_
_There were people all around us, some crying, some praying,
but most in a kind of stunned silence. The ship had come down
sat in the middle of Times Square. I remember looking at the
remains of the ticket sellers booth, now crushed under the huge
bulk of the thing. Why they decided to come down in the middle
of the city is a mystery to me; I like to think that they made
it a dramatic spectacle just for us, because that's what we
would expect.
__
The ship too was like something we might expect when we thought
of "aliens". It was tall, with rounded edges, and it made me
think of an old church I used to go to as a child, only plated
with chrome.
_ _ I just happened to be the closest
one. Not more than five minutes before, I had been yelling at
some guy to get back behind the line, or I would have him arrested.
It was a hollow threat on my behalf. Afterall, the whole city
was in a panic; how could they not be with this giant spaceship
floating high above it?
__ There were media people everywhere,
and when the ship came down, they were all pressing at my back,
trying to get a better look. It was all I could do to hold them
back. But after it came to a rest, they all backed away, leaving
me there alone.
_ _ They were tall. That was my
first thought. The main doors opened outwards, and a set of
chrome stairs extended down no more than fifteen feet from where
I was standing. Oddly, I never felt the urge to run. I just
looked up at the five of them, and thought, "man, are they ever
tall."
__ And thin. The men
and women both, like ballet dancers standing six and half feet
tall. Their hair was black, and their eyes were dark. Two of
them wore suits of armour like you'd see in museum, and
carried these tall banners with purple flags on them. The
others were in these dark blue robes. They looked around them,
seemed to be surveying the now silent crowd. I believe that
both sides knew that they were standing at a cross roads in
time.
_ _ The one in the front,
who later turned out to be Martext, their official ambassador
to us, was the first to come down the stairs. I knew somewhere
inside that I should be backing off. I heard the army guys
cocking their weapons, but I just stood there. "If they
open fire," I remember thinking, "we're dead. Please
God, don't let them shoot."
