Var was being devastated.

Never in the history of this beautiful region of France had such a forest fire been encountered. It wasn’t just the woodland that was burning, but the scrub alongside fields, the vines themselves, and homes.

Alain Lob stood in the roasting heat, sweating in his red firefighting suit and yellow helmet. He watched as another of the converted DC-10s flew overhead and dropped its cargo of water onto the raging inferno on the south side of the hill. Helicopters were more precise, but the use of the larger aircraft was essential as the time it took to reload and reach the fire was more important than accuracy, however, it was clearly a losing battle.

‘Keep them coming,’ he said into his radio.

‘Number four on the way, Commander,’ was the tinny reply.

‘Did we get an answer on the extra flights?’

‘We did, one more should be here shortly, but that’s it. There’s a new fire just north of Marseilles and the remainder will be heading there, sir.’

‘Damn it! It’s crazy. We’re losing the battle. Out,’ he said, switching channels. ‘Get me the prefect in St Antonin-du-Var. Quick.’

Another huge plane skimmed over the vineyards to his left, rose on the approach to the hill and a tenth load of water was released.

‘Allard here. Who’s that?’ came over the radio.

‘Commander Lob. We’re losing the battle. If the fire crosses the hill, it’ll be upon you in minutes.’

‘It’s here now. My men are evacuating everyone who hasn’t already left. Houses are on fire on the south of the village.’

‘Don’t let anyone delay. Seriously, we can’t stop it.’

Alain could visualise the scene on the other side of the hill. People panicking, trying to take belongings with them as they left ancestral homes.

Philippe Allard, prefect of police, pulled his patrol car to the side of the road. An elderly couple were carrying furniture and boxes to a dilapidated old Citroen van standing in the driveway.

He shouted to them. ‘For God’s sake, Henri, what the hell are you doing. Go!’

‘We’ve got a while. Trying to take important things,’ the grey-haired hobbling man retorted.

‘And they’re more important than your lives? Seriously, get out. NOW!’ He leaned out of the car, looking behind the vehicle. ‘Look, the Dubois place is on fire! You can’t wait.’

Flames were rampant around the Dubois bungalow and flaming debris was flying through the air, settling on the Laurents’ roof.

‘Look! Your roof is burning,’ the prefect shouted. ‘For fuck’s sake go!’

The woman looked behind her and upwards. She looked as if she was going back into the house. ‘Don’t go back in, Louise,’ shouted the old man, suddenly appreciating the threat.

It happened so quickly. A flaming branch fell into the hedge along the roadside, and it caught fire instantly. The old woman came out with a cardboard box, running towards the van. Her husband saw the debris raining around them. The box was burning, then the woman’s dress. She screamed and the old man ran towards her, beating out the fire as she fell to the pavement.

Alain was out of his car in a flash, fire extinguisher in hand and rushed to the rescue, spraying the retardant over the squirming crying figure. The two men pulled her to her feet between them.

The hedge continued to burn, a strong wind fanning the flames throughout its length. The entrance to the garden was through an archway covered in the same hedge material. They were cut off from the road.

Alain ran through the flames and turned the remainder of his extinguisher onto the trellis. ‘Quick, get out!’ he shouted.

He looked back and saw that both the elderly people’s clothes were alight. He ran back into the garden and started to roll them backwards and forwards on the ground. Henri’s clothes were quickly out, but Louise was still afire and screaming as the flames burned her hair and arms as she tried to fight them off.

Outside, in the road, the Citroen exploded into flames. Alain tried to pull the woman out through the arch, but she’d lost consciousness. He turned to the man, saw despair in his face, and called for him to run out of the garden, but he stood, stock still, watching his Louise being consumed as the fire took its dreadful hold. He didn’t run outwards, but threw himself on top of her, as if to protect her, but it achieved nothing other than setting his own clothes burning again.

‘Henri! Leave her! Run!’ shouted Alain, realising that it was now hopeless, and he was in fear for his own life. Flames were in the road, branches and fiery paper were being whipped along by the growing strength of the wind.

He looked at his car, then at the couple again. There was nothing he could do for them. The old man’s face turned towards him in hopelessness. Alain jumped into the vehicle, hit the accelerator, and raced up the street, barely keeping pace with the speed of the advancing inferno. Tears ran down his face.

He sped out of the village as fast as he could, heading east. He needed to get to Lorgues. The fire was heading that way, and he must warn them. His burned hands gripped the steering wheel as he raced away from his now destroyed home village of Saint Antonin-du-Var. He wondered how many had died. How many foolhardy individuals hadn’t heeded the seriousness of the evacuation warning and had died trying to save possessions.

What price those possessions now?

