Some of the men, by their facial expression and obvious emotional condition, were considered inadequate for the task before them and were excused. The scar-faced man, however, quietly followed instructions. Henry wanted to go to him and ask him about Uncle Andy, but he could no longer move against the press of the crowd.
"He has stopped now at the head of the staircase," Captain Merman announced in a low tone. "He is looking down into the lounge."
Men and women pressed closely against the two adolescents. Henry could sense their accumulated tenseness. He could hear grown men panting and he could observe the dryness of their tightly compressed lips, the animal-like flaring of nostrils, the hunted look in their staring eyes. He saw one woman grip her husband's hand until he winced. Martia pressed her face against his shoulder and would not look at the staircase.
They waited. And Henry watched the Major.
He was a short, stockily built man with a clear, youthful face and brown, wavy hair. On his chest were campaign ribbons and one small medal of some kind. Henry saw his Adam's apple move as he swallowed nervously. His blue-grey eyes never wavered from the staircase.
The scar-faced man stood slightly apart from the crowd, watching the stairs with a quiet, expressionless intentness. About a dozen men waited tensely on either side of the stairs, trying to remain out of a direct line of sight from above.
"He's coming down!" said Captain Merman.
There was an audible drawing of breaths as they saw the alien intruder descend the stairs. He came down to the second step from the bottom and stood there surveying the scene before him.
He was taller than men, by about a head. His shoulders, arms and musculature were not human. He was almost four feet across his sloping shoulders, with ponderous arms and six-fingered hands that reached below his thick knees. There was a thumb, in addition to the taloned fingers, a prehensile, calloused extension of the heel of the hand. A second set of three, prehensile appendages writhed slowly about just above his multi-jointed wrists. His large, almost circular chest was split by a multiple lipped orifice that slowly opened and closed like a sea anemone as he breathed. He wore only a meager harness and loin cloth, the plastic-like straps supporting a heavy instrument box at his waist and a pack of apparatus on his back. His skin was leathery, almost brittle appearing, as though he were partially exoskeletal, and of mottled colors ranging from dark red to purple, like a mass of birth-marks that left no room for normal pigment. His face was small, chinless and devoid of nose or nostrils, but he had a round mouth the lips of which were like the beak of a blow-fish. His cranium was large, hairless, and heavily veined. Under absurdly accentuated, hairless brows, a single, monstrous insect's eye with a thousand gleaming facets rotated about, examining them balefully.