Unless wear made the disguise more perfect.
Or maybe they were, somehow, human.
I made myself swallow the tight lump in my throat.
Through his suit’s external speaker, the contact specialist said “Uh…”
Alien Captain rolled his eyes and said, “Dang it, I hoped you spoke English.” He grabbed the bag of blocks, dug out a handful, and set four in a neat square. “There you go. Let me guess, you’re gonna say five? Then we point at rocks and grunt?”
I itched to say something, but procedure said leave everything to the contact specialist unless called upon. McGowan had assigned me to retrieval. I stood by until everything went horrible, then grabbed anyone injured and carried them back to safety. It’s like running towards trouble, but the other way around.
“We speak English,” the specialist
