One Small Step

“Tell us the story again Uncle Larack!” The voices of the eager children filled the room. Even though it was past bedtime, Larack smiled indulgently at them, stroking Timal’s small head with his long, grey-skinned fingers.

“OK children, OK. Once more, then you have to go to sleep. Deal?”

“Yes, Uncle Larack!” They chorused, settling down around his feet on the rug by the fire. Larack reached for the fire iron, and stoked the flames, sending a warm amber glow flickering around them. He sat back in his old rocking chair, and cleared his throat.

“It was the twenty-first of July, nineteen sixty-nine, when the Nation’s biggest heroes made those fateful first steps. And I was lucky enough to count myself amongst them.” Larack’s eyes clouded at the memory, his thoughts returning to that amazing, and terrifying day decades ago.

He had been only thirty-two then, which was considered quite young for one as qualified as him. He had gained many prizes for his work in the field of science, and had been taken with the astronauts to run experiments on whatever they found up there.

“The sound of the rocket taking off was so loud, Mars could probably hear it!” The children laughed at this, as they always did. Larack smiled down at them before continuing.

“We sat there shaking like leaves as we were flung into space. You can’t begin to imagine how if feels, being up there like that. All you can see for miles is stars. And it’s so quiet, so very quiet.” The children stared up at him in awe, watching his face as he spoke.

It had been the most amazing experience of Larack’s life, flying through space that day. Even more amazing to him than when they had first landed. That had been wonderful, of course it had. But to Larack, the feeling of just being up there, surrounded by infinite space, had been more enthralling.

“It took a long time to get to Earth.” He continued. “We finally caught their gravitational pull, and went down. I tell you, there’s nothing like the feeling of gravity! It’s like you are wearing boots full of cement!” He paused for the children to giggle at the thought before continuing. “Well, as you know, two of them left the craft and actually stood on Earth! They wore special suits to protect them from the atmosphere. Earth has a lot of something called Oxygen, which we can’t breathe.

The land itself was like nothing you have ever seen! Everywhere we looked was yellow grainy stuff. Whenever you stood on it, you left great big footprints. It was heaped in great big mounds, as far as the eye could see.”

“I know what it was called!” Timal leapt up, eager to show he had remembered what Larack had previously told him. “It was the Sharaha!”

Larack chuckled. “Almost! It was the Sahara! The Sahara is a large dessert on Earth, all made up of sand. We know they have a lot of water as well; more than seventy per cent of the planet is water. We were lucky not to have gotten wet!” Larack cleared his throat before continuing.

“Well, we ran tests on all sorts of things that we found. Bits of rock, little prickly plants, even the sand itself. We made charts and took pictures. And we planted a flag in the sand, to mark that we had been there. It looked so funny there, blowing in the wind! I don’t know how anything could live on that planet, what with the wind and all. It’s a weird feeling alright.” A slight shiver ran over his skin as he remembered.

“Did you really see one of the aliens?” Shima piped up. She asked the same question every time, and never seemed to believe the answer.

“Yes, we really did see a human being.” Larack held a certain respect for other races, and disliked the term ‘alien’.

“Tell me what it looked like again!” Shima demanded.

“Well, it stood no more than five and a half feet tall. It was very short. It had the smallest head, and tiny eyes. Its arms only came about halfway down its body. How ever they manage with such short arms is beyond me! And its feet! They were so tiny it’s a wonder the thing could even stand!”

The children laughed at the thought. Timal looked down proudly at his own feet, which were two feet in length, and much more sensible for walking on.

“Can we go to the Museum again tomorrow and look at the pictures?” He asked Larack.

“Sure we can. After school, mind. We can catch the shuttle to Area fifty-one and go see the landing site if you like. Then we can go to the museum afterwards.”

“Area fifty-one?!” The children cried in amazement. That would be a big treat. Area fifty-one was very famous on the moon. It was the site of the first Earth space shuttle landing. The craft had crashed, and the remains of what had been found were now displayed in the Moon Museum, alongside plans which had been drawn up by the Moon Government. They were planning more expeditions to Earth. Maybe they could even colonise the planet one day.

Larack stood up and stretched his eight foot tall frame. Picking up his walking stick with one three-fingered hand, he made his way to the door.

“Time for me to go home to my crater now, kids. You sleep well and behave for your mother, and I will be back tomorrow to take you to the Museum.”

Larack drove his moon buggy slowly back home that night. He gazed up at the sky, and the blue-green planet which hung there, surrounded with stars. He wondered how many humans lived there, what they ate, what they did. He hoped he would live to see the day the planet was finally colonised, and he felt sure he would. Science had been advancing in leaps and bounds, and his old contacts from the days he was involved in it all kept him up to date on the latest findings. They had created an oxygen vacuum. It was only a prototype at the moment, but they would soon be able to use it to suck out the un-breathable atmosphere on Earth, enabling them to create new colonies for their ever expanding race. He felt sorry for the humans, but was glad of the advances it would mean for his own kind.

And who knows, maybe they could make special domes for the humans, keep them in the same way they kept animals on Earth.

“They would certainly entertain the kids!” He chuckled to himself with a smile.