The man had wrinkles around his eyes and around the corners of his mouth. Old, but not old enough to be handicapped. He still carried himself like a soldier.

The time I first encountered Sarah's father and learned his name, I thought him to be some relation to the inventor of Big Bird and other puppet creatures, but when I studied the bible, I learned about the concept of Hansen's disease.

This Mr. Hansen, however, wasn't a fun loving entertainer, nor a Nobel prize nominee.

When he noticed me in the corner, he pulled the children away like I were a rabid dog. I shivered at the lack of emotional warmth.

I wagged my tail anxiously, watching with unease as the man unlocked a storage compartment, drawing out a pistol. The girls whimpered in fright.

"No, daddy," Sarah cried.

Her father ignored her, loading rounds into the gun. "I tolerated you in the lab because you were under lock and key."

At this point, I probably should have fled, but didn't.

"I let you play with my daughter because you were under supervision, and Kurt only needed to push a button to overload those probes whenever you got out of line. I see those probes are out now." He aimed the weapon at my dome. "I suggest, if you can understand what I'm saying, and if you have any sense at all, you'd high tail it back to the lab before I add a few extra holes in that banana you call a head."

"I (chair), I can't. The others of my (hello), my kind will kill me."

"Tough."

He chambered a round, pulling back the hammer.

Swallowing, I backed toward the shower door.

"Daddy, don't," said Sarah.

"Honey, Ernie isn't well, and he needs to go back to his cage. If he does what I say, no one will get hurt."

Sighing, I opened the door to the shower room.

As I began my retreat, stepping onto the wet tiles, Rebecca ran to me, throwing her arms around my exoskeleton. "Don't go!"

"Rebecca!" Mr. Hansen cried. "Get out of the way!"

She turned to face him. "No. You'll have to kill me first."

I sneezed softly at the touching gesture.

"Dammit." Scowling, Mr. Hansen disarmed the gun, looking away.

"Why?" I whispered to Rebecca.

"You're my friend."

I coughed.

"Are you allergic to something?"

"No. (Yes). No. I'm...happy. "

We all fell into an awkward silence.

Sarah hurriedly shut the shower room door.

I looked Mr. Hansen in the eye. "I won't hurt you. (Hosanna)."

The look on his face said he didn't believe me. I bowed my head in sadness.

"He's right, daddy," Sarah said. "He saved us from the other ones."

Mr. Hansen sucked in his breath. "Other ones! How many of those things did he let out?"

"It wasn't him, daddy. He was a good monster. He stayed in his cage the whole time."

Rebecca nodded. "There was a big one. She can open doors."

"What was Kurt doing all this time?"

The girls just cried and shook their heads.

"They were going to kill us," Rebecca sobbed. "Just like Doug and Keith. But Ernie fought back."

Mr. Hansen's skin turned white. "They're dead."

She nodded, wiping her eyes. "We could have been next."

The man stared at me in disbelief, his facial expression like somebody who had ingested a distasteful nugget of food.

"Mr. Hansen, I can see (growth), see you don't like me, but I need you to at least listen to me. Everyone in (God), in this base is in great danger, these children and your (maranatha), your family especially. You need to evacuate this (manna), this facility at once. Is there (hello), anywhere you can go in the event of an emergency?"

"Why's he talking like that?" he asked Sarah.

"Ernie hurt his brain. Daddy, he's right. Is there any way at all we can evacuate?"

The man shook his head. "The nearest transport is more than a million light years away. It could take months to get here. We have escape tunnels going under the planet's surface, but we'd eventually run out of air and food."

"Then we have to find (Jesus), find a secure place in (Jehoshaphat), in this building. Somewhere strong enough to resist (Lord), resist Ss'sik'chtokiwij attacks and not let any in."

Mr. Hansen just stared at me, his mind apparently turning over various possibilities and rejecting them.

"Where's mommy?"

I'd seen Sarah's a few times during my imprisonment. She smelled funny, and my vision seemed a bit garbled every time I looked at her. Sarah said it was because of the plants and chemicals she worked with, but it always left me scratching my dome.

"She's fine, Sarah. She's still in hydroponics."

"Yesterday I didn't see her at all! What's she doing in there?"

He knelt down to her level, looking her in the eyes. "Honeycakes, she has a lot of work to get through. We have to grow a certain amount of plants to maintain our air supply, and we've got to have enough corn and beans to feed everyone on the base. Not to mention Ernie's synthetic bacon."

"That wasn't real meat?" I said. "(Angel)?"

He nodded. "Kurt experimented with feeding xenomorphs various compounds. Your bacon and processed meat is actually a synthesized amino acid formed out of bean and tofu molecules. You, me and everyone on this base has been eating that crap for so long that we don't even remember what real pork is supposed to taste like anymore."

My heart leaped with excitement. "So I'm (God) I'm a vegetarian?"

Mr. Hansen frowned. "I certainly hope so."

"But Mom didn't even go to bed! Nobody saw her at the cafeteria either! All day!"

Her father sighed, patted Sarah on the head. "She's been pulling all nighters. She has to. The entire station depends on her. She's got a cot set up down there. I've been bringing her food so she can eat while she works."

"But...No. That's not right..."

"Sometimes she eats what she grows. But she's fine. And once we get the O2 up to ninety percent..."

"I want to see her."

"Honey..."

"I want to see her!" Sarah shouted.

"Fine," Mr. Hansen sighed. "We'll go see her as soon as we can."

My heat vision suddenly displayed a ghostly paint blotch waltzing through the entrance to the shower room.

Although at first seeming to be nothing but a hallucinatory lava lamp blob, I noticed it moved with distinct purpose.

In the distance, I heard Mr. Fujicama screaming. "We need to go," I hissed. "(Jesus), Now!"

"I told you," Mr. Hansen blurted, "We don't—"

I wasn't about to sit there and let them kill us. "They're in the (manna) the showers. We have to (manna), to get out of this room!"

Frowning, he clicked the safety off his gun, unlocked his front door.

When the door came open, I crowded in alongside him. "Wait. I should (afflictions) should go first."

"What, so you can lead us into a trap?"

I ignored the accusation. "I (Satan) I have highly developed senses. I can (halleluiah) see things before you can. I can detect (Jehoshaphat), detect smells you can't. I hear..."

"All the better for leading us into a trap," he growled, pushing past me.

"You need (Caiaphas) need to go downstairs."

"Oh. So the trap is down there! I should go right, then. Is that what you're telling me?"

I shrugged. "If (yes) you want to be lunch for five hungry Ss'sik'chtokiwijs, you're (manna), you're welcome to go right. There's a big (hosanna) glass window that way. Perhaps you (chair), you could coat yourself in sauce and dance in front of it to (perfect) make yourself more enticing."

Mr. Hansen kicked me. Hard. I suppose I deserved it.

"If this goes south," he snarled through his teeth. "I'll be using the first bullet on you."