Sometimes the memory of the headlights would invade Alec's dreams and wake him.  Yellow circles of light, stabbing through the darkness, boring into his mind, coming closer.  Like eyes.  Like the eyes of the creature on the beach.

He rarely thought back to the days before the creature now, to the days when he was young and stupid and the future was a golden age waiting to happen and he was still Alec Redshaw and in love with Sandra McBride and they were going to be young for ever.

Sometimes he felt as if his life had begun that day on the beach, as if the nineteen years before that were no more than a pleasant dream he had had in the womb.  But the moment at which he had first seen the alien was seared into his memory, like a birth trauma.  Or rebirth.  The start of his new life.  The moment at which he was forced to grow up, although he had neither recognised nor accepted the fact until later.

The broken capsule lay on the grey beach.  Alec craned his neck to see inside it, steeling his nerves and bracing his cartwheeling stomach against the shock to come.  When he saw the creature at last, it was almost a letdown.  He had expected some multitentacled monstrosity, not something so... small.  So wizened.  It looked like a baby.  He could have plucked it from its nest of multicoloured wiring, and tucked it beneath one arm.  It wasn't even green.

He almost laughed, but the instinct to do so was overwhelmed by the enormous realisation that he was looking, actually looking, at a being from another world.

He was disappointed, amused, awe-struck, full of wonder, excited and scared.  The emotions overwhelmed and paralysed him.  He didn't know what to think or how to feel.

Perhaps, deep down, he felt a sense of dread too.  Perhaps he knew then that his life had just changed for ever.  Or perhaps he didn't, and his mind would simply overlay that detail on to his memory in retrospect.  Perhaps it was only in distorted recollections of the moment that Alec would be so keenly aware of the gentle breeze, the sting of sand particles on his cheeks, the lapping of the sea against the beach, the salty scent of fresh air and the distant, lilting sound of piano music.  Familiar sensations that would very soon be lost to him.


'Its skin was a sort of purply grey,' said Sandra, 'all wrinkly.'

'Its head was bigger than its body,' Alec chipped in, shifting uncomfortably in his flimsy metal-framed chair.  It had been a long time since he had talked about the Maker.  Doing so brought back some of the conflicting emotions, some of the uncertainty he had felt on that beach in 1965.  He wondered if he had made a mistake, inviting the stranger into his quarters.  He had positioned guards outside and his personal robot within to sound an alarm if necessary, but it was still a risk.  He felt exposed.

'Its face was... wide,' he said.  'Like it had been stretched by the ears or something.'

'It didn't have ears,' said Sandra.  'Its head just sort of...'

'Stuck out a bit to each side.'

'It didn't have a nose, just two nostrils: slitty things at angles to each other.'

'Its eyes were huge.'

'Yeah, really big.'

'They opened sideways like...'

'Curtains.'

'And they were all bright yellow inside.'

Sandra nodded.  'Bright yellow, like headlights.  And it didn't blink, not once.'