Touched by an Alien

other planets targets. So they sent emissaries out to warn the other populated planets of the threat.”
    “What do the parasites do?”
    “Guess,” Martini said softly.
    When White didn’t counter that, I gave what I was in some way hoping was the wrong answer. “The parasite attaches to someone and alters him or her into a superbeing, capable of great destruction. They’re attracted to rage and fear, or whatever pheromones are given off from those emotions, and that’s how they pick their new hosts.”
    “I say it again, she’s mine,” Martini said.
    “And,” Gower added, “because the parasite amps up everything, the emotions are enhanced to the point where the host isn’t able to think rationally.”
    “Under most circumstances,” White corrected. “There have been some who were able to control it.”
    “Good guys?” I managed to pull my gaze away from the clawed beast in the box.
    White shook his head. “There are no good ones, not that we’ve ever run across. There have just been some who have been able to control their reactions to the parasite and successfully survive. Until we find and stop them.”
    “How does anyone survive being like … that?” I pointed to the thing in the box.
    “Those few who can control the parasite in some way are able to revert to human form. We aren’t sure if they’re aware of the parasite or not.” White looked sad for a moment.
    This struck me as odd. “Why not?” No one answered but they all looked uncomfortable and a little embarrassed. “So, you aren’t sure because you’ve never caught any of them, right?”
    “No,” Gower said. “We’ve caught them. But only in their superbeing form.”
    “No,” Martini corrected. “We’ve killed them in their superbeing forms.”
    “You’ve got this monster in a box. Why not box up these other ones?”
    “They’re a lot harder to kill, the in-control ones,” Martini added. “Hard to follow them back to their lair or whatever when you’re dead or injured. And so far we’ve only been able to stop them by destroying them. Not a lot of pieces left kind of destruction.”
    “The longer a superbeing can remain in control, the stronger it grows,” Gower added. “We have a few we know of that have survived for years. They stay dormant, in whatever their human form is, until something triggers them. We haven’t been able to determine who they are in human form.” He looked just a little uncomfortable—I had a feeling he wasn’t telling me everything. However, I wasn’t in a position to push it.
    “Nice. How long have they been around?”
    “The first ones showed up right about the time we’d made a little headway in the translations,” White said. “So, call it the late sixties, early seventies. We’d gotten enough to know the aliens were warning us about something, so when the first superbeings appeared, it wasn’t a complete shock.”
    I thought about it. “They showed up in Vietnam, didn’t they? The rage from both sides would have drawn them, right?”
    “Oh, yes,” White said quietly. “The unrest that war caused undoubtedly drew the parasites here. But both sides were able to destroy them. The superbeings become somewhat invulnerable, but when you’re using machine guns and tanks, you can destroy them nine times out of ten.”
    “What if you kill the human part but not the parasite part?”
    “You can’t kill the host unless the parasite wants it dead. The parasites can move, but it’s iffy. It’s not just the strong emotions—there has to be some connection between parasite and host for the pairing to take.”
    “If you hadn’t killed it first try, it might have moved to you,” Martini offered.
    “Thanks a lot. So, I’m being recruited because I’m homicidal maniac material?”
    “No,” he said with a touch of impatience. “They like strong people, but not just physically strong. They like bravery, intelligence, compassion.”
    “They’re looking for a love connection?” I was back to hoping I’d wake up soon.
    “In a way,” Martini said with a shrug. “They want to live, they have to live with the host, why not have it be someone they like?”
    “If they like all that, why do they turn their hosts into these … horrible things?”
    “They aren’t horrible things to them ,” Gower answered.
    I thought about it again. “They don’t belong here, so what they adapt their hosts to don’t belong here, either. On the right world, they’d be a