The creature immediately copied the gesture, bending an arm at one of its two joints and splaying out the six digits at the end of it. And then something incredible happened. A vertical slit opened on the upper segment of each of the two front-most legs, and from the slit on the left came the syllable “hell” and from the one on the right, in a slightly deeper voice, came the syllable “oh.”

I felt my jaw dropping, and a moment later my hand dropped as well.

The alien continued to bob with its torso and weave with its eyes. It tried again: from the left-front leg came the syllable “bon,” and from the right-front came “jour.”

That was a reasonable guess. Much of the museum’s signage is bilingual, both English and French. I shook my head slightly in disbelief, then began to open my mouth — not that I had any idea what I would say — but closed it when the creature spoke once more. The syllables alternated again between the left mouth and the right one, like the ball in a Ping-Pong match:

“Auf” “Wie” “der” “sehen.”

And suddenly words did tumble out of me: “Actually, auf Wiedersehen means goodbye, not hello.”

“Oh,” said the alien. It lifted two of its other legs in what might have been a shrug, then continued on in syllables bouncing left and right. “Well, German is not my first language.”

I was too surprised to laugh, but I did feel myself relaxing, at least a little, although my heart still felt as though it were going to burst through my chest. “You’re an alien,” I said. Ten years of university to become Master of the Bleeding Obvious . . .

“That is correct,” said the leg-mouths. The being’s voices sounded masculine, although only the right one was truly bass. “But why be generic? My race is called Forhilnor, and my personal name is Hollus.”