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Elliot sat cross-legged on a metal plate in the garden, with the lowering sun warming his shoulders and the smell of spicy herbs perfuming the air. Four cameras peered over his head at the plastic box with the alien gopher in it.
The cameras were recording, but the gopher did nothing.
“Well, this bites,” Hubcap said from his position on the ground next to the box. “And not in the fun way. After the fight that other one put up, I expected some action! I got dirt in my seams for this?” He brushed off his arms and addressed the animal wedged into a corner, studiously ignoring him. “Shame on you. So boring, while other people are out looking for real aliens. And not letting us come along, so they can hog the glory for themselves. Don’t you know we’re depending on you to entertain Earthlings you’ve never met?”
“Try squeaking again,” Elliot suggested. “This guy’s just not motivated.” Hubcap obliged by making prey noises, but the horn-headed creature didn’t budge. Even a whack on the box from Ted’s trusty bladed shovel did nothing.
“Yeah, he’s gonna stay like that until we leave,” Ted said, leaning on the shovel next to Hubcap. “Probably hoping we don’t see him there.”
“Harrumph,” Hubcap declared. He put a hand on the dirt, fingers splayed. “None of the others are moving around anywhere nearby, not while we’re here being loud and scary. Bah.”
Elliot slumped back. “Well at any rate, I’m pretty sure this guy can’t climb the sides when they’re this slick, but I don’t know about jumping. Is he likely to get out, Ted? Or is a barrier this size tall enough to protect the whole garden from above-ground pests?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” Ted said. “I’ve never seen ‘em with a reason to jump. They always come from below.”
“Right. Still, I think you might be able to wall them out of the area,” Elliot insisted. “You’d need industrial wire mesh underneath, of course...”
“Only problem would be funding,” Ted said.
“Dun dun dun,” Hubcap sang. “Funnndinnng!”
“Yes,” Elliot sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t be a high enough priority to order enough plastic or metal to wall in the entire garden. Maybe just the most important parts?”
“Probably not,” Ted said, spinning his shovel. “Not when we get enough food as it is, fighting the little bastards off by hand.”
Elliot grumbled, frustrated at the lack of better options. Hubcap patted him on the head. “Poor sentimental human,” the robot lamented. “So sad about the plight of the supergophers.”
Elliot brushed the hand away, turning to deliver a retort. But he stopped, looking past Hubcap. “Aircar!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet.
“With aliens?” Hubcap asked, whirling to look.
Tarja and Dale turned as well, cameras ready, while Vic and Graham watched the co-hosts for reaction shots. Elliot squinted into the distance, deciding that the incoming vehicle was big enough to house all of the explorers, and it was heading for the hangar. He held a hand out to the gardener. “Ted, it’s been fascinating, but we may need to finish this later,” he said.
“Good for you; I wanna see if they found any aliens!” Ted exclaimed, striding toward the building.
Elliot glanced at Vic before following. She gave him the thumbs-up and kept filming. Behind her, Hubcap picked up the plant that the gopher had been eating when they caught it, and dropped it into the box.
“Here you go, Pointy,” he said. “We’ll be back for you later.” With that he burst into a run past Elliot. “Last one there doesn’t get to meet the aliens!” he called over his shoulder.
Elliot sighed into Vic’s camera, and followed in a dignified trot. He heard the sounds a moment later of the camera crew switching off their cameras and running as well.
When Elliot jogged around the outside of the building, he met Hubcap waiting at the door to the hangar. Elliot peered inside, hoping for a scene full of scientific delight, but instead he got a panicky medical drama. People were pouring out of the aircar with a herd of gurneys wheeling to meet them.
“What happened?” Hubcap asked the first human to run past. “Were the aliens dangerous?”
The woman shook her head. “No sign of ‘em,” she said, looking slightly haunted. “But frenzy was everywhere.” She hurried away into the growing crowd of people.
