Masklin saw a third truck rattle down a side road and pull in behindthem. There were a lot of humans on it, and most of them were watchingthe skies.

They didn't stop at the nearest building, but drove on to a bigger onewith many more vehicles outside. More humans were waiting for them.

One of them opened the truck door, doing it very slowly even for a human.

The human carrying Masklin got out of the truck.

Masklin looked up at dozens of staring faces. He could see every eyeball, every nostril. Every one of them looked worried. At least, every eyeballdid. The nostrils just looked like nostrils.

They were worried about him.

Keep smiling.

He stared back up at them, and still almost giggling with repressedpanic, said, "Can I help you, gentlemen?"

Chapter 9

Science: A way of finding things out and thenmaking them work. There is a lot more Science thanyou think. - From A Scientific Encyclopedia forthe Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo deHaberdasheri.

Gurder, Angalo, and Pion sat under a bush. It gave them a bit of shade.

The cloud of gloom over them was almost as big.

"We'll never even get home without the Thing," said Gurder.

"Then we'll get him out," said Angalo.

"That'll take forever!"

"Yeah? Well, that's nearly as long as we've got here, if we can't get home." Angalo had found a pebble that was almost the right shape to attach to a twig with strips torn off his coat; he'd never seen a stone ax in his life, but he had a definite feeling that there were useful things that could be done with a stone tied to the end of a stick.

"I wish you'd stop fiddling with that thing," Gurder said. "What's the big plan, then? Us against the whole of Floridia?"

"Not necessarily. You needn't come."

"Calm down, Mr. To-the-rescue. One idiot's enough."

"I don't hear you coming up with any better ideas." Angalo swished the ax through the air once or twice.

"I haven't got any."

A small red light started to flash on the Thing.

After a while, a small square hole opened up and there was a tiny whirring sound as the Thing extended a little lens on a stick. This turned around slowly.

Then the Thing spoke.

"Where," it asked, "is this place?"

It tilted the lens up and there was a pause while it surveyed the face of the human looking down at it.

"And why?" it added.

"I'm not sure," said Masklin. "We're in a room in a big building. The humans haven't hurt me. I think one of them has been trying to talk to me."

"We appear to be in some sort of glass box," said the Thing.

"They even gave me a little bed," said Masklin.

"And I think the thing over there is some kind of lavatory, but look, what about the Ship?"

"I expect it is on its way," said the Thing calmly.

"Expect? Expect? You mean you don't know?"

"Many things can go wrong. If they have gone right, the Ship will be here soon."

"If they don't, I'm stuck here for life!" said Masklin bitterly. "I came here because of you, you know."

"Yes. I know. Thank you."

Masklin relaxed a bit.

"They're being quite kind," he said. He thought about this. "At least, I think so," he added. "It's hard to tell."

He looked through the transparent wall. A lot of humans had been in to look at him in the last few minutes. He wasn't quite certain whether he was an honored visitor or a prisoner, or maybe something in between.

"It seemed the only hope at the time," he said lamely.

"I am monitoring communications."

"You're always doing that."

"A lot of them are about you. All kinds of experts are rushing here to have a look at you."

"What kind of experts? Experts in nomes?"

"Experts in talking to creatures from other worlds. Humans haven't met anyone from another world, but they 've still got experts in talking to them."

"All this had better work," said Masklin soberly. "Humans really know about nomes now."

"But not what nomes are. They think you have just arrived."

"Well, that's true."

"Not arrived here. Arrived on the planet. Arrived from the stars."

"But we've been here for thousands of years! We live here!"

"Humans find it a lot easier, really, to believe in little people from the sky than little people from the Earth. They would prefer to think of little green men than leprechauns. "

Masklin's brow wrinkled. "I didn't understand any of that," he said.

"Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter." The Thing let its lens swivel around to see more of the room.

"Very nice. Very scientific," it said.

Then it focused on a wide plastic tray next to Masklin.

"What is that?"

"Oh, fruit and nuts and meat and stuff," said Masklin. "I think they've been watching me to see what I eat. I think these are quite bright humans, Thing. I pointed to my mouth and they understood I was hungry."

"Ah," said the Thing. "Take me to your larder."

"Pardon?"

"I will explain. I have told you that I monitor communications?"

"All the time."

"There is a joke, that is, a humorous anecdote or story, known to humans.

It concerns a ship from another world landing on this planet, and strangecreatures get out and say to a gas pump, garbage can, slot-machine, ofsimilar mechanical device, 'Take me to your leader.' I surmise this isbecause they are unaware of the shape of humans. I have substituted thesimilar word 'larder,' refering to a place where food is stored. This isa humorous pun or play on words, for hilarious effect."

It paused.

"Oh," said Masklin. He thought about it. "These would be the little green men you mentioned?"

"Very-wait a moment. Wait a moment."

"What? What?" said Masklin urgently.

"I can hear the Ship."

Masklin listened as hard as he could.

"I can't hear a thing," he said.

"Not sound. Radio."

"Where is it? Where is it, Thing? You've always said the Ship's up there, but where?"

The remaining tree frogs crouched among the moss to escape the heat of the afternoon sun. Low in the eastern sky was a sliver of white. It would be nice to think that the tree frogs had legends about it. It would be nice to think that they thought the sun and moon were distant flowers-a yellow one by day, a white one by night. It would be nice to think they had legends about them, and said that when a good frog died its soul would go to the big flowers in the sky.

The trouble is that it's frogs we're talking about here. Their name for the sun was ... mipmip... . Their name for the moon was ...

mipmip... . Their name was everything was ... mipmip ... and when you're stuck with a vocabulary of one word it's pretty hard to have legends about anything at all.

The leading frog, however, was dimly aware that there was something wrong with the moon.

It was growing brighter.

"We left the Ship on the moon?" said Masklin. "Why?"

"That's what your ancestors decided to do," said the Thing. "So they could keep an eye on it, I assume."

Masklin's face lit up slowly, like clouds at sunrise.

"You know," he said, excitedly, "Right back before all this, right back when we used to live in the old hole, I used to sit out at nights and watch the moon. Perhaps in my blood I really knew that, up there-"

'Wo, what you were experiencing was probably primitive superstition," said the Thing.

Masklin deflated. "Oh. Sorry."

"And now, please be quiet. The Ship is feeling lost and wants to be told what to do. It has just woken up after fifteen thousand years."

"I'm not very good at mornings myself," Masklin said.

There is no sound on the moon, but this doesn't matter, because there is no one to hear anything. Sound would just be a waste.

But there is light.