I think its Murphy's Law that states: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. In this case, I believe that motto applied. There we were sitting hip-deep in days old garbage, tired and fearful about the uncertainty of our own mortality; one of us injured from combat, the other from personal stupidity; one knowing how to fight, the other a meek scientist; neither of us knowing exactly how we were going to kill, if necessary; and now we had a Martian tentacle about to alert its being that we were here.

What could possibly be worse than that?

Rats. That's what.

I loathe the little brown creatures. I cringe in disgust every time I am in the lab and need to use them for experiments here and there – my own personal lab, not the NTSB one. They are diseased, filthy, gnarly little creatures that immediately make my skin crawl.

I felt the sharp-clawed little feet of one of the above-mentioned menaces scuttle across my hand and immediately jerked my hand and entire body away from it toward Cronus. Before I could let out a disgusted yell, grunt, scream, I felt the fast smack of the back of Cronus' hand against my mouth.

I narrowed my eyes at him and was disappointed that he wasn't even looking at me. His gaze was on the Martian tentacle and the slow joining of the other two tentacles. He pursed his lips at me in a mute shush and flicked his eyes at me, then back on the invader.

I felt like I had read his mind, like he had projected an order of "stay quiet, and still" into my head. I didn't argue. I bit on the inner part of my lips to clamp them shut and stared at the tentacle, which was at least three-inches thick.

It flopped around quite clumsily across the lip of the bin as it searched for us. It rolled and slapped on the bin much like you would expect a giant Earthworm would. There were no eyes, nor any real indication of tiny sensors, but it was obvious that the primary role of this appendage was to send sensory information back to the Martian.

The largest, and central, tentacle suddenly rippled with a deep, black colour as it seemed to focus on Cronus. It stopped still and large pores began to open on its surface. You could almost see it inhale the air around it. I held my breath in expectation that at any time, the Martian would be upon us and we would end up charred mannequins.

The Martian's head finally rose over the edge of the bin. I felt as if my heart was going to explode from my chest.

The Head of the creature was bald, large and covered with thin semi-transparent skin. The eyes were like a focal point of the head. They were a dazzling green and brown that shimmered glassily like the eyes of a blind man. There was no side to side, or up and down movement. The eyes seemed to be more of an applied decal than a functioning organ – which was something that could definitely be used to our advantage.

We both remained perfectly still as the Martian's tentacles searched clumsily around the bin, only inches away from Cronus' hand.

One of them, the one rippling with black, swept in the air over Cronus' shoulder and immediately straightened. I mentally cursed him for reeking of spent gunpowder residue. His eyes swept slowly to mine and I could read a warning in his stare. Just inside my peripheral vision I could see his fingers tighten around his weapon.

I immediately mouthed, "Don't move. Don't shoot," as slowly and as clearly as I could so as not to let him misread my demand – if my assumption was accurate, we would have been safe as long as we made no moves or did anything stupid.

Fortunately he relaxed the hold on his weapon and slid his eyes back to the Martian.

The tentacle rose to an inch in front of his face and slowly bounced in the air. It's pores pulsed and gulped in the air, possibly trying to sense the carbon dioxide off his breath, possibly trying to scare him in to moving. Cronus was a smart man, it seemed, as I could see his face redden slowly in protest against him holding his breath. It was only time before physiology forced him to breathe, or pass out, and either of those scenarios would be our downfall.

I had to make peace with my God. I truly didn't believe we were going to get away from this alive.

A small scuttle from the right of Cronus became our salvation. The tentacles, all three of them, immediately reacted. They all began to ripple black and ash blue and shot straight in the direction of the noise.

The Martian's head tilted in the same direction. I heard a click from deep within the Martian's chest, and then it raised a small weapon and fired a single lazer beam at the very same animal that had run across my hand only a few minutes earlier.

The rat immediately burst into flame and then cindered into a charred version of its former self. It took all I had not to gasp in horror at the site and the realization that it could very well have been Cronus or myself in that same position. I could see Cronus was thinking something along the same lines. He began to shudder slightly and I was concerned that the small shaking movements of his body would alert the Martian to the presence of more than just a small sewer rat.

My panic was quickly eased, however, when I heard the loud hacking cough of a large caliber gun. The bullet ricocheted of the metal suit of the Martian and then impacted the wall across from us. The bin violently jerked as the Martian was forced against it with the bullet's impact. This caused the supports for the lid to fail and the whole metal top of the bin fell heavily on top of a tentacle, and plunged us into darkness.

I knew my breathing was now loud and rapid, but I no longer cared. I wanted this uncertainty to end and for that damn Martian to finally just come and put us out of our misery. There was no way that Cronus would allow that to happen.

When the lid fell, it forced him to collapse against me. His mouth was close enough to my ear that when I heard him snarl in a whisper it sounded as though he was yelling.

"If you give us up, John. I swear I will kill you before they get the chance to."

