Behold, I stand at the door, and knock
He had met one of them once, flowing white robes and long black hair. They had sent the Hound after her, although really, it hadn't required much, they knew that they arrived on Earth every four years, making it easy to predict their movements.
It had been in 1978, a warm summer filled with unrest and dissatisfaction, and he had been an officer in the Royal Air Force, his days filled with nothing in particular, a short stint with the Americans at Yokota Air Base, flying F-105s off the coast to remind the Russians and the Chinese of the friendship between the United States and her allies, all bluster and show.
There had been a lot of that then, a lot of posturing that had since begun to quieten since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In '78, however, it had been a different story, and not only had the West been agitated about Communism, but there had been the continuing threat of alien incursion, and, even worse, the perceived potential of an alliance between the Communist nations and hostile planets.
That had been where the Hound had come in, a creature originally from Planet Ruperts, he had been told, not that he would have known; that had been how he had first encountered the deity, flowing white robes and long black hair.
The goddess Nike, Flight Lieutenant Arthur Grant had been told later, or at least what humanity had once believed to be the goddess.
Every four years, beings from Planet Alpha had been arriving on Earth to monitor the progress of humanity. Nike had been the name the ancients had given them upon first encountering them, and every subsequent ambassador from Alpha had been thought of as the same as that first visitor, the goddess incarnate, her presence assuring victory.
In myth, she had been an attendant of Zeus, helping him to steel his heart when the final confrontation with Typhon came, a woman who did not shy from entering the fray, from fighting for a cause she believed just. The woman he had seen at Yokota Air Base in 1978 had been no warrior, her face full of concern and shame, handcuffed, led across the field to the main compound by two burly American officers where she would await transport to the United States—where she was assumedly tortured in the name of whatever it was that had seemed the most justifiable at that moment.
What had happened to her, he thought quietly, sitting alone before his terminal in UMA's coastal outpost, an artificial island positioned off the coast of Australia. He wondered if the people of Planet Alpha had stopped sending emissaries after that, and, if they had not, he wondered how many of them had ended up dying in lonely prison cells, tortured for what they knew by either the Americans or the Soviets.
Grant had no doubts about the excuses made in wartime, the things that were deemed necessary in order to remain one step ahead of the enemy.
Why was he thinking this, he asked himself, but in the dim light of dawn, as the other members of his command team slumbered, he already knew the answer.
The boy, Shindo, the astronaut who should not have lived.
It was clear that whatever had happened on Mars, Shindo was not divulging the truth of the matter, and in his gut, Arthur Grant felt a twisting pain, regret, guilt perhaps that he had not done more for that woman escorted into captivity before him, flowing white robes and long black hair.
He liked to tell himself that the world had changed, that they were heading towards the new millennium with hope in their hearts and belief in the future, but there was still the doubt, still the fear of contact with aliens.
How fragile would that peace prove to be now Gudis had begun to reach across the cold void of space for them?
They had one chance, and Shindo was the key. Why then, did it feel that if the Guidis did not get him, then eventually the Hound would, sent forth from the Ultra Guard to sniff out the story of this man who, against all odds, had now returned to Earth?
He closed his eyes, burying his head in his hands.
"How long?" he asked softly. "How long have we got?"
In the early dawn, the answer remained unspoken yet obvious.
Not long.