The Mission
Our mission—to discover signs of life
amongst the stars—seemed destined to succeed;
for though our sun-strewn galaxy was rife
with barren orbs, our probe commenced to feed
our mother ship with data that portrayed
a double-planet’s larger sibling as
a place where fast-evolving beasts once stayed
before their air was radioactive gas—
a toxin-laden, stormy atmosphere,
through which a ruined cityscape we viewed,
till heat and rads destroyed our spacecraft’s gear.
We saw no blue, nor green that life imbued.
Our captain was uncertain if this proof
of aliens would be accepted by
our home-world leadership as gospel truth,
or else dismiss it, labelling it a lie.
To guarantee our bonuses, we scanned
the lesser of those planets, where a thing
of manufactured metal graced its bland
grey airlessness. We made a vow to bring
this artifact back with us, which would prove
our honesty and quash the envious claim
of fakery, to finally remove
all doubt we’re not alone—and seal our fame.
The vessel sent, brought back a steely plaque
that creatures from the big world left behind
upon their moon, while pledging to the black
of space, “We came in peace for all mankind.”
Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was taught in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of hundreds of published short stories, poems and articles.
