The window looked into the neighboring room. This had to be where the “clinical” part of the clinic occurred. There was a bed in there—at least, that’s what she assumed it was. It was a large amalgamation of bedding, steel, and what looked like stuffing built up and around. It resembled a nest. Next to the bed was a table with shining metal instruments of ghastly design. A mechanical arm with a needlelike protuberance hung from the ceiling.

Jill’s lip curled in fascinated disgust. “Ewww,” she said, and then, because that wasn’t very scientific, “It doesn’t look too appealing, does it?”

“Yeah,” Nate breathed a shaky laugh. “If this is their idea of a romantic setting, no wonder they have problems feeling sexy. They need some James Brown and mood lighting in here.”

Trying not to think about Nate in the context of James Brown and mood lighting, Jill sat down at the monitor. This was the first computer she’d had access to since they’d tried the translators, and she was anxious to check it out.

“I’ll see if I can find some records. They should have data on birthrates, population, things like that.”

“ ‘Kay. I wanna look next door.”

He left her alone. In a minute she saw him enter the neighboring room from her peripheral vision. She looked. He picked up one of the instruments on the table, turned, and threatened her with it menacingly. Jill uttered another “ewww” and went back to her screen.

She was disappointed to see that although the words on the monitor were now in English, she still had no idea what she was looking at. There were many terms that were apparently untranslatable and remained in the alien text. She decided to try the speech approach.

“Computer,” she said, feeling slightly ridiculous, “show me the birthrates for the past two hundred years.”

The computer understood her perfectly. It brought up data, but it was arranged in a graph that could have been designed by Escher. It hurt her brain just looking at it. She squinted at the confusing lines and symbols. The numbers on the screen were incredibly low. If they were really birthrates, they ran in the mere dozens per… what? Month? Year? Decade? She was still trying to figure that out when she heard a muffled noise and glanced up.

Nate was being dragged from the clinical room—by an alien.

For a moment Jill was too surprised to respond. Then she got her feet under her and ran out the door. Nate was being pulled down the hall, his wrist gripped tight in the alien’s long greenish fingers.

“Come along, citizen!” the alien said. “Do your duty!”

The voice—the first Jill had heard coming from a living alien—sounded right off an old Alvin and the Chipmunks album. And there was something comic about the way the alien was marching Nate along. He looked fragile but stern, like a determined old man. Nate was trying to get away without hurting the thing.

“Hang on a minute. I think you have the wrong—”

“Do your duty!”

Nate glanced over his shoulder at Jill and they exchanged a confused look.

“Hey!” Jill said. “Hello!”

The alien paid her no mind. He stopped at a door and the door opened. Without further ado, the alien shoved Nate inside and the door closed.

From behind the door, Nate let out a bloodcurdling scream.

The situation went from baffling to dead serious in a heartbeat. Jill called his name and went running toward them. The alien, ignoring her, disappeared behind a second door. She hesitated a moment, then went to the door Nate had gone through. She pounded on it, but nothing happened. Nate screamed again. He sounded terrified.

Jill pounded harder, yelling at the door to open, but it wouldn’t budge. She ran back to the door the alien had entered and this one opened immediately. Inside was an observation room, just like the one she’d been in. The alien was seated at the computer, his fingers dancing over the screen. He peered through the window into the next room. Jill stepped up to look.

Nate had stopped screaming. He was backed up against the doorway, a horrified look on his face. He was not alone. The bed-nest in this room was occupied by something the likes of which Jill had never seen. It was an alien, or so she thought, but its body was huge and grossly fat. It was naked, with a whole row of nipples and a pubis partially hidden by waving legs. Through its rolls of translucent skin Jill could make out bubbles or sacs.

As her eyes grazed over the corpulent mass, pulled by a sickened fascination, she saw that one of the sacs had something in it. She knew at once what it was and thus what the sacs were. They were eggs. Most of them were empty, but this one had a tiny embryo inside. As the mass on the bed shifted, the embryo’s face rolled lazily to face Jill. Its large head and eyes looked like any other embryo she had ever seen, but there was something wrong. The thing was frozen in a calcified position. It was dead.

“Oh my god,” Jill whispered.

The alien on the bed was a female, the first they’d seen on this planet. And she was horrid. The creature lay quivering, barely alive herself. She slowly turned her enormous filmy eyes to Nate. He pressed back harder against the door, shuddering.

“Nate, can you hear me?” Jill called. He gave no response. She knocked on the glass, but it was hard as a diamond and scarcely gave off a vibration, much less a noise.

Oh god, Jill thought. Tell me the females don’t eat the males on this planet. That would explain their reluctance to breed.

But the female didn’t lunge at Nate—far from it. She looked completely immobile. Next to Jill, the alien at the computer pressed something, sent his high chipmunky voice echoing into the next room.

“Do your duty, citizen! Do your duty!”

“You’ve got to let him out of there!” Jill demanded loudly. The alien ignored her.

“Hello!” She bent over, waving her hand in front of him to get his attention. But he was focused on the computer screen again.

“Bad!” the alien muttered. He turned those long fingers to a set of controls.

Jill, uncomprehendingly, watched the mechanical arm start to move. Nate backed away, sure it was coming for him, but the arm headed for the female. She made a high squealing cry of panic and protest as it approached. The needle-probe didn’t pause but embedded itself into her skin above the dead embryo and sucked it up, sac and all. Jill squeezed her eyes shut, felt her gorge rise. In the next room, Nate screamed and resumed his pounding on the door.

“Do your duty, citizen,” the alien said over the intercom, “or I shall report you. Do your duty!”

On the bed, the female weakly unfolded in invitation. Nate glanced over his shoulder, pounded on the door more fiercely. The look on his face—Jill couldn’t bear it.

And she did not like him being alone with that… that thing.

She ran back into the hall and pushed at the door to his room, pushed where it went into the wall, trying to get it to slide. Nothing.

“Nate, can you hear me?”

“Jill! Get me out of here!”

“I’m trying, but the door won’t budge!”

“Well… make it!”

Before she could figure out how to do that, the alien stomped into the hall from the observation room. Despite his inhuman features he had a distinctly petulant air. He would have walked right into Jill if she hadn’t backed up. He might be able to see Nate, but it appeared he still could not see her. The door opened at his touch.

A terrified Nate stood on the other side.

“Nate!”

“Bad! Move back!” the alien ordered.

Nate dodged around the alien into the hall. The alien, with a mutter, stomped into the room, heading for the nest.

“Are you all right?” Jill asked as Nate grabbed her hand.

“I will be. Let’s get out of here!”

Jill resisted his pull. “Wait!”

She couldn’t resist a final look into the room. The female was straining as if to get up. She appeared to be choking, her mouth gaping open, her face going from a gray to purple. The frail little alien paced helplessly beside her as if unsure what to do. He kept muttering but seemed unable or unwilling to actually touch her.