the machines that graded the ore before it was passed to the refinery.'
'The refinery?' I said, surprised. 'Bloody hell, just what did you do on that ship? I thought you just mined for whatever it was you needed and transported it back to your planet.'
He shook his head.
'Because we'd used up pretty much all of our planet's resources we had to start mining further and further afield. And because of the length of time it took us to travel to these places, we prepared the ore en route so that it was ready for use when we got back home. That also avoided polluting the planet with the by-products of our operations.'
'So you just polluted space instead?' I snapped.
He nodded again.
'That's right.'
'So how did you do it? How did you mine? Did you have machines with hammers and pickaxes or...?'
'We took most of our minerals from asteroids and small moons. We'd locate the source, attach the ship to it and then extract whatever it was that we needed to take.'
'You mined asteroids?' Rob asked, his eyes like saucers. 'Jesus, how dangerous is that?' 'Dangerous enough to mean that I'm sitting here with you tonight,' he replied. 'The asteroid we were working on had an undetected flaw. Our machines tapped into the wrong place and the whole mass disintegrated.'
'Disintegrated?' I pressed.
'Exploded,' he explained. 'That's where the debris I was talking about came from. It damaged the engines and breached the hull.'
I nodded and thought for a second.
'So where exactly did you stand on board?' I then asked. He didn't answer immediately - did he think I was asking where he physically stood on the ship? I elaborated. 'There are about three hundred and seventy of you here, right?'
'Correct.'
'So how far up in the chain of command are you? Do you sit at the captain's table or are you...?'
'Am I what?'
'Bottom of the heap?'
He shook his head.
'We don't have rankings as such in our society, there isn't any need. I was trained to do my job and I did it to the best of my abilities, as did the pilots, the technicians and the maintenance staff.'
'So who's fault was it that your ship got damaged?'
'No-one's fault. It was a freak accident.'
'Shouldn't you have been prepared for freak accidents if you were all so highly trained and effective?'
I was conscious that both Rob and Siobhan were glaring at me but I wasn't interested in anything they felt or had to say. I wasn't particularly interested in what the alien had to say either. I just found myself feeling particularly territorial and awkward.
'It was a freak accident,' he repeated quietly.
I didn't believe him. How could they have been so advanced and yet have left themselves so exposed? Surely they must have had contingency plans and safety measures to prevent such accidents from happening? Or perhaps I was just being overly critical for no better reason that I didn't like this alien. Or any alien for that matter. More to the point, it wasn't that I didn't like them, it was just that I couldn't be bothered with them. I resented the fact that to everyone else I knew, these uninvited guests had suddenly become the be-all and end-all at the expense of absolutely everything else.
'Do you like what you do?' I wondered. Now I was the one asking the incessant stream of questions.
'There's no point liking or disliking it, is there?' he replied. 'It's what I was trained to do. It's what I always knew I would be doing. I know everything there is to know about my job...'
'And you know exactly how long you'll be doing it for, don't you?' 'That's right.'
'But don't you ever yearn to do anything else?'
'No.'
'Haven't you ever looked at the bloke who lives next door to you and felt like you wanted to do what he does? Or have you ever liked the look of someone else's wife or house and...'
'I'm not even going to bother answering your questions. I've already told you the answers.'
'Is there anyone you don't like?' I pressed.
'My race or alien?' he sneered.
'Your race,' I sneered back. 'Alien.'
He shook his head.
'No-one.'
'Any one ever pissed you off?'
'Pissed me off?'
'Got on your nerves?'
'You're the first for a while.'
'Any of your kind?'
'No.'
'So you live in this perfect world where everyone gets on and there's no resentment and no discrimination and...'
'Give it a rest, Tom,' pleaded Siobhan. I ignored her.
'...and you all do everything for the good of everyone...'
'What's your point?' Rob butted in.
'My point is I find