There was a concerted gasp from the crowd as the side of the sphere rippled and a being stepped out into the sunlight.
The being was neither beautiful or horrible.
It was simply—different.
Definitely humanoid, a little more than two meters tall, with a graceful body topped by a slender head with large golden eyes, the being walked directly to Degruton. At first the scientist thought it was naked, until he realized the silver-gray skin was a tight, form-fitting covering which left only the face exposed. Dominated by those golden eyes, the face had twin nostril slits, a thin lipless mouth and no chin. There was a faint rough texture to the greenish skin; perhaps all that remained of its dinosaur ancestry.
“You are Degruton.” The voice was contralto, without accent and no inflection.
“Yes,” Degruton replied. Gail’s hand tightened on his.
“You expected us.”
So there are more of them. How many aboard the mother ship? fust one? Or maybe a thousand?
Degruton glanced at the nearby gantry from which his and Gail’s shuttle had departed to rendezvous with the Francis Bacon. The being’s choice of landing spot was almost poetic.
“I—” He swallowed, “—think so.” “That is good. The circle is complete.”
“I do not—”
“Who created the conditions for what, small one? It is debatable. However we know what you did, and are grateful. Nevertheless there are alternates, and there are alternates within alternates. When we investigated the past history of our planet and determined the near miss of the asteroid, we wondered what the outcome would have been if the asteroid had indeed impacted. So we effected a minor readjustment.”
It was too much.
Frederick Degruton and Gail Sovergarde exploded into hysterical laughter.