Free book for you and your friends. MOONWALK. If you like my writing, you can give the link to family and friends for them to download. It means signing up to this blog/newsletter, but they can unsubscribe any time they wish.

MOONWALK is a short story in which you are introduced to Mark Noble for the first time as he makes his first trip to Moonbase. Unfortunately, the Dragonstar Lander suffers an accident during the descent and Mark finds himself in a life or death situation lost on the lunar surface with air and resources rapidly running out.

This is the Amazon description:

Mark Noble thought becoming the youngest person to walk on the moon would be his greatest achievement.

His first moonwalk may be his last.

You and your friends can get a free copy of this prequel by going to this link.

If you enjoyed the Mark Noble stories it would be great if you tell your friends and send them the link. They can get a free read on me.

The spacewalker moved to the side of the opening of the hold in case he’d be needed to help with the transfer of AD2. The Scaffy Wagon began an approach to the entrance of the hold.

‘Scaffies. Halt operations!’ shouted Yuri over the communication channel.

‘What’s up?’ asked Alana.

‘I was about to disconnect framework from hold to give the Scaffy access to move AD2 when message came onto monitor. It saying, “RELEASE ME”.’

‘We need him to be attached to the framework in order to move him,’ said Alana.

‘Well, seems he wanting move freely. I release him if you wish,’ said Yuri.

I jumped into the conversation, ‘Release him immediately, Yuri. Scaffies, back off, please.’

No one argued. There were some puffs of fuel as the Scaffy Wagon retreated from its position. There was a slight movement inside the hold, the framework opened and AD2 was floating freely.

‘The message is now being, “THANK YOU. STAND CLEAR”,’ updated Yuri.

Everything was clear of the hold and sphere now, so we had nothing to do but wait.

Slowly and gracefully, AD2 moved into the entrance of the Mars One hold and it seemed to sweep itself left, right, up, and down as if surveying the scene, then it circled Mars One as if examining it before carrying out the same survey of each of the Cluster’s spheres.

Very quickly indeed, it vectored away from us to about one hundred metres, which was a bit worrying, stopped and turned back towards us.

I guessed it was assessing its location and taking a look at the Earth, spread out beneath it. Brilliant white clouds breaking over India and the Far East.

My heart missed a beat when I saw what it did next. It spun around and shot off towards the ISS. Had I made the wrong call? I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, the one you get when you realise you might have made a serious blunder. Even the secret George and I shared had become ineffective in this situation. Had I got everything wrong?

‘It’s heading for the ISS!’ shouted Alana.

What should I do? I didn’t have any options. Was it attacking us? I still didn’t have any options.

‘All we can do is wait and see. Warn the ISS,’ I said, keeping my voice calm and steady. ‘Yuri, please type “PLEASE EXPLAIN ACTION” into the communication system you have been using with AD2.’

‘Will do, Eva.’

The device was now almost out of sight. I grabbed a pair of binoculars and followed it. It was close to the ISS, seemed to pause a while, looped around it for a few minutes then repeated its loop even more slowly. I held my breath. My heart was pounding. Perhaps it was just curious.

‘No answer, Eva,’ said Yuri. 'It possibly not received message as away from the Mars One environs.'

‘ISS reports it swung around the station,’ said Alana, ‘spent a short while beside the Cupola and close to a Soyuz and Dragon and is now heading slowly back towards us. It gave them a fright for sure, passed very slowly past the living modules.’

‘Just curiosity, I think,’ I said, glancing at George who raised his eyebrows. Secret relief passed between us.

It returned to the Cluster, turned towards the sphere and sleekly entered where the sections had been removed. In less than a minute it was pointing towards AD1 and manoeuvring around it, perhaps examining the damage and the empty cavity within it. It touched its golden rod against AD1’s and, after a minute or two, it turned and faced the seats from more or less the position we’d been going to attach it to in the first place. It had cut the transfer time down but had almost given me a heart attack in the process. I’d had visions of the ISS being blown up and then us. Heaven knows why I should expect it to hurt us, but for a moment I had, and it took a while for my heart rate to return to normal.

‘Eve, can I give the command to reinstate the sphere sections?’ asked Alana and I nodded. I glanced towards George Rainey again and raised my eyebrows in a sign of relief which was mirrored by him widening his eyes briefly. First crisis over, perhaps.

The Scaffy Wagon approached the sphere again, grasped the first of the three segments and began the process of fixing them back into position. It was a painfully slow procedure and wasn’t completed until almost one in the afternoon. I’d already suggested the diplomatic team had some lunch. AD2 made no further move.