Owen’s pale hair was easy to spot leaving the aircar. Vic handed her camera to Tarja and told the crew to stay put. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “No wandering off.” That last was aimed at Hubcap, who managed to look innocent as she shook a finger at him before hurrying away.
Elliot stepped to the side and watched the gurneys roll towards the medical wing. “Looks like they barely made it out of there,” he said. “At least they all had good sedatives.”
Hubcap made a mechanical snort. “What they needed was some robots. All of this emotional fiddle-faddle could have been easily avoided.”
“Yep. Too bad none are applying to work here.”
“Yeah. Well, no more.” He spoke into Graham’s camera, which was filming again. “All of you robotic citizens looking for work, you are needed here. Planet IGN-47. Look it up. Next time they have a shuttle ready for new employees, I want to see a load of you on it.” He pointed a finger at the lens and gave the camera a stern look, then turned away.
“I wonder how long before that next shuttle,” Elliot said, looking around. “Ted’s gone, but I’m sure somebody knows.”
“We can find out later,” Hubcap said with folded arms. “It’ll be a while before the message gets out in my lovely clear tones, but anyone with brains on their hard drive will have figured out the need by their first look at this location. Here’s hoping they act on it.” Hubcap began walking in the direction Vic had taken.
“Where are you going?” Elliot asked.
“To make sure they don’t leave us behind tomorrow,” Hubcap told him. “They had their chance to handle the situation without cameras making them look bad.”
––––––––
“I’m glad you insisted,” Elliot said over the roar of the engines.
“Me too,” Hubcap said. “This is what we’re here for! To show people at home the kind of stuff they do! And there isn’t much that’s more important on an alien planet than finding intelligent life. Plus, y’know, our ratings will be bananas. That’s kind of important.”
Elliot nodded. “The locals should be grateful we’re here to film it,” he said. “This is a big deal.”
Hubcap scoffed. “The only way it could not be big is if some of the off-duty workers made the spear as a prank.”
“That doesn’t bear thinking about.” Elliot fought off a moment of panic. Vic had already told Ms. Kaleel about the spear, and Elliot was certain that the showrunner was putting things into place with the hopes of a historical discovery. If the alien artifact turned out to be human-made, then it would be a massive upset, to say the least. Heck, I’ll bet the locals told their own higher-ups, he thought. I hope nobody’s contacted the news media yet. We don’t need pressure from them to search any harder than we already are. He leaned his head against the window. This is going to be huge.
Suitably worried now, Elliot did his best to think of best-case scenarios for the rest of the flight.
Soon the aircar was dropping to hover near the water, where the air smelled of mud and warm plants. The driver switched off the flight engines, leaving things quiet enough for Owen to address the troops. He rose from the copilot's seat with a comradely pat on the shoulder of the nervous-looking psychologist who was supposed to be translating for the aliens, then he addressed the rows of people before him.
“All right, crew,” he said. “Today will be different from yesterday. We’ll save the handheld scanners for later; we’re starting from the air. The dashboard scanner should be just powerful enough to reach the ground from this height, especially if we put it on disaster rescue settings. Your job for now is to keep an eye out for anything interesting. Anything at all that could be a sign of intelligence out here. Questions? No? Good. Let’s get going.” With that, he sat down and began messing with controls as the aircar eased forward.
Elliot could barely see Owen’s viewscreen from where he sat, so he urged Dale in the seat next to him to raise his camera for a better look. Dale did, and Elliot was reduced to waiting. He was glad when the first shout of discovery sounded.
“Back there, hidden by the plants,” a woman was saying, pointing out the window. “Pretty sure it was a living creature with those scales.”
Owen nodded. “The scanner doesn’t register anything intelligent, but that’s still a fine place to start! Maybe our intelligent aliens keep these as livestock to harvest their scales. Carla, about face!”
The driver sent the aircar into a sharp turn back toward the way it had come, following the biologist’s directions. No animals were visible from the air, and Owen soon had the team gearing up for a trip to the ground. He gave special attention to everyone’s frenzy precautions.
