Fast Cars and Intergalactic Speed Dating

17: A Bit of Advice

Aialo-El was gone for longer than Richard would have hoped. When he tried to check the time, he realized that he didn't have his mobile. He must have left it back at the house or dropped it on the way out.

He wondered about Amy, the 911 dispatcher. She probably wasn't wondering about him. No doubt she'd helped other frantic strangers by now.

Had the police arrived at their house? Paramedics?

What had they found?

A rustling in the tall grass interrupted Richard's musing. He turned, the curved weapon held up in his good arm as he faced the cornfield. Aialo-El took shape before him, familiar in the black uniform that changed so seamlessly with her. She had her hands loose at her sides. Instantly, two other shapes appeared behind her.

The newcomers' faces were shades of green, and they, too, had tentacles where a human might have hair. Their eyes were like Aialo-El's, yellow, their pupils slitted.

"Please lower the weapon, Richard Arthur Campbell," said Aialo-El. "You are among friends."

Staring at the three of them, Richard could not help but hesitate. He and Garth were now outnumbered, both of them wounded, and these creatures were real-life shapeshifters who could move at inhuman speeds.

Still, Aialo-El had answered their distress call and had brought them to safety. He lowered the fist-gun she'd given him slowly.

Aialo-El said something else, something Richard could not understand; it was in a burbling language, the same sounds the communicator had made. One of her companions burbled back to her. Then, both unfamiliar aliens started forward, moving toward Garth.

Richard stepped forward, one arm outstretched in front of Garth. Although he knew that these people had come to help, it was instinct, this uncertainty. "What's going on?"

"They are going to help him," Aialo-El assured him. "Be assured that these are friends. Meet Jalala-Ko and Pey-Daika."

The aliens extended their tentacles inquisitively toward Richard, and then, almost as one, they bowed their heads. Hesitant, Richard returned the gesture. He couldn't tell at a glance whether they were man-aliens or woman-aliens. Aialo-El had seemed feminine to him, but now, seen among her peers, he realized that what had made her seem that way was only her slender silhouette. Her figure wasn't all that different from Garth's at a glance: skinny, not human-womanly in any noticeable way.

Maybe she wasn't a she at all.

"I'm Garth," said Garth. He sounded far more tired than cheerful, and Richard's stomach turned with worry. "Ja-lala-ko? Pey..."

The taller of the strangers extended their tentacles. "Pey-Daika," they said, bowing their head again.

"Pey-Daika," Garth repeated, a passable pronunciation. "You guys have awesome names. So do I, but Richard's just Richard."

The newcomers turned to Aialo-El—alien or no, they were clearly non-plussed—and she must have translated for them, because Richard heard his name among the burbling.

"You should get up now, mate," said Richard, extending a hand to Garth. "Right? Time to go to the ship."

Aialo-El made an affirmative sound. She said something else in that alien tongue, and Pey-Daika and Jalala-Ko stepped closer to Garth, one of them gently nudging Richard aside.

"Hey—hey, careful—" Richard warned.

But they were undergoing a very intentional transformation. They had linked their humanlike hands, and their arms had begun to loosen, lengthen, and flatten; before Richared's eyes, they became flexible, mobile straps. Together, Pey-Daika and Jalala-Ko slid these straps beneath Garth's legs and between his back and the bark of the tree, then lifted him right off of the ground in their impromptu hammock.