“Alien invasion!” The thought had terrified humans for centuries, almost from the moment that the concept of extraterrestrials became familiar.
From H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds in 1898 through the UFO scares of the 1950s and for more than a century after, those worries seemed just science fiction. When in 2136 John Bomorov found his “Honeycomb Comet” the possibility of alien invasion became more real—but it and the other Sol Fragments were hulks that had been lifeless for millions of years, as had the extraterrestrials found on them.
Then in 2374 the Altair Sphere was discovered and with it real, live aliens. They seemed supremely uninterested in our race, and less interested than that in our Solar System. Nevertheless, from a million or billion to one odds against an invasion, the bookmakers began offering mere thousands to one.
The xenophobes had said it in a thousand ways, and a billion times: “If you play with fire, you’ll get burned.” In 2437 the xenophobes finally were vindicated: Aliens came to the Solar System!
Gian Gauci—Disastrex Director, Earth (our narrator)
Nash Mostromo—Earth President
Martin Suheimet—Mars President
Alima Kouyate—Titan Colony CEO
Yoshiaki “Bull” Kogi—Belt President
Mary Elizabeth Ranson—Director of Pre-Disaster Planning and Post-Disaster Response (aka Director of Disasters), Titan Colony
João Mbundu—admin, Disaster.gov.merc (Mercurian government department)
Aidah bint Jaber—Belter ship captain
Adm. Lemeyo Maika—Earth Defense space force officer
Col. Shillingford Roosevelt-DeFreitas, Cpl. 2nd Class Benyam Adamu, and Staff Sgt. Rigoberta Potosí—Earth Defense ground force soldiers
Russell Morris—farmer from Halfmoon Bay, Stewart Island (alias Rakiura), New Zealand
Gian Gauci as drawn by a student of mine in Korea who loved this story. (At that time he had the name Jack Purdu.)