Invasion! Earth vs. The Aliens

by Robert Reginald

  If wishes were horses, then beggars might ride.

  * * * *

  But Min had actually seen the falling star, as he told me later, and was convinced that it had landed somewhere up in the hills west of Novato. He drove out of town as far as he could, and then set off across the countryside on foot, taking with him a couple of flashlights and some extra batteries. He would have included his female understudies if any had been available.

  After meandering through the woods and being attacked by giant mosquitoes, he stumbled across an open sandy field just after dawn, a few miles west of State Highway 101. There an enormous hole had been carved by the impact of the falling star, with sand and gravel heaped all around it. Some dried shrubs had burned at the edge of the site, and he could see a thin line of blue-green smoke rising against the new-born sun.

  The thing was almost entirely buried, surrounded by shattered splinters of pulverized trees. The uncovered section was thirty or forty yards wide, and had the appearance of a huge egg caked with reddish mud and earth, its outline softened by thick, scaly, iron-colored encrustations.

  Min carefully approached the site, surprised at the size and shape of the object, since most meteorites appear as melted chunks of bare rock; but the metal casing was still so hot that he had to keep his distance. He could hear a kind of grinding noise inside, but assumed it was being generated by the gradual cooling of the thing beneath the earth’s surface.

  He realized, of course, that this was a major find! The “Mindon Meteorite” would make his reputation, if only he could devise some way of removing the artifact without actually destroying it.

  He stood there at the edge of the pit, gazing down at the steaming thing, and then, as the light began to grow, noticed that it had an odd symmetry. Maybe, he thought to himself, just maybe this would more than make his reputation. If this was a machine of sorts, or even a Martian probe sent to explore our world….

  The morning was wonderfully still. He wiped an unnatural sweat from his brow. Then he noticed that the winter birds had gone completely quiet. The only sound that he could hear was the faint crackling emanating from within the cindery ship.

  Some of the crusty ash that covered the protruding end began flaking away in rusty scabs and raining down upon the sand, where it shattered into small bits. A large piece dropped off with an audible pop that brought his heart into his mouth.

  Although the thing continued to radiate heat, he was finally able to scramble into the pit to view the rock more clearly. There was something about the structure of the meteorite that was profoundly disturbing, even artificial. This just didn’t look like anything that he’d seen in the museums.

  Then he realized that, very slowly, the top of the thing had begun rotating. It was such a gradual thing that he discovered it quite by accident, noticing that a black mark that had been close to him a few minutes earlier was now positioned on the opposite side of the meteorite. He watched it more closely, and was able to see it slide forward an inch or so. Understanding came in a flash. Yes! The thing was artificial! It was hollow, in fact, with an obvious hatch that could be unfastened! Something inside was trying to get out!

  “I’ll be damned!” he said to himself. “I was right! It’s a probe from outer space! I’m rich!”

  The thought of his soon-to-be-famous visage appearing on O-rah-rah nearly overwhelmed him, causing him to lose his balance. Fortunately, he caught himself before actually touching the hot, glowing metal, which would have burned him terribly. He had to do something quickly, and he obviously needed help. He scrambled out of the hole and ran as fast as he could back towards Novato. This was around eight in the morning.

  He’d completely forgotten where he’d left his car. He stopped a passing vehicle, trying to make the driver understand; but his story and appearance were so bizarre that the man simply drove on. He was equally unsuccessful with a restaurateur who was just unlocking the doors of a local café, Zee’s Zippy Zone. “Zee” was inarticulate on the best of occasions, and didn’t fare well under pressure (Mindon had once criticized his bœuf latté), so he threatened to knock Min down if he didn’t get out of his way.

  That sobered my friend long enough to think clearly for the first time since his grand discovery; and when he spotted Owen M. Owen, a writer for the Pac-Sun, seated at his desk in the newspaper office, he calmed down and tried to make himself understood.

  “‘O’!” he said, “you hear about that meteor last night?”

  “Yeah?” said Owen.

  “…it’s landed west of town.”

  “Good!” The man was a bit deaf and had left his hearing aid off, so what he heard was: “…sanded the western down,” which made no sense at all.

  “It’s some kind of ship! There’s something inside it.”

  Owen cupped his hand to one ear while continuing to work.

  “What?”

  Mindon reiterated him what he’d seen.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Swear to God,” Mindon said.

  Owen grabbed his jacket and hearing aid and got his car; they picked up a spade at his house on the way out of town. The two men then hurried back to the site, but the noises within the meteorite had ceased. Small circles of bright metal now showed around the top surface of the thing. Air was either entering or escaping the ship with a high, thin, whistling sound.

  They listened closely and “O” rapped on the singed casing with his shovel. Nothing happened.

  “Gotta be a probe of some kind,” Min said.

  “Maybe we should contact the authorities. Also, I need to check with my paper.”

  “Just so long as you spell my name right: it’s the ‘Mindon Meteorite,’ OK? M-I-N-D-O-N.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” Owen said, pulling out his cell phone and ringing his office as they drove back towards town.

