I don't own E.T, and okay I took liberties with E.T's name, but I had little choice since it was a POV one-shot and I needed a name which I borrowed from a Doctor Who book.
Please let me know what you think.
Trapped on Earth.
Sa'Motta of the survey team had broken the cardinal rule when surveying alien worlds; do not wander away from the main survey team, but Sa'Motta couldn't resist it. He had always been curious, and he had always learnt about the worlds his people had explored for countless centuries. His race were scientists, explorers, visiting alien worlds, learning of the various cultures and advancing their technology through those means. While theirs was not a violent, warlike race, they had occasionally fought to protect themselves.
As he had matured, Sa'Motta had longed to visit other worlds, breathe in the air of the different atmospheres and receive a dose of medication to prevent his lungs from dying, although his body had the power to adapt to the atmospheres of other worlds if he went into a coma for only a few cycles.
He had studied long and hard and eventually Sa'Motta had become an apprentice in the Scientific Survey fleet, and under the supervision of several survey commanders, he had arrived on Earth.
His people had been aware of the humans for centuries; while many of his people had deemed them a warlike race, primitive by the standards of his people and those more advanced beings in the galaxy, they had been fascinated with them in turn as well. The humans had a complex culture, and even with all the material his people had accumulated about them, Sa'Motta knew they hadn't learnt everything about them, and something told him they would never fully know about what humans were like.
As he wandered through the forest, his large eyes taking in everything about the vegetation, and the occasional example of animal life, Sa'Motta wandered further away from the landing site of the spaceship when he wandered face-first into trouble. At first, the trouble only came after he found a peculiarly shaped plant, and foraging nearby was a small animal covered in fur with long projections from its head. The animal watched Sa'Motta as he used his long fingers to dig away the soil around the plant. Once he had finished, Sa'Motta continued his exploration of the forest. Finally, he came to a ridge with some kind of fencing - a safety measure, perhaps? But what intrigued the young alien the most was the sight of the electrical circuit grid-like pattern of lights that made up the nearby human settlement. There were long rows of light that Sa'Motta knew were really close to one another that from this angle, they looked continuous. Other lights were scattered like the stars in the galaxy.
Sa'Motta had seen this kind of sight on over 3,000 surveyed worlds and they never failed to amaze him; thanks to his people's cloaking technology, they had travelled to worlds with rudimentary space travel and others who had taken their first steps to devise an interstellar engine like a tachyon shunter, a warp tube, a warp field projector, or a hyperdrive engine although with those they had opened up dialogues to allow them to exchange knowledge although Sa'Motta and his people weren't stupid enough to hand their technology over to strangers.
Many races varied with the way they constructed their cities; some took advantage of the environment of their worlds to form the basic shape of their settlements, but every single race seemed, and this was odd, to find it more efficient to create grids like this for their lighting technology; he had seen spirals, lights set up in a spherical fashion as they looped and looped around themselves like a gild, or a piece of primitive jewellery, like the helix of DNA.
But the human system was as efficient. He had seen it many, many times during his various surveys and while the sight was familiar, it was always subtly different in some matter.
As he stood upon the ridge, the fact he had walked a good distance from his ship and colleagues was at the back of his mind. He was just too immersed in studying the view. Down there, in that settlement were humans. Some of them would be working while others would be viewing the humans' strange entertainment programs his people had intercepted over the years as it bled out into space.
While Sa'Motta would have liked to visit some of their homesteads, watch the humans as they interacted with their family units, he knew he couldn't take even the smallest glimpse without them noticing him, and Sa'Motta knew of many stories of explorers who had made the same mistake. Sometimes a piece of their races technology would fall into the hands of primitive societies where the consequences were always severe, and he had no intention of joining that pantheon.
A sound made him turn in surprise, and he identified the sound in an instant; it was some kind of engine sound, and it was coming towards him. Sa'Motta's cry of surprise and dismay was drowned out by the loud noise of the engines while he hid in the bushes, avoiding the front navigational running lights of the vehicles, the air now full of the scent of the engine fuel. Sa'Motta knew from the landing the planet's atmosphere was polluted thanks to the use of burning fossil fuels, and he knew this ground vehicle was powered by the ignition of such a crude power source, but every race developed slowly.
As a small number of the ground vehicles parked and the humans got out of them shining their light sticks and clustering around each other in a group conferring in their own language, Sa'Motta whimpered in dread. This was going to be hard to escape from; he wasn't as tall as a human, and he could slip through the bushes, but the humans were likely going to be alert. There was no doubt in his mind, they knew of the ship, and they were determined to reach it. His people wouldn't allow such a capture of their technology, even at the expense of their own lives.
Sa'Motta felt the telepathic pulse that caused his secondary brain to glow. Quickly he covered it with his hands before the humans could see, but luckily they seemed distracted. Sa'Motta was too busy worrying about the message he had received in his mind
Return.
The ship was being prepared for lift-off; either the scanning crew had detected an increase in human activity or they had decided to launch now to limit the amount of time they spent on Earth, Sa'Motta genuinely did not know. It didn't matter; he needed to quickly think of a way of sneaking away from the humans and use the telepathic pulses coming from the landing site to guide him back without the humans noticing.
Unfortunately, he noticed quickly the humans pointing their light sticks in his direction.
Oh no, they must have noticed the glow of his brain…
As they moved closer, Sa'Motta exploded into action, screeching madly as he ran from the humans. He was partly ashamed of his actions since he was leading them back towards his ship, but hopefully, he would be in the lead before they caught him up. In the meantime he had to focus on the telepathic pulses while he tried to run; Earth's gravity was slightly different from that of his own world, and he was having to fight really hard to keep his advantage over the humans. He could hear them right behind him, and they were gaining fast. If he slowed down…
No, he would not think like that. He could hear the humans shouting behind him.
Sa'Motta could hear the sounds of the humans pants for breath as they ran behind him and he could just see the lights of the ship. If he could just get closer… Suddenly he heard the sound he was dreading the most, the sound of the ship's antigravity engines. The ship was in the second phase of take-off. They would soon fire off the warp drive in the second power before using power three to escape Earth's atmosphere.
He let out a shriek and opened a telepathic communications channel with his shipmates urgently, hoping that the antigravity field hadn't masked the telepathic signal, but he lost hope with the pitch and tone of the engines. The telepathic channel was weakening despite his urgent pleas for help and for them to wait, just a little longer…
Unfortunately, his pleas were in vain. With a loud roar, the spherical space ship lifted off the ground by its powerful fusion-drive based antigravity motors which warped gravity as easily as laser light passing through a prism. Sa'Motta shrieked in horror and he tried to push his already aching legs faster, but he knew it was already too late. He came to a stop and watched as the ship's warp drive kicked in and pushed the ship into hyperspace before it became but a speck of light.
He was trapped, marooned on Earth due to his own stupidity, and Sa'Motta had no immediate idea of what he could do. He had no idea how long it would take for his fellows to realise that he'd been left behind on Earth, and how long it would take for him to be rescued by his people. He could construct a simple enough communicator, one which would transmit a signal through the space-time continuum and through hyperspace until it reached his homeworld, but he needed to visit the human settlement to do that. That was dangerous; there were humans who knew he was here, and they would be searching for him.
He would need to be cautious.