Between the mall and the bus stop we needed was a large construction site. We'd all been told to avoid the construction site, and with good reason; it was poorly lit, had no roads through it, and it was the perfect place for all sorts of criminal activity. The safe, sensible thing to do was to walk around the site, using the carefully-lit roads that lengthened the journey by a quarter.
We're safe, sensible kids, so we were careful not to cut ourselves on the wire as we snuck through a hole in the fence to cut through the construction site.
"Um," I said, eyeing the piece of fence that Rachel was holding up for me. "Are we sure we don't want to go around?"
"As opposed to moving through the creepy abandoned lot full of dark corners and potential axe murderers?" Marco muttered. "What could possibly go wrong?" But Rachel was already on the other side of the wire, raising her brow at him, and Tobias showed no hesitation in sliding through, so he shrugged and followed.
"Don't worry," Jake told me with a smile. "It'll be fine."
I nodded and scrambled under the wire.
The site is a big area, surrounded on two sides by trees, with the highway separating it from the mall area. There's a broad, open field between the construction site and the nearest houses. It's a very isolated place. Originally it was supposed to be a new shopping center. Apparently somebody had thought that building a big shopping center very close to an existing mall was a good idea, but their boss must have had more sense because the project was now abandoned. Now it was just all these half-finished buildings that make it look like a ghost town. There were huge piles of rusted steel beams; pyramids of giant concrete pipes; little mountains of dirt; and deep pits that had filled up with black, muddy water. And it was completely deserted. Odd. It seemed like the perfect place for homeless people to sleep.
Tobias couldn't have been half as nervous about the place as I was, because instead of peering into dark corners for axe murderers, he was gazing at the sky as we walked. I knew this because he stopped and pointed upward. "Look."
"What?" Jake sounded distracted.
"Just look."
A blue-white light, brighter than a star and faster than an aeroplane, scooted across the sky. A shooting star? Nice. It started to slow down.
Shooting stars did not slow down like that.
Normally, an object that moved oddly against the sky was a satellite in Earth orbit (or at least that was what my dad always used to tell me when I looked for UFOs as a little kid). But satellites didn't move like that either, and they weren't nearly so bright.
"What is it?" Jake asked.
"I don't know." Tobias again.
It didn't move like anything in orbit. It wasn't a shooting star. It definitely wasn't an aeroplane.
"It's a flying saucer." I hadn't realised I'd spoken aloud until I saw the odd looks the others were giving me.
"A flying saucer?" Marco; incredulous, a little mocking.
"It's coming this way," Rachel said.
"Hard to be sure," Jake replied.
"No," Rachel insisted, "It's coming this way."
I opened my mouth to clarify my position – that it was a normal phenomenon unknown to us, possibly a military aircraft test or possibly some sort of scientific test, that commonly resulted in such stories – but the object was close enough to see now. It was, indeed, coming our way.
"Not exactly a flying saucer," Jake said. Was he trying to make light of the situation? Was he trying to sound composed? He wasn't succeeding. He was, however, right – it was no saucer. The flying object was about the size of a school bus. The whole thing looked like some sort of legless, mutant scorpion with a long, needle-ended tail curled above its straight shaft of a body. There were stubby little... wings, I suppose... on either side of the "body", with tubes at the end, each glowing blue. Engines, had to be. The "head" end was some sort of egg-shaped pod, looking weirdly gentle under the clearly weaponised "tail".
Not like a scorpion at all. More like some kind of scorpion-tailed science fiction dragon.
I knew this mental wandering was simply me avoiding the main issue, that this... thing was simply too big, too world-shattering to think about. But I couldn't do that. I couldn't afford to do that. I pulled my thoughts back to the actual matter at hand.
The thing was not very aerodynamic.
The thing was of sufficient size to carry several humans. (Or other human-sized organisms, I reluctantly corrected myself.)
The thing was using technology I had never seen or heard of, and that could not be extrapolated from what I had seen or heard of.
The thing was coming down right in the middle of our town.
Some sort of publicity stunt? Unlikely, in an abandoned construction site at night. Secret military vehicle? That would explain why the construction site was completely deserted, but it made no logical sense to land a top secret military vehicle in a town where anybody outside the site could see it with binoculars. There are military bases for that sort of thing. Aliens. Still seemed like silly behaviour, but there was no reason that aliens would behave like humans did.
"It's stopping," Rachel said. There was disbelief in her voice, and fear.
"I think it sees us," Marco said. "Should we run? Maybe we should run home and get a camera. Do you know how much money we could get for a video of a real UFO?"
"If we run, they might… I don't know, zap us with phasers on full power," Jake said.
"Phasers are only on Star Trek," Marco replied with absolutely no evidence to back up that position.
The ship stopped and hovered almost directly over our heads, maybe a hundred feet in the air. I could feel the hair on my head standing on end, although I wear it so short it probably made no visible difference. I could see everyone else's hair standing up, though.
"What do you think it is?" Marco asked. He sounded a little shakier, not so laid-back now that the thing was so close. I was scared, too. Scared and excited. I could feel my heart thundering, my legs threatened to give way beneath me, because even though I knew I shouldn't let my emotions or hopes cloud my reasoning the answer to Marco's question was so obvious to all of us including him.
"I think it's going to land," Tobias exclaimed, grinning like a maniac. He didn't look frightened at all, just really, really excited. Science fiction nerd, probably.
"It's coming right at us!" Jake cried.
