"And they talk in squeaks yet!" the alien told himself aloud.
Longtree regarded the alien carefully. As Channeljumper had said, the creature was short and had close-cropped hair on its head. The legs were brief and pudgy, and Longtree felt a shade of pity for the creature who could obviously not get around as well as they. It was undoubtedly intelligent—the space rocket testified to that—and the fact that the creature's skin color stayed a peaceful pink-orange helped assure Longtree the alien's mission was friendly.
The alien raised a short arm and stepped slowly forward. "I come in peace," he said in the language they could not understand. "My wife and I are probably the only humans left alive. When we left Earth, most of the population had been wiped out by atomics. I think we were the only ones to get away."
Longtree felt his redness subside to orange, as he wondered idly what the alien had said. Except for a natural curiosity, he didn't really care, for he remembered suddenly the symphony he had to finish by tomorrow if he were to marry Redsand. But there was the element of politeness to consider, so he nudged Channeljumper.
"Don't just stand there, say something!"
Channeljumper flustered and turned several colors in rapid succession. He stammered, "Er—ah—welcome to our planet, O visitor from space," and motioned the alien to sit down.
"That's not very creative," Longtree accused.
"What's the difference," Channeljumper pointed out, "when he doesn't understand us anyway."
"You guys don't really look like grasshoppers," the man from Earth apologized, coming forward; "it's just the long legs that fooled me from up there. Boy, am I glad to find somebody intelligent on Mars; from the air we couldn't see any cities or anything, and we were afraid the planet didn't have any life. I wish we could understand each other, though."
Longtree smiled pleasantly and wished the creature would go away so he could search for the last note to his symphony. He picked up his blowstring so the alien wouldn't sit on it.