An Alien Hand

Tilloo and his parents live beneath the surface of a planet. Tilloo has read about the sun and stars but never seen them.

Tilloo's community lives in an underground habitat. The sun and stars are known from books, not sight. A forbidden passage leads to the surface where only select workers may go.

Tilloo's father uses a security card daily. One day Tilloo steals the card, opens the metal door, and walks up the slope toward the surface.

Whenever Tilloo asked to follow, his mother refused. While his father napped, Tilloo took the security card, evaded his mother, and opened the silent metal door to a well-lit upward passage.

Security detected him and sent him home. His father explained: the surface has thin air and freezing cold; he works in a special oxygen suit maintaining solar machines.

Invisible devices photographed Tilloo; security escorted him back. Father explained surface air is unbreathable and cold; he wears a special suit and maintains surface machines powered by solar energy.

Forefathers lived on the surface for millions of years until the sun turned hostile, birds and animals died, and people survived only with technology underground.

Once ancestors lived naturally on the surface, but a slight solar change upset nature's balance. Extinctions followed; superior technology let humans live artificially below while solar power runs life-support machines.

In the Control Room a TV dot moves - not a star but a spacecraft from neighbouring planet Earth. The Central Committee debates destroying it or staying hidden.

Tilloo's father finds excitement in the Control Room: a moving dot - a spacecraft, perhaps from neighbouring Earth. The President convenes the Committee. Defence wants missiles; the scientist advises passive observation to hide Martian existence.

Tilloo's father takes him to the Control Room. Fascinated by buttons, Tilloo presses the red one. An alarm sounds; the mechanical hand on the spacecraft stops working.

On a red-letter day Tilloo watched the alien craft on screen. He pressed the prominent red button; his father restored it, but damage was done - the mechanical hand ceased digging Martian soil.

NASA reports a hitch in the Viking Mission's mechanical hand, then says it works again - but finds no life on Mars. Were Martians there all along, unseen?

A NASA press briefing mentions the malfunction; later soil samples resume. Viking hoped to find life on nearest neighbour Mars but found none - while Tilloo's people watched, hidden, debating revelation.