So she too had leapt to her feet, placed her hands firmly on her hips, leaned right into his face and hollered, "Don't make me laugh. Just because we've had a little fun together, that doesn't mean you own me." Then, spinning on one wooden cowboy boot-heel, wild black hair flying, she had stormed out of the roadhouse into the night and down the road in her old pickup... now she was here.

***

      Off to her right another of those ‘black-hole-door-thingys’ appeared on the wall. The three little green men came through it into the round, morgue-like room. Though only 4 feet in height, the first one through the door still stood a head taller than the two behind. It also had a bigger ruffled crest running from front to back on top of its head. Like a Banty Rooster, she thought. A male and two females? The larger one came close and bent over her slightly, as if to get a better look, then turned to the others and let out a string of sounds. Kind of musical-like, Bobbie thought. They responded with a similar string of 'notes', only higher in pitch. Female, definitely female. The smaller two then moved to a pair of consoles at the foot of the table. A doctor and two nurses. How typical. Even in outer space the men have the best jobs and get to be the boss.

      The thought surprised her. Bobbie's mind was in chaos and the fear she felt was almost overwhelming. Deep down inside, however, she felt the vague presence of a second self. One serenely calm and capable of viewing the scene as a disinterested outside observer. It was this Bobbie who saw the odd way the little green men's bodies were made up of three-dimensional triangles, like pyramids. Not perfect triangles, but ones with rounded corners and edges. A triangle head, point down, setting on top of a larger triangle body, also point down. Two-part triangle arms and legs, point-to-point, with three longish triangle toes and even longer triangle fingers pointing out from them. Their skin was in fact green. A sort of sea-foam color. Their entire bodies were covered with a hazy, vein-like pattern of light brown lines. Kinda like rivers on a map, she thought. On the faces though, there was color. Here, the rivers spread out into lakes of pastels. Pink, yellow and sky-blue on the females, Red, purple and a darker blue on the doctor. His larger crest was bright red to the females loam-brown. When they sang to each other the facial patterns shifted about and the colors drifted through the spectrum. Specific colors seemed to correspond to certain notes. The lower tones were accompanied by darker colors while the higher ones appeared to be associated with the brighter shades.

      The doctor bent over her again and started to sing. Low notes. Dark colors. The voice of authority, Bobbie thought. She instantly determined that she preferred the higher notes. The nurses began waving their treble-fingered hands over their consoles causing spots of variously colored light to appear on the ceiling above her. From these spots of light long shafts of like-colored narrow tubes began to descend towards her. From the outside Bobbie had seen that the top of the ship was flat, but the ceiling of this room was domed. This caused the rods of light to approach at different angles. Ever so slowly they descended. Soon it became obvious that the point of convergence was to be Bobbie's cute little 'innie' belly-button! She had been mortally fearful from the moment of her capture, but now, with the dissection actually beginning, that fear rose to near insanity. As the colored shafts drew closer and closer the terror in Bobbie continued its rise to an uncontrollable level. When the rods finally touched her Bobbie's body began to thrash wildly about and the instinctive scream she had fought so hard to suppress at last burst agonizingly from her throat, echoing repeatedly throughout the now-horrendous confines of the spaceship.

      The nurses abruptly stopped their concentrated activities. The doctor turned quickly back to her, stretched out his three fingered left hand and touched Bobbie's forehead. The intense colors on his face faded to soft pastels and the lakes shifted upwards slightly. A smile, she wondered, fearfully? He's enjoying this. What is this guy, the damned Dr. Mengle from Mars? Even that second, detached, once serenely calm part of her was now senselessly, mind-numbingly terrified.

      The doctor's voice then sounded quietly, not through her ears, but right inside her head. "No Bobbie, don't be afraid. We are not going to hurt you. Look and see."

      She looked down and saw that the colored-light rods had penetrated her stomach. The lighter colored ones were pumping fluids into her while the darker ones did the opposite. But despite what logically appeared to be a traumatic invasion of her body, she felt neither sensation nor pain.

      The soft voice echoed again in her head, "I know we do this against your will, but we will not harm you. We do this only because we must. The process will take some time, so I will explain."

