"Does he have a name?" one of the women asked. She was tall and blond.
Her date shook his head. "It's just it. " Sput-phwut went the speaker. Sput-phwut.
"What was that?"
Jillanna whispered, "Look at his eyes."
"It's facing the wrong way."
"Well, wait. He'll turn."
"Be a good show tonight," the guy at the end said as he lit a cigarette. "Saint Bernard and a Great Dane. I'm betting the Bernard puts up a better fight."
"Aah, you'd bet on your grandmother."
"If she still had her own teeth, I would."
Jillanna leaned over to me. "He needs fifty kilos of fresh meat a day. They have a real problem getting a steady supply. Also, they're not sure that terrestrial animals provide all the nutritional elements he needs, so they keep varying the diet. Sometimes they pump the animals up with vitamins and stuff. Sometimes he rejects the food; I guess it smells bad to him."
Sput-phwut.
The Chtorran humped around and looked at us with eyes like black disks. Like dead searchlights. It humped up, lifting the front third of its body into the air, trembling slightly, but focusing its face-like the front end of a subway, flat and emotionless-toward us. I stepped back involuntarily, but Jillanna pulled me forward again. "Isn't he beautiful?" Her hand was tight on my sleeve.
Sput-phwut.
It had blinked. The sound was made by its sphincter-like eyelids, irising closed and open again. Sput-phwut. It was looking right at me. Studying dispassionately.
I didn't answer her. I couldn't speak. It was like looking into the eyes of death.
"Don't worry. He can't see you. I think. I mean, we're pretty sure he can't."
"It seems awfully interested." The Chtorran was still reared up and peering. Its tiny antennae were waving back and forth curiously. They were set just behind the eyes. Its body rocked slightly too. I wished I had a closer view-something about the eyes; they weren't mounted in a head, but seemed instead to be on swiveled stalks inside the skin. They were held high above the body and gimbaled independently of each other. Occasionally one eye would angle backward for a moment, then click forward again. The creature was constantly alert.
The Chtorran lowered suddenly and slid across the floor, right up to the wall below us and halfway up it, bringing its face within a meter of the glass. I got my wish-a closer look. It angled its eyes upward, bringing them even closer. Its mandibles --sinuous like an underwater plant-waved and clicked around its mouth. Its eyes opened as wide as they could. Sput-phwut. "Too interested. You sure it can't see us?"
"Oh, he tries that almost every night," called the guy on the end with the funny-smelling cigarette. Laced with dream dust? Probably. "It's our voices he hears. Through the glass. He's trying to find out where the sound is coming from. Don't worry, he can't reach up here. He has to keep at least half his length on the ground to support himself when he rears up. Of course, if he keeps growing-as we think he will-we'll have to move him to a bigger lab. There might come a day when he won't wait for Smitty. He'll just come right up here and help himself."
The women shuddered. Not Jillanna, just the women. They moved instinctively closer to their dates. "You're kidding," the redheaded one said plaintively. "Aren't you?"
"Nope. It could happen. Not tonight, though-but eventually, if we don't get him into a bigger tank."
The Chtorran unfolded its arms then, like a bird flapping its wings once to settle them, but instead of refolding, the arms began to open slowly. They came away from the hump on the back and now I could see exactly how the shoulders were anchored, and the curve of that bony structure beneath the fur, how the skin slid over it as the muscles stretched, how the arms were mounted in their sockets like two incredible gimbaled cranes. The arms were covered with leathery black skin and bristly black fur. They were long and insect-like. How long and thin they were, and so peculiarly double-jointed. There were two elbows at the joint! And now the arms came reaching upward slowly toward us. The hands-they were claws, three-pronged and almost ebony-came tapping on the glass, sliding and skittering up and down it, seeking purchase, leaving faint smudges where they touched. There were soft fingers within those claws. I could see them pressing gently against the glass.
The eyes stared emotionlessly, swiveling this way and thatand then both of them locked on me. Sput-phwut. It blinked. And kept on staring.
I was terrified before it. I couldn't move! It's face-it didn't have a face!-was searching mine! If I had stretched, I could have touched it. I could see how narrow its neck was-a shaft of corded muscle terminating in those two huge, frightening eyes. I couldn't look away! I was caught like a bird before a snake-its eyes were dark and dispassionate and deadly. What kind of god could make a thing like this?
And then the moment broke. I realized that Jillanna was beside me, breathing heavily.
One more sput-phwut and the Chtorran began sinking back down to the floor. It slid away from the wall and began roving around the room again, sometimes humping like a worm, other times seeming to flow. It left a swept trail through the scattered straw and sawdust. There were several bales of it against one wall. It stopped to pull at one of them, did something with its mandibles and mouth, then left behind a small mound of weak-looking foam.
"Building instinct," Jillanna said.
"It doesn't seem very intelligent," the redhead whispered to her date.
"It isn't. None of them are," the man whispered back. "Whatever kind of invaders these Chtorrans are, they don't seem to be very smart. They don't respond to any kind of language-or any attempts at communication. Then again, maybe these are just the infantry. Infantry doesn't have to be very smart, just strong."
I realized then that we were all whispering. As if it could hear us.
Well, it could, couldn't it?
"Look at the way his arms fold up when he's not using them," Jillanna pointed. "It's like they're retractable. They're not bones you know, just muscle and some kind of cartilage. Very flexible -and almost impossible to break. You'll see them in action when he's fed--0h, here we go now."
A slit of light appeared at the base of the left wall; it slid upward to become a door, revealing a closet-shaped cubicle. The Chtorran arced around quickly-amazing, how fast the thing could move. Its eyes rotated forward, up and down, in an eerie disjointed way. The sliding door was completely open now. A Great Dane stood uneasily in the lit cubicle before the Chtorran. I thought of horses-Great Danes, with their lumbering huge paws, long legs and heavy bodies, always made me think of horses. I could just barely hear a low rumbling growl coming from the dog.
For a moment, everything was stilclass="underline" the Chtorran, the dog, the watchers at the glass. Below, in the glow of light reflected from the cubicle, I could see a dark window just across from us. It looked as if there were someone behind the glass, watching.
The moment stretched-and broke. The Chtorran's arms came slightly out from its body. I thought of a bird getting ready to fly. It was a gesture of readiness, the way they were poisedthe claws open, ready to grab.
The Chtorran slid forward. The dog jumped sideways
-and was caught. One of the arms reached out at an impossible angle and snatched the dog in mid-leap, knocked it to the ground on its back. The Chtorran bent sideways in mid-flowas if the dog in its claw was a pivot and it was pulling itself around. The other arm came around. The Chtorran flowed. Its great black jaw was a vertical open hole that split the front of its crimson body. The dog was pinned by both arms now-I could see how the claws dug into its flesh like pincers. It thrashed and kicked and snapped and bit. The red beast raised and stretched and arcedand came down upon the hapless Dane almost too fast to follow. There was a thrash and slash and flurry-and then stillness. The back half of the Dane protruded from the Chtorran maw.