it,' Rob replied.
The alien turned round to look at me.
'You wouldn't be able to pronounce it.'
'Try me,' I snapped. I didn't like being told that I wouldn't be able to do something by anyone, certainly not by an alien.
Rob seemed to pick up on my irritation and immediately did his best to try and diffuse the situation.
'I've been calling him John,' he said. 'You don't mind that, do you John?'
'John' shook his bulbous head.
'I don't mind. It doesn't really matter. Popular name, isn't it?'
'Used to be the most popular name,' Siobhan said.
The alien managed a thin-lipped smile.
'Thought so.'
'Why?' asked Rob.
'Because a lot of my friends have been given human names by the people they've met. Not including me I know of seventeen Johns, four Stevens, three Christophers and one Thomas!'
That really annoyed me. I didn't know why, but it did.
'Who wants a drink?' I grumbled.
'Beers for us two please, Tom,' Rob answered.
'And me,' added Siobhan.
'Can you have beer?' I asked, nodding in the general direction of the alien.
'I'm old enough, if that's what you mean,' he replied, deadpan.
The supercilious tone of his voice was infuriating. I couldn't tell if he was intentionally trying to wind me up or whether he was just doing it by chance. I walked out to the kitchen and fetched four bottles of beer.
By the time I returned to the living room the others had dragged three chairs out onto the front lawn. I grabbed another one (nice of them to think of me) and sat down next to Siobhan before passing the drinks around.
'So, how are you enjoying yourself here?' Siobhan asked the alien. Although she was sitting just inches away from me she had managed to angle herself so that all I could see was her back. 'Are you getting used to being here yet?'
I watched John the alien and smiled inwardly as he struggled to open his bottle of beer with those long, slender fingers. Siobhan reached across, took the drink and did it for him.
'I wouldn't say I'm enjoying it,' he answered, sniffing and cautiously sipping his beer. 'It's adequate for now.'
He shuffled in his seat, looking distinctly uncomfortable. His body was too long for the seat.
'Looking forward to getting back?'
'Of course I am.'
'You must miss home,' Siobhan continued.
'I do,' he replied. 'I knew I was going to be away for a long time, but this is going to take much longer than any of us expected.'
'So what exactly happened?' I asked.
'What? Happened when?'
'When you were out there on your ship. I can't imagine what could have happened to cripple something as big and complex as your ship.'
'We were mining minerals in an asteroid field and we were hit by debris.'
'Debris!' I exclaimed. 'Fucking hell, must have been a bloody big bit of debris to do so much damage.'
He fixed his baby-blue eyes on mine.
'It was.'
His voice was icy cold and devoid of all emotion. Although I had no way of knowing whether the aliens normally used the same expression and intonation in their voices as we did, I sensed that was his way of telling me to piss off.
While I stared at the alien and wished that he would fuck off back to wherever it was that he had come from, Rob and Siobhan continued to bombard him with a barrage of questions.
'So how did you feel when you stepped out of the ship?' Siobhan wondered. 'What were your first impressions?'
'First impressions of what?'
'Of everything. What did you think of the planet, our cities, our people?'
He thought carefully for a few moments and finished his beer. He was drinking at an impressive speed. I had only just started mine.
'If I'm honest,' he began, 'arriving here was a very strange experience.'
'Strange?' I asked. 'In what way?'
He thought again before replying.
'Strange in that being here is like being in a living history book. There are some major differences between our planets and our people, but generally your technology and way of living is similar to the standards we had on our planet a considerable time ago...'
'When you say considerable,' I interrupted, 'just how long are we talking about?'
'You are about three hundred years behind us.'
'You're that far ahead?' Siobhan gasped.
'We're that far behind?' I mumbled.
He nodded.
'Approximately.'
A moment of silence passed while we all individually stopped to consider the alien's apparent superiority over our race.
'So what did you do on your ship?' Rob asked, effortlessly restarting a conversation which I silently hoped had finished.
'I worked in the Storage and Gradation team. I looked after