"Mrs. Xlptl is missing."
"Ah," I said, leaning forward. This was something I could understand. Maybe I had heard him wrong about that name.
"Missing how?" I asked.
"Mrs. Xlptl," said my potential client, "failed to re-transmigrate."
"To do which?"
"Re-transmigrate. To get out of her Earth body after touring Earth."
A nut, I thought. Your first case, Brody, and he's a nut. Ah, well, there goes the retainer. But you might as well humor him. "And did you," I said, "ah, get out of your Earth body?"
"Goodness, yes," said Mr. Xlptl promptly, removing his jacket. "You never saw an Earthman without shoulders, did you?"
He wasn't kidding. I gawked until he put the jacket back on. His neck slanted down gradually, widening as it went, to the broad waist. He had no shoulders to speak of. No wonder he looked like a penguin.
"You see," he said in a confidential voice while I continued to gawk, "Mrs. Xlptl thinks she doesn't want to transmigrate back. She thinks she wants to go on being an Earthwoman. Naturally she's wrong. Naturally we ought to go home. Na—"