She meant Duke.
Behind us, his breathing had gotten painfully loud. And it seemed even more ragged and uneven than before. I wondered if he was even going to last until the blimp arrived.
We sat in silence for a while.
Suddenly, Lizard said, "You son of a bitch."
"Huh?"
"You did it again." She pointed. I looked.
Outside the chopper, there was something moving through the edges of darkness-something just beyond the warm circle of our lights. Its eyes glimmered and flashed as it glanced toward us. It was that reflection that had given it away.
"Is the spotlight working?" I asked.
"The nose light is out, but I've got one overhead. Hang on." She touched her control panel. A bright beam sprang out across the clearing, suddenly catching the little silvery-pink figure by surprise-it was centered in the rosy pool of light. The creature blinked and froze in the sudden glare. It was round and furry and as cute as a baby abominable snowman. Pink dust hung in the air around it.
"Oh-" gasped Lizard. "Is that a bunnydog?" Her eyes widened in wonder.
"Yeah," I said sourly. I lifted the camera to my eye. The creature was only thigh-deep in the powder. That meant the cotton candy was settling.
"He doesn't seem scared of the light, does he?"
"No. Just curious. These creatures don't display much fear of anything. Do you see the others?" There were more bunnydogs in the dimness behind it. We could see them in the reflected glow. They were motionless too.
Lizard was grinning. "You just blew one. These are not worms."
I said, "I've still got ten minutes."
The bunnydog blinked and unfroze then. It scratched behind one ear, rubbed its face with its paws, made a face at us, then turned and ambled out of the spotlight.
"Well, I guess he told you," said Lizard.
"Yeah, but what?"
The other bunnydogs were getting curious now. One at a time, they began taking cautious little hops toward the chopper. They pushed through the powder in quick spurts of motion, stopping often to look ahead and ponder. They cocked their heads sideways to listen, their ears flopping open as they did so. I held my camera steady and recorded every moment of it. I thumbed the controls and zoomed in for closeups. These pictures were going to be important.
There was something funny about the shape of their mouths; they seemed permanently pouted-their muzzles were oddly blunted. As I watched, one of them straightened up and turned to its companion, pursing its lips as if kissing the air. The other replied with a kissy-face of its own. They looked like puppies who'd been pulled off Mamma's tit. Of course! Their mouths were shaped more for sucking than for chewing!
How very... odd.
I watched-and photographed-as the bunnydogs continued sniffing closer to the chopper. Every so often, one or another of them would lower its muzzle to the dust and suck and chew. Were they going for the powder-or the creatures feeding on the powder? I couldn't tell. But I knew it was important-it was part of the bigger question. Were these creatures sentient? Were they omnivores? Were these the sentients we were looking for?
Their nostrils and eyes were slits against the powder-but every so often, one of the creatures would pause and straighten and look at us, blinking its eyes wide for a quick curious instant; then we could see that the bunnydogs actually had very large round eyes. Puppydog eyes. Probably that was their normal configuration-when they weren't rump-deep in dust.
I said, "This is very very bad news."
Lizard glanced at me. "Huh?"
"We've been telling people that the Chtorran ecology is extraordinarily vicious, right?"
"Uh huh."
"And we've got pictures to prove it, right?"
"Go on. . . ."
"So-how long do you think we'll be able to sell that story after these creatures are seen by the public?"
"You're right," she said. "This is bad news."
I continued recording the bunnydogs' cautious inspection of the chopper. "We're going to have to put the lid on this. At least until we know what we're looking at. These creatures could be the most dangerous of all. And we might not find out what the danger is until it's too late, because we're so distracted by how cute they are."
The first of the bunnydogs reached the wind'shield then. It climbed up the side of the chopper and peered in at us, blinking owlishly. With its paws flat against the glass, it looked like a small child peering in the window of a candy store. It sucked at the surface-tasting it, no doubt.
"I keep wanting to say awww," whispered Lizard.
"It's a fucking teddy bear-a goddamned fucking teddy bear!" I growled. "What a dirty trick."
The bunnydog licked its chops politely. I wondered what that meant.
There were other bunnydogs climbing up the side of the chopper now. Within minutes, the window was full of tiny little faces peering in at us.
"I, uh-hate to say this," said Lizard, "but I'm starting to get scared."
"Me too. I never thought I'd be afraid of a herd of teddy bears."
"They just keep staring at us. What do they want?"
"I don't know." I was still recording. "I think maybe they're just curious." I lowered my camera. "I want to try something. Will you record this?"
"Sure." She took the camera from me. "Okay, go ahead."
I leaned forward in my seat and placed my hands up against the glass, opposite the paws of the first bunny. Its paws were no larger than a baby's.
The bunnydog blinked. It tried to sniff my hands through the windshield. It sucked at the glass. Then it stopped and frowned. It looked puzzled. It blinked and tried again. This time, it licked the glass. Its tongue was soft and pink. The other bunnydogs watched curiously.
"That doesn't seem very intelligent," Lizard said.
"It is if you've never seen glass before. It's testing." The bunnydog blinked at me again.
I blinked back at it-a big oversized gesture. The bunnydog showed its teeth.
I showed mine. As wide as I could.
The bunnydog-there was no other word for it-smiled. I smiled too-a big ridiculous grin.
"I think you're communicating," Lizard said.
"I wonder what we're saying to each other?"
"It looks like, `for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.. . "'
"Bite your tongue," I said. But my face was frozen. I was still smiling broadly at the bunnydog. "Maybe we're negotiating a peace treaty... . "
The bunnydog made a face. It pulled its cheeks out into a grotesque expression. And held it.
"I dare you," Lizard said.
I swallowed. "The things I do for my species." I made a face back at the bunnydog. I hooked my fingers in my mouth and stretched it wide. I crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue and touched the tip of it to my nose.
The bunnydog fell off the window in surprise. So did all the others.
"Oh, God-I think I've insulted them."
The bunnydogs were rolling around in the powder, stamping their feet and drumming up big clouds of pale pink dust. They looked like they were having a collective seizure.
"Or something," Lizard said. "Maybe they're laughing themselves to death."
I looked at Lizard; she had the camera still recording. She pointed it straight at me. "This-" I said angrily to posterity, "-is not the way Captain Kirk always did it!"
TWENTY-SIX
THE BUNNYDOGS climbed back up on the windshield and stared at us for a while longer. I made some more faces at them. They made some more faces at me. Gradually, they lost interest in that game and drifted away to explore other parts of the chopper. We heard them scrabbling across the top of the ship and scratching at the observation bubbles.