"Take a look through the telescope, Trevor. What do you see?"

Trevor McElroy obeyed and placed his eye next to the refracting telescope lens. Michael had angled it towards a small star cluster on the edge of Orion's belt. He squinted as he tried to make out what his brother was pointing out, but he saw nothing except the twinkling stars that shone brightly through the thin atmosphere.

"The stars?" he asked hesitantly.

"Nope. Try again," Michael replied with a toothy grin.

"Is one of those stars special?"

"All stars are special, Trev."

"Michael! You aren't being fair! What do I see?"

"No one can tell you what you see through your own eyes. That's for you and no one else."

"Michael!"

"Fine, I'll tell you what I wanted you to see." Michael knelt down next to Trevor so that he could look him in the eye. "What you're looking at is history. Not one of those stars out there look like the one you see. Some are brighter, some are darker, some got big, some got small, some are dead, and some new stars have been born. We just don't see it because we're too far away; it takes hundreds of millions of years for the light to get here from so far away." Michael chuckled. "Don't you think it's silly? Everything we ever knew about stars is old news. We don't actually know anything about what's really out there, just the universe's memories of what was."

Trevor didn't know what to think about this. He was smart for a seven-year-old, but he'd never heard of a light-year. He didn't know that stars died.

When the sun rose over their home in Machu Picchu it was a red sun, a tired sun that meandered rather than streamed through the hazy sky. Or maybe it was a tired Earth. Dad looked up and squinted even though it wasn't very bright.

"Too bad that storm front moved away last night. I'll miss the clear air."

Dad had to walk to every greenhouse they had built in the last few months to check on the UV lights. Trevor followed Dad to the third one today. He liked to come along, and Dad liked to have him come, because the thin air and the dust made him cough sometimes. Not Trevor; he was nimble on the narrow roads carved by Inca long ago.

Dad checked the peas in the first greenhouse. Rows and rows of wheat in the second. Corn. Lettuce. Potatoes. Each had their own greenhouse; enough to feed three dozen people for a year, fortunately for the three-dozen hanging onto the face of the world. Dad's job was to keep the lights on; the sun, he said, wasn't strong enough to do the job herself, and so she needed Dad's help.

On the way back from greenhouse five, Dad coughed. He sat down on a stone that an Inca must have forgotten to move away. Trevor waited for him patiently.

"You'd better go home and tell Mom that I'll be late for dinner," Dad said. He wheezed against the brackish, thin air. "Run along and make sure you're not late."

"Okay, Dad!" Trevor said cheerfully. Dad would be fine out here by himself, and Trevor knew the way.

Trevor leapt along the path, confident even in the dimming light. There, ahead of him, was the ancient city, lit by firelight and the cool, welcoming glow of LED lights from his real home. He picked up his pace to return to it.

Click. A loud snap in the gathering dusk.

Trevor stopped and looked around. The noise echoed across the empty hillside.

Click.

Trevor turned again. He caught sight of a motion and narrowed his eyes to focus in on it.

Click.

It was an animal. It was covered in fur and walked on four legs as it felt the ground with two more shorter front legs. Its head looked like a mouse or a mole, and it had no eyes. It crawled towards him, slowly, moving its legs from side to side like a crocodile, all the while sniffing and going "click" with its tongue.

Click.

It approached Trevor carefully, almost like it was afraid. Trevor watched it, not sure whether to be afraid or to laugh at the thing. It clicked again and sniffed at Trevor with its whiskery nose.

Trevor realized that it must be lost. He couldn't imagine it wanted to eat him; it looked so cute.

"My name's Trevor," he said.

It drew back at the sound. Was he too loud?

"My name's Trevor," he whispered.

It seemed less scared when he whispered. It clicked a couple of times. It waddled toward him...it was kinda cute. It reached out one of its front hands, and he stretched out his to touch it, delighted. They were almost holding hands.

"Trevor! Get away from that thing!" Dad yelled.

Trevor and the animal jumped back at the sound. The animal ran away.

"Dad! I wasn't doing anything!" Trevor pleaded.

"That thing is dangerous," Dad said. "They came here to kill us all!"

At night Trevor heard the grownups arguing.

"But, Gerald, there was only one of them!" Mom's voice.

"Yes, but there'll be more. There were millions of them that were in that rock when it landed. They'll be here to murder us as soon as they can." Dad's voice

"Well, why would this one or its friends want us dead?" Michael's voice.

"Why would they not? They killed people before. Remember what happened in Russia."

"The Russians fired first, if we do nothing, maybe they won't hurt us."

"We didn't do anything to them when they dropped a meteorite the size of New York City on us and plunged us into a thousand years of winter."

"I agree they're dangerous. But do we have to run away again? Where would we even go?"

"I don't know. The Andes are full of Inca ruins; one of them will hold us."

"But the greenhouses are here. We can't leave those."

Dad sighed. "Then we'll have to fight them. How much ammunition do we have?"

"Not enough, Dad."

"Then we'll use pitchforks. We can't let the aliens kill us off like animals."

Trevor didn't sleep easily that night.

The next day the sun rose red and it set red. That's when the animals came. They waddled over the edge of the mountains from the North. There were dozens of them, and many came carrying carts on their backs or on wheels behind them. The sound of clicking filled the air.

Three dozen humans raised their guns to face the alien invaders. Trevor watched from a stone building. He held his breath.

But the aliens stopped. They stopped and waited silently. Dad didn't say a word as he stared down the barrel of his rifle at them.

Then, they unhooked the carts and baskets that they'd been carrying and turned around. Clicking like a horde of dolphins, they withdrew into the dusk as if they had never come. All except one with glossy black hair that stayed behind. It waited silently in front of the baskets and carts, sniffing and turning its blind snout this way and that as it picked out the human defenders.

The humans were silent, confused. Dad finally called out. "Can anybody see them?" he asked.

"No, they're gone."

"What's in those bags?"

"I can't see, it's too dark," said Dad.

"Should we go out there? We can take one."

Dad and another man climbed out of the stone ruins and approached the animal. It ignored them. They walked up to the bags.

"It's fish! Bags and bags of smoked fish!" Dad said. Trevor's ears perked. He hadn't had fish in years.

The animal lifted its front hand, like it had with Trevor. Dad and the other man circled it suspiciously. "What does it want?"

"I don't know."

Trevor suddenly knew. Before Mom could stop him, he slipped out of the house and ran to Dad.

"Dad," he yelled, "He wants to shake your hand!"

Dad looked annoyed that Trevor had left safety. But carefully, he reached down and shook the animal's hand A sudden change overtook him. They held hands for a moment; then the animal let go and waddled away into the night.

"What happened?" asked Trevor.

Dad blinked. "I saw a planet orbiting a red star. These animals live in darkness underground; their star is too deadly to live under. There was an explosion, a war, and a spaceship left the planet. There was an uninhabited planet orbiting a yellow star. They traveled for hundreds of years. Then it landed. A crash-landing was fine, they don't need the sun, they live underground. But there were people there..." Dad paused. "We were there." He looked at the bags of fish. "I think they just said sorry."

So the animals were looking at history too, Trevor thought. Maybe Dad did too; maybe they all did. Suddenly he understood.