"Hey, wanna go get an ice cream from the Convenimart?" Jimmy had whooomed up on his hand-me-down refurbished hovbike, and Susie looked up from her incomplete thrift-store set of Stellar Infantry Wartime Playset. "No." Her voice was soft. "I don't really like it over there since the Fnarians moved in."

"Why? You know they don't eat kids like the wartime vids used to say, right?" His smirk suggested he was preparing for some vicious teasing.

"No! I mean, yeah, I know that. I just don't feel good there. Mom says it's worry. Lotsa kids feel it."

"C'mon, scaredy-pants."

"No!" Jimmy saw her face bunch up, on the verge of tears. As much as he enjoyed teasing Susie, he didn't want to make her cry. "Okay, no big. Let's go see if Old Mister Okafor has any of those lranthian taffys!" Much relieved, Susie followed himm.

In the apartments above the Convenimart two blocks down, a Fnarian looked up from its morning chemtouch news. "I haven't seen as many of those human kids in a while," it scented (loosely translated).

"That's probably the sonics," odored the other. "Too low for us or them to hear, but it makes them uncomfortable."

"Brilliant."