Free The Visitor by Boris TZAPRENKO

thing that bangs and kills in its hands.
    Terrorized, Etos dropped what he was carrying and ran away as fast as he could.

A Strange Flat and Low Hill
     
    In her upstairs room, sitting on her bed and leaning on the wall, Akkaliza was watching the bov videos captured by her device. There wasn’t much to see. However, especially interested at the time when he was bovgrunting, she had viewed this passage several times.
    What was he doing when I disturbed him? She asked herself. He was hiding something, that's for sure! When will people realize that bovs are intelligent, at least as much as a hinec or a thac, anyway?  
    Almost without realizing it, she had given her protégé a name: "Sneaky".
    It was then that she heard the noise that Okkdor, the hinec on guard for the evening, made. She stood up and pulled back the translucent curtain in her room to see what was happening below. Unaccustomed to the dark, her eyes didn’t see anything else than darkness. She heard the front door squeak on its hinges and her father shouting: "Who’s there?” The voice of her brother also was heard: "What’s gotten into you, Okkdor? What have you sensed?" She opened the window and leaned over. The hinec hadn’t calmed down. Although her eyes were adapting a little more to the night, and her brother had turned on the outdoor lighting, she saw nothing that could justify the animal’s agitation.
     
    *
     
    Akkal and Akkalo saw nothing in particular outside. Akkalo patted the hinec’s head:
    “ Hey! Okkdor, what’s gotten into you? I hope that you won't keep on making this racket all night!”  
    It was raining enough that father and son had little desire to stick around outside. They came back in. Akkal shut off the outside lighting and collapsed in his chair, in front of the TV. One of his thacs came onto his knees to be petted.
    “ So? What was it?” asked his wife.  
    “ No idea. It looks like the hinec has gone crazy.”  
    In a commercial, rejoicing bovs were singing that dairy products were friends for life. Akkal produced a long screech while shaking his neck’s scales. That was the way umas laughed. But this particular laugh was sinister.
    “ What’s making you laugh like that?” asked Akkali. “You look like the devil! You're really weird these days.”  
    He looked at his wife without responding.
    “ Mom’s right, dad... you've been strange for some time," said Akkalo.  
    “ Yes, well... It's just that they aren’t everyone’s friend! I know what I mean!”  
    “ Okay! That’s better!” exclaimed Akkali. “But, myself however, I don’t understand you at all! Who are you talking about?”  
    “ Dairy products, of course! They aren’t everybody’s friend!”  
    Son and mother exchanged a puzzled look. Mechanically petting the thac with his lower left hand, the father tried to take his mind off things by listening to the news:
    "... seems to be a probe coming from the depths of space. A device that hasn’t been built on Teruma, of extraterumastrial origin. All the experts say that they don’t recognize this craft. In addition, the trajectory that it’s following in approaching our planet confirms that it can only come from elsewhere ... »
    “ Such a waste of all that money to go into space with all the misery here on Teruma," said Akkali.  
    “ But, dear! It has nothing to do with that! Listen! They’re saying that it’s something that is coming from another planet!”  
    “ Yes, that's it! They can tell us all kinds of nonsense and you fall for it!”  
    Akkal couldn’t focus on the news nor on what his wife and son were saying. It was up to him to take the final decision regarding the removal of the dairy bov’s limbs. A meeting of the Board of Directors had been urgently called to discuss it. By ridding the animals’ mass of everything that wasn’t essential to the production of milk, they would make significant savings in feed.
    “ Actually, the ideal case," pointed out one of the