      Bobbie felt a wave of relief flood through her. She couldn't explain why she believed him but she did. Maybe because not to would leave her only the insane fear of unknown horrors to come. Her tensed muscles began to relax and her trembling body became still. As Bobbie calmed, the nurses went back to their work. The doctor reached down with his other hand and took hers into his. As he lifted it from the table the last of the green lights that had been restraining her vanished. He stood there with one hand holding hers, the other brushing her hair, and with that quiet, soothing voice in her head, he began to tell her the story of his people:

      "Bobbie, the star our planet orbits is not as stable as your sun. Every few million years its energy output goes through a period of fluctuation. It has been going through one of these unstable phases for the last 300 years, and has just returned to normal in the last twenty. The intense radiation has forced most of the life forms on our planet into non-viable mutation."

      "Wh-What?" Bobbie stumbled.

      "It killed most of the life on our planet", he answered. He bent low, bringing his colorful face only inches from hers. The lakes of color sagged down his face and faded to a dull, gray, pallor. His voice became even softer than before, "And now we are dying too, Bobbie. Our race has become sterile, unable to procreate. That is why we have come here to your planet. It is why we took you against your will. And it is why we are performing this... procedure. You are to be the mother of our future. Our new 'Eve', so to speak."

      Bobbie couldn't help herself. She knew it was totally inappropriate, and possibly dangerous, but with her fear now reduced to a simple state of high anxiety, she burst right out laughing! "Look, Greenie, I didn't have a damn star blow up in my face or anything, but you’re wasting your friggin’ time, cause this girl can't 'procreate' either. So just let me up from here, gimme back my clothes and let me get the hell out of this flying morgue of yours."

      The little green man straightened up and put his head back. In her mind Bobbie heard him begin to laugh. His whole body began to shake, his 'smile' brightened upwards, and the lakes of color danced around his face like Jello on a plate. "Yes, Bobbie, we know. We discovered the problem with your reproductive system when we scanned you, remember the blue light? This required the performance of an unanticipated additional procedure before we started the insemination, but all is going well now." The colors on his face softened and ceased their dancing. He took her hand between his and continued, "We are really quite good at medicine, Bobbie. We have had to be to survive even this long. You are fine now. After we are gone you will be able to conceive all the children you wish."

      His words hammered home hard. "I can have children?" she stammered. For a moment, it felt just like when she was five and Grandpa's field horse had kicked her in the stomach. But Bobbie already had more on her confused mind than she could deal with right now, so she forced her thoughts elsewhere. "Just what the hell is this 'procedure' you're doing to me anyway? You said insemination. I ain't no damn cow, you know."

      The doctor smiled, and quaking only mildly this time, Bobbie heard him laugh again before he began to think into her mind. "We have fused a string of our damaged genetic material into one of your now-healthy eggs. You are pregnant. A new life form is being created inside of you. The transport beams penetrating your stomach are providing that new life with nutrients and removing its waste products. The egg was yours, but all except the tiniest piece of DNA at its core was ours. Only the critical GCTA sequences that we have lost and cannot recreate have been replaced with yours. And, of course, we have accelerated the gestation rate. We have also engineered a new gene sequence that will allow our... your daughter's ovaries to produce millions of eggs in her lifetime, as opposed to the few hundred that would be normal. These eggs will be in-vitro fertilized and then implanted into the genetically healthiest of our female population."

      "Well Christ, Doc, if you can do all that why don't you just engineer your own damn genes? What the hell do you need me for?"

      "Because there is just not enough time, Bobbie. There have been no children born on our world for over 40 years. It has taken 30 years of total global effort by our entire medical and scientific communities to get this far. It would take another twenty to do what you suggest. By then all the females on our planet would be to old to carry the zygotes to term. We would become extinct."

      "Well, I don't know your GC-what-evers from ziggets Doc, but I get the drift. Hell, we get PBS in Texas, you know." She stretched, then completely relaxed her body on the strange table, totally accepting her situation. She recalled that line from the old 'Mafia' movies that Jack loved so much, We made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Well, they've made me an offer I can't refuse, she thought. If I help them have kids they will help me have kids. Nothing was more important to her. So she would do as they wished. Not that she had a choice, but now she did so willingly.

      "How long is this going to take?" she asked.

      "Not long. About nine hours. We can't risk to long for fear of being discovered. We possess advanced technology but we are not invincible. One of your thermonuclear weapons could vaporize this ship."

