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please.” I found myself, briefly, imagining the thing fired, imagined hearing the sharp, sizzling zzzzzzip! of the barrel’s magnetic-induction catapult, the dull thup- whack of the bullet flying through the air and hitting someone. Dum-dum? Poison? Or would I see gobbets of meat flying from an explosive load?
    Phil lifted his hands halfway, as if trying to put them over his head. Twit.
    I called out, “No problem officer. What’re they doing here?”
    The nearest Kapellmeister lifted one of its chelae, something like a long, narrow lobster’s claw, but colored and textured like it was made from polished brass, made a sharp, insistent noise, a loud, metallic chatterclinkchitter . A little box hanging from the policeman’s belt muttered something indistinct. He glanced at the alien, picked up the box, said something I couldn’t quite make out, and the box made little rattling noises in return.
    He said, “Same thing as you, buddy. Just sit tight and we’ll be on our way. Please don’t try to follow us.” Horsemen—horsethings as well— riding on, hooves lifting dust out of the grass as they headed for the opposite side of the clearing, disappearing into the shadows one by one. Policemen keeping those guns sort of loosely pointed at us.
    Zell said, “Man. Those things are weird !”
    No harness gear on their horses. No saddles. No nothing. When one of the Kapellmeisters passed close by, I could see its eight skinny legs, segmented like bugs’ legs, stretching out from under its fat body, clutching the horse tight enough to dimple its flesh. And it had what looked like a third arm coming out of the middle front, ending not in a lobster claw but something like a wet gray octopus, or maybe a squid, slimy-looking tentacles anyway, pressed into the middle of the horse’s back.
    Interesting. The eyes of the policemen’s horses were rolling in their sockets, trying to get a look at us as they passed by. The Kapellmeister’s horses’ eyes were... glassy. Still. Staring out at odd angles. Up at the sky. Down at the ground. Straight out to the side. Like they were drugged or something, though the horses walked quite well, walked with pretty much the same gait as the policemen’s horses.
    Rua Mater put her hand on my forearm and said, “No. Not weird at all. Pretty neat, in fact.”
    Pretty neat? Yes. When human civilization started spreading through interstellar space, a little more than four hundred years ago, I guess we fully expected to run into other sentient species. We weren’t disappointed, of course. The Arousians, with tools and things that were enough like cities we could think of them as people . Other beings, not as smart as us, but... brighter than various species of extinct ape perhaps. The womfrogs on Green Heaven are a prime example.
    Bit by bit we got further afield, until one day a squadron of starship explorers sailed into the planetary system of 82 Eridani, a very nice G5V star just a little more than twenty light-years from Earth. Planet number three turned out to be inhabitable, a lot like Earth. And inhabited already.
    Our little fleet found itself hailed on assorted radio frequencies as it decelerated toward 82 Eridani, then met by a pair of armed warships that escorted them to what appeared to be a large industrial site circling one of the star’s larger gas giants. Ultimately, they were welcomed on Salieri itself, and now these most interesting Kapellmeisters have an embassy on Earth.
    People have noticed that the Kapellmeisters’ technology is at least the equal of our own, their technical civilization of unknown antiquity, apparently somewhat older than our own, and have wondered why they didn’t go starfaring. Wondered why they didn’t show up on Earth a long time ago.
    It’s been suggested that they simply thought it not worth the effort. And, of course, the usual pack of idiots started digging up old flying saucer stories. Back then, the Face on Mars still had currency, though the