Mistaken Identity

Reet and Gert watched the aliens on the planet with interest. It was what they had expected. The aliens were bipedal as per reports they had recieved from the advance scouts who had travelled to this area of the galaxy. They stared at the images. They had been watching the aliens for some time now, it was more out of scientific curiousity rather than from any interest in the alien's planet.

Reet looked at Gert and asked if they should report back to their commander. Gert indicated that it was not necessary as the alien planet held very little intrinsic value, both from a viewpoint of acquisition and from a technology viewpoint. Gert turned away and began the sequence for exiting the space around the galaxy 3663; it was another dead end.

The two explorers were the advance guard for the main imperial fleet. They were high ranking officials, unlike the scouts, whose job it was to search for signs of life and intelligence. Though they had found a great many alien species, it was not always worth the time and effort to contact species which had not progressed beyond a certain level. In many cases, it was counterproductive. Gert was already mapping a course to the next planet as indicated by the scouts. They had twelve scout vehicles moving in tandem, marking out inhabited worlds for their perusal.

There was an incoming communication from the fleet commander "Please get moving, we have other planets to visit. We need to scan all the planets in this galaxy by the next few cycles." Reet acknowledged and sent a null report, they were on the move.

Their ship was spotted by the alien radars - they were beaming something incomprehensible: it looked like it was their number system. Gert ignored it.

Back on Earth, the SETI was informed of the UFO by the Griffith observatory. It seemed to vanish. They rechecked their observations. Maybe it was an error. They had no other observations to check against. The SETI official decided against informing anyone on priority. It could have been a mistake.