That story echoes my own thoughts on the subject of humanity running into any alien species.
There are a few considerations that tend to throw any naivete we entertain about peaceful and great first contact with an alien species out the window. Drake's equation is accepted, if a contested theory...but it tends not to factor in the all-important vector of time. Let's consider our own species for a moment. Our own species came into being roughly two million years ago. A huge period of time by our understanding, but only a little bit for the Universe (which is about 14.7 billion years old by our estimates). Out of that time, we've only really started to get our stuff together as a civilization about a hundred thousand years ago, with records of ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley only reach to about 6000-8000 BCE. So think about it. In about Ten thousand years, an intelligent species like us has gone from being merely intelligent animals to developing a complex, contemporary society and become capable of at least a little space travel. Ten thousand years is nothing for the Universe, and it is worthwhile to note that we could've gotten here even faster but large periods in human history had relatively little scientific development, with the major brunt of it happening in the past half millennium.
That brings me to my point. There's every possibility that there can, and will be a ton of alien civilizations existing in our Galaxy alone. But it is not necessary that they will exist at the same point in time. There can easily be alien civilizations just a few thousand years ahead of the curve from us (the most minor of time gaps in terms of the Universe) and still be so advanced as to be unrecognizable. By the same token, there can also be medieval alien civilizations a few thousand years behind us. If we increase the time gap under consideration, things become even more ludicrous. It leads me to view any first contact scenario with a healthy dose of fear. If any alien civilization operates remotely on the same motivations as humanity does, we will be enslaved without a doubt. Even if not that, the technology gap will all but ensure that we're third-rate citizens of any Galactic society that may be in place. They may bridge the technological gap, but that would be irresponsible of them to do so, as we may not have enough experience being a sapient species to really be able to handle that kind of thing.
In the end, all is hypothetical. But our best hope is to assume that we're part of some sort of cycle of sapience, and any alien species that evolved is growing alongside us. If that is somehow true, then we should certainly expect to meet and greet them within the next one thousand years.
