Free Invasion of the Dognappers by Patrick Jennings Page B

his head forlornly. This act wasn’t difficult. It was how he truly felt. The trick actually was not to feel it too keenly, to avoid getting so sad and scared that he became angry and frustrated. “I miss my mom, and she’s probably worried sick.”
    The alien flicked her flukes and, in an instant, was beside him.
    “I understand,” she said, tentatively reaching out her silvery hands.
    He wanted to be held, to be comforted, but not necessarily by an alien life-form. Nor by his jailer. Unsure of how she would react, he recoiled.
    She withdrew her hands but did not leave.
    “I miss my friends, too, and my dog, Bubba,” Logan said, steeling himself against his own words, speaking them but not letting their full meaning sink in, for he really did ache to see his friends, his dog, his mom, his brother….
    “I would very much like to go home, please, ma’am,” he said.
    The alien’s frown deepened and her eyes moistened.
    The buoyant dog herd moved in, ready to help.
    “Bubba’s my best friend,” Logan said. “I don’t know what I’ll do without her. Or what she’ll do without me. She needs me to feed her, and clean up after her, and love her, like you do for these dogs, the ones you’re holding captive.”
    He wasn’t sure about that last part. He wanted her to empathize with him, and also to feel bad about her role in his predicament, but he didn’t want her to feel so guilty she would swim away again.
    The alien’s throat light glowed at his words, translating them, but she did not respond. She sagged into a posture Logan recognized in humans. If it was the same for the alien’s kind, she was feeling ashamed.
    Logan decided he had gotten his message across, and it was time to change the subject.
    “Why does your boss ride in a wheelchair?”
    Again the alien’s light lit, but she didn’t reply.
    “Ma’am?” Logan asked, as if concerned.
    She shook off her distressing thoughts. “It’s difficult for him to walk on your planet. Your air is thin, and your gravity, strong.”
    “Did he steal the wheelchair, too?”
    The female alien nodded.
    “The woman he stole it from posted a flyer,” Logan said, building his case that her boss was a lowlife thief whom she should defy. Again this was not difficult to do, as it was what Logan really believed. “She offered a reward for it. She was old and couldn’t get around without it, but couldn’t afford a new one. They cost a lot of Earth money.”
    The alien gave a little pout, which Logan viewed as a good sign. She cared about others, even people she had never met. That made her more likely to help him and the dogs.
    “Where does he keep the wheelchair and clothes when he’s here?” Logan asked, adding, “I assume he stole the clothes as well….”
    He was only assuming the boss alien returned to the ship periodically. Wouldn’t he want to check on things? Wasn’t that what bosses do? And wouldn’t he want to shed his clothes and his wheelchair, escape Earth’s atmosphere and gravity, and relax, as parents do when returning home from work?
    “He hides them in a park,” the alien said. “Inside a cave, by the beach.”
    Logan figured it was Ketchoklam Park. It was the only park in town with a beach.
    “I see,” he said. “Does he come up from Earth every day?”
    “We are on Earth,” the alien said.
    “We are ? Where?”
    “Submerged in the bay beside your town.”
    “Is that why we float?” Logan asked. “I thought we were weightless because we were in space.”
    “We float because the ship is filled with air from our planet,” the alien explained. “Our air is heavier, which is why we don’t walk on the ground. We hover.”
    “Interesting,” Logan said. “Yet me and the dogs can breathe it….”
    “Yes. We didn’t know if that would be so, but when we brought the first dog here … ”
    Her face darkened again, and Logan believed he knew why.
    “That dog was lucky it could breathe your air,” Logan said.
    “Yes,”