Some assumptions had to be made, and our leading astronomers and scientists had argued that a million light-years away in another time and place a fierce battle had raged for an eternity, and the inhabitants of this planet were struggling to survive against their most feared predators–creatures so terrifyingly hostile that had they ever gone head to head with our most fierce predators, it would have been a one-sided battle. 

The “Aractopus” as it came to be known, was a carnivore and herbivore. In fact, it would eat just about anything that got in its way. They grew to an average of 1.5 metres high at adulthood with a diameter of at least two metres. It had a central circular body of mainly muscle and cartilage with eight powerful legs, not unlike a 1.5 metres high giant tarantula but without the hair. Their eyesight was as sharp as an eagle’s and the mouths had four rows of razor-sharp teeth. They could move fast too, much faster than a man at full sprint. Another factor that to our horror we were to learn was they could swim, above or below water.

All in all, an extremely tough creature with no fear, no remorse and yet with the intelligence to hunt as a group. We would soon learn that they could attack as if a strategy had been worked out. It was obvious that the older, larger, dark grey Aractopus were in charge. A hierarchy existed, but no-one knew how or even which were male or female or even if they were asexual. All we knew was that one day they were here and the survival of mankind as the dominant species was truly in jeopardy, possibly to the point of extinction!

Life on Earth as we know it is pretty much well researched and documented. We know that certain frogs and crustaceans can lie buried for many decades and still live, but how these creatures managed to survive all these years sealed in their tomb-like nests in some kind of deep hibernation has still not been properly explained and is unlikely to ever be. We are not even sure if we have found all the nests that hit Earth. We know one thing for sure—the inhabitants of that planet must have been far more advanced than us, because if they reached the point of realisation that they couldn’t be beaten, then they must have found a way to seal what we assume to be the last of them into nests and somehow send them out into deepest space. We know two-hit Earth, one in central America the other below the English Channel. But we cannot be sure that they were the only ones or that no more were hurtling round in space waiting to hit our planet.

We can be sure that when they sent the Aractopus nests into space it ended their nightmare, only for ours to begin…….