Jan seemed about to answer Doc a little sadly. But then the grating over a circular doorway at one side of the room opened and Kobolah floated into our presence, and alighted before us. Uncertainly, Doc and I arose. No human yet could have read the expressions of Kobolah's queer, angular face, limpid filament-framed eyes, or palped mouth orifice. The ages of history, and alien thought structure behind that visage, were lost in enigma. But now his voice-tympanum buzzed; words came out with an effort, but their arrangement and apparent thought mimicked the human almost comically.
"Bubble cavities," he buzzed. "You are fine guessers. We are in a very small asteroid. But it is not in the asteroid belt. The great explosion long ago hurled it into an orbit around Ganymede. It is one of our many retreats. We wanted to conquer Mars. We attacked terribly. But they destroyed X. The few Martians still surviving tried to hunt our even smaller numbers down. But we found a way; we became little to be concealed. Later, we were at peace, safe. But being small was a habit not needing change. We bore offspring, as we could before. We built things up again, and multiplied, very few dying. We made more refuges in the solar system, then in the systems of the stars. We are strong and hidden. We have a good way. We are peaceful, except when there is danger. But you three have come—differently. All right, we can watch and learn from you, too. Yes, I have listened to all that you have said, but to learn is good, and not unkind. Right? Now I have answered some of your questions."
The buzzing voice ended in the slurred imitation of a laugh, which tautened whatever now served me as nerves. For to laugh is a specially human, Earthborn thing, not to be mocked. But here I was in the awesome dark of complete novelty.
Doc, however, gripped Kobolah's corresponding tactile member. "Does one do this, after all, among your people, Friend?" he asked. "Or express thanks? If so, here it is. As for the rest, about the technology of transformation—"
Doc did not even make it an apparent question. Yet the question was there. Dr. Shane Lanvin had to learn what he could.
Kobolah mocked up a human chuckle. But his monster's gaze was cold. "This is not for my decision," he buzzed. "But it could be as you wish. Yes, I overheard what you want. Some I could show you now. You and your companions—Charlie, Jan. The apparatus you could see."
"Of course!" Doc replied quickly.
I looked at Jan. Her jaw was set grimly, as if to fight the strain in her eyes. I didn't have to ask her what it was. I felt it myself. All the strangeness around us, beating at, grinding at, our minds. Physical laws turned topsy-turvy, till nothing was the same. Could an android go mad—if the mind in it remained human, and reacted even against the unfamiliar substance of the arms and legs that it controlled? Too long already it had been so. We were realizing what we were. There needed to be some relief from the harsh thought.
"Wait!" I insisted. "Our own forms—are they dead?"
"Alive, sleeping, mindless, where they fell in your ship," Kobolah answered. "I believe—safe...."