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It's coldest near the Box.

The junkyard is an ice grotto.

It's quite pretty, I suppose. Sparkling white and blue, with light trapped inside the pearly slabs of ice, and the buried shapes of the scrap iron vague behind the semi-transparent frozen thickness.

Early in the evening, after listening to Alan 'Fluff' Freeman's Top Twenty on the wireless ('Foot Tapper' by the Shadows is Number One – yuck!), I went searching for Grandfather.

He wasn't in his laboratory or the Control Room.

Away from the fan-heater in my room, the Box is cold enough to frost my breath. I followed the cold to the door, which was open a crack, and peeked out. Thick cables ran from Grandfather's laboratory out through the door, so I knew he was experimenting nearby.

I was chilled by more than just the cold.

In the junkyard, Grandfather was talking to someone.

Through the door-crack, I saw Grandfather – wrapped up with a Russian fur hat and woolly cloak – holding up what might have been a large loudhailer or a small observatory dish with a crystalline filament extending from its centre.

I could only hear odd phrases. I wasn't sure if he was having a conversation or muttering to himself.

' ... an act of usurpation ... pestilential invaders ... "original tenant", eh? ... it'll get colder, of course ... big ball of intelligent ice ...'

He was having a conversation. I saw him nod and listen, but couldn't make out another voice, just a sound like someone gargling with icecubes.

I recognised the whispering. The presence I had sensed last night. I should have known that Grandfather would have felt it too, and taken steps to make contact with it.

He often says that Earth is no place to go for a decent conversation.

Grandfather was looking up at whoever – whatever – he was talking with. He pointed his apparatus.

I risked opening the door a little wider.

There was no one with Grandfather, but he stood in front of a wall of glistening, shifting ice. Inside were shapes, like the Palaeolithic men sometimes found in glaciers. The shapes weren't moving, but the ice was. Its surface was fluid, but not liquid.

Last night, I had thought there were eyes in the ice. Now, there were faces too.

'And so you wish to rid yourself of this infestation, my friend,' said Grandfather. 'What do the pests call themselves? Human beings? Clearly, no loss at all to the greater scheme of things. Prior right of occupation, in this case, is certainly on your side. We shall see what can be done, my dear fellow. I regret having caused you any inconvenience. It's not my place to get in the way, not at all, not at all.'

I let the door shut, pinching the cable.

My hearts were racing.

Later —

Grandfather came in. He didn't speak to me.

I worry about him.

I worry about why we are here, and what we might do. I'm more like him than them, the people he calls 'the infestation'.

I might seem to fit in, if only marginally, but it's just pretending.

I am not of this Earth. Like the Mekon.

The only person I've told is Malcolm, because he accepts everything as a magical mystery. Yesterday, he asked me whether if there was still snow on the ground Father Christmas would come again at Easter. He thinks a race of tiny people live inside television sets, ruled by giant bodiless heads called Announcers. I've told him about other planets, other places. When he grows up, he'll think I was just telling him stories.

That makes me sad.

Human beings – people – are aliens. Singlehearts who race through their lives, grow up and old fast, wear out their faces without ever changing.

But they're not an infestation.

This is their home, and we are their guests. Nobody even invited us.

I think, fighting mindache, we ran away from School. Where we come from, the Masters are angry with us.

I can get round the mindaches. There's a way to remember without hurting, by thinking in equivalents. So long as I dress up what lies beyond my mental fogs with the scenery of the Here and Now, I can remember Home.

Because of persistent