"I—I should trust you because you didn't use the collapser on me? Because if your motives were bad, you would already have destroyed me?"
The sugarfoot nodded violently.
"Unh-uh!" I said, backing off. "Not a chance. You tell me why, and maybe I'll come along. But not before." Even as I said it, I felt regret for my own irrationality. Were its intentions even the best, it could certainly not prove them to me, or even demonstrate its reasons with the language barrier between us.
It stood there, looking at me, apparently thinking hard. We seemed to be at an impasse. I didn't want to go with it. On the other hand, I didn't want it to go off and leave me with the most baffling mystery of my life unsolved. I had to know why it had spared me, and what it wanted.
But an alien, on a strange planet, with that dragonish form, and the shark-mouth full of teeth, not to mention a thick three-foot tail ... I couldn't bring myself to trust it.
At that moment, there was a shout down the street, and a flashing light. Someone was coming. Probably, I realized an instant later, the Security men from the rocket field. They had a gadget there that could not only spot, but track down, any use of atomic energy in the region. And there had been, within ten minutes of each other, two such uses of that all-annihilating collapser.
The sugarfoot took a step backward.
"Hold on," I said. "These guys are okay. Maybe, after I get a tranquillizer, I'll be more in the mood for coming with you. If you'll just wait a moment."
But the sugarfoot was having none of it. It gave me an angry glance, then, before I could dodge, it grabbed my arm. I went to pull away, then saw that it was trying to tell me something. The fingers not holding my arm were indicating my wrist. It took me a second to catch on.
"Wrist—wristwatch?" A swift nod. "Time of some sort?" Another. "You—You'll come for me at a later time?" A very brief nod, then a surprisingly friendly clasp of those clawlike fingers on my shoulder.