This installment of Artifact X contains multiple chapters.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Start where Gerald P. Rathburn has staked out for his lonely, bizarre vigil. Now take yourself thousands of miles up and roughly in the direction opposite to the rotation of the galaxy.

There you will find an evil entity preparing to end a long, long, long trip across interstellar space. And preparing to forever alter the long, long, long history of planet Earth.


CHAPTER EIGHT

Disgraced and outcast former NASA Astronaut Gerald Rathburn has been waiting for decades for this moment to arrive. And indeed—just like his calculations have predicted—something does come streaking down from orbit to strike a deep hole in the remote Southwestern badlands where the old man has been camped out and waiting.

But the old man’s celebration quickly turns sour. This isn’t the joyful, extravagant welcome he expected Earth’s first alien intelligence to have for him. As a matter of fact, did the alien even survive the trip? Or even worse, has the old man been imagining the whole thing from the beginning?