Print   Both technicians escorted him out into the long bleak hallway through which he came hours earlier. 

The sick-smell, the one in the little room, is gone.  It made me nervous because it smelled like the dead, he thought

“That’s a good boy, Harry, just come with us and we’ll fix you up so you can be out doing what you were before we brought you here.”  The woman had a sing-song voice.

The man nodded, but remained silent; and Harry sensed nervousness by the quiet one on the left.

They came to the end of the long hall and the man pulled them down another corridor, then the woman on his right guided them through a turn.  Moments later they found a door that looked to Harry like the one they left earlier.  Natural, comforting smells came at him.  He sensed the outside world lay just beyond it. 

Not there yet, he thought as the door swung open to reveal a huge lab.  Animals in cages sparked his curiosity and he recognized a couple of those as creatures he often chased in the fields when bored. 

Smaller caged animals panicked when Harry entered.  He ignored their rants.  Those bigger than Harry lolled around and showed little interest despite the cacophony of noise. 

While the two lab techs worked at their work stations, Harry walked around and looked at the battery of test tubes, vials, instruments and mechanical devices.  One of the white-suits reached over to a control panel and adjusted the color temperature in the room.  Harry sensed the change as the white-suit dialed the light to a lower Kelvin reading to replicate moonlight.    

  The noise in the lab changed pitch and then subsided and Harry settled down, too.  Many of the caged animals fell asleep in a few minutes and others brightened into alert stances and cast hungry looks at neighboring cages.  A pair of marsupials blinked and their eyes opened wide to stare at Harry.  He looked back but said nothing.  After a few moments, Harry walked over to a desk, sat and put his head on the top to take a nap.

Later Harry awoke, still thirsty and much hungrier, and saw the two techs seated as before working on their project.  Only a few of the other animals stirred.  Even the marsupials remained quiet, now.  With languid moves, he rose, stretched and searched the lab for food and drink.

“Harry?”  The woman called over to him.

Harry looked back across the row of work stations and canted his head to the right and waited for directions.

“Come over here for a few moments.  We need to take some readings.”  Harry stood there a moment, confused.  “Come, Harry,” she said, a hint of exasperation.  Harry walked around the bank of empty carrels and toward the tech. 

“Good boy, Harry.”

Harry sat in a chair alongside the woman and waited. 

The man said: “Harry’s the last in a long line of xenos, Ariel.”