Invasion

It was Philippe Laroche who answered first. “I think they’ll look exactly like us,” he said, and grinned at their faces. “They’re an evolved race, just like us, and so they will fit their environment. The humanoid form is so useful that the aliens are quite likely to have evolved along similar lines to us. If they were, say, massive octopus-like creatures, could they have evolved a space-based technology?”

“Octopuses are actually quite smart,” Sophia Friedrich said. The UN’s representative, a German-born girl who spoke English with a slight accent, smiled from her perch. “You could get one of them to actually do almost anything, as long as it was underwater.”

Kane laughed. “So, you don’t believe the abduction claims, then?”

“No,” Francis said. “I think they’re just attention seekers.”

Gary nodded. The number of reported alien abductions had skyrocketed in the days since the announcement of an actual alien starship. The reports had featured the stereotypical little grey aliens, but also hundreds of other kinds of aliens, from humanoids with pointy ears to perfectly indistinguishable human-aliens that had been attempting to pick up breeding stock. So far, no one had actually managed to provide proof that any of the abductions – let alone the UFO sightings, government men in black covering up alien contacts or even the super-secret FTL starships flown by the American government – actually existed.

“Its obvious,” Bai Li said, with one of his rare smiles. “They’re going to be Chinese.”

“Chinese? Asians? Space Asians?” Kane asked. “How did you figure that?”

“Well,” Bai Li said, mischievously, “it’s been proven by the latest revisionist history book, in the sprit of 1421 and 1434 that the old imperialist patriarchy actually built spacecraft and headed into space before somehow losing the technology in the collapse of Chinese civilisation caused by the Glorious Revolution. Of course they’re Chinese.”

Kane stared at him, realised that he was being wound up, and laughed. “I don’t think that that’s quite the answer,” he said. “Maybe they look like spiders, or other insects.”

“Won’t happen,” Sonja said. “There are limits to how large a spider, or a crab, could become before it collapsed under its own weight. It’s rather more likely that they’re dinosaur-like creatures.”

“Or little baby elephants,” Francis said, grinning. The barriers were breaking down, one by one. “Hell, they could look like anything, even the Manhunter from Mars.”

“That would be funny,” Philippe said, dryly. “Do you think that there would be a case for a lawsuit if the aliens actually looked like some alien we invented on Earth?”

“It would be hard to imagine an alien who didn’t look like something we invented on Earth,” Stanislav Genya said. The Russian smiled into the silence. “Come on; between Hollywood and the rest of the world, we have hundreds of thousands of aliens that might reassemble the real aliens. They could look like something from Star Trek or Lost in Space or…well, anything.”

Gary spoke into the silence. “Does anyone have any phobias they wish to confess to, now they’re up here and beyond recall back to Earth?”

There was a long pause. “Perhaps the aliens are machines,” Kane suggested. “That entire starship could be a machine, or two machines, and there won’t be any humanoid life at all.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Gary said. He leaned forward carefully. “Anyone want to confess?”

“I can’t stand horses,” Sonja admitted, suddenly. “I rode on one once, fell off and broke my arm…and since then, I haven’t been able to deal with them at all. You, sir?”

Gary shrugged. “I’m scared of falling into vacuum,” he admitted. “It focuses the mind a bit on the station. Anyone else?”

“I used to be terrified of the Germans,” Philippe said. “No offence, Sophia.”

“None taken,” Sophia said. “My family weren’t in Germany during the war.”

“Perhaps we should forget about humanity’s long history of war,” Stanislav suggested. “After all, this is the dawn of a new era, right?”

On the screen, the alien starship raced closer.

Chapter Five

Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the morning, rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an ordinary falling star.

– The War of the Worlds