The transport attendant – clearly tickled at being called ‘M’ by an alien visitor – nodded. ‘Yes, I can lift. But, um . . .’ He paused, searching for words. ‘I’m not sure I can carry it and you same. Together?’

‘Together,’ Isabel said.

He nodded again. ‘It and you together.’

‘Oh, you won’t need to worry about that,’ Ghuh’loloan said. ‘Isabel, would you—?’ She gestured at her cart, and Isabel caught on. She grabbed the edge of the cart and dragged Ghuh’loloan a short ways backward. Right on cue, the cart hummed to life again. Ghuh’loloan pressed a few controls, and a compact ramp extended slowly from the side.

Understanding her colleague’s intent, Isabel looked at the floor. Smooth, dry metal plating, just like everywhere else. Clean, but hard to say what had been on it, or what it had been cleaned with. A bit of solvent residue, a bootprint with traces of fertiliser, or an unseen patch of spilled salt were all enough to make a Harmagian itch for the rest of the day. Isabel frowned with concern. ‘I’m sure one of us can carry you.’

‘No,’ Ghuh’loloan said. ‘You can’t.’ She angled her eyestalks toward Isabel’s bare forearms. Right, Isabel thought. Soap. Skin oil. Lotion. And you couldn’t forget the clothes, either, undoubtedly still dusted with detergent. Stars, but Humans made a mess of getting clean.

Isabel looked to the crowd. ‘Does anyone have any water with them?’ she called out in Ensk. ‘A canteen, or . . . ?’

The faces in the crowd looked surprised to be addressed, as if they’d just discovered they were playing a sim instead of watching a vid. But they responded to the question, opening satchels and digging through backpacks. Bottles, bags, and canteens were raised up.

‘I’m sorry to ask this,’ Isabel said. ‘But we need to rinse off a path for her.’

Ghuh’loloan wagged her facial tendrils. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m asking them to clean off the floor for you.’

‘Oh, dear host, I’ll be all right, really—’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Isabel said, and turned again to the crowd. ‘Any volunteers? Clean water only, please, no tea or anything flavoured.’

Isabel hadn’t expected differently, but was pleased to see everybody with water come forward to help. She knew a good deal of the motivation was self-serving – not only did they see an alien in a pinch on the platform, but they got to help. Still, the unquestioning willingness to pitch in made her proud. The onlookers emptied their drinks, tossing the water in forward-moving splashes. One small girl upended her equally small cup straight down in front of her. It did little for the task at hand – most ended up on the girl’s shoes – but she got the point. Every bit counted.

After a minute or two, a glistening path stretched from the Harmagian cart to the Exodan pod. ‘Thank you, friends,’ Isabel said. ‘And thank your families for us, too.’ That water had come from many, after all.

‘Yes, yes,’ Ghuh’loloan said, having caught a familiar word. Her dactyli unfurled like waking leaves. Had she continued in Klip, she likely would have delivered a truly Harmagian declaration of gratitude, but instead, she exercised one of the few Ensk phrases she knew: ‘Thank oo mutsch.’

The crowd was delighted.

Ghuh’loloan’s eyestalks shifted to the ramp. ‘Now, if you will forgive me further, this will take some time.’

And with that, Ghuh’loloan began to crawl.

There were a few muffled sounds from the crowd – a smothered gasp, a nervous laugh. Isabel looked sharply to them, giving everyone the same look her grandkids got if reaching for something forbidden. But in truth, she was one with the crowd, choking back her own instinctive yelp. She’d never seen a Harmagian leave xyr cart. She knew, logically, that vehicle and rider were two separate entities, but the visual confirmation was cognitively dissonant. She had imagined, given the Harmagian lack of legs, that Ghuh’loloan would simply slide, like the recordings she’d seen of slugs, or perhaps snakes. But instead, Ghuh’loloan’s smooth belly began to . . . stars, what was the word for it? Grab. Pull. It was as if Ghuh’loloan’s stomach was covered with a thick swath of fabric – several bedsheets, maybe – and behind the bedsheets there were hands, and the hands pushed against the sheets, curling, grasping, dragging the rest of the body forward. Dough, Isabel thought. Putty. There was no symmetry to it, no pattern easily discernible to a bipedal mind. And the result was slow, as Ghuh’loloan had intimated. Isabel imagined trying to walk alongside her like this. She’d have to take two short steps, then wait two beats, then two steps, then two beats, on and on. This was why Harmagians had spent so much of their evolutionary history enjoying the quickness of the sea before adapting for the riches of the land. It was why they’d invented carts. It was why their tech was so incredible. It was why they’d become so good at defending themselves – and at taking from others.

Ghuh’loloan heaved herself forward, a lumbering mass inching across the wet patch of already clean floor that had been rinsed with pure water for the sake of fussy, fragile skin. Isabel watched, and marvelled.

The former conquerors of the galaxy.

Eyas

‘Need a hand?’