THE RELAY STATION’S access road was barricaded by a chain-link gate.

“Want me to make it go away?” asked Willy, already aiming his plasma cannon at it.

“It’s easier to spy on aliens when they don’t hear you coming,” I said.

So we left Lucky to guard the van, and, as stealthily as an Alien Hunter and his four imagined friends can manage, we jumped the fence. It was fifteen feet high, but we can do tall buildings in a single bound, so it really wasn’t an issue.

We snuck up the hardscrabble road on foot. At the top of the hill and inside another fence-this one topped with concertina wire-we found a pretty typical broadcast substation: a small forest of towers, satellite dishes, antennas, and transformers. The small control shack also looked to have been built by human hands.

Everything, in fact, seemed pretty normal-except that the door to the shack had been blown off its hinges, and there was an eerie blue glow emanating from within… and, of course, the air was filled with the disgusting stink of aliens.

We broke out some night-vision binoculars and long-range microphones and crept closer. There were a half dozen henchbeasts inside the shack, guzzling motor oil and laughing their ugly butts off as one of them edited video footage.

The transmissions were surreal scenes of townspeople doing dances, singing a capella, and, always at the end, getting vaporized. That especially sent the aliens into hysterics.

Next they uploaded a scene of pregnant women converging on a country farmhouse.

“That Number 5’s a stallion,” said one of them, guffawing conspiratorially.

“Yeah, especially for a fish,” replied another, causing the rest to roll on the floor with laughter.