"Goodbye," Longtree said, but Channeljumper's long legs had already taken him over to the nearest sand dune and out of sight.
Alone, Longtree picked up the blowstring once more, placed it against his stomach, and gave out with a clear, beautiful, experimental note which was again not the one he desired.
He still had not found it an hour later, when the Sound came. The Sound was a low unpleasant rumble, a sound lower than any Longtree had ever heard, and he wondered what it was. Thinking of it, he remembered he had seen a large flash of fire in the sky a moment before the roar came. But since this last was clearly not likely at all, he dismissed the whole thing as imagination and tried again to coax some new note from the blowstring.
A half hour later, Channeljumper came bounding excitedly over a sand dune. "They're here," he cried, screeching to a halt and emitting yellow flashes of color.
"Who's here?" Longtree demanded, turning violet in annoyance at the interruption.
"The visitors from space," Channeljumper explained. "They landed near my hole. They're little creatures, only half as big as we are, but thicker and grey colored."
"Grey colored?" Longtree repeated incredulously, trying to picture the improbability.
"But only on the outside," Channeljumper went on. "They have an outside shell that comes off, and inside they're sort of pink-orange."
"Ah-ha," Longtree said, as though he'd suspected it all the time. "Evidently they wear grey suits of some kind, probably for protection."
"They took them off anyway," Channeljumper said, eager to impart his knowledge, "and they were sort of pink-orange underneath. There are only two of them, and one has long hair."