Once he was at about a forty-five-degree angle from Enola’s “face,” he stopped and lowered into a crouch, placing his lantern onto the ground. “Can you understand me?”

For several minutes, Enola was so still Kaveh wondered if he had died at some point in the last few hours. Then, the strange luminous eyes opened. They were much clearer, less cataract. Then a voice in his earbud spoke, a computerized voice, one that was definitely based in man-made text-to-talk software, but more sophisticated, more natural-sounding, more unsettling:

“PLEASE DON’T KILL ME.”

Kaveh gasped in wonder. It worked. He couldn’t believe it. His earbud was working, and an alien, a real live fucking space alien, was talking to him. He was so shocked that it took him a moment to parse what the alien had said.

Wait, what?

Kaveh lowered himself into a sitting position, hoping his body language was imparting nonaggression.

“I’VE COME VERY FAR— YES, TO DIE—BUT NOT LIKE THIS. I MEAN YOU NO HARM. PLEASE, DON’T KILL ME, NOT NOW. PLEASE WAIT. SOON, NOT NOW, BUT SOON. PLEASE WAIT.”

It took him a moment to find his words. “I . . . I’m not here to hurt you.”

“PLEASE DON’T KILL ME.”

“I’m not here to kill you,” he specified, figuring that in the alien’s mind death could be painless, and “not hurting” did not preclude “killing.” “I just want to communicate.”

“WILL YOU FREE ME?”

“I’m not going to free you. I’m not going to get close to you. I’m not going to touch you. I just want to talk.”

Enola stared at him for a long while, giving Kaveh the opportunity to really take stock of the creature, and he realized that Enola’s eyes didn’t emanate light but instead reflected it like the eyes of a cat. Such beautiful gems ensconced in such a monstrous body.

“DO YOU KNOW WHAT I AM?”

“Not exactly,” said Kaveh. “I know you’re an . . . extraterrestrial . . . person of some sort. You’re from a different planet.”

“DEFINE: PERSON.”

Not like that was a difficult question! “A person is a sentient, autonomous, conscious being,” he said, utterly winging it, “capable of some measure of intelligence. Problem-solving intelligence, and social intelligence. An individual member of a species that is capable of forming societies. Forming . . . civilizations.”

He sat back, honestly pretty pleased with his answer. Enola kept watching him. “DEFINE: PLANET.”

“We are on a large . . . very large . . . oblate spheroid. That orbits a midsize star. Once every three hundred and sixty-five days. I don’t know where exactly you’re from, but I assume you probably evolved on another large oblate spheroid orbiting a different star.”

The eyes seem to clear further, the brightness concentrating, making them seem to glow even brighter. “YOU ARE INTELLIGENT. YOU ARE CONSCIOUS. YOU ARE PERSONS. AS I PREDICTED.”

“What do you mean?”