Interstellar Pig Read Free Page B

view is, I wouldn't want to be locked up there for twenty years," I said.
    They had turned out the floor lamps. In the shadowy, firelit room, Zena's eyes glittered like a Ijjft. "And the scratches Ted informed you about, were you able to discover them?" she asked, leaning toward me, her voice a gentle purr.
    "Oh, sure. There's a lot of them, and some of them are deep, deeper than you'd think a person could make with his bare hands. He must have . . . spent a lot of time making them."
    "And did they seem to fall into a kind of pattern or ... or tell a tale or anything?" Zena asked.
    "No. They're completely senseless."
    "I don't suppose there was anything else, uh . . . unusual about the chamber, was there?" Zena said carefully. "Nothing odd, peculiar, that you or your parents might have stumbled on?"
    It was a strange question, and I tried to make a joke out of it. "You mean like a dead body, or a ghost or something? Uh-uh. No such luck."
    But they didn't seem to appreciate my wit. Barely moving their heads, their eyes met; three pairs of eyes meeting equally somehow, as though there were only two of them. And I thought of the jagged pits and troughs in the windowsills of my room, and I felt uneasy for the first time. A curtain flapped gently at the window. The others in the room remained as still as reptiles in the sun.
    "So you travel a lot?" I said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "That must be great. Where's your home base? What was your last trip?" :
    "You certainly do ask a plethora of questions," Manny said.
    "I do?" I said. "Funny. It seems to me like you're I the ones who've been asking me questions all evening."
    "You know what?" Zena said abruptly. "All of a j sudden I have a powerful nagging itch to get back j to the game. How about it?"
    "Nice," Manny said. "I always want to play the game."
    They turned on the lights, pulled their chairs up to the table and sat down around the board I had noticed when I first came in. They hadn't asked me to play, so I stood behind Zena and looked down at it. It was the first chance I had had to study it, and I saw now that it was not like any board game I had even encountered before.
    "Hey, what game is this, anyway?" I asked, beginning to feel extremely excited. It seemed to be a space fantasy, with dreamlike, but detailed, planets. "I love games, but I've never seen anything like this. Where on earth did you get it?"
    There was a moment of silence. Then Zena said, "It's a very new game. I suppose it isn't even on the market yet. It's still being . . . uh, what's the word? . . . Consumer tested, that's it."
    "How did you get your hands on it then?"
    "Because ..."
    "Because we ... encountered somebody in the business," Joe explained. "He borrowed us an advance set."
    "It was the best event that ever happened to us," Manny said with conviction. "It's a noble game," Joe said. "We've been playing it every night, and we still can't wrench ourselves away from it."
    "But what's it called?" I asked again. "How do you play it?" I reached down to pick up one of the pieces.
    "Don't touch, you'll distress it!" Zena slapped my hand a lot harder than seemed necessary.
    "Questions, questions, questions," Joe murmured.
    "But can't you just tell me the name of it?" I said, feeling a bit wounded. "It's called Interstellar Pig," Zena said tartly. "We'd ask you to play, but we're in the middle of a three-person game. Perhaps another time."
    Time! I had forgotten about it completely. How long had I been here? If I outstayed my welcome they might think I was a pest, and wouldn't take me along on any expeditions, "Well, it's probably time for me to go," I said. "But I would love to play it sometime."
    "Uh-huh," Zena murmured, staring down at the board. She moved her piece. "Hyperspace tunnel!" she announced triumphantly. "I'm going straight to Vavoosh."
    They seemed to have forgotten I was there.
    Mom and Dad were extremely curious about the neighbors, and dissatisfied by what I had to tell them.