Short legs did not make him slow. His movements were blurringly fast, like a striking snake. Does this mean a better nervous system and more efficient muscles? Or a native planet with higher gravity?
His arms looked like snakes-they had more joints than ours. He had two sets, one pair where his waist should have been and another set under his head. No shoulders. I couldn’t count his fingers, or digit tendrils; they never held still. He wasn’t dressed except for a belt below and above the middle arms which carried whatever such a thing carries in place of money and keys. His skin was purplish brown and looked oily.
Whatever he was, he was not the same race as the Mother Thing.
He had a faint sweetish musky odor. Any crowded room smells worse on a hot day, but if I ever whiff that odor again, my skin will crawl and I’ll be tongue-tied with fright.
I didn’t take in these details instantly; at first all I could see was his face. A “face” is all I can call it. I haven’t described it yet because I’m afraid I’ll get the shakes. But I will, so that if you ever see one, you’ll shoot first, before your bones turn to jelly.
No nose. He was an oxygen breather but where the air went in and out I couldn’t say-some of it through the mouth, for he could talk. The mouth was the second worst part of him; in place of jawbone and chin he had mandibles that opened sideways as well as down, gaping in three irregular sides. There were rows of tiny teeth but no tongue that I could see; instead the mouth was rimmed with cilia as long as angleworms. They never stopped squirming.
I said the mouth was “second worst”; he had eyes. They were big and bulging and protected by horny ridges, two on the front of his head, set wide apart.
They scanned. They scanned like radar, swinging up and down and back and forth. He never looked at you and yet was always looking at you.
When he turned around, I saw a third eye in back. I think he scanned his whole surroundings at all times, like a radar warning system.
What kind of brain can put together everything in all directions at once? I doubt if a human brain could, even if there were any way to feed in the data. He didn’t seem to have room in his head to stack much of a brain, but maybe he didn’t keep it there. Come to think of it, humans wear their brains in an exposed position; there may be better ways.
But he certainly had a brain. He pinned me down like a beetle and squeezed out what he wanted. He didn’t have to stop to brainwash me; he questioned and I gave, for an endless time-it seemed more like days than hours. He spoke English badly but understandably. His labials were all alike-“buy” and “pie” and “vie” sounded the same. His gutturals were harsh and his dentals had a clucking quality. But I could usually understand and when I didn’t, he didn’t threaten or punish; he just tried again. He had no expression in his speech.
He kept at it until he had found out who I was and what I did and as much of what I knew as interested him. He asked questions about how I happened to be where I was and dressed the way I was when I was picked up. I couldn’t tell whether he liked the answers or not.
He had trouble understanding what a “soda jerk” was and, while he learned about the Skyway Soap contest, he never seemed to understand why it took place. But I found that there were a lot of things I didn’t know either-such as how many people there are on Earth and how many tons of protein we produce each year.
After endless time he had all he wanted and said, “Take it out.” The stooges had been waiting. The fat boy gulped and said, “Space him?”
He acted as if killing me or not were like saving a piece of string. “No. It is ignorant and untrained, but I may have use for it later. Put it back in the pen.”
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