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English. An Arcturan? What was his name, Knafti? But I had understood they couldn’t make human sounds.
     
    Whoever it was, he put an end to the meeting. The door opened.
     
    Through it I could see a couple of dozen hostile backs, leaving through another door, and coming towards me the Space Force colonel, a very young man with a pale, angel’s face and a dragging limp, in civilian clothes ... and, yes, the Arcturan. It was the first one I had ever been with at so close range, in so small a group. He wobbled towards me on four or six of his coat-hanger limbs, breathing-thorax encased in a golden shell, his mantis face and bright black eyes staring at me.
     
    Peyroles closed the door behind them.
     
    He turned to me and said, ‘Mr Gunnarsen ... Knafti ... Timmy Brown.’
     
    I hadn’t the ghost of a clue whether to offer to shake, and if so, with what. Knafti however merely regarded me gravely. The boy nodded. I said: ‘I’m glad to meet you, gentlemen. As you perhaps know, I tried to set up an appointment before but your people turned me down. I take it now the shoe is on the other foot.’
     
    Colonel Peyroles frowned towards the door he had just shut - there were still noises behind it - but said to me, ‘You’re quite right. That was a meeting of a civic leaders’ committee—’ The door interrupted him by opening, and a man leaned through and yelled: ‘Peyroles! Can that thing understand white man’s talk? I hope so. I hope it hears me when I say that I’m going to make it my personal business to take it apart if it’s still in Belport this time tomorrow. And if any human being, or so-called human being like you, gets in the way, I’ll take him apart too!’ He slammed the door without waiting for an answer.
     
    ‘You see?’ said Peyroles gruffly, angrily. Things like that would never have happened with well-tempered troops. ‘That’s what we want to talk to you about.’
     
    ‘I see,’ I said, and I did see, very clearly, because that fellow who had leaned through the door had been the Arcturan-property-sale standard bearer we had counted on, old - what had Connick called him? - old Slits-and-Fits Schlitz, the man we were attempting to elect to get our proposition through.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    Judging by the amount of noise I’d heard from the citizens’ delegation, there was lynch in the atmosphere. I could understand why they would reverse themselves and ask for me, before things got totally out of control and wound up in murder, if you call killing an Arcturan murder—
     
    - although, it occurred to me, lynching Knafti might not be the worst thing that could happen; public sentiment might bounce back—
     
    I shoved that thought out of my mind and got down to business. ‘What exactly?’ I asked. ‘I gather you want me to do something about your image.’
     
    Knafti sat himself down, if that’s what Arcturans do, on an entwining-rack. The pale boy whispered something to him, then came to me. ‘Mr Gunnar sen ,’ he said, ‘I am Knaf ti ’.’ He spoke with a great precision of vowels and a stress at the end of each sentence, as though he had learned English out of a handbook. I had no trouble in understanding him. At least, not in understanding what it was he said. It did take me a moment to comprehend what he meant; and then Peyroles had to help.
     
    ‘He means at this moment he’s speaking for Knafti,’ said the colonel. ‘Interpreter. See?’
     
    The boy moved his lips for a moment - shifting gears, it seemed - and said, ‘That is right, I am Timmy Brown. Knafti’s translator and assistant.’
     
    ‘Then ask Knafti what he wants from me,’ I tried to say it the way he had - a sort of sneeze for the ‘K’ and an indescribable whistle for the ‘F.’
     
    Timmy Brown moved his lips again and said, ‘I, Knafti, wish you to stop ... to leave ... to discontinue your operation in Belport.’
     
    From the twining-tree, the Arcturan waved his ropy limbs and chittered like