Earth Fathers Are Weird (Earth Fathers #1) - Lyn Gala Page 0,23

to grow. Rick slid forward and gave another long string of untranslatable words; the translator caught “offspring” and “remove.”

If Max’s kids were in some woman who was considering abortion, he would feel something, too. Of course he would avoid getting someone pregnant if he didn’t speak the same language, and being gay, that was a bit of a moot point. Gay couples had to jump through more hoops to get kids. Only hets produced sentient life by accident.

“I will be surrogate in return for compensation,” Max said. Rick’s tentacles uncurled and two waved. He had one hell of a bad poker face. Or poker extremities, anyway.

“Query. Time given for surrogate in return for compensation?”

Oh Lord. Here they went again with time. Max had no idea how Heetayu’s computer could translate years and Rick’s couldn’t. Hell, when he did an audio search for “seconds,” he got television broadcasts where people said, “Wait a second” or “Do you want seconds?” Minutes and hours had been equally unhelpful. He frowned. Wait. The ground had been counting down to a Patriot missile launch. The mission had been to keep the ships away from the populated areas until the SAM system was in place.

Max did a fast breaststroke toward the edge of the pool, and Rick retreated damn fast for an octopus with one leg. He even got a couple of his longer tentacles involved, but Max ignored him. He grabbed clothes on the way past, and dried himself with them as he ran bare assed naked toward the translation room.

Rick probably had another name for the computer cubby, but Max had taken the space over for his translation work, and Rick hadn’t cared.

“Computer,” Max said as he slapped his wet hand down on the identification screen. “Search Earth broadcasts for phrase ‘T-minus.’” Max struggled into his pants. The fabric clung to his wet skin, and Max shook his leg to get it to slide into the pants. He then had to hop as he switched feet.

The computer speaker immediately broadcast the audio Max remembered. He’d been in his jet, focused on the ship in front of him. If the Patriot missile had taken him down, he wouldn’t have cared as long as it had destroyed the aliens. The memory of that helpless rage swelled up as he listened to the recording of the controller’s voice. “T-minus forty-five... forty-four... forty-three... forty-two...” The voice got to twenty-three before Max said, “Stop!” The countdown had been somewhere around eight or ten when Max had lost consciousness.

And the whole damn alien invasion had been nothing more than a police chase. How many people had died from battle debris falling to the ground? Max wondered whether his own plane or that Patriot missile had fallen to Earth and killed even more. Max’s stomach cramped as Kohei did something unfortunately athletic.

“Right, right. No upsetting the babies.” Max rubbed his side and sat on the stool. Maybe Kohei had the ability to sense emotion through some chemical in Max’s body. It would help if he understood alien biology, but at this point, Max would settle for sorting out the time issue. The dock computer system and Rick’s computers were not great at sharing information. Yet the raw transmissions from the government’s fly-by of Earth were all available. Politics must be involved. But he couldn’t worry about that right now.

A squelch announced Rick’s arrival. Any time he got his walking tentacle wet, it made unfortunate noises on the padded floor. Max ignored it because the one question they each wanted answered required the computer to sort out time markers.

“Computer, mark the sequence of numbers.”

“Marked.”

“The speaker is counting down seconds. Use the time intervals between T-minus forty-five and T-minus fifteen to define thirty seconds.” Max pulled the damn shirt over his head.

Maybe it was Max’s imagination, but the computer took more time than appropriate, as if it was frustrated with Max’s questionable translation skills. “Thirty seconds, confirm. Require secondary confirmation.”

“Use the length of time between T-minus forty and T-minus ten.”

Again, the computer paused. Whenever they had attempted to define time, this was where the computer called him an idiot because his first time interval didn’t match his second. This time the computer said, “Deviation within acceptable boundaries. External source required for confirmation.”

Fuck. If Max tried to do the one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi thing again, he would screw it up and they’d be back at square zero. He rubbed his stomach. Thirty seconds. He needed something that would correlate to thirty seconds. He smiled. “Check the