“Looks like we’ve been kidnapped,” someone said.
“Or collected,” O’Brien said. “No matter. The ceiling is high enough for us to pyramid. I don’t imagine they could stop us.”
The alien leader made half-fists of her hands and put them together over her sternum, then drew them apart slowly: a gesture probably inviting them to open their suits. She repeated it several times, then smoothed a hand over her naked body and smiled. She had too many canines.
“I’ll be glad to get out of my suit,” a male voice said, “if you promise not to open your mouth.”
“Shut up, Jerry. Let me answer.” Since the cameras were on her suit, it was impossible to see what O’Brien did. The alien shook her head and said something in a surprisingly low growl.
“That could mean either yes or no, even on Earth.”
One of the males rapped on the wall with his knuckles and a small rectangle opened. He reached in with both arms and came out with four objects that looked like old-fashioned microphones. A short length of silvery wire dangled from each.
He handed one to the leader and then to the other two. Each one plugged the wire into his silver belt.
“Couldn’t be a translator,” Jerry’s voice said. “A weapon?”
“Maybe it is a translator,” someone said. “We don’t know everything. . . .” The leader approached the nearest Tamer, pointed the microphone at him and smiled.
The sound from the holo cube screamed a split second before the audience did.
The beam from a ten-megawatt laser couldn’t penetrate that suit, but where she pointed the wand a round hole opened, then widened into a long gash that sprayed blood. Dying, the Tamer snatched her arm and pulled. She dropped the wand as the amplified grip broke her arm.
The other three aliens attacked simultaneously; it was over in a second. The holo picture tilted sideways, then dimmed red and turned two-dimensional as blood washed over two of the three lenses.
The aliens walked slowly down the corridor, the injured one showing no sign of pain, even though jagged gray bone protruded through the bloodslick on her useless arm. A couple of dozen paces down, the wall opened and they turned left.
The auditorium lights went on. “That’s all,” Riley said. “There’s another nineteen minutes of the same scene. The aliens never come back.”
He referred to his notes for the first time. “We-myself and representatives from Bio, Psych, and Senior Survey-we have some tentative remarks, observations about these aliens.
“The most striking thing, of course, is that they look so much like us. The compelling explanation is that we have common ancestors, either in prehistory or. . . well, any number of interesting scenarios. Another possibility is that they are able to change shape, and adapted this form to throw our Tamers off their guard.
“How they could know what a human being looks like is anybody’s guess. Perhaps they could read the Tamers’ minds.
“That they should conform to our current standards of beauty is a suspicious coincidence. As Dr. Sweeney pointed out, a culture will generally regard as beautiful such characteristics as have survival value, for the individual or for the race. A similar aesthetic about the body presupposes a similar environment. Of course, two highly developed technological societies will have similar environments, the most comfortable possible. Which brings us back to square one.”
He held up a piece of paper. “See whether any of you can add to this list. Dr. Jameson made it up: anatomical differences between us and them.
“The teeth are obvious. But that could be cosmetic; various Earth cultures have filed or chipped teeth to make them look more ferocious.
“Did you notice that the men have no nipples? I didn’t. Jameson says they could have been excised in infancy, though, for cosmetic or ritual reasons, and not leave scars visible from our range.
“Their umbilici are all the same, a simple vertical groove. You would almost never find this in four humans chosen at random. The same with genital size in the men. But we have no reason to presuppose randomness; maybe only men with strange navels and large genitalia are recruited for the job.