But I said, in a voice that I hoped wouldn't sound too much like a dish of unchilled tapioca,
"Now, don't worry, Helen. Everything's going to be all right. There must be a logical explanation for this. Hank's just the man to—"
And then—there it was again!
A blinding flash of light. A weird vibrancy tingling my body, drawing taut the tiny hairs of my forearms and neck. Light motes dancing giddily before my eyes, coalescing to form the figure of a man. A wavering, mobile figure, from the uppermost nebulosity of which emanated a piteous, hollow voice.
"Skleeva! Skleeva—"
Then a swift, dulled paling of the light. Burning white tarnished into red-ochre, red-ochre brazened, the green palpitated to a deep blue-indigo. The figure before my eyes took on form and substance. I saw with a sense of stark disbelief it was tall and lanky as Hank himself, that it wore a uniform of some sort, that its eyes were not unfriendly but haggard and despairing. And then,
"Ombiggs!" wailed our impossible visitor. "Ombiggs! Skleeva?"
And vanished!
I stood still. Very, very still It was not courage. It was rivets in the soles of my feet. My brain clamored,
"Go, boys, go!" But my knees were clattering and banging like the fenders of a T-model Ford.