“Of course I know that,” his son said indignantly. “Do you think I’m addled or something?” That bit of slang had made it from the Lizards’ language into English.

“No, of course not,” Sam answered, doing his best to remember how touchy he’d been when he was twenty. “But it’s liable to be important not to let anyone know we have Lizard eggs-or hatchlings, which is what we’ll have pretty darn quick now.” Eighteen years of minor-league ball and twenty in the Army had given him a vocabulary that could blister paint at forty paces. Around his wife and son, he did his best not to use too much of it.

Jonathan rolled his eyes. “What are you going to do, Dad, hide them in the garage whenever people or males of the Race come over?”

“When males of the Race come over, I just might,” Sam said. But he sighed. His son had a point. His orders were to raise the baby Lizards as much like human beings as he could. How was he supposed to do that if they never met anybody but his family and him? With another sigh, he nodded. “Okay, go ahead. But when she gets here, I’m going to have to warn her she can’t blab.”

“Sure, Dad.” Jonathan was all smiles now that he’d got his way. “This is so hot!” The Race liked heat. That made it a term of approval. He sprinted for the telephone.

Worry in her voice, Barbara said, “Sooner or later, the Race is going to find out that we have these hatchlings. There’ll be trouble when that happens?”

“I expect you’re right,” Yeager said. “But it’ll be trouble for the government, not trouble for us. If we have to give them up, we have to give them up, that’s all. No point to worrying too much ahead of time, right?”

“Right,” Barbara said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

Sam didn’t know that he was convinced, either, but he forced whatever worries he had down to the bottom of his mind. “Let me have a look, will you?” he said, as he had a moment before. “I’m the only one in the house who hasn’t seen the eggs this morning.”