Terror Firma. Matthew Thomas

a small black box. But the strangest thing about them was they were all wearing make-up, and none too subtly applied at that. They had white foundation smeared on good and thick, and each bore bright red lipstick too. Their eyes were hidden behind horn-rimmed shades.

      ‘Now as folks round here will tell you, I’m a bloke who likes his privacy. ‘‘That Smithy loves his privacy,’’ they say. When intimidating strangers come calling, as a rule, I’m more likely to send them packing with two barrels of buckshot than offer tea and drop scones. But on this occasion that’s just what I done. I’d lost my innate belligerence.’

      ‘What did they want?’

      ‘That’s just it. Nothing as such. Just asked me lots of silly questions. The one with the box was silent throughout; just stood there staring at me and holding his contraption as if it were some sort of gift. One of the others seemed fascinated by my TV. Asked me how it worked, then shut up after that. Their leader did most of the talking.’

      ‘What sort of questions did he ask?’

      Smith looked genuinely baffled. ‘Mostly stuff about my nightly visitation. But not the obvious things, nothing to do with the craft, or the Morris dancers, or what I thought they were doing, just … odd things. He seemed obsessed with knowing if I had any physical scars to show for my adventures. Not so much a scarring, I told him, more of a soreness to be quite frank. Even to this day I have to be careful if I sit down at the wrong angle, and the sight of my dairy herd’s pendulous udders can spark off an excitement that leaves me doubled up in pain. Needless to say Mrs Smith ain’t as impressed as she used to be.’

      The young farmer looked suddenly crestfallen down at his feet as Kate pushed. ‘And that’s when they made their threats?’

      The farmer nodded. ‘Yeah, all suddenly the mood turned real nasty. Once they’d convinced themselves I bore no lasting marks they crowded round all threatening. The leader told me that if I ever mentioned their visit, or my enforced night of passion, terrible things would happen to me. After the terrible things that had already happened I was in no mood to argue. Then he handed me these.’

      He showed Kate a selection of gaudy promotional fliers for what looked like a New Age mystic religion. The organization claimed to be able to make sense of the most bizarre psychic experiences – new recruits were always welcome. She wasn’t certain but she felt sure she’d heard of the Cult of Planet Love somewhere before.

      Tearing her eyes from the strangely compelling, almost hypnotic symbols on the covers, she refocused on her subject. ‘But you feel able to talk about your ordeal now?’

      ‘Too bloody right,’ said Mr Smith, jumping to his feet and barely wincing in pain. ‘If their sort comes calling again I’ll be ready for them with my gun. I just … wasn’t ready at the time, that’s all.’

      Kate stopped her tape recorder and sighed wearily. She had never heard the term ‘Men in Black’, but she had a close personal friend who knew only too much about them.

       8. Aurora Bored-Me-Senseless

      The star-speckled sky arched above Dave’s head like God’s very own dandruff-covered blanket. For the briefest of seconds he suffered a stomach-churning attack of vertigo, his reeling senses telling him he was falling headlong into the infinity of endless night.

      With a jolt that almost threw him off balance Dave came crashing back to earth. The piece of earth he came crashing back to was a small patch of rocky desert, beside a dusty highway, eighty miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada. The wilderness around him was very still and very quiet, but he was not alone. Nearby a motley assortment of individuals from every walk and some stumbles of life stood silently, just as Dave did, peering up at the moonless night sky. They had only one thing in common. Hope shone from all their eyes like the light from a flickering candle flame.

      Dave stood at a very special spot. This sandy roadside verge was the nearest an unauthorized civilian (and when it came to matters like these there wasn’t really any other sort) could get to the Mecca, St Peter’s, Wailing Wall and 74 Station Road, Aberdeen of Ufology. Twenty yards away, down the gently sloping desert, a double razor-wire fence stretched off as far as the eye could see in both directions. The signs were evenly spaced: ‘USE OF DEADLY FORCE PERMITTED’. The signs were there for one very good reason. Over the jagged ridge on the horizon lay the top-secret US Air Force base known as ‘Dreamland’, or Area 51.

      This facility was so secret that officially it didn’t even exist – it said so in all the tourist brochures, books, magazines, films, TV shows and pamphlets that had been published on the matter over the past forty years. In the nearby one-stop town of Rachel you could buy a T-shirt that told you much the same thing. As far as secrets went ‘Dreamland’ was about as well kept as Colonel Gaddafi’s hair.

      Area 51. Some claimed that forty-two levels beneath the burning desert there lay a junkyard full of crashed alien craft. Others claimed that the very aliens themselves were housed here, their brains picked over by the sort of government scientist who giggled a lot and hadn’t learned to shave. But tonight Dave and the others weren’t here to speculate, they were here for the show. And as regular as an atomic clock, they weren’t to be disappointed.

      At eight-thirty precisely the first lights glided serenely above the horizon. They must have been more than ten miles away but against the translucent indigo sky they stood out like nuns in a whorehouse. As if on cue, a barely audible sigh rose from the congregation. Deferentially, camcorders were raised in unison as the nightly act of worship began.

      The display was much the same as it ever was. For thirty minutes the lights bobbed and weaved, dived and swooped. It mattered not that the event was caught on over twenty cameras, the tapes of ‘assorted coloured lights dancing in the sky’ had been seen many times on TV before. It took much more to impress a cynical public these days.

      Shortly, Dave was conscious of a figure standing closer to him than the others. ‘Mighty fine sight,’ said the newcomer, not taking his eyes from the display for a second. ‘Makes you proud to be American.’

      Dave looked his companion up and down. He was the sort of middle-aged man who had been fit once, but pizza and Miller Lite had taken their toll. Covering his broad belly was a T-shirt depicting an Arab terrorist cowering beneath a cruise missile. ‘Go On–Make My Day’ begged the caption.

      ‘Name’s Ray,’ he beamed holding out a vast hand that could have easily encased both of Dave’s. ‘Fifty-eight combat missions over Nam and not a hint of post-traumatic stress disorder.’

      Dave nodded meekly. ‘Dave. Twenty-six copies of ScUFODIN Monthly, and no trace of a book deal yet. Actually I’m not American, I’m on holiday from the UK.’ Instantly he was wondering if this was further into conversation than he wanted to get.

      ‘Ah – England!’ his new friend gushed. ‘We can always rely on you guys to back us up. Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher – now they were leaders with real balls, but this new guy of yours makes them look like pussies. Not like the wet farts we have leading us over here.’

      Dave correctly surmised that he should direct the conversation away from politics. ‘So, have you been interested in UFOs for long?’

      Ray chuckled good-naturedly. ‘Oh, they ain’t no flying saucers, boy. That there’s good old Yankee know-how driving those babies. If I was twenty years younger I’d take a shot at piloting one myself.’

      ‘So you think they’re just the latest military hardware? If that’s the case why is your government so secretive about them? Why not show them off to the world’s press to help deter aggression?’

      Ray looked pityingly at Dave. ‘They ain’t just any sort of aircraft. They’re the very latest in super-secret stealth technology recon birds. If everyone knows we’ve got them, what’s the point in having a stealth plane?’

      Dave