Chapter 4
The woman sighed. Her husband should have been home hours ago.
Yawning, she placed her book on the cushion beside her.
The grandfather clock in the hall struck once.
That did it; she wouldn't wait any longer.
Pausing only to switch off the lights, she made her weary way upstairs to bed.
As she climbed the stairs, she reflected on the book, 'That Summer' by Allen Drury, a cheap and trashy paperback that she'd picked up at the airport and which in an earlier age would have been referred to as a penny dreadful; The plot seemed to revolve around a newly-wedded husband having an affair behind his bride's back, all the while claiming that the late nights were as a result of pressure of work.
As she reached the top of the stairs, she smiled. It was rather a silly book really. No one would carry on like that in real life. Would they?
Suddenly, Mary Straker wasn't smiling any more
Silence had once more returned to the forest. Ford and Waterman stood looking at the devastation.
A search by Harker and the rest of the squad had turned up nothing but ashes.
The troops had been dismissed and were now waiting in the Land Rovers with the bodies of the dead Aliens stowed safely in the back of the vehicles.
"So much for the samples for Farnborough" Waterman muttered bitterly.
"We've still got the gun and the bodies," replied Ford "And at least we can get some photographs. "
He reached into his pocket for the flashbulbs he kept there.
Swearing, he snatched his hand away; the razor-sharp edges of the broken bulbs had sliced deep into the skin.
"That looks nasty," said Waterman, examining the wound. "Come on, there's a first-aid kit in the Land Rover. "
Ford cast a final look back at the clearing then followed Waterman back to the road.
As the sound of their progress died away, a figure stood up from the bush behind which it had been concealed. Silently, it examined the spot where the UFO had so recently been.
The trees soughed gently in the breeze and the clouds, which had been concealing the moon, drifted slowly away.
Moonlight streamed through the leafy canopy and illuminated the figure.
His skin appeared a mottled green. This was a side effect of immersion in the bio-acrophilic liquid, which enabled members of his race to travel for months at many times the speed of light.
Now though, he had removed his helmet and was breathing the strange air of this alien planet. The plastic shells, covering the iris completely and protecting his eyes from the liquid and rigours of the flight, glittered eerily as he looked up at the Moon.
Perhaps it would make more sense to set up a base on the satellite, he thought. That way help would only be a matter of minutes away. The base would have to be concealed, of course; the humans had taken their first tentative steps outward from their home world and landed their crude, rocket-powered devices on the satellite. Since the satellite was in a captured rotation around its parent, the majority of the devices had landed on the near side. The far side, eternally hidden from the telescopes of Earth, would make an ideal staging post.
The Alien lowered his gaze to look around him. This planet seemed to be a very attractive place. In a way, he envied the humans this lush green planet, so full of as-yet untapped resources. Resources that included the humans themselves.
Of all the planets that the Race had visited over the millennia, only the Humans of this insignificant little blue-green planet were able to supply their needs; spare parts to replace their own diseased and failing organs. In many cases, it would not even be necessary to kill them - Nature on this planet had given them spares of some of the most useful organs. It was merely necessary to isolate a human, remove one of its organs, stitch it up, erase the most recent events from its memory then put it back.
Some on his home planet had objected on moral grounds, saying that it was wrong to use lower animals in this way.
But, it had been pointed out; Medical science had been unable to provide artificial replacements that could last more than a century or so. It was ironic; the scientists who had perfected the means to travel for months at many times the speed of light were still unable to produce an artificial heart or kidney, to replace their own diseased and failing organs.
And besides, the Humans actually ate lower animals on Earth, breeding them as food.
Perhaps, one day, it might be possible to set up a captive breeding programme, offering advanced technology in exchange for organs. Not too advanced, though - the Humans seemed to be a particularly warlike race. They had even taken their first steps off of the planet, with crude chemical-powered craft, little different from the missiles the humans often rained on each other. So far, a small number of these craft had crossed the void, to land on the barren surface of the Earth's rocky satellite before lifting off and returning home.
The small size and low speed of these strange craft had, on one occasion, almost spelled disaster; veiled by the glare of the system's central star, one of the missiles had almost collided with the watching scout as it dropped out of superluminal space. With no time to react, the crew had been unable to prevent the automatic defence systems from acting to prevent detection; the energy beam had all but destroyed the rear section of the humans' craft. Despite being mortally wounded, the human-carrying missile had managed to swing around the back of the planet's satellite before returning home. Evidently, the humans were resourceful. Who knows what devastation they could cause if they got their hands on a scout craft with its energy weapons? The more reactionary faction of The Race saw Mankind's aggressive nature as justification for a programme of total extermination.
Fortunately, theirs was still a minority view but it had been considered prudent to build in auto destruction units into the Scout craft. Unfortunately, though, something in this planet's atmosphere seemed to trigger the unit - leading to the destruction of the craft if the crewmembers were unable to cancel the destruct sequence in time.
That was obviously what had happened this time.
The moonlight dimmed as a cloud passed in front of the moon. A distant rumble heralded an approaching storm.
Obviously, he'd have to find some shelter until another Scout arrived. Turning, he left the clearing and headed back into the forest.