The alien was silent for a time. Reynolds busied himself at the bar. Suddenly the alien said, “Thuktun Flishithy-Message Bearer?-was docked to a moonlet of the ringed planet for many years. This many.” The alien’s trunk emerged from the mud, and he flexed a clump of four digits, three times. “Pushing. We were not told why. I once heard officers call the mass chaytnf.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means this part of a fi’.” The alien rolled (and Sherry shied from a wave of mud). One broad clawed foot emerged.
The sci-fi types all seemed to freeze in place; but Jenny didn’t need their interpretation. Her hand closed painfully on Jack’s arm. “My God. It’s real. Of course, the Foot, they’re planning to stomp us—”
“They’re talking too damn much.”
“Huh? The alien’s talking a lot more than they are.”
The blurry voice from the TV set was saying, “It was not so large as many of the-asteroids-at the ringed planet. I think 8 to the 12th standard masses—”
“Standard mass is your mass? About eight hundred pounds… Curtis took a pocket calculator out of his bush jacket. “Jesus! Twenty-seven billion tons
Nat Reynolds said, “At… ten to twenty miles per second, that could-Harpanet, where are they going to drop it?”
“I was never told that it would be impacted against Earth. If so, the Herdmaster may have sought more data, perhaps in Kansas.”
“Jesus, Jenny,” Jack said, “they’re telling too much. We have to see them. Now.”
When a pretty girl enters a swimming pool, the natural thing to do is follow. Nat didn’t follow at once. The pool was filled with thick mud, but he was already muddy, and there were showers he set his glass down, jumped in, and waded forward. Harpanet turned and sprayed Sherry with a jet of dark mud. Nat saw her startled and appalled before she threw up her arms and turned her back. Hell, Sherry was from Oklahoma; this was hardly fair! A California boy knows how to water-fight. Nat half cupped his hands and sent water jetting at the invader.
The alien preened. He liked it. Sherry was laughing, and three others had leaped to her aid and were jetting mud over the alien’s back. Curtis’ tall wife showed impressive ambidextrous firepower.
The alien sprayed them back impartially, with the capacity of a small fire truck, his digits splayed from around the nostril.
Jack Clybourne and Jenny walked into a mist of mud and a roar of echoing laughter, and a water fight raging at the center. They stopped in the doorway and waited.
None of the Threat Team noticed them. The water fight stopped, and two muddy writers were now fondling the alien’s trunk. Reynolds asked, “Can you bend it in any direction?”
“No.”
Sherry began braiding the bifurcations, the ‘digits.’ “Does this hurt?”
“No. Discomfort.” The trunk lifted and writhed and was no longer braided.
“I wonder just how mobile your tail is,” Curtis said from behind the alien.
The short, somewhat flattened tail flapped up, down, left, right. “Control the speed of a floating car with tail. Accelerate and stop.”
“Mmm. We couldn’t drive your cars, then, even if we could capture one.”
“Not one. Two human could drive. Or I drive for you.”
Nat Reynolds noticed the visitors. He moved to the doorway without disturbing the rest. “Major Jenny, did you notice that he’s telling us how to steal fithp cars?”
“I wondered how much you were telling him,” Jack said.
Nat looked at Jack. He grinned and said, “Anything. Everything. Harpanet is part of the Threat Team.”
“You needn’t be so damned flippant. He acts like he’s switched sides, snout to human. I take it he’s got you convinced?”
“We’re still watching, Clybourne, but it’s a little more than that. He expects us to act like he’s switched sides. He’s not putting any sweat into convincing us. Sherry thinks it’s herdbeast behavior.”
“I still don’t think you should be telling that alien exactly what we’re afraid of at all times!”
“Why? What is he going to do, disguise himself as a general and walk out? Change clothes with one of us? Come on! Or wait for rescue? Clybourne, if the snouts can get him out of Cheyenne Mountain, we’ve bloody well lost!
“But never mind that. Think about this. Somewhere in the sky, aboard their mother ship, they’ve got human prisoners. They got some from Kansas, they may have saved some from the Soviet space station. They’re probably treating their human prisoners as if they had changed sides. If nobody’s shot his mouth off too much, it’ll be just like Hogan’s Heroes, with the fithp totally gullible and the prisoners running rings around them!”
Jack’s eyes changed. He said, “Mr. Reynolds, do you really believe that? Or are you spinning daydreams?”
“Oh… some of both. But it could be true. For a while. Before the aliens catch on, our people might actually do some damage.”
“And then? One human does some damage, they’ll kill them all, won’t they? I saw those piles of bodies in Topeka.”
Nat nodded soberly. “I’d have liked to meet Wes Dawson again. The snouts are ruining what used to be a fun thing. Anyway, you can see we’re learning things.”
“Yeah.”
