As the belt fell open, the corpse abruptly became visible. Under a layer of dust and flour, a being slightly over seven feet tall lay haphazardly across the pallet. The tail was definitely too meager for any self-respecting squirrel, but the face and the short, strong rear legs were definitely reminiscent of the breed. And of course, it was completely covered in fur, which varied from gray to a light yellow.

Patrick pointed at the head. “That doesn’t look healthy.”

I looked where Patrick had indicated and had to agree. The head was partially caved in, but whether from the impact with the truck or from the subsequent landing was uncertain. Not that it mattered. Dead is dead, and nothing terrestrial would have survived that kind of head injury. Unless the brains were somewhere else, Chewbacca was almost certainly deceased.

I scanned the rest of the corpse. “This either.” I pointed to part of the hip area, which seemed to be pulp. Caked blood covered both injuries.

“Nothing on Earth would have survived this,” Patrick said, echoing my reasoning. He experimentally squeezed an arm. “No muscle tone. It feels room-temperature-ish.”

“And it hasn’t moved in hours or made a sound.”

Patrick held a hand in front of the alien’s face. “No breath. Granted, we can’t make too many assumptions about an alien, but this one sure seems dead.”

I slowly sat back onto the floor. “And the belt says intelligent. Which means I just killed an interstellar visitor. Cripes.”

“Not one of your better days, I’ll give you that. But it was an accident, right? He, er, it was invisible. They can’t hold that against you.”

I responded with a sickly grin. “I guess it’ll depend if they’re more like Vulcans or Klingons.”

“Speaking of which, where are they?” Patrick asked. “No one has tried to radio him—it. No one has shown up to either offer us a reward or vaporize us. Shouldn’t there be some kind or reaction? A search party or something?”

“Hmm. We can’t extrapolate too much, but yeah, you’d think there’d be some kind of procedure in place for a crew member getting injured or killed. Or captured.”

“Maybe he was alone,” Patrick suggested.

“Like a lone explorer? It seems unlikely, but … ”

“But like you say, we can’t extrapolate too much.”

I gave Patrick a smile in reply. “Yeah, that. Meanwhile, we have what we have. Help me get the belt out … ” We both lifted and managed to get the alien’s torso off the belt for long enough to pull it out. I picked it up and took it to the workbench.