My entire body heaved with fast breaths and I knew I was close to hyperventilating. "I can't do this. I can't…"

His hand moved to grab hard at my chin. I felt his fingers dig deeply into my skin. "I can't fucking die, Man. I have got to live through this – my son will NOT grow up without a father!"

I shifted my eyes to the only source of light inside the bin – where the lid was caught on a tentacle. It slowly struck me that there was no attempt by the Martian to free himself. I could hear the scuffle of feet outside in the alleyway away from us – but could feel no jerk of the bin as the fight ensued.

There was suddenly a bright light that flashed in through the crack, and a loud whoosh of superheated air. We both held our breaths and listened as there was a thud and crack of what we assumed was a charred body, then a thundering stampede of metal feet against bitumen running away from our location.

But the tentacle was still with us.

It took about ten minutes of apprehensive silence for one of us to finally move. I'm kind of proud to say it was me. It was curiosity that made me do it. My natural inquisitive and analytical nature forced my hand to ball in to a fist, with my index finger stiffly pointed out, and poke at the limp lump of flesh.

It didn't move.

I inhaled a deep breath and held on to it as I poked at it again. This time I didn't quickly draw my hand back to myself.

Cronus exhaled before I did. "What do you think?"

I let a brow rise over my left eye and spread my lips into a grin. "I think it's time you got off me. I'm flattered, but …"

His long-suffering groan interrupted me and he did, quickly, pull himself upward. "At least I know you have a sense of humour in that stiff, scientific body of yours."

I answered with a single exhale that sounded like a laugh and nodded up at the roof of our enclosure. He pressed his hands to the lid and, together, we heaved it up and hooked the support arms back in place.

I inhaled and he exhaled simultaneously in shock at the scene before us. There were four half-charred human bodies strewn directly to the right of us. Ground force military – I could tell by the black boots and green/khaki camouflaged pants. I turned my attention to Cronus, who was stilled by his feelings of … I guess, horror.

"Matt. I'm so sorry," I offered foolishly as I touched my hand to his elbow in a sympathetic gesture.

"Fuck," seemed about the only word he could manage in response.

I left him where he was and leapt out of the bin to survey the damage, and retrieve the tentacle from the ground.

I half expected it to be covered in blood from where it had been torn from the Martian's body, but was immediately intrigued when I found it to be relatively clean, and the break neat. I crouched and pulled a ballpoint pen from my chest pocket to poke and prod at it. It gave a short twitch that sent me scuttling a few inches backward, then stilled again.

Cronus landed lightly on the asphalt beside me and crouched in front of the tentacle. He gave a disgusted grunt as he poked at it with his finger. "Well?"

I couldn't help but smile in small excitement. It's not everyday you get given something like this to play with. "Brilliant."

He raised his eyes and gave me a dark look that said much more than his mouth ever would to me about how disgusted he was with my tone. "Only a scientist…"

I flicked his hand away from it with my fingers and moved in closer to it. "This could be the answer to our problems, Cronus." I gave him a child-like smile of glee. "How exciting."

His hand met firmly with the top of my head as he turned it to force me to face the destruction. "No, not exciting or brilliant, John."

I didn't appreciate him squashing my excitement with actual reality, but I appreciated where his worry came from. It was the heat ray that we had to be concerned with, first and foremost, thrill could come later. I could see a basic indication of the heat from a fire-escape stairwell on the opposite side of the alley.

I had to approach and exhale in awe at the damage. There was a definite, rounded tunnel-effect in the stairwell. Where the blast had penetrated there was a clear void of scaffolding and metal, the edges of which were still red and molten. I cautiously lowered my nose to see if I could distinguish an accelerant of sorts and was surprised to see Cronus slouch to one side beside me and press the palm of his hand into the stairwell.

My look must save screamed "what are you, stupid?" at him, because he curled a lip at me as he pulled his hand quickly off the metal and shook it in an attempt to cool it.

"Fuck, that's hot!"

I offered him a sideways glance and shook my head gently. "Conduction," I said flatly.

He blew on his hand as he screwed up one side of his face in confusion. "What?"

I pointed at the metal and adopted a tutorial tone of voice. "Conduction: the transfer of heat through matter by communication of kinetic energy from particle to particle with no net displacement of the particles. First Law of Thermal Dynamics. Physics 101."

He stilled his whole body and stared at me for a few seconds. Eventually he answered with a slow, irritated purr. "Asshole."

I had to smirk at the response, but didn't look at him or acknowledge it in any other way. Instead I focussed on gathering the tentacle up in my arms to prepare to take it back to the lab.

"Are you ready?" I asked as I strolled casually past him.

"Yeah, I think they're gone. It should be safe."

I shrugged a single shoulder and jutted my chin in the direction of the NTSB workshop. "We're not too far away now. Just … " I glanced down at his gun. "If we get in trouble, aim for the snakes."

A slow grin began to appear on his face. "You think that's the ticket?"

I dipped an ear toward my shoulder. "It's a working hypothesis, right now. I'll know more about it when we get back."