"I saw the damndest thing, Clee!" Lola exclaimed. "I've been gnawing my fingernails off up to the knuckles, waiting for you!"
Lola's experience had been very similar to Garlock's own, except in that her monster was an intense green in color and looked something like a bat about four feet long, with six-inch canine teeth and several stingers....
"Did you find out the name of the thing?" Garlock asked.
"No. I asked half-a-dozen people, but nobody would even listen to me except one half-grown boy, and the best he could do was that it might be something he had heard another boy say somebody had told him might be a 'lemart.' And as to those lower-case Arpalones, the best I could dig out of anybody was just 'guardians.' Did you do any better?"
"No, I didn't do as well," and he told the girls about his own experience.
"But I didn't find any detectors or receptors, Clee," Lola frowned. "Where were they?"
"'Way up—up here," he showed her. "I'll make a full tape tonight on everything I found out about the guardians and the Arpalones—besides my regular report, I mean—since they're yours, and you can make me one about your friend the green bat...."
"Hey, I like that!" Belle broke in. "That could be taken amiss, you know, by such a sensitive soul as I!"