Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [6]
Eagerness filled the air like a cool fog. What would the aliens look like? Would they be atavistically alarming like the thranx? Elegantly handsome and yet vaguely sinister like the AAnn? Or quaintly charming like the Quillp? Humankind had yet to voyage sufficiently far, had still to encounter enough intelligent species, to be blasé at the prospect of meeting still another.
Perhaps they would look like nothing the smooth-skinned simians in their glistening new KK-drive starships had yet met. They might be towering horrors or diminutive pacifists. Or diminutive horrors or towering pacifists. No one knew. The aliens had failed to respond to interrogatives from the Chagos, either verbally or visually. Kairuna and the rest of the survey team would be the first to gaze upon these new, previously unencountered alien countenances. He and his associates were acutely conscious of the singular privilege that was being accorded them.
Everyone had been thoroughly, if hastily, briefed. No matter what the aliens looked like, no matter how repulsive or absurd or disconcerting or surprising, all reaction was to be kept to a minimum. There was to be no cheering lest sudden loud noises upset the visitors. No wrinkling of faces, no distorted expressions that might be misinterpreted in the event the visitors communicated by similar means. No expansive gestures in case they asserted themselves in a manner akin to the highly gesticulatory thranx. Response to any overtures and all expressions of greeting would be made by Pranchavit and Maroto. Everyone else was welcome to watch, but in stillness and silence.
That did not prevent Idar from nudging Kairuna in the side as an opaque cylinder slowly and silently descended from the belly of the alien craft. It looked as if a particularly sleek bird was laying an oblong egg. Nearby, a grim-faced Alwyn patted his side.
“Not to worry. I’m carrying a regulation sideshot with a full clip.”
“It won’t be of much use to you in the brig,” Idar hissed at him.
“Both of you, be quiet.” Kairuna nodded. “They’re coming out. Or something is.” The possibility that the aliens might choose to make first contact through intermediaries such as mechanicals could not be discounted.
There were no mechanicals, however. The aliens had chosen to greet the tightly packed crowd of anxious bipeds in person. There were three of them. Nitrox breathers themselves, they were clad only in lightweight clothing of some unfamiliar fabric that shimmered in the bright, cold air, and no helmets or other headgear whatsoever.
The reaction to their appearance was a uniform gasp on the part of the assembled humans. Kairuna was unaware that his lower jaw dropped slightly, leaving him standing in full defiance of orders with a mock stupid expression on his face. Idar stood wide-eyed but with more presence of mind as well as person. Alwyn, whose left hand had been hovering in the vicinity of his concealed weapon, was moved to comment, but mindful of the general directive to keep quiet, he held his peace.
It was a good thing he had the forbearance to keep from drawing the gun. The aliens might not have reacted immediately to its emergence, but his fellow humans surely would have. It was not that his naturally suspicious nature was in any way mollified by the aliens’ utterly unexpected and novel appearance, only that he was for once no less shocked than his companions.
2
The reaction on Earth to the announcement that yet another intelligent space-faring species had been discovered no longer dominated the news portion of the general media. People were more interested in the progress of the new settlements being opened in the Centaurus group, the results of the lottery to determine who would be granted emigration visas for New Riviera, the latest DNA-HGH gene splicing scandal involving the parents of would-be sports superstars, whether a new wholly artificial fat-free chocolate was safe for human consumption, and possible ballot fixing involving the two runoff