In the old books and movies we had brought with us from Earth, people always imagined aliens from Mars. They were often described as “little green men” and usually didn’t come in friendship and peace.
The creatures that waited outside the hatch door were little and green.
But they most assuredly weren’t men.
Maybe eight of them stood back from the hatch. No two looked quite alike. Ranging in color from a pale yellow-green down to an almost black blue-green, they had limbs numbering from four to six, except one that appeared to have at least ten. None of them were more than waist-high to me. Their skin was mostly smooth and shiny, though some had wicked spikes protruding from their backs and arms. Most of them were standing on two legs, in roughly human form, though a couple were decidedly not humanoid in shape. The ones without obvious heads were just hard to look at, and I wasn’t sure if they were looking back at us or not. A couple carried items that must certainly be weapons—hard, rounded things made of some kind of solid, plastic-like material.
There were eyes trained on us. Generally two per alien, except in the case of the many-legged fellow, who was also similarly blessed in the eye department. I decided to call him “Spider,” no matter what his actual name turned out to be.
Doc Walsh stepped forward. With an embarrassed, nervous look, he gave the traditional Earth human greeting when faced with a group of aliens.
“We come in peace. Take us to your leader.”
The aliens scuttled back at his words. Weapons were raised.
They huddled together for a moment, appearing to communicate in some way, though none of them made a sound. After a few tense seconds, they broke apart and made an aisle down the middle of their group.
Do they want us to walk through there? What do we do?
None of us had any idea how to respond. My feet were rooted to the floor of the shuttle, hands gripping Shane’s arm hard enough that he’d probably be bruised later. I wanted to relax my grip, but my hands wouldn’t respond.
Aliens. Actual aliens. On a huge black spaceship that had just swallowed our shuttle and cut it away from the Delta. We were standing in artificial gravity on an alien spaceship. Maybe rescued from certain death.
Maybe heading for something even worse.
Warm, humid air wafted into our shuttle from their ship. I inhaled, bracing for toxic gas or sickening fumes, but it smelled thick and clean. Anything would smell cleaner than the inside of our shuttle.
Doc tried again.
“Does anyone speak English?”
Of course it was a ridiculous question. English died two hundred years ago when Earth was destroyed. But what else could he say?
The tallest alien, an algae-green one that walked on two legs and carried one of the weapons, strode toward us. He was the most humanoid in appearance, with two eyes in roughly the correct place. He had no nose and no mouth but did have what might be some kind of ear hole on each side of his head. His feet were wide and flat, like lily pads on a pond.
I looked at the rest of the aliens. They all had feet like that, of varying numbers.
I decided to call this tall one “Eddie” because in my whirling, panicked brain, that struck me as hilarious.
Eddie marched straight toward us, and we parted to let him pass. He moved into the shuttle and around behind us and started pushing us toward the open hatch.
“Do we go out?” Doc’s face was full of wonder.
What choice did we have?
We filed out of the shuttle between the columns of waiting aliens. None of them had made any noise beyond the sticky, sucking sound it made when they picked up their feet off the floor of the hangar.
They ushered us around the front of our shuttle, and I got a first look at the inside of their ship.
My eyes were still swollen from the days of no gravity, and I squinted to focus. The hangar we were in was enormous. Our shuttle sat just behind me, and across the room was another metal-hulled spaceship a bit larger than ours. It was basically tubular in shape, with a large, open hatch on its side. It had symbols painted behind the hatch that must have been writing in whatever language these creatures used to communicate.
Behind that ship I could just make out a different shape that was probably a third metal shuttle of some kind.
The floor and walls of the hangar were a mottled blue-green, lit by a soft yellow glow that seemed to emanate from every surface. There were no obvious light sources on the walls or the smooth, unbroken ceiling high above us. I turned to look back at our ship and saw that these aliens had cut through the wall of the Delta that had attached the two-sided hatchway to our shuttle.
They knew we couldn’t survive in a vacuum. They kept our hatch intact until we were safely on board their ship.
Did that mean they were friendly?
Shane asked what I was thinking. What we all must have been thinking.
“Who are they? Are they friendly?”
I pulled him closer to me and whispered, “I don’t know. I think so. They saved all our lives.”
If only they’d arrived a few days earlier. My heart gave a squeeze. Mom and Dad. And everyone else. Best not to start down that road. I’d avoided letting myself think about our parents since the horrible moment that the Delta’s hull was breached. Don’t go there now. You’ll never come back. Shane needs you.
The aliens marched us between the pockmarked shuttles that looked so different from the interior of the black bean ship that held us all. Were those the shuttles of other rescued space travelers? Were these little green guys some kind of cosmic lifeguards, scouting the galaxy for disabled spacecraft and saving the survivors of interstellar disasters?
I looked in vain for any more of our shuttles in the hangar. Surely other people had managed to evacuate in time. But if they had, the aliens hadn’t rescued them. Ours was the only Horizon shuttle in the ship. Our little group of survivors were the only ones here.
Across the hangar, other green aliens were moving equipment into a long hallway. I recognized things from the Delta: parts of the command bridge, computers, some of our entertainment systems, and a large, covered, rolling bin of the algae that was our staple food. It must have been strapped down when the hull breached and sucked everything out of the ship.
They made a bucket brigade, passing items from our ship along their alien chain to who-knew-where. I watched them move crates of our seeds, meant to plant on the new home we would never reach. A giant cooler full of animal embryos took six of them to slide along. Wouldn’t do them any good. All those systems lost power years ago. Nothing was still viable in that cooler.
A poke in the back of my thigh jerked me back to focus. Shane and I were last in line, and the rest of our people were exiting the hangar, escorted by more of the small green aliens.
“Where are they taking us?” Shane gripped my hand, shuffling along beside me.
“I don’t know, buddy. But it has to be better than the shuttle.” At least it smelled better.
They took us down a long hallway, featureless blue with the same yellow glow. We huddled together as we moved deeper into their ship. My hair was sticky with perspiration in the close humidity.
Doc’s voice echoed down the hall. “Are you taking us to someone who can talk to us?”
The aliens didn’t answer.
The hallway let out into a wider corridor. At long intervals, closed hatchways lined the hall. From behind some of them came the sounds of moving creatures, with strange bellows and cries.
Ahead, the crowd of humans stopped. I pulled Shane ahead of me and stood blocking him from the aliens behind us. “Whatever happens, stay with me,” I whispered.
One of the aliens touched a small plate outside the hatch. It opened, and the front half of our group was ushered inside. Doc Walsh, at the head of the group, was held back by two of the aliens holding his legs. One of them looked like it would be slippery to touch, like an eel. In the dampness of their ship, I wondered if they came from a water planet. Did they live in giant pools somewhere in this ship and only come onto dry land to rescue doomed ships floating in space?
The hatch closed, and the remaining twelve of us trooped farther down the hall, along with Doc.
Another hatch was opened.
As the rest of our people were herded through, Shane and I passed Doc, still being held by the aliens. I paused next to him.
“Are they taking you to the leader?”
He nodded. “I’m sure they are. They obviously think I’m in charge of us, so I’m sure they’re going to try and figure out how we can communicate.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, Jonah. I’ll find a way. We’ll all be fine.”
Eddie, the light green spaceman, poked me in the thigh again, and I followed Shane into the room beyond the hatchway.
It closed behind us, and the humans were alone once again.