The aircar landed on a strip of rocky beach lined with more of those wilted-celery trees, and the door flew open to the sound of rushing water. The river moved faster here. As soon as the crew started pouring out of the car, someone pointed out the creature with a shout. This sent it scuttling away into the green-blue bushes before the camera crew could get outside.
“You know better than that!” Owen admonished one of his louder subordinates with a good-natured smack on the back of the head. “Indoor voices, kids!”
“I love how he calls everyone ‘kids,’ Hubcap said to Elliot in front of a camera. “My sense of age in regards to you fleshy types might be out of calibration, but he seems like he may be younger than you.”
Elliot nodded. “I’m pretty sure he is. But as they say, it’s not the years; it’s the mileage.”
Hubcap pondered. “Humans say that? Really?”
“Really.”
Then the crowd was haring off after the thing, and the TV crew had to scramble to catch up, their footing uncertain on all the fist-sized rocks. From what Elliot could gather from the back of the herd, this creature was fast, brightly colored, and the handheld scanners didn’t recognize as intelligent either. But it was covered in those scales.
He caught a glimpse as the group got closer. The thing dashed from one bush to another, looking like a monstrous lobster-crab hybrid. Elliot saw spidery legs and a long torso covered in overlapping blue scales with yellow edges. It moved too fast to see anything more detailed than that.
“It’s heading for the water!” someone yelled.
“Try to cut it off!” Owen replied.
“Almost — Aw, no!”
Sploosh.
The river’s surface rippled and wavered. The creature was gone. People grumbled and swore, censoring themselves mid-word with a glance at the cameras.
“All right, huddle up,” Owen said, waving everyone closer. “What have we learned about it?”
The biologists all talked at once while the TV crew observed.
“Those scales definitely grew on it,” said a dark-skinned man almost as tall as Vic. “Attached, not clothes.”
“It looked awfully hard to kill,” said a pale woman whose skin was mostly freckles. “I wonder if our sentients have them domesticated.”
“They could gather the scales after the things have died naturally,” suggested an Asian woman with freckles of her own.
“That’s hardly a reliable source,” said the pale woman.
“But what do we know about how often they shed?” Owen pointed out.
“True...” she admitted.
Elliot could see that Hubcap was bored already, watching the river instead of the conversation. Suddenly Hubcap jumped and pointed with no small amount of delight.
“Look! Little ones!”
The biologists whirled as one, and followed his pointing arm. There were indeed small colorful things further up the riverside. Elliot had half expected a prank.
“See if you can net one!” Owen said. “Careful now!”
They were off. Elliot and the others ran after them.
––––––––
When it became obvious to Hubcap that the humans weren’t about to do anything more interesting than huddle around the slow-moving pools of water at the river’s edge, he decided to kick-start things again. “The view will be better from up there,” he announced, pointing at a looming cliffside. “We could get back in the aircar to look from above, but there’s probably nowhere for it to land if we find excitement among those trees.” He strode toward the best route up. “Go ahead and finish what you’re doing; I’ll scout.”
This of course prompted Owen to leave the puddles and make sure his TV star guests weren’t getting into danger. Hubcap let Vic handle the conversation behind him. He heard Elliot talking to one camera or other; as long as neither of those humans thought he needed to stay on solid ground, then he was cleared to climb as far as he was concerned.
And anyway, they all followed him.
The climb up was easy enough, even for those carrying cameras or scanners, and even considering the rain-wet rocks. As fun as it would have been to take a challenging route up, Hubcap was a professional. He led the humans up to the flat clifftop without incident. The plateau made a good viewpoint, with more large rocks keeping the forest at bay. Hubcap eyed the treeline with interest while the various humans got settled behind him. Elliot was complaining about mud from the climb.
Hubcap regarded him with amusement. “Poor human, your clothes are a slightly different color about the knees.”
“And damp,” Elliot retorted. “You’re one to talk; you hate getting dirty. Be grateful you don’t have clothes that stay wet.”
“Yup!” Hubcap agreed easily. “But look at this view! Surely it is scenic enough to distract your delicate sensibilities from damp knees?”
