Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [17]
The woman smiled and stroked the man’s face. ‘Who is?’
Irritated by the attention, the man pulled a small device that looked a bit like a calculator from his belt and swept it around. ‘If we hadn’t spent so much of our time looking after Mr Gibson, we’d have target acquisition by now. Trust us to land on the one part of Earth where everyone’s looking out for aliens.’
‘It might not be a coincidence. Our arrival would have created warping in space-time – the lights in the sky that these people have seen could be echoes of that.’
‘Or it could be that everyone on this planet is just a stupid Joey who points up to the sky every time there’s a funny light in it.’
‘We’re in the right area,’ the woman assured him. ‘We’ve done pretty well to narrow it down to this town in this time zone.’
The man frowned. ‘Odd. I’m reading a life form just –’
He spun round, and leapt off his swing, landing just in front of Daz, glaring at him. The man seemed ready to pounce.
‘I was just out... walking,’ Daz stammered, suddenly afraid. He didn’t want to put Julie in any danger by telling them about her.
‘Walking? It’s a very cold evening. Just walking? What’s that in your hand?’
‘Just a box of Milk Tray.’ Daz held it out for the man to inspect. ‘I... you can have them if you want.’
The man shook his head, scowling.
‘You’re from the UFO, aren’t you?’ Daz asked.
The man frowned. ‘Youeffwhat?’
The woman had joined him. Despite himself, Daz thought she was quite a looker. She had great, long legs, and the top she was wearing was short, so you could see she had a flat stomach. She looked strong – stronger than her brother, or whatever he was.
‘UFOs,’ Daz said. ‘Unidentified Flying Objects. Flying saucers. Aliens.’
Realisation dawned. ‘Of course,’ the man said. He pointed at the newspaper. ‘Little green men.’ He laughed, and looked up at the sky.
Daz forced himself to laugh with him.
The woman smiled encouragingly. ‘Well – now we’re here, what have you got to say to us?’
‘I...’ Daz didn’t know what to say. He’d been watching Buck Rogers on Saturday night with his brother. There had been alien women in that – a whole planet of them, all wanting to go to bed with Buck Rogers. Daz and his brother had laughed about the UFO spotters – they’d agreed they wanted to meet aliens, too, if they were all like that. Daz had had a great dream that night about living on the planet Amazotica. Now he’d actually met some aliens, Daz wasn’t so sure he liked it. There was something about the woman’s eyes.
‘You don’t look like aliens,’ he managed.
The man rolled his eyes. ‘Please don’t tell me I look like one of you.’
Daz looked at him. He didn’t. He was too... elongated. His legs were just a bit too long, his eyes a little too narrow, his hair swept back all wrong. Tiny differences, and he was sure this man could walk down Greyfrith high street without anyone noticing (he would have had to, to get to the park, Daz told himself, unless they’d beamed down like Captain Kirk) but this wasn’t a human being.
‘I didn’t mean to offend you... or your... wife.’
‘Wife?’ The man looked over his shoulder at the woman. ‘She’s not my wife, she’s... actually, I don’t think there is a word for what she is in your primitive language.’
Daz tried to stay calm. ‘Where are you from? I mean, what planet? Are you from Mars?’
‘Xbike, no. That’s even colder than it is here.’
‘You could wear warmer clothes,’ Daz suggested, looking over at the woman. She didn’t seem impressed by his observation. She didn’t look that cold, although she should do, dressed as she was.
The alien man bent down, a fluid motion, impossibly graceful. He smelled of... he didn’t smell of human being. Some sort of flower. Not-quite‐lavender. ‘I’m from a planet you haven’t heard of in the next galaxy over but five.’
‘Oh, and we’re also from a few million years in the future,’ the woman added. Her smell was stronger, like Old Spice.
‘Why are you here?’ Daz asked, worried about the answer.