As usual for times when something seems amusing to my Earthling sensibilities (but likely wouldn’t to everyone else), I kept quiet about it. Nobody wanted their delivery person to laugh in their face about whatever they’d ordered. Even blue-furred aliens with the wood-gnawing habits of beavers, who were receiving a cubic foot of carefully-packed tweezers. All I could think about was irony and splinters. I kept my expression at customer-service neutral and approached the info booth, with Mur tentacle-walking beside me.

“Welcome,” grunted the curmudgeonly fellow stationed there, eyes squinting from a face of graying blue fur. The stripes down his back seemed more gray than black too. “Is that for me?” He chuckled like that was a joke.

Mur leaned his squidlike head backwards, his version of craning his neck without actually having a neck. “Only if you’re working a double shift as head of the medical center,” he said.

I added, “We were hoping you could tell us how to get there.” Our ship had a decent map of this loose settlement, but it was hard to tell from the air which tributaries we’d need to cross in which order to get to it. The info booth was clearly stationed near the spaceport for a good reason. And not just for the high ground in rainy weather — it was built into a rocky cliffside that held many holes. A different species might have built their civilization right up that cliff, but these folks were strictly a “ground level or lower” sort.

The elder perked up. “Oh sure, I can tell you where it is,” he said. “But it might as well be for me, since my wife is the head bonesetter around these parts.” He reached furry little webbed paws in a gimme gesture.

I read the name on the label to him, and he confirmed it. Mur held up the payment tablet that he’d so carefully carried with his rear tentacles. (He’d refused to let me carry the box AND the tablet.) He handled getting the fellow’s name and other information to approve the delivery, while I set the sturdy white box on the counter and thought privately that there should be another word than “handled” when the person in question doesn’t have hands. “Tentacled” just didn’t sound right.

I also wondered about the scratching noise from the roof, but didn’t think much of it until the guy complained.

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Our luck was just garbage lately. First the client for our latest delivery wasn’t on time to pick up their order, then once we were finally ready to take off, the exceptionally dense asteroid field had shifted to the point where our word-of-mouth map wasn’t accurate anymore. And then, as we tried to maneuver through the mess, some local jerk in a sporty cruiser sideswiped us and never looked back.

Good news: our shields did their job and prevented any damage.

Bad news: that asteroid field was full of junk, including the remains of something mechanical that turned out to be a broken gravity generator. Our little yellow ship got stuck to the side of the scrap heap like a lemon on a pile of compacted cars. At least Kavlae got the solar sails folded in time.

So, there we were, with no other ships in sight. Our own ship’s gravity tech was enough to counteract the pull coming from this thing, so nobody was falling down in the hallways, but escape velocity was going to be a problem. Mimi came up from the engine room to study the readings on the scrap heap, and he didn’t like the odds of igniting something with our thrusters. He also wasn’t wild about the idea of getting up close and personal in a space suit to try turning the generator off. Everything was unstable out there.

Captain Sunlight decided we would send out a distress signal before trying anything rash. The disagreeable client we’d met earlier (by docking ship-to-ship, not landing anywhere sketchy) was long gone, and there weren’t any official civilization centers nearby. But we’d seen other ships on the way here, not to mention the terrible driver who hit us, so surely someone else would be along who could help out.

The captain muttered about raiders in a way that suggested she didn’t want to worry the rest of us, then she shooed everyone away from hanging around the cockpit, and told us to find something else to do.

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Ever park your car under a tree, then regret it? Come back to find it covered in tree sap or bird poop? Turns out that sort of thing is much worse on an alien planet. And when it’s a spaceship.

We couldn’t get the dang door open.

I stood in the cargo bay, watching Captain Sunlight supervise an attempt to un-stick the big door. Blip and Blop were putting their muscles to use in shoving mightily, while the captain worked the controls and Mimi kept a careful watch out for stresses on the machinery. Mur shoved some narrow tool into the gap, muttering that the captain should let him use his tentacles.

Captain Sunlight told him sternly, “No body parts in danger. That’s what tools are for.” She kept both scaly yellow hands on the controls and gave him a look.

I asked, “Is there anything I can do? Help push, or get another crowbar?”

Blip grunted, her frills slicked back in effort. “It’s moving!”

With an unpleasant sticky noise and a creak of metal, the bay door began lifting open an inch at a time. Mimi’s rough voice yelled, “Stop!”