“It is pretty nice,” Elliot agreed.
Laid out below them, the muddy river snaked off for quite a ways until it dropped to lower ground and spread between the trees. Everything was lush foliage and dampness, with a variety of native animals visible. The biologists were already at work scanning the area for intelligence. They weren’t finding anything other that the two humans they’d left watching the aircar, but that didn’t blunt their excitement.
“Look look look!” Owen said, “Two of the crustaceans over there! What are they doing?”
Elliot dutifully stepped in front of the cameras to join the speculation about whether the pair were building a nest or looking for food.
Hubcap did the same, though his interest didn’t last long. This was not riveting television. He cast about around for anything better. A fluttering motion near the boulders caught his attention.
“Behold!” Hubcap exclaimed, “An alien butterfly! Is it a clue?”
“A what now?” Elliot looked up. “Oh. Yeah, that’s not a butterfly. That’s one of the mini-winged-whatchacallems. It was in the briefing.”
“Whatever. Watch me catch it.”
“I don’t need to warn you about venomous bites, so go ahead. Just try not to bring down a hive on our heads.”
“I promise nothing!” Hubcap said, leaping for it. The creature flitted away, looking to his eyes like a tiny green bat. But then, feathers didn’t seem to exist on this world, so most of the flying animals he’d seen reminded him of bats.
This one was a master of evasion. It fluttered and dodged, causing Hubcap to lunge about like a madman and the camera crew to object while they tried to film his antics without getting stepped on. Hubcap apologized halfheartedly and continued leaping about. Riveting or not, at least this was fun. Then the animal made an adorable little chirrup, and he forgot about his frustration.
“Chirpy-tweet?” he replied, clambering up the rocks.
“There he goes,” he heard Elliot say.
“Up we go,” Vic replied. “Hubcap, walk slowly please.”
“Sure thing, boss. As slow as a butterfly.” Hubcap followed the chirping creature while the various humans trailed after him. There were purple-green shrubs and orange trees on the other side of the rocks. The cliff opened up on a thriving alien forest, full of dripping water and animal noises.
“Chirrrrr, throot, pir-tweet?” Hubcap spared a moment to congratulate himself for getting the sound bite module installed years ago. It had brought him much joy in poking fun at his friends, and it was pulling its weight again now. Hubcap made his stealthy way into the plantlife, recording and repeating every sound he heard. Except, that is, for those made by the decidedly un-stealthy humans behind him.
“Shush, you,” he said over his shoulder. They managed to shush a little, and he went back to exploring. He crouched to sneak through the bushes, emerging into a clearing with Elliot’s cautionary words not to stray too far echoing in his ear sensors.
“Killjoy,” he hissed. “Now hush. Ahem. Chirp!”
None of the animals up in the sturdy orange trees were answering back, but then, none of them seemed scared of him either. He walked out onto the purple grass, marveling at the fact that none of the creatures had learned to fear two-leggers. He caught glimpses of them up on the golden-brown branches, scurrying from place to place and chattering at each other. They were little stripy things, though he couldn’t be sure if they had fur or bare skin. Switching over to heat vision showed that they were warm, but that was about it: red shapes on a dark branch, with varying shades of sunny-day warmth around them. He switched back to normal sight and appreciated the colors.
The things were still chirping away. He did the same, wandering across the small meadow to sit down on a log. This was a massive thing of dark orange that had probably created the clearing when it fell. Plenty of colorful undergrowth had sprung up in the sunlight since then. Hubcap made himself comfortable as he repeated back the animal calls, ignoring the camera crew who were filming from the cover of the bushes. Hubcap expected Vic to decide as soon as the biologists joined them that that was enough meandering. She would usher them all back down to the aircar to fly off to some other patch of wilderness in the search of noteworthy things to film.
In the meantime, Hubcap craned his neck back, watching the treetops. The plantlife next to him rustled, and the humans made surprised noises.
He looked down and stared into alien eyes.