"Eyes"

"Eyes"

         Eyes, eyes, eyes. Jerrikonn stood aboard the Marvan starship, his own eyes becoming wider as his vision adjusted to the darkness. He had been chosen, out of millions of applicants on Earth, to be the first Human ever to ride in an alien spaceship. No one knew what the Marvans looked like. No one knew what they sounded like. All that anyone knew about them was from the coded "star letters" that the mysterious beings had sent to Earth in response to a probe which had been sent out a century ago. The beings had asked the population to choose one member of their species to take a ride in the Marvan ship for approximately one hour.
         Jerrikonn was beginning to make out the forms of the aliens. His excitement at being the first human to see the aliens was fast dissolving into unmitigated terror. He had always feared spiders, and these creatures were essentially hairy, ugly, huge arachnids. The worst part about them, however, was not their hideous appearance but the dozens and dozens of multi-coloured eyes which surrounded their head-bodies. He noticed that the "eyes" were not stationary but seemed to rotate around their heads.
         He could see twelve of these beings surrounding him, each one training their revolving eyes upon him.
         "What do these creatures want with me?" he thought, desperate for the ride to end.
         He could only hope that they did not want to dine on him.
         "We are your friends," a voice said inside his mind, "We have responded to your space probe's invitation to us. What do you want from us?"
         "They're telepathic," Jerrikonn thought as the creatures awaited his answer.
         What did he want from them? He finally summoned up enough courage to shout out the answer: "Stop staring at me!"