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I had some time to kill at the spaceport. We’d already made our delivery, and a different client was due to bring the next package to us later today, for transport to some other population center. Captain Sunlight was currently in discussions with a third individual, who sounded like they were fine with whatever delivery time we could manage. That was a nice change.

Also nice was the fact that I didn’t have to worry about any of the details. The captain was on top of things, with a couple other crewmates at hand (or in Mur’s case, at tentacle). I was free to wander a bit.

So I did, strolling through the civilized area with all its concrete and murals, and out toward the edge of the area where plants grew. It looked peaceful out there.

Plus I heard excited shouts and laughter on the breeze, and I was very curious.

This seemed to be the forgotten area of town. There was a big pile of machine parts near what passed for a doorway, and I had to climb around some of it. I thought briefly about seeing whether it was legitimately up for grabs — might be worth selling as salvage offworld — but that didn’t seem worth the trouble. It probably belonged to somebody. Plus most of the pieces were huge: cogs and gearshafts that weighed more than me, unwieldy cables, and things I couldn’t identify. One part looked like a broken teeter-totter.

I stepped over a warped panel, trying not to lose my balance as a stack of gears shifted when I leaned on it, then I immediately forgot all of that. I could see the hills outside town.

There was a mock-battle going on.

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The architecture in this alien city was strange: undulating concrete all over the place, with some buildings underground and some set on top. Everything was painted in wild colors. It reminded me of a skate park. I was curious about the history behind it all, and whether the local Heatseekers had worked with any other species on it. I hadn’t seen the little lizardy folks build things like this before.

Zhee didn’t know. He also didn’t care, more interested in getting our delivery done before the distant rainclouds arrived. He clicked across the concrete on his many bug legs, hissing at me to keep up and not drop the package.

He probably would have liked to be the one carrying it, but I’d grabbed it first. My hands were more suited to carrying this size box than his mantis pinchers were anyway. I walked faster. Getting caught in the rain didn’t sound like a good time to me either.

Then we rounded a corner and topped a hill to where there was more ambient noise, and hmm: problem. It looked like the previous rainclouds had made for some unexpected flooding. A valley with high sides was filled with rushing, muddy water. Heatseekers stood on either side with their own signs of commerce, debating how to get across.

“Can’t we just go to the bridge?” one asked, sounding like she knew the answer already. Her purple-blue scales clashed with the orange vest she wore.

An older female in a similar vest shook her head. “Too far. The bosses want this fixed an hour ago.” She rapped scaly green knuckles on the hoversled holding tightly-strapped-down machine parts. “Traffic’s going to pick up soon, and the rich and powerful will be complaining.”

A truly ancient male with patchy blue scales peered at the contents of the sled. “Are you kids here to fix the water lock?”

The middle-aged female gave him a look that was part amusement, part exhaustion. “We are. Unfortunately it’s on the other side of the water.” She waved toward the gushing current.

Several other Heatseekers stood on the other side, three in orange vests. One cupped hands to his snout and yelled, “Ride it across!”

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As I watched the struggle with the door mechanism, I thought again that it was good we’d gotten our delivery done early. Planetary time zones being what they are, it’s usually inconvenient to land at a spaceport in the pre-dawn, while everyone on our ship is wide awake. Nothing to do but wait until the clients are ready to receive whatever we’re bringing them. Today though, our client was an early riser. I’d taken a short walk from the ship with Mur and Paint, and we’d dropped off three lightweight boxes of exotic moss. Then we were free to stop by the local food court as soon as it opened.

It wasn’t open yet, which is why we’d picked this nice little garden lounge to wait. It was indoors with artificial sun. It had a single door. That door had just thrown a rod or whatever, and now it refused to open again.

I sat on a low bench (awkwardly low) and watched while Mur and a Waterwill who’d also gotten stuck in here pried off the panel over the door mechanism. I would have liked to help somehow, but all my expertise was in biological things, not technological. Plus my fingers were nowhere near as maneuverable as Mur’s tentacles or whatever the Waterwills called their extendable tendrils. This one was making some very tiny ones, not the usual arm-chunks. Fingers would be no help here.

And Paint was handling the phone calls: she’d brought a bag with many pockets, planning to fill it with food, but so far all it contained was her communicator, and she was putting that to good use. She’d already notified our ship. Now she was trying to get ahold of someone official who could send a mechanic. She paced back and forth, rattling claws across her arm scales and speaking intensely.

That left me with nothing to do except sample the local snackberries, which were rooted in a pot next to the bench with a detailed sign about which species could safely eat them. Each branch was grafted from a different plant. There was an elaborate chart on that sign. As usual, the section for humans showed that we could eat every single berry there. Oh, and there were nuts too. Nice.

