Alien Velocity by Robert Appleton Page B

parents were difficult to tell apart. The only physical difference he could discern was that one’s skin was almost lilac while the other’s was mauve like that of the infants.
    Charlie hesitated at the greeting. It might have been the sudden upscale in size of the creatures, or the fact that the parents would be that much more advanced on every conceivable level. It may have been that he knew so little about them, while they knew everything about him.
    “How do you do?” He extended his hand to the mauve parent.
    “Pleased to meet you, Charles Thorpe-Campbell,” the voice in his ear greeted. “I am the second, the father. Once upon a time, I was an artist and poet. You can call me Blake.”
    “Okay, Blake.” He turned to the lilac mother. “And you are?”
    “The first. You may call me Hippolyta.”
    “Interesting choice. You were some kind of queen?”
    “No, but Blake needs a strong-willed woman to put up with him. The queen of the Amazons will do nicely.”
    Charlie couldn’t help but smile. Either she was approximating feminism for his sake—to make him feel more at ease by reminding him of Earth’s women—or she really did have a suffragette streak running through her lilac. Either way, he loved the effect.
    “All right, where do we go from here?” He set Christina down in front of her mother. One hundred and fifteen alien mouths opened wide, but there was no physical interaction apart from a fleeting touch of tentacles as each youngster passed by its mother.
    “Follow us, Charlie,” the monotone voice in his ear said.
    Given its number of occupants, the crashed ship was smaller than he’d expected—a slender cigar shape, twenty feet in diameter, about half the length of a football field. Its exterior was pale grey, almost white, and rifled. Its landing had gouged a sizeable crater in the yellow desert, deep enough to breach the underground waterline. Filthy-looking liquid flooded the devastation, forming a kind of reservoir behind the ship.
    From this rose approximately a hundred thick brown stalks with bizarre sagging fruit curling around them from top to bottom. Charlie imagined them as rancid bananas, but he was so hungry even that idea juiced his mouth.
    “You’ve done a great thing, Charlie.” Blake draped a moist mauve tentacle over his new friend’s shoulder. “We can never repay you.”
    “How about something to eat?”
    Hippolyta appeared a few seconds later with a metal horn full of odourless brown soup.
    Charlie peered inside and gulped. “What’s in it? Or am I better off not knowing?” He took it nonetheless.
    “Based on our knowledge of human biology, it is the best we could do,” Hippolyta replied. “There are extracts from a variety of organic foods, as well as two synthesised nutrients—what you would call ‘vitamins’ on your planet. It should sustain you for some time.”
    He took a tentative sip. The slight marzipan flavour was not unpleasant, and it lined his throat. Whatever the hell it was, it hit the spot. “Any more where that came from?” he asked, after gulping it all down. “For later, I mean—on my secret mission. I could do with some for the journey.”
    “As much as you like.”
    “Cheers.” He belched and pardoned himself, quickly realising how ridiculous manners and etiquette were a billion light-years from Earth.
    “Our pleasure, Charlie. Now, the children will need to rest and repair themselves inside. Let us sit awhile by the water. We will tell you everything we know about the overlords of Baccarat and you can decide for yourself whether our plan to destroy them is a fecund one.”
    “Um, whatever. Do I really have any choice in the matter? If I want to get home, I mean?”
    “Yes. You can wait here with us and hope that another creature with your agility happens along and is willing to infiltrate the great city. Yes, you could choose to do that. But as Marley told you, we have been here for over three years, and not one visitor has