Ba squeezed his arm, her breath unpleasantly sweet as it blew across his face. She was the first to break the long, stunned silence after the Urfers’ remarkable standoff. Nobody moved; even the camera operators froze when the five aliens turned and folded down onto their legs in that bizarre way of theirs. Of course, to the contact crews, the teams who had been working face-to-face with the Urfers since their landing, the flexibility and agility weren’t so shocking anymore. And once he’d been fitted for the earpiece, Loul now understood how they pulled off that eerie synchronized movement. But even with that, the effect of the movement and the sight of those slender backs sitting perfectly still amazed him. He could only imagine the effect it had on the newcomers. True to what he’d learned of the reporters, however, Baddo reacted with a distinct lack of wonder and huge dose of umbrage. It didn’t seem to matter that a team of space-traveling aliens had confronted them; all that seemed to matter was that someone had dared to defy them, block them, and turn them away.
