Jonathan Yeager descended from the shuttlecraft and let his feet thump down on the concrete runway at Los Angeles International Airport. The breeze smelled of the nearby ocean. It played on him at random, not with the gentle regularity of the starship’s ventilation system. After so long, random breezes felt strange, unnatural. He laughed. Random breezes were anything but.
His teeth started to chatter. After so long aboard the Lizards’ starship, the breeze that swept across the airport also felt damn cold. Because of the sea breeze, the airport was one of the coolest spots in the L.A. basin. Jonathan knew that. He’d never known it to be so downright arctic, though.
He moved away from the shuttlecraft as trucks came up to refill its hydrogen and oxygen tanks. A car came up, too, a familiar car. There was his father behind the wheel. They waved to each other. The car stopped. Jonathan’s dad hopped out and gave him a hug. “Good to see you, son!” he said. “Good to have you home!”
“Good to be back, Dad,” Jonathan answered. “It’d be even better if I weren’t freezing to death.” He tacked on an emphatic cough. It seemed the most natural thing in the world. Except for the odd word of English here and there, he’d spoken nothing but the language of the Race for a couple of months. Going back to his native tongue felt odd: English seemed sloppy and imprecise after the Lizards’ language.
His father laughed. “It’s a nice day, if you ask me. But you’ve been up in the bake oven for a while, so you wouldn’t think so.” He went around to the passenger side of the Buick and opened the door. “Hop in and we’ll head for home. Your mom’ll be just as glad to see you as I am. She’s riding herd on Mickey and Donald right now.”
“How are they doing?” Jonathan asked. He hadn’t been able to inquire about them while he was on the starship; as far as the Race was concerned, they didn’t exist.
“They’re growing like weeds,” his father answered. “They’re only two and a half now, but they’re already something like three-quarters as big as they will be. And talking quite a bit, too. If Lizard psychologists wore hats, they’d have to eat ’em, because they say that kind of thing just doesn’t happen.”
Jonathan slid into the car. It was warmer in there than outside. “What else has been going on while I was away?” he asked, tossing his bag onto the back seat.
His father got behind the wheel and started up the hydrogen-burning engine. “Oh, this and that,” he answered. His tone was casual. Too casual? Jonathan shot him a sharp look. The elder Yeager went on, “We can talk more about that when we get home, okay?”
“Okay.” Jonathan didn’t know what else to say. The car glided up to a security gate in the chain-link fence that kept normal traffic off the runways. His dad showed a guard his ID. The guard nodded and handed his dad a clipboard. His father signed the paper it held and gave it back. The guard opened the gate. The car left the restricted area and went out into a parking lot. Jonathan found another question. With a certain amount of apprehension, he asked, “How’s Karen doing?”
“Not… too bad,” his father answered judiciously. “She comes over once or twice a week. She likes the hatchlings, you know.”
“Yeah,” Jonathan answered. “Does she… still like me?”
“She hasn’t said much.” His father paused as he left the lot and merged into traffic. “Your mother and I haven’t asked her a whole lot of questions, you know. We figured it would be best if you took care of all that yourself.”
“Okay,” Jonathan said again, and then, after a moment, “Thanks. Uh-does she know what all I was doing up on the starship?”
“Well…” His father made another one of those judicious pauses. “Let me put it this way: I don’t think she thinks you were playing tiddlywinks up there.”
“Oh.” Jonathan thought about that. He sighed. “Has she said anything about it?”
“Not much.” His dad sounded admiring. On the farm and in the minor leagues and in the Army, keeping your mouth shut was praiseworthy. A phrase his father sometimes used when his mother couldn’t hear was, He wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful. He meant it as approval.
But what was Karen not saying? Jonathan sighed. He’d have to find out. On the other hand, Karen might not want to say anything to him ever again. But if she didn’t, would she keep coming around to see Mickey and Donald? She might, dammit, he thought. She was wild to learn anything she could about Lizards. A lot of kids-maybe even most-her age and Jonathan’s were the same way.