      "They ain't mine," she quipped. "But we're still all in a lot of trouble, folks. Cause somebody's going to discover you. You got this crate parked right in the middle of County-17 for Christ sake. I'm not the only human with a damn pickup truck, you know, and lots of people live out this way besides me."

      The Doctor just smiled, "We have moved the ship since we... abducted you. This...crate...is now safely sequestered in your very own barn. You live alone, and you had a disagreement with your mate tonight, so it is unlikely that anyone will be coming here any time soon. This will all be over by sunrise and we will be gone."

      You got a point there, Greenie, she thought. Bobbie did not want to think about Jack. She could still see that grin of boyish enthusiasm his face had held as he proposed to her fade to an expression of pain as she had rejected him. And worse, Jack was not stupid. She had seen that pain change to anger when he realized not only was she saying no, but that she was lying to him about why. God, he must hate me. My dear Jack, I've lost you forever haven't I? So she just tried to relax and focus her mind on the little green men as they went about their tasks. She watched the tubes of light pumping the fluids in and out of her and realized that she could actually see the bulge in her abdomen slowly growing. After a while she closed her eyes and just let her mind drift.

***

      Bobbie was startled awake by the feeling of one of the little green men touching her stomach. Up until now only the doctor had actually touched her, and then only to comfort her, not as part of the procedure. She looked around to see what they were up to, but none were nearby. Then she felt it again. The baby was kicking! Bobbie let out a squeal and they all came running. All, even the doctor, were touching her tummy and singing excitedly. When they felt the now well developed fetus kick again they went positively ballistic. The pitch and volume of their singing rose to a level that was almost painful to her. The colors on their faces went from the normal pastels to brilliant primaries and danced wildly about. The two nurses hugged. Bobbie saw beads of moisture form in a line across their foreheads and run down their faces. The doctor then fell silent, put his palms together at his chest and looked upwards. The nurses stopped their excited singing and mirrored his actions. Long, low, rhythmical notes of the doctor's voice echoed in Bobbie’s mind.

      My God, she thought. A prayer? They have religion?

      "What's everybody so excited about?" she asked. "Isn't this what you expected?"

      The doctor took her hand and started brushing her hair again while the two nurses went off to finish their cry. "Hoped for would be more accurate than expected, Bobbie. We did not know if this would actually work. It's all quite theoretical. We have already failed on several other worlds and we are out of time. This was our last chance. So I hope you won't mind our emotional reaction. We are a passionate people." Then, smiling, "And of course we have religion, Bobbie. God is a universal concept. There is nowhere we have been that it does not exist, and we have been around a bit lately, searching for a genetically compatible species. Our technology is far beyond your people’s, but we, too, accept a kind of big-bang theory for the creation of the universe. The question is: What caused the big-bang in the first place, we don't know. And, with the laws of physics being what they are, we don't expect to ever know. So, just like every other sentient species that we have ever encountered, we wonder about the creator of the universe. Don't you?"

      Bobbie knew a rhetorical question when she heard one, so she didn't answer. Instead, she thought about how different, yet alike, their two species were. From two different worlds, they with their space ships, green triangles, three-fingered hands, telepathy and those physically featureless faces with the dancing colors. Yet they obviously had a high moral standard, strong ethics and held dear values much like her own. Hell, I like old greenie here way better than my sleaziod ex-husband, she thought. They've gone out of their way not to hurt me, and to avoid any kind of run-in with humans. They smile and laugh and cry. They even have a God.

      "You'll take good care of our daughter won't you," she said. It was a statement, not a question, but her voice cracked as she spoke it.

      The doctor assured her, "Bobbie, on our world your daughter will be revered as a religious icon. She will live like a queen with the very best of everything our people can provide to her."

      Bobbie frowned. "Well don't spoil her. And don't let her take advantage of her position. Teach her to be kind, and fair too. Make her take her responsibilities serious."

      The doctor laughed and shook, then gave her a hug. "As you wish, mother. You, too, will hold a place of honor in our history. You will be heralded as our savior. The Queen Mother, so to speak, so your wishes will be respected as a matter of course. I will personally see to it that her two feet are kept firmly on the ground and that she is not spoiled."

      "Thank you, doctor." She knew he would keep his word.

      "And how shall we call her?" he asked. "A name is required for one of her station in life."

      Bobbie didn't have to think. "Sarah. Call her Sarah, after my grandmother." Saying this made Bobbie smile.