  They ran up Main Street in the bright sunlight as the stores were opening their doors for business. Owen stepped into a nearby coffee shop, the Green Tiger, and after taking time to call the police, sat down and e-mailed his paper, quickly putting together a story that would be circulated nationwide within the hour.

  By mid-morning a few folks were wandering back into the hills to see the “Ship from Mars” for themselves. Mindon called me as I was finishing a late breakfast. I was excited at the prospect of viewing the artifact for myself, so I grabbed Becky and drove as close as I could to the site. We then started hiking westward.

  It was Christmas Eve.

  It was the last day that we would ever think of ourselves as alone in the universe.

  CHAPTER THREE

  AFRAID TO GO HOME IN THE DARK

  I’m afraid to go home in the dark.

  —Harry H. Williams

  Alex Smith, 24 December, Mars Year i

  Novato, California, Planet Earth

  By the time we reached the site, forty of the locals had arrived ahead of us, with more on their way. We gathered ’round a huge hole in which the alien ship was embedded upright in the ground. The gravel on either side of the opening had been charred black by the impact of the landing, although the vessel itself no longer radiated any heat. “O” and Min still hadn’t returned yet.

  Four or five teens were dangling their feet over the edge of the pit, amusing themselves by throwing stones at the bloody thing.

  “Stop that!” I said, but they just laughed. Kids!

  When I looked around at the bystanders, I recognized a couple of folks with their bikes, among them my yard man, a woman with a stroller, a store owner and his son, and two or three others who nodded back at me.

  There wasn’t a lot of conversation. I mean, what could you say?

  Most of the people were just staring quietly at the large, egg-shaped end of the ship. After awhile, when nothing else happened, some of them left while others took their place. Even Becky began pestering me to go home. I finally told her to take the car, that I’d join her later for lunch. She reminded me that we’d planned to go shopping th
at afternoon. After she left, I climbed down into the pit to examine the thing more closely, and thought I heard a movement somewhere inside. But if the top had shifted before, it’d stopped by now.

  At first glance the oval just seemed like a large lump of charred rock, but on closer examination I noticed some thin, wavy lines, almost cracks, that permeated the top third of the visible portion of the artifact. The scales that flaked off left a sheen of shiny, unscarred metal underneath. I’m no scientist; I didn’t recognize the yellowish-white surface that gleamed at me in the sunlight, reflecting a glare that almost blinded the onlookers. Even the crack around the lid had an unfamiliar color and texture. Obviously, the probe would have to be examined more closely by our scientists.

  And it was pretty clear in my own mind that this was a probe, likely sent from Mars in response to our own explorations on the Red Planet. I didn’t even consider the possibility that the meteorite was natural. The unscrewing of the top, if that’s what it’d been, was similar to the way our rovers had prepared themselves for their journeys across the Martian terrain. I wondered if the artifact might have some message for us, some offering of peace and a sharing of the benefits of our respective civilizations, and speculated on the translation difficulties that might occur. This was the greatest thing that had ever happened to mankind—and I was part of it! I was impatient to see something further, but nothing more actually happened then. About noon I too wandered back to my two-story home on Olivet Avenue.

  The Internet was already blaring the news:

  THE METEORITE—

  MENACE OR MESSAGE FROM MARS?

  NON NEWS FROM NOVATO!

  ALIENS AMONG US!?

  HAS ELVIS RETURNED?

  UFOs Attack California!

  MARIN MIRAGE—LIBERAL CONSPIRACY?

  and so on, getting progressively more lurid with each new rendition.

  Mindon had phoned several observatories in the western US, and CNN had already sent a reporter up from San Francisco to provide an “objective” story on the event. Fox hadn’t even bothered, simply announcing that another “Kooky Kalifornia Komedy” was unfolding among the “marinated minds of Marin County.” I flipped through the TV channels, getting progressively more disgusted by the lack of serious coverage.

  “It’s as if we didn’t exist,” I told Becky.

  “It doesn’t matter, Alex,” she said, putting down her book. “They’ll find out soon enough.”

  Once again, I wish in retrospect that I’d paid more attention to my wife’s prescience.

  “What are you reading?”

  She showed me the garish cover: What the Future Holds!—and What You Can Do About It!!! by Madame Stavroula.

  “You remember her,” she said. “She was the one who told your fortune at the Renaissance Fair last year.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  I did remember, all too well. She’d been dressed in some kind of faux medieval garb (she looked like a washer woman, to tell you the truth), and she’d suddenly grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let it go, oohing and ahing over the lines in my palm.

  “Nai!” she’d said, her voice warbling as it deepened (they’re always so cheery, these soothsayers), “Such interesting intersections thou hast here, such curious crossings. Malista, thou art, how do you say? Moiraios, the destined one, thou art….” Then she’d looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time, her black eyes growing very large and very wide, and she’d suddenly released me, pulling back with a flutter. “I…no! Here! You take back your money. Go away from me!”

  She’d thrown some bills on the table, more actually than Becky had paid her, and gathering her skirts together, had pushed her chair aside and bolted the room. Harrumph indeed!

  “Well, I’ll be,” Becky’d said.

