text: Going to be the First The Situation I have long wanted to be the first one to do something memorable. And now I am just about to do what no one on my planet has ever done before. But I’m not so sure that this is something that I want to do, certainly not alone as I am now. I had known about the exciting possibility of this great event and worked towards its likelihood for years, from boy to man, from school to experience. But now I do not feel completely comfortable or ready for it, especially in the present circumstances. I have to make a decision soon. Do I go for it, or do I return back to where I came from? The First Strike There were three of us at the beginning of this space adventure. We laughed over how we were going to race to see who was going to make the first big step onto ground untrodden by our people before. But the first major obstacle we encountered eliminated one of us from ‘the touching the ground race’ as we had been calling it. The obstacle was a round flying object that came for certain from our eventual destination and quickly closed in on our spaceship before we had time to put up our defences. The object exuded such an incredibly strong attractive force that it slammed one of our number against the nearest wall of our space craft, crushing his breath and his heart beat right out of his body. There was nothing the two of us could do to rescue him from his fate. Fortunately, we had been strapped into our seats, while he had been walking, so we could not be moved like he had been. Granted, breathing was quite difficult for the two of us for a few seconds, but still possible. Our heartbeats sped up, but not to a rate that would force our hearts to burst, as happened to our flight mate and good friend. The Second Strike As we got closer to our destination, we faced another threat. A rocket circled our space ship. It shot a ray that, without breaking the outside surface of our ship, literally set my one remaining flight partner on fire. He glowed for a second or two and then went up in flames. I am now alone. I am lucky to have been sitting down in the inner office, not near the surface of the ship like my friend and colleague had been. The First Decision I have to make a decision now. Should I land on the planet and complete the mission, or head back to my home planet? After some thought, I decided that I should complete our mission. I owed it to my two colleagues. I owed it to the boy I was that yearned to have this chance. In addition, there was important work here that I needed to do for our people to have a safer future. I turned on the undetectablizer. As soon as it began functioning, I was protected from having my craft and I seen, heard or the source of a rebounding ray. Soon afterwards I saw several space vehicles apparently sent out to seek me out. One of them nearly collided with me quite accidently. I’m knew that the pilot could not detect the presence of my vessel. The undetectablizer had worked its magic. I approached and then passed close to their moon, and, much to my surprise, I found it to be completely empty of life. I would have thought that they would have occupied it by now. They had first landed on it a longt time ago, according to our space history books, and made a big deal out of it at the time. It did not take me long after that to land on the planet in a field filled with plant life. I believe that the local name for the plant was corn. The task that we had been set was to take a sample of a particularly successful plant, to see whether there was some genetic element in the planet that made the people that lived here so incredibly aggressive towards people from other planets. I was shocked to hear what they had done to the people on Mars.. The plants were easy to sample, not having strong defences against what I was doing. It would be interesting to see what our scientists would find out about life on this planet based on this sample. I had a bit of a hard time resisting eating the corn, as I had read somewhere that the people who lived on this planet thought it to be quite tasty. The Second Decision Just as I returned to my space ship I picked up a signal that was being broadcast around the planet. Apparently the message it sent was that the planet was being attacked by ‘dangerous aliens’. I wanted to reply to the message saying that there was only one alien currently on their planet, and he was about to leave, having done no damage to the people of the planet, although he had stolen some corn. I felt now that it could be possible that I would not only be the first of our people to land on this planet, but could very well be the last to set foot here. These were not an easy people to deal with in any mutually beneficial way. We might never again take the chance to return to Abbadabba ‘land of the unknown’, as we call it. I discovered when I was listening to the signal that their name for their planet was ‘earth’. Right at this moment I think that a better name for it in this one of many languages on the planet might be ‘stone’. It certainly seems to me to be a hard place. I am glad that I live on Neptune, and that the denizens of this planet do not yet know that we exist. Still, I want to return here and work towards establishing a friendly connection with this planet. I will have lots of time on my flight back to think of how that might come to be. Right now I think that I will try to override the signal transmitting the ‘dangerous aliens’ message with the simple but truthful words, “We come in peace.” And that was to be the first step.