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to reduce the internal illumination to minimal, he watched as the walls dimmed until he could just make out shapes and spaces. Among other things, the room was its own night-light. Turning over, he tucked the faux feather pillow beneath his head and closed his eyes.
    He was in his rented 4X4 again, sleepy instead of frantic this time, as he stared up at horizontally flattened eyes that flared across the lower portion of a tapering head. A membranous hearing sensor protruded from near the top of the purple conical skull. A single sucker-lined arm flap was reaching for him.
    An old dream, he told himself. One that, though he relived it with less and less frequency, never lost its power to unsettle. The alien appendage touched his bare shoulder. It felt very real.
    In the dream as well as the reality that had given rise to it, he had been clad in jeans and flannel shirt. His shoulder had not been bare. He blinked. Then his eyes went almost as wide as those of the creature gazing coldly down at him.
    Vilenjji. In his room.
    As he tried to scream, the heavy arm flap pressed down hard over his mouth. Fortunately, it did not cover his nose. Moving up rapidly behind him, a second Vilenjji easily lifted him up in the bed and despite Walker’s frantic, desperate efforts, proceeded to secure his arms behind him. Something was slapped over his mouth. It adhered tightly to the flesh and drew his lips together into a thin, tight line. Eyes goggling, moaning futilely, he was lifted off the bed and found himself being carried ignominiously toward the doorway.
    Out in the faintly illuminated common room, his shock was magnified threefold as his abductor set him down on the floor. At least a dozen of his former kidnappers had crowded into the high-ceilinged open space. Arrayed like the specimens they had once been and now threatened to become again, his friends were lined up alongside Braouk’s softly gurgling imitation geysers. An outraged Sque had all ten of her limbs secured beneath her while the furious, straining Tuuqalian was cocooned in enough heavy-duty bindings to secure half a dozen elephants. Next to him, a helpless George gazed across at Walker. The dog’s dark brown eyes were full of fear.
    With the same swaying, side-to-side gait Walker had thought never to see again, a single massive Vilenjji came toward him. With time, the commodities trader had become adept at recognizing individual alien characteristics. A chill as if a glass of ice water had been dumped down his back flowed through him. He recognized the alien.
    Bending toward the securely bound human, Pret-Klob peered into much smaller, much rounder eyes that glared back up at him with a mixture of defiance, outrage, and alarm.
    “Do you recall my telling you, some time ago, on board the Sessrimathe vessel that misguidedly chose to interfere in the normal course of commerce, that in the realness of time the natural order of things would be restored?” When a disoriented and increasingly panicky Walker made no move to respond, the Vilenjji commander straightened.
    “You wonder at my presence. Know that I regard myself as something of a master of judicial minutiae. It took time, but with work and patience even the overweening Sessrimathe can grow bored with justice. Finally freed from their custody, having ‘admitted’ to my error and repented most strenuously of my ways, I was eventually able to reconstitute a small portion of my original association. As primary shareholders, we determined to commence our financial recovery by repossessing as much of our original inventory as possible. It is only business.” Turning, he hissed orders to his cohorts.
    Walker felt himself lifted and bundled into some sort of open, hard-sided container. He was joined by a trembling George and the stolid cephalopodian form of Sque, whereupon the container’s lid was moved into place above them. They must have a separate, special container for Braouk, he thought as the container began to