I tried something like a pistachio with a spiky shell, decided it was extremely average, then entertained myself briefly with the compost can next to the sign. The motion sensor / scanning field at the top of it would open only for acceptable compost. Any other trash was the responsibility of whoever brought it in here. I tossed the two shell halves in one at a time, watched the mini force field blink on and off, then looked for more nuts to do it again.

A quiet hello made me crane my neck in confusion. There was no way the bush could talk, right? Alien gene-splicing wouldn’t have gone that far. But thankfully no, it wasn’t science with questionable morals; it was somebody hiding on the other side.

“Hello!” I said, trying to get a better look. “Sorry, I didn’t see you back there.”

“That’s good,” said the brown-furred fellow huddled among the berries. “Maybe no one else will either.”

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Paint asked, “So are these clothes for protection, or for decoration?” She peered at the readout on the larger of two shipping cases, her lizardy face curious.

I sat down to look, dangling my legs out the open door of the ship. “A bit of both, I think. This one’s all shoes, which most people don’t leave home without, on account of our delicate human skin. Sometimes they’re fancy, though. These shoes … huh. It’s an odd number.”

Paint looked at the readout, then at my own shoes. “You don’t have an odd number of feet.”

“Right. Well, most of us don’t,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “Do some humans have extra limbs?”

“N— Well, it’s not unheard of,” I had to admit. “Conjoined twins have been known to happen. But it’s more likely that somebody’s missing one. Or, really, that someone lost a shoe and needs a replacement.”

“Oh,” Paint said. “That’s much less interesting.”

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I sat on the empty hoversled and waited. It didn’t make a great chair. Smooth enough, but no backrest, and slightly too low for my long-legged human preferences. I considered asking Mur to change the hover height since he was sitting next to the controls, but decided it wasn’t worth it. We’d probably get to start walking again soon. Probably.

Mur stood up on stiff tentacles, trying to see past the people in line ahead of us. “I think someone’s coming,” he said.

I leaned to peer around a hovercycle and several pedestrians. (Are they still called pedestrians if they don’t use feet? Tentacle-estrians? Anyways, they were on the ground.) The guarded gate at the front of the line was still mostly closed, but it had just opened enough for a new Strongarm to squeeze out and talk to the guards.

The rest of the grumpy traffic jam was catching on; people straightened up and edged forward, everyone hoping that whatever mess had blocked the road was now cleared away.

No such luck. The tentacular messenger glanced out at the long line of impatient people waiting to get into the spaceport, grimaced, then ducked back through the door and closed it.

“Aw, man,” I said while people around us grumbled.

Mur slapped a tentacle on the sled. “We are going to be late.”

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I wasn’t expecting any questions out of nowhere as I walked through the open-air spaceport. I didn’t expect any conversation at all, except maybe from Paint who was walking with me, though she was busy eating dried food from a stall we’d passed earlier. It was a long strip of some unidentifiable-to-me meat, and it was getting smears of black seasoning all over her orange scales. She was having a great time. She was welcome to it.

Then someone asked, “Hey, do you eat salt?” and I had new things to think about.

I paused. “Uh. In other food, not by itself. Why?” The speaker was one of those people made of green-white crystals, and he was leaning earnestly over a low wall.

His companion stepped up beside him: a plant-person whose face looked like a rose full of eyeballs and teeth. “What about dirt?” he asked me.

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“Aw, man,” I muttered, staring at the board game. “Was it this one or that one? I was trying to get over here, but you moved that row. I think it’s this one?” My finger hovered over the switch on one nearly-identical tile among many.

Captain Sunlight gave away nothing, her scaly yellow face serene. “Make your move.”

“It already smells like a flower shop threw up in here.” I struggled with the switch, my human fingernail barely up to the task usually meant for Heatseeker claws. When it finally clicked, the tile spurted a weak jet of scent. This one smelled more leafy than flowery, but I still had no flaming idea if it was the one I was trying to find. I sniffed the scent compartment of the token I’d drawn, hoping they matched. Leafy? Vines, maybe?

“I’m sorry it’s such an old model,” said Captain Sunlight, taking pity on me and drawing her next token. “The scents are fainter than they should be. Maybe we can get replacement cartridges at the next station.”

I sighed as I watched her make three moves in a row, matching up scented tiles and rearranging the maze of the board until I’d lost all idea of where my target was. “Somehow I don’t think that would help.”

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