I had Xeronee pinned and had just begun to inhale his strange human fear-smell, when I felt a familiar tingling. A transporter beam!

The transporter beam always makes me ticklish, so when I appeared on the transport pad of my ship I was unable to stop giggling for a moment. I noticed, with a strange sense of detachment, that I was actually rubbing my eyestalks together. It would be sometime before I could master my new body.

"Who the hell are you?"

This from a very pale looking Glptah Zrotif. I started to answer him, but the view from the visor screen stopped me cold.

"Great Skaz, we're in orbit! What's going on here?"

"We're in a ship belonging to a feeble brained earth creature. When my son Zagnor inadvertently launched the ship, I pushed the emergency recall in the hope that it would home in on the misbegotten creature's personal transponder and beam her aboard before it was too late. And instead you appeared. WHO ARE YOU?"

In the back of my mind it occurred to me that we were speaking in Crabish. I was about to begin my explanation when little Zagnor appeared at the forward hatch holding the last vial of my metamorphosis solution.

"Hey Dad, look what I found!"

"NO! Don't drink that!" But it was too late. I could hardly bear to watch.