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Hubcap opened the door an inch and peered into the hallway. Empty. No voices or footsteps. He waved the others forward and crept out in fine spy-drama fashion, alert for any signs of life. His feet made no sound, and he was ready to spring.
Elliot opened the door the rest of the way and walked right out, followed by the camera crew.
Hubcap scowled, crouching against the wall. “Shh, silent like ninja!” he urged. “The enemy will discover us!”
Elliot gave him a look. “Stand up. Let’s go find Larry’s lost equipment, then you can play around.”
Hubcap stood. “Yes, his equipment.” The humans were already walking toward the secondary hangar. “By all means, let’s find that.” He hurried to catch up, proclaiming loudly that the worker in question was foolish indeed for dropping something in so much mud. Elliot muttered something disparaging about Hubcap’s acting skills, but Hubcap chose to ignore him.
They made it to the hangar without incident, skirting the cafeteria and anywhere else that the VIPs were likely to be, assuming they hadn’t left for the day yet. The humans had planned ahead and eaten breakfast in the sleeping quarters.
Hubcap peered through the viewport in the hangar door, a handy little thing to keep people from wheeling carts into each other. No one was on the other side. The hangar held several parked aircars, but was mostly empty of humans. A couple of workers loaded boxes into the farthest car while early morning light filtered in from the wide open flight entrance. Satisfied, Hubcap turned the handle and stepped through with the humans right behind him.
“Larry?” Elliot called. “You in here?” The distant workers didn’t look up.
Then a voice said “About time!” The door of the closest car rumbled open to show a familiar purple-haired human. “Come on, time’s a-wasting! The airheads have a head start!” The short biologist windmilled an arm at them. “Owen’s trying to direct ‘em away from the breeding grounds!”
Hubcap led the charge. He hopped aboard with a salute for Larry. Xian was already seated near the front, while the rest of the car was empty. “Hello to both of you!” Hubcap said.
Elliot climbed aboard behind him. “Larry, good to see you. Xian, I’m glad you could join us.”
“Oh, you know it!” the medic said with a grin. “It’s only smart to have at least one bonesetter aboard. And I want to see the frenzy stopped! I’m sick of treating people for it!”
Hubcap placed a hand on his chest. “I feel you, brother.”
“I bet you do,” the medic chuckled while everyone found a seat and strapped in. “Can you imagine no more frenzy? No paranoia whenever someone yells or laughs too loud? Being able to just live without policing everyone’s emotions?”
Hubcap nodded. “I can imagine it. Sounds like life back on good ol’ Mother Earth. And even there, people are afraid of going into space. No more!”
“No more!” Xian agreed. He held up a hand, and Hubcap obliged with a high-five. He was even gentle about it.
“We ready?” Larry asked, hand on the ignition. At the unanimous nods, he started up the riotous flight engines and backed out into the sky.
Hubcap spent a few moments deep in thought about a frenzy-free life. It occurred to him that dealing with the hazard truly dominated his attention. I work in space. In lots of locations. The frenzy is a danger in all of them. I can hardly imagine going to a new station and not having to ask where their sedatives are. ...I really want to imagine that.
And he did imagine it, until the flight leveled out and Xian caught his attention. The medic pulled a gadget from his bag that had a screen and a shoulder strap, and presented it to Hubcap, who accepted the pilfered translator with glee.
Vic looked over from her seat. “I have to ask,” she said as Hubcap opened the thing and turned it on. “How did you get it?”
“Owen swiped it from the storage locker,” Xian said. “There’s plenty of the things, or at least there were last night. The rest of them are probably out in the other aircars now. D’you know they took three cars full of people? Those idiots are going to scare all the aliens away before they get close enough to translate anything.”
Vic shook her head and discussed strategy with Xian while Hubcap played with the translator until he understood it.
“Oh look, it knows Yelliantian!” the robot said in delight. “Perfect, another alien language to test. C’mon, somebody say something I can translate!”
“In Yelliantian?” Elliot said. “Good luck with that!”
“Surely you know something in hootspeak,” Hubcap pressed with an impish smile. “Humans are supposed to be good at mimicry.”
“I’d do a better whale song,” Elliot said.
“I wonder if it knows that,” Hubcap mused, typing away. He messed with the settings and options, finally looking up to find the aircar exiting the mountain pass. The vast floodgrounds had spread in the last two days.
“Crap, they’re still circling,” Larry said. He banked sharply and returned to the shadows, where he set the car to hover with its nose pointed toward the two silver shapes flitting about the treetops. Hubcap frowned out at them.
“You said they took three aircars,” Elliot said to Xian. “Where’s the third?”
The medic shrugged. “Landed somewhere,” he said. “Impossible to tell. Hopefully it’s not somewhere we want to be.”
Everyone waited in silence. Finally one car picked a landing site and dove into the trees, with the other following it down. Several humans breathed a sigh of relief.