During lunch, the shuttle bus docked and brought Yuri from Mars One to the living quarters. We had a welcome and warm hug and, damn it all, he had to say he was sorry about Mario. I’d been unprepared and ended up in floods of tears in a bearlike hug from Yuri which was hurting my arm, but I dared not say anything to stop such a wonderful gesture. I pulled myself together, separated from him and had to deal with zero-g sticky-tears. Such a nuisance. He gave me a second comforting hug but thankfully not so tightly.

The Scaffy Wagon put the last section in place and one of the crew was now outside checking the seals before we introduced atmosphere to the sphere.

The six of us in the diplomatic team suited up and, one by one, we passed through the airlock from the observation chamber into the presence of the two alien vehicles. I paused in mid-flight beside George and squeezed his shoulder before taking my turn. He looked up at me knowingly. Beside him were the two military observers, both in dress uniform, a general from the USA and a colonel from Russia, who was having trouble controlling space sickness. Fortunately, our governments had kept the military out of any involvement with the alien. Hopefully that would prevent the misunderstanding and disasters oft depicted in first-contact movies like Arrival, The Abyss, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Thank goodness, however, no one knew of the secret George and I possessed. Little did I know that would be blown wide open in the next few minutes.

The pressure suits had a supply of air which would last thirty minutes. Shutting the visor turned on the air. We had all practiced the action and even I could shut it in less than a second. I wanted us to have our visors open when we met the alien personality. A twenty-inch monitor and speaker were on hand.

Soon we were all seated in our allocated places with me at the front.

I gazed at this inanimate alien artefact and, feeling foolish, uttered the words, ‘Welcome to Earth.’

I half expected him to say, ‘Take me to your leader,’ but the reply, when it came ten seconds later was much more mundane.

‘Good afternoon, Evelyn,’ the first words spoken by an alien to humanity in a face-to-face meeting, even if one face was a miniature spaceship. I recognised his voice as a perfect copy of the man Roy had used for the English tuition video.

He knew my name. It meant he understood the reveal video and that it was me who presented it. It also meant he could tell us apart, even in helmets, which confirmed he had excellent visual sensors and the sound seemed to be emanating directly from him, not the speaker we’d provided.

‘Thank you. Good afternoon to you too. What should we call you? You’ll know I used the name Allen for the image of one of your people in the video.’

‘I am Allen.’

‘The same Allen as in the image?’

‘The same. My real name is Nsyncadma.’

‘I am pleased to meet you, Nsyncadma.’

‘What happened to my other self?’

‘We think he was struck by a meteor in antiquity. Seated behind me are Hugh, Reg, Yuri, Petra, and Alana.’

‘I am pleased to meet you all.’

Several variations of hello or welcome came from behind me.

‘Do you know how long you have been here?’

After a brief pause, he said, ‘One hundred and thirty-two million, four hundred and eighty-seven thousand, five hundred and fifty-three of your Earth orbits.’

My goodness. That was precise.

‘Have you been asleep throughout that period?’

‘We have, although we awoke regularly to check our situations.’

‘We have been examining your other self from the damaged craft. Can we continue to learn from him, or would you prefer we returned him to you?’

‘In good time, I would like to deactivate his mind modules.’

‘Are we supposed to unscrew your golden rod?’

‘No, unscrewing the rod was a mechanism to awake me if systems had not already awoken me automatically. I awoke during transportation from the planet you call Mars.’

This all seemed to be going well. Simple questions and simple answers.

‘Why have you come to visit us?’ There, the first pointed question.

‘We are explorers. Some of us made the choice to have our minds sent to other planetary systems in the hope of meeting other civilisations such as yourselves.’

‘So, does your original body still exist on your home world?’

‘No. I am long dead. Even my civilisation might be gone after such a long period. It was a choice we made. I will have lived a normal life on my home world, Dregednon. I am fortunate to have also had the opportunity to exist in this form. Life is short. Electronic life can be almost indefinitely extended.’

‘Can you communicate with Dregednon? Did your home world give you updates on how it was doing?’ This was a question the military had requested be asked, to discover if he was communicating with his world.

‘No, neither. Those of us who undertook the exploration project knew we would be alone. The speed of photons may be fast, but communication, even at that speed, is impractical.’

‘For how long are your craft designed to operate?’

‘One day one of me might observe the end of the universe.’

‘But fuel?’

‘The fuel for orbital adjustments should last indefinitely and even primitive cultures could synthesise it for us. Will you please deactivate the device?’

‘Which device? The monitor?’ I asked, rather puzzled at his request.

‘The nuclear device which is attached to this environment.’

There was agitated rustling of the suits of my team behind me as they obviously looked at each other questioningly. I hoped George was relaxed in the observation sphere.

How on Earth did he know about the device? How should I answer this? I thought back to my Downing Street meeting which had taken place before I’d travelled to Motherwell for the launch. It hadn’t been what I expected, and neither was this situation.