Getting from the airport to Jonathan’s house took about half an hour. Up in the starship, he would have gone around a significant fraction of the Earth’s circumference in that time. His dad pulled into the driveway. When they got out, Jonathan noticed something he hadn’t before. He pointed to his father’s hip. “Are you wearing that pistol all the time now, Dad?”
“Every waking minute,” his father answered, dropping his right hand to the holstered.45. “And it’s always where I can grab it fast when I’m sleeping, too.”
“Are things really that bad?” Jonathan knew about the attacks on his father and the house, of course. But none of them had come to anything, so he had trouble taking them seriously.
“No.” His father’s voice belied the word. After a moment, the elder Yeager added, “They’re worse.”
Before Jonathan could respond to that, the front door opened and his mother hurried out to say hello. Between embraces and kisses, he stopped worrying about the pistol for a while. “I’m so glad to see you,” his mom said over and over. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”
She didn’t know how close that German had come to blowing the starship out of the sky. He didn’t intend to tell her, either. All he said was, “It’s great to be back.” He wondered if he meant it. Next to where he’d been, the stucco house looked like a primitive makeshift.
“I bet you’ll be glad to sleep in your own bed again,” his mother said. “From what your father tells me, a Lizard sleeping mat isn’t what you’d call comfortable.”
“My own bed sounds great, Mom.” Jonathan didn’t have to work too hard to sound enthusiastic. The sleeping mat hadn’t been all that great. But he’d be sleeping alone in his room. He’d had company, friendly company, up on the starship. His eyes slid to his father. By the way his dad was holding his mouth a little too tightly, he knew what Jonathan was thinking.
His mother said, “I wonder if the hatchlings will remember you. It’s been a good-sized part of their lives since they’ve seen you.”
“Let’s go find out,” Jonathan said. He wanted to discover if Mickey and Donald still knew who he was, too. And, if he was dealing with the hatchlings, his mom wouldn’t have the chance to harass him about how he shouldn’t have gone up to the starship in the first place or about how he shouldn’t have spent all his time up there fooling around with Kassquit.
He missed the girl the Lizards had done their best to raise as one of theirs. He couldn’t help it. He’d broken off a love affair. It never would have worked, not for life, not the way his folks’ marriage had. He could see that. But it had been intense while he was up there. With him and Kassquit closed up in one little cubicle all the time, how could it have been anything else?
When he got inside the house, he dropped his bag in the middle of the living room. His mom gave him a look. His dad murmured, “It’s okay this once, Barbara.” His mother frowned, but nodded a second later.
Mickey and Donald were in their room. When Jonathan opened the door, he gaped at how much they’d grown. Sure as hell, they were well on their way to being full-sized Lizards. But they looked funny. He needed a moment to realize why: they wore no body paint. He wanted to speak to them in the language of the Race. That wouldn’t work. They didn’t know it, any more than Kassquit knew any human tongue. As she’d been raised as a Lizard, they were being brought up as people.
“Hi, guys,” Jonathan said in English. “I’m Jonathan. Remember me?”
They came up to him, slowly, a little bit warily-he was bigger than either of his parents. Their eye turrets swiveled as they looked him up and down. Did they have any idea who he was? However much he wanted to, he couldn’t tell.
Then Mickey took another step toward him and stuck out his right hand. “Hello, Jonathan,” he said. His mouth couldn’t make all the sounds of English, any more than Jonathan’s could shape all those the Lizards’ language used. He was probably talking baby talk, too. But Jonathan understood him.
“Hello, Mickey,” he said gravely, and shook the little scaly hand. Then he nodded to Donald. “Hello, Donald. How are you?”
“Hello.” Donald was bigger and stronger than Mickey, but Mickey talked better; he-or maybe she-had always been the more clever hatchling.
Before Jonathan and the Lizards could say anything more, the telephone rang. Jonathan jumped a bit. He’d got used to hearing hisses. But then old habit took over. “I’ll get it,” he said, and hurried into the kitchen. “Hello?”
“Hello, Mr. Yeager,” said the voice on the other end of the line: Karen’s voice. “Could I-”
“I’m not my dad,” Jonathan broke in, wondering what the devil would happen next. “I’m me. I’m back. Hi.”