I fought the urge to run. I think we all did, except maybe Tobias. But I didn't know if I wanted to run away or run towards the ship. I didn't even have real proof yet and I knew I was going to look like an idiot if it opened up and a director somewhere yelled "Cut! Those kids shouldn't be in the shot!", but already, the parts of my mind that were afraid of a huge discovery rocking everything I knew about the world, and those that were excited about it, were warring for my attention.
Tobias was right; it slowed, then stopped, almost directly above us. It was so close that I could see the burn marks on the surface. I could see the melted portions of the pod section. The blue lights of the engines were flickering a little. The ship landed, and the blue lights went out instantly.
"It isn't very big, is it?" Rachel whispered.
"It's about three or four times as big as our minivan," Jake replied. Reverent, afraid. The vehicle looked delicate on the ground. Hurt.
"We should tell someone," Marco said. "I mean, this is kind of major, you know? Spaceships don't just land in the construction site every day. We should call the cops or the army or the president or something. We'd be totally famous. We'd get to be on Letterman for sure."
Sometimes I think Marco is an idiot. "Do you really think – "
But Tobias was already stepping forward, hands raised and open. I hoped whatever was in there recognised a human peace signal. It'd be just our luck that it was some sort of alien with poison needles in their palms or something, and Tobias was giving them the most aggressive gesture in their body language. We'd be killed by a communication error. "It's safe," Tobias said in a loud, clear voice. "We won't hurt you."
"Do you think they speak English?" Jake asked.
"Everyone speaks English on Star Trek," I said, trying to lighten the mood. I wasn't sure myself. We'd been broadcasting signals into space for quite a while, but who was to say anybody had bothered decoding them? Spaceships probably didn't even come by Earth all that often, or we'd have noticed.
Tobias tried again. "Please come out. We won't hurt you."
[I know.]
I froze. Point one: they understood English. Point two: I was pretty sure that reply had been telepathic. Maybe I was just distracted or something, but I didn't remember hearing any sounds. Just the translated words, in my head.
I traded a glance with Jake. He'd not-heard it, too. Okay.
"Did everyone hear that?" Tobias whispered.
We all nodded at once, very slowly.
"Can you come out?" Tobias asked in his loud, talking-to-aliens voice.
[Yes. Do not be frightened.] An impossible request.
"We won't be frightened," Tobias said.
"Speak for yourself," Jake muttered. I giggled nervously.
A thin arc of light appeared, a circular doorway, opening slowly in the smooth side of the pod part of the ship. With the engines extinguished, it was far brighter than anything else in the lot. I shielded my eyes and willed them to adapt to the light faster, wanting to see everything.
Then the alien appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the bright interior lighting.
My first thought was It's hurt. You could see it in the way it stood slightly unsteady on its four horselike legs. It looked like a centaur, one of its thin, weak-looking arms stretched back to comfort its right flank. From the top of its head stretched two stalks. Eyestalks?
My second thought was, This is very, very strange.
It stumbled out of the ship with an odd light-footed grace that belied its injury. Not horselike, I realised; deerlike. No longer silhouetted in the doorway, I could see more detail. It was covered in blue fur, slightly longer on the deer part of its body. It did indeed have eyes on the stalks sprouting from the top of its head, eyes that scanned the area independent of each other. It also had two larger eyes on its head, in about the same position as ours. Those eyes were focused on us.
It had no mouth, no jaw so far as I could tell. Most of its face was taken up by two enormous vertical slits. Nostrils, I presumed; the movement of its flanks suggested that it breathed. Fortunately, it was having no trouble breathing our atmosphere. Yet.
And it had a tail.
How had the tail not been the first thing I noticed? Even though it was clearly being held in a nonthreatening way, it was alarming; a length of thick, flexible muscle tipped by a blade. Some kind of horn, probably, or tooth. (Why was I trying to apply the body tissues of Earth animals to something not from Earth anyway? Habit, probably.) It was shaped like a scythe, and it looked very, very sharp. I wondered, idly, whether it was sharpened manually, or kept an edge naturally.
"Hello," Tobias said, wisely keeping his voice gentle. I was glad I wasn't doing the talking. Mentally, I was freaking out. This was an alien and it was here talking to us, there was life on other planets and I just wanted to break down and cry in gratitude to the universe and...
[Hello,] the alien said, in that disconcerting mental voice.
Then it staggered. Tobias tried to catch it, but it slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground. Only then did I realise it had angled itself so that we could only see the left side of its body. Only then did I realise just how badly it was hurt.
"Look!" I said, pointing out the angry burn that had destroyed the flesh along its right flank. "It's hurt."
[Yes. I am dying.]
Somebody was going on about ambulances, but I ignored them. My parents are veterinarians. We run a wildlife clinic in our barn. I'd treated a lot of wounds before, although admittedly not severe burns on a blue alien centaur. "We can bandage that wound. Jake, give me your shirt. We can tear it up and make bandages," I added at Rachel's confused look.
[No. I will die. The wound is fatal.]
"NO!" Jake said, as if he could prevent that happening by sheer force of will. "You can't die. You're the first alien ever to come to Earth. You can't die."
"We won't let that happen," Rachel added firmly.
[I am not the first. There are many, many others.]
"Other aliens? Like you?" Tobias demanded.
The alien shook his big head slowly, side to side. [Not like me.]
Then he cried out in pain, a silent sound that echoed horribly inside my mind. I felt sick. For a moment, I had actually felt him dying.
[Not like me,] he repeated. [They are different.]
"Different? How?" Jake asked.
The alien narrowed his eyes; whether in emphasis or pain, I couldn't tell. [They have come to destroy you.]