The Trojan Horse by Christopher Nuttall Page A

mocking the puny humans making their way off the plane and heading towards a handful of buses waiting at one end of the runway.  In the distance, the silvery towers of the alien base rose up against the skyline.
     
    “Papers, please,” a policeman said.  There were a number of armed policemen waiting at the buses, carefully checking the papers carried by the visitors.  The alien base had already become a favoured destination for travellers – the curious, the worshipful and even the hostile – and the local police force had found itself overwhelmed as it struggled to try and keep the unwelcome guests from scrambling over the fence and slipping towards the alien base.  “I need to check your papers.”
     
    Jason produced his ID – his SETI card, the letter that had invited him to the base and the security card he’d been issued by a government minder – and waited for the policeman to check it, cursing the sun under his breath.  The heat seemed to grow every stronger – sweat was trickling down his back – as he waited; it seemed like hours before the policeman finally returned his ID and motioned for him to enter the bus.  It was cool inside, thankfully; he stumbled to a seat and collapsed in front of one of the windows.  He’d never faced such heat in his life.
     
    The bus lurched into life and started driving down a road towards the alien base.  It had been constructed near a former USAF base for heavy-lift aircraft, allowing the Federal Government a high degree of control over the surrounding area.  The airfield was separated from the alien base by a network of fences and armed guards, but hardly anyone came to visit the former base unless one of the alien shuttles came to land on the field.  They reserved their attention for the aliens.  Nearly a week since the aliens had made their speech at the UN, they were still a source of endless fascination to the inhabitants of Earth.  Every alien base on the planet existed under the same state of friendly siege.
     
    He winced as the bus neared the second layer of fencing.  There was a much stronger police presence there, along with a number of pro-alien and anti-alien protesters.  The policemen had separated the two sides when they started fighting, according to the driver, and left them sitting by the side of the road, their hands cuffed, until a police transport could arrive to take them away for processing.  God alone knew what would happen to them after that; Jason had known a couple of arrested protesters while he’d been at college and all they’d received had been a caution.  He looked away from one crying girl and up towards the alien base.  They built remarkably quickly.
     
    Inside the fence, the alien base rose towards the sky.  Jason had seen videos of the aliens landing components on the ground and then assembling them into a single set of structures.  They’d moved with remarkable speed; some commenters on the television had pointed out that only a military unit could move with such speed and skill.  Their prefabricated structures looked oddly simplistic for a star-travelling society, although he did have to admit that the human race had no benchmark to measure the aliens against any other race.  Perhaps simple designs were a constant among the Galactics.
     
    The base was composed of large angular structures, reminding him of the Pentagon to some extent, although the exact number of sides seemed to vary.  Their featureless metal walls seemed to glow of their own accord, although it could merely be a trick of the light.  He caught sight of the bus’s reflection as it parked beside one of the larger buildings and waited for the aliens to open the doors.  When the building finally opened up, Jason was among the first to scramble for the door.  There was no way he was going to pass up on the opportunity to see an alien base from the inside.
     
    Inside, the alien base was something of a disappointment, although it was clear