Chapter 1
“Can you believe people used to think our first encounter with alien life would be like this? Bipedal, human-sized, with a fake third eye, and suspiciously good command of human languages?”
Mick could. He enjoyed the old movies with their smart and often humanoid aliens, and honestly found such fictional extraterrestrial life much more interesting than the real variety. So far humanity had yet to find anything more intelligent than your average rabbit, and while Mick had nothing against rabbits, he didn’t find them particularly fascinating.
“Sure,” he said. “Why not? Most people aren’t captivated by bacteria, you know.”
His good friend Larissa Donovan, PhD, studied the bacteria in Neptune’s atmosphere, the existence of which she’d co-discovered. It was no surprise that her vi