  Suddenly I came back to myself.

  “You do remember her,” she said, tilting her head.

  “How could I ever forget?” I sighed.

  “Anyway, she sent me this book, inscribed ‘To the one who showed me the way,’ so I’m just getting around to reading it now. It’s really not bad. I don’t believe all of it, of course, but it sure does make you think.”

  “I think I’m going back to the landing site,” I said. “Want to join me?”

  “No, I probably need to uncover our joint destiny.”

  I was laughing along with her as I exited the door.

  When I returned to the field that afternoon, I couldn’t park anywhere near the pit. Dozens of cars now lined the shoulder of the dirt path closest to the impact site, and the road had now been cordoned off by the local police. Since this was Marin County, a fair number of motorcycles and bicycles were also in evidence. The crowd numbered, I suppose, several hundred individuals, including some young women, whom I thanked under my breath for decorating the scenery. Mindon waved at me from the other side of the hole, one arm wrapped around a delicate delight. I joined him.

  “This is, uh, Barbie,” he said, introducing his companion.

  “Hiiii!” came the girlish gurgle.

  “Hi yourself,” I said. “What’s happening, Mindon-Man?”

  (I was one of the very few individuals in the whole wide world who knew that Mindon had adopted his name from a nineteenth-century Burmese king, Mindon Min. His real name was Gorace Alonzo Styles, Ph.D.—and he hated it, he absolutely despised it, he utterly loathed his name. I asked him once why he’d never changed it legally, and he said something about an inheritance owed him by his Great-Uncle Gorace—“Liz”—who was rich and stuffy and would cut him off immediately without a red cent if he ever dared such a step. He wanted the money, honey, and that’s the whole truth of it.)

  “Not a hell of a lot,” he said.

  It was almost hot for December. Not a cloud in the sky, not a hint of wind. The only shade was provided by a few scattered pine and live-oak trees. The burnt brush had blackened the field for several hundred yards in either direction, and was still giving off occasional puffs of smoke where embers had nested in some downed tree limbs. One of the ever-present Chicano vendor-vans was selling ice cream bars and soda and hotdogs and chips off to one side, making, I’m certain, a whole week’s worth of income in just one day, and playing a tinny version of “Für Elise” over and over again. I could have strangled him.

  What a reception for the Martian probe! All the worst elements of humanity were represented here—and perhaps even a few of its best.

  The rim was the domain of Owen, Mindon, and a tall, blond, middle-aged fellow with glasses whom I learned afterwards was Hastings Johnson-Carson, an astronomer at Berkeley. He had several workers with him armed with spades and picks. J.C., as we called him, stood on the end of the ship like a naval captain, imperiously giving orders in his nasally, needling voice, his pudgy crimson face streaming with perspiration. All he lacked was a sailor’s cap. Something seemed to be irritating him, and it was probably Mindon, who was still claiming the meteorite as his own, and that he should therefore be the only person consulted concerning its disposition.

  A large portion of the artifact had now been uncovered, but its lower section yet remained buried in the soil. Mindon pulled me aside and asked me to get help from City Hall.

  “Look, that damned interloper is going to steal this thing from me. We’re within the Novato city limits. The Mayor has authority over the site, if he chooses to exercise it. See if you can get him to intervene, OK?”

  I promised to do what I could.

  Min wanted a rail erected to keep the people back, and especially to remove “certain” individuals from the site. He said that he could still hear noises within the probe, but no one had been able to break the thing open yet, thank God! The casing seemed impervious to ordinary tools.

  It was a little past four, and I knew City Hall closed at five. I walked to my car and drove to the Art Deco-style building that had housed the facility since the 1940s. I asked to see Mayor Cory.

  “What do ya want, Smith?” the man said, chewing on a pretzel stick like
some old cigar.

  I told him that there was a safety issue involved: with all the people milling around the pit, that someone might get hurt, and that he didn’t want the city to be sued for lack of proper preventive measures on the part of the local government.

  That got his attention.

  He immediately phoned the Chief of Police, and ordered him to restore order to the site, pushing back everyone to a safe distance.

  Then I went home to Becky and shared a dinner of cold sandwiches and canned fruit, before returning to the place that marked the beginning of the Martian hegemony on Earth.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  O SUCH COMPANIONS

  O heaven! That such companions thou’dst unfold.

  —William Shakespeare

  Alex Smith, 24 December, Mars Year i

  Novato, California, Planet Earth

  By the time we reached the site again, the sun was starting to set. The crowd was larger now. The police were trying to bring some order to the situation, but they were too few to control the area effectively. Something was beginning to happen in and around the landing site itself.

  Then I heard J.C.’s voice booming: “Back! Come on, get back, folks! Officer, push these people out of the way!”

  But the cops had no more effect than anyone else.

  Then someone came running towards me.

  “It’s moving!” he shouted as he ran by. “Hey, people, it’s moving!”

  We tried to get a better view, but there were too many onlookers in the way.

  “Someone fell in the pit!” a man shouted.

  “C’mon, watch out!”

  “What’s happening out there?”