***

      Two hours later, as the sky outside began to brighten, the baby was born. Except for all the singing, hugging, crying and praying the birth was uneventful. A perfectly healthy 3-pound 6-ounce, little green bouncing triangle, future-of-her-race girl-child was brought into the world. It was a miracle. The nurses first washed and then brought the baby to Bobbie and laid it on her breast. The child felt soft as goose down. She cupped the tiny alien in her left forearm and gently stroked it from head to foot with her other hand. The baby made little gurgling sounds and then went straight for the larger of Bobbie’s still bare breasts.

      "You like that sweetheart? Yeah, I think so," the new mother cooed, "yeah, that’s good, huh? Goochy-goochy-goochy. . . ."

      The little green men went back through one of their mysterious black doors and left her alone with the child. As he went the doctor said, "We will be leaving soon."

      Bobbie knew she would never see her little green girl again. So she just rested there and held on to the tiny infant as tightly as she dared. She told the little triangle all about its grandparents, and the farm, and Texas, and America, and planet Earth that she could in so short a time. A nonsensical ramble really, but it was the telling that was important. The feeling of passing on the family and human heritage that would always be a part of the little creature's life. She trusted that the doctor would teach it the truth as it grew.

      Too short a time later the doctor returned, alone. He took the child from its mother's breast and placed it into a transparent sphere where it floated freely. Bobbie watched as the first signs of pastel color began to dance on the child’s ocean-green face. At a wave of the doctor's hand the sheet of blue light appeared and returned Bobbie's clothes to her. She was not surprised that except for being slightly fatigued she felt none the worse for wear. The doctor walked her to the door and held her hand as she stepped out into the bright morning sun. "Thank you for this gift," he smiled.

      "Likewise, Doc." She squeezed his hand, then turned and headed out the open barn door and up the hill towards the house. She didn't look back, but as she walked away she heard the same whistling-in-the-wind sound that she had heard when the ship had landed and knew that they were gone.

***

      Bobbie stood next to her Daddy's grave in the little picket fenced side yard of the West Texas farm house where she had been born. As she waited for the sun to set, so she could see the star whose location the doctor had put in her head, she thought about her man, and the time they had spent together that afternoon. Bobbie had fallen asleep easily after leaving the ship, then awakened a little after noon knowing what she must do. She had begun by calling Jack.

      Bobbie was almost embarrassed at the memory of how she had groveled as she apologized to him for the previous night's scene at the roadhouse. And for her rejection of his proposal. And most of all, for laughing at him. But she knew her man. He was proud to a fault and would not have asked her again. Hell, he probably would never have spoken to me again, she had thought, much less proposed a second time. So, like the little green men, Bobbie had done what she had to do. She had prostrated herself before him and quite literally begged him to take her back. It had been difficult. Bobbie had a proud streak of her own. But in the end he had said yes. She had known he would and that was all that mattered.

      She had not, however, told him whit one of flying saucers, little green men, or beautiful little triangle babies. She never would. She had given this decision careful thought. Bobbie had not forgotten the price she had paid for the last secret she had kept from him, and she was concerned about how well she would bear the burden of keeping this new secret for a lifetime. But in the end she had decided it just wasn’t the kind of thing a good old, rednecked, West Texas cowboy was ever going be able to accept. So instead of telling him of her experience on the alien ship, she had simply invited him over for dinner and then treated him like a prince. Bobbie knew she had a great deal to make up for with Jack. She had hurt him deeply, so she had gone about restoring his feelings methodically. She had unabashedly doted on him, cooked him his favorite meal and hung on every word he spoke. She had enthusiastically agreed with everything he said as he excitedly told her of the plans he had for their lives together. Then she had made love to him in a way that only a woman who truly knows her man, and loves him dearly, can.

      Jack had been gone almost an hour now, but she still felt all warm and fuzzy inside. She knew he truly loved her and that all was now right with the world. A world that just 24 hours before had seemed so bleak and hopeless. But the little green men had changed all that. She now found herself living in a new world; one filled only with hope and promise. So she watched the sun set, and as that lovingly anticipated point of light appeared in the eastern sky, Bobbie reached out her hand as if to touch it and said, "I love you my little triangle, and I'll miss you like the dickens." Then, for the first time since the old pickup had skidded to a stop out on the highway, “Nails” began to cry.