Excerpt from Chapter 16

Inside The Moon

I was about to complete a 360-degree inspection of the place, when it was right there, standing almost in front of me; it was an odd way to encounter a Martian.

The creature turned towards the torchlight with its huge luminous eyes, seemingly oblivious of my presence, then it shifted back, staring towards the wall. The Martian was far larger than I had imagined and its bear-like size could easily overpower me.

Briefly I shone the torch in front of it to see what it was doing. A row of tentacles–about a third of the way down its body–prodded and poked at the rock wall. With the rifle aimed at its head, all I had to do was pull the trigger and this Martian would be dead.

Then it occurred to me that if I discharged the weapon now, I would be no better than the Martian that had killed my father in the pit on Horsell Common.

Besides, there was something strange about this creature that did not behave in a way I expected: it was completely absorbed by the wall. It had no idea how close to death it was, as my finger shook nervously inside the glove that held the trigger.

The alien creature was agile, and it came at me with surprising speed, knocking me over. Instead of impacting against the wall or the stone floor, I fell into the passageway and found myself sliding down a steep narrow slope on my back.

With the torch illuminating my rapid

descent, I gripped on to both the case and the rifle, which scraped on the sides of the passage walls. As I lay stunned at the bottom, the Martian loomed over me. Its black, almost featureless face came closer as its mass of squirming tentacles slapped and poked against my visor.

I closed my eyes, fearing the worst. Then the case was snatched from me, and with my heart thumping hard I looked for the Martian–but it had gone.