‘Retro-boosters engage … slowly … slowly …. 4 - 3 - 2 - 1. Landing complete.’ 

Stopping after the long descent the captain’s brain feels like it is slithering down her body, towards her astronautical boots. 

‘Perfect, Captain.’ 

 The four-person crew applaud. 

‘Better let them know on the flag ship,’ she says.

‘Okedoke, Cap’n. I’m on it.’ This from the communications officer. “Calling Mission Control. Calling Mission Control. The falcon has landed. Safe ’n sound.” 

The crew, glasses in hand, their special celebration champagne, with its celebrated taste, all but finished, when, an hour later, a thin voice responds. ’Great to hear you Captain. This is President Kim leading the first of the Follow Fleets.’ 

The crew gaze at the loudspeaker grill as if they can somehow see the person whose voice is emerging from it. 

It continues. ’Great job, guys. Back here, back three year’s flight away, our sensors have been watching you, listening to you, sensing your life signals month in, month out, year in, year out in your deanimation pods. They’ve observed the other, deeper, life-signals, sensing your senses. And you’ve come through, as we have, you’ll be glad to hear. At last your there - you’ve reached the most promising of planets our scientists have yet found - Planet 4110 in a solar system similar to ours. Our prayers are with you.Today, at last, there is hope.’

The captain replies. ’Sir, I can report back to you that all signs are good. Gravity, similar to ours, air composition just as our scientific analysis discovered. So we can breath without extra equipment. The temperature on the surface here is pretty ideal. It is night here. We shall rest now and tomorrow we will explore. Over.’ She looks at her crew. A sense of pride, of fellowship, spreads like soft, warm syrup through her very being. ‘We’ve made it, made it to this blue planet, blue just like ours. We’ve made history. Perhaps the greatest moment in our history. This day. Today. The asteroid will have already destroyed our planet. As the president said, the ships that were built during our voyage are following. And on this planet our race will be saved. I sense destiny. And tomorrow we have the honour of establishing our new world.

' The terrain here is flat, incredibly flat,’ the lieutenant speaks into his microphone as he emerges from their ship the next morning. ‘We seem to be on a great plain. I can see what looks like a huge plateau in the distance. The ground feels strange. It is coated thickly, in soft, grey strands - but my sensors tell me it is not organic.’ The others climb out of the dull, rather battered, metal hatch and join him.

An hour of trekking brings them near the shimmering vertical wall of the plateau. ’Let’s fly up,’ says Astrocrew 3. She is already firing up her back pack. ‘We’ll see more of this new world from there.’

The five members of the team are soon standing on the plateau - its surface bright red but no longer with the soft strands. 

‘What’s on earth is that?’ Astro 4 says. They look up to their right to see  … what? Some kind of geological formation perhaps. ‘Surely it’s not a manufactured structure?’ Towering above them and rising in a great curve is a golden yellow mound that seems to grow out from above two great trunks. Astro 4 hovers up one of the trunks. ’Its surface structure seems like what we walked on down there, down below. They look beyond the great bulbous curve. ‘It can’t be’ Astro 4 reports back to them, ‘It looks like a chin, and further up?….’ From way below they all start to recognise the shape of a face with a huge, black … ‘Nose … It’s a face. I can make out a pair of gleaming eyes.’  

‘Non organic, the sensor reads,’ says Astro 4. ‘A building? A statue. But too big to engineer. How the …’ But there is no time to apply common sense, for the ground beneath them begins to stir. Slowly at first,then, suddenly a great lurch. ‘Flight mode, now!’ orders the captain. And as she says this the air around them explodes with a sound that seems not to enter their ears but vibrates through their very beings. ‘MU…’ Their chests, stomachs, bowels heave - they are being shaken to their very core.’MEEE …’  

‘Regroup. Regroup on the plain!’ shouts the captain and she hopes the team might hear her, might hold it together. Yes, here they are. Together. Those years of discipline and training have been worthwhile. Return to the ship.”

Back aboard the captain turns on the vidiscanner.  

As they look at the screen they gasp as one.

 ’My god,what is it? It’s staring straight at us. Those wild eyes. And below it a great gaping pit of a mouth. Horrible! Horrible!’

‘It’s a thousand times bigger than us. But let us try to speak with it. Switch speakers on ... WE COME IN PEACE. OUR PLANET HAS BEEN DESTROYED.  Now what’s it doing?  It’s lifting something. It’s waving it at us.  It wants to destroy us. Abort mission! Abort mission!’


“Mummy, Mummy. There was a creepy crawly on my bed, it climbed on teddy.”

“It’s all right now darling. Mummy’s splattered it. Horrid whiny buzzy thing.”