Larry gunned the engines and moved the car forward again. “I’m pretty sure they’re at the central mating grounds,” he said. “Owen said he’d have his hands full keeping them from disrupting things worse than before. Where should we set down?”
Hubcap wanted to find one of the meadows where they’d met aliens before, but he was overruled. Vic directed Larry to follow the river upstream in search of likely beaches. Xian agreed. Hubcap grumbled. Elliot reminded him that any remaining adults would probably be near the water’s edge, for egg-laying purposes.
“Fine.” Hubcap threw his hands in the air. “But if we’re flying away from the only place around here that they’ll actually be, I will take no pleasure in saying I told you so.”
“That’d be a first,” Elliot said.
Hubcap waggled a hand in front of his face, in his best thumb-to-nose taunting gesture. Not for the first time, he regretted passing on an aftermarket tongue that he could stick out at moments like this. Elliot ignored him.
Larry flew low over the treetops, checking the sensors for other aircars. He cut the flight engines early and coasted in on hover alone. Everyone peered out the windows, with and without cameras.
“How’s that spot look?” Larry asked, pointing at an open space in the trees where water met grass. Vic agreed that it was as much a beach as anything else. Larry took the car in to land. Hubcap was out of his seat and waiting with the translator before they touched down.
“Hubcap,” Vic admonished halfheartedly. “You need to follow the safety rules too.”
“Yes, yes, of course, yes,” Hubcap said, ready at the door. “But you know I won’t get hurt if we stop suddenly.”
Elliot spoke up. “Sure, but we might if you fall on us. Nobody wants to get an accidental robot to the face.”
“That’s the name of my next cover band,” Hubcap quipped as the engine shut off. “Onward! Everybody listen for aliens and idiots!” He slid the door open and stepped out onto long purple grass.
The humans did as he suggested. Silently, they joined him in the meadow that sloped down into densely muddy water. Spiralling blue trees poked past the surface. Twittery things frolicked in the taller orange trees, chirping louder than the rushing water, but Hubcap wasn’t here for them. He waved the translator about with the scanning function engaged, covering the area as thoroughly as possible. This just confirmed the obvious: there were no colortalking aliens close by.
“Off we go,” he said, looping the travel strap around his neck. “Downstream toward the mating grounds, unless there’s any objection?”
Vic agreed. Larry locked the aircar, and they set out along the water’s edge.
It was slow going. The recent rainfalls had made the grass slippery, and there wasn’t much flat ground between the trees.
“We should have gone back for the car,” Dale grumbled, climbing over a rock. “This is taking forever.”
“Hush up, you off-brand ape,” Hubcap said mildly. “A little walking is good for you, and the engines would scare them off. Now quiet.” He cocked his head in a pose that denoted listening over the river sounds, and the young human subsided.
“Anything?” Elliot asked. He stood on a different rock, craning his neck to look in all directions.
Hubcap dimmed his eyelights in scorn. “Nothing good. I hear the idiots that way.” He pointed downstream.
By the sound of it, the official diplomatic party was at the mating grounds, and that they were Doing Diplomacy Wrong. There were far too many raised voices, argumentative tones, and occasional yelps of surprise. Hubcap was willing to bet money that there were spears involved.
He recounted this to the humans with inferior ears. Vic decided that they should press on in the stealthiest manner, and retreat at the first sign of other Earthlings.
“Agreed,” Hubcap said. “All senses at maximum.” He crept forward with the humans behind him.
Hubcap led his small group of rebellious heroes through the damp forest, following the edge of the floodwaters over dirt, sand, rocks and plantlife. The view finally opened up after they passed a dense grove of orange trees, and found what had once been rolling grasslands. Now it was just the edge of the river, with tiny islands popping up where the water hadn’t risen quite high enough to cover everything.
Even now, there were no visible signs of civilization. The center of the floodwaters appeared less muddy to Hubcap’s eyes, but he couldn’t make out any details from this angle. And more importantly, the racket from downstream was getting louder. He could almost make out individual words. Moving along the shore, he approached a smattering of taller boulders that promised to be a good vantage point. He held his scanner up as he walked, expecting nothing, and was surprised when it flashed a positive sign.
Hubcap stopped in place, waving an arm and hissing for silence. Elliot looked over his shoulder at the screen, then glanced at the rocks. Hubcap nodded.
Vic got the cameras into action. The group crept forward, Hubcap in the lead, approaching the boulders with care. At first he didn’t see anything. Then he rounded a corner and saw a splash of dark maroon perched on top of the highest rock.
He ducked back, gesturing wildly and not caring if the humans completely understood him. He reset the gadget to its translator function, and peeked around the corner.
It was one of them all right, laying on its stomach and resting its chin on its hands in a pose that looked part human and part jungle cat. Its transparent scales displayed a shifting pattern of reds and browns with streaks of green, except for its tail. Starting a few inches from the base, this was a dead white that did not change. The tail did move though, twitching idly as the alien watched the muddy river.
Then the colortalker shifted position on the rock, and caught sight of Hubcap.