"Any you guys wanta scram, do it now. The rest of you come on."
I took a step. Something squirmed under my foot, squeaked, and began to curse in a voice like a katydid's.
"My God," I said. "It's Quern."
I picked him up. His rubbery little body was slick with mud. He spat and hiccoughed, and snarled,
"Of course it's Quern. Fine thing, leaving me in the mud like that. I might ha' drowned." He started cursing again in Low Martian, which is his native tongue. He's a Diran from the sea-bottom pits of Shun.
Somebody laughed. It sounded hysterical. "The little lush! He don't even know what's happened!"
And he didn't. The cansins hadn't even seen him. He'd just been tromped into the mud and left there, unharmed.
Gow caught his breath suddenly, and somebody whimpered. I looked up. I couldn't see much, in the rain and the indigo dark, but I didn't have to see. I knew what was coming.
A little vicious splotch of living green against the darkness, and underneath it four huge shadows, trampling knee-deep in mud, making toward a plastic hut filled with human beings.
I said softly, "Quern, I never thought you were such a hell of a wonderful hypnotist."