Henry James stared at the glyph saying ‘denied’. He was pretty sure it said denied. The Blash’s writing looked like bowls of spaghetti dropped on a long-haired carpet, but the left-facing hook usually meant ‘no’, and the two inverted whorls meant ‘official’, ‘power’, and occasionally ‘flushing things down the toilet’.

“But why?” he said. He was fairly confident that it came out right. Blish-blosh was a physical language, consisting of flapping and clapping the octopus-like Blash’s many arms. Henry made do with smacking his tongue, flapping his lips, clapping his hands, and snivelling forcefully. Having a cold helped immensely, but the Blash didn’t allow infected aliens on their space stations. Snorting chilli peppers and ground mustard produced almost as good a phlegm, though.

“Denied,” said the Blash, a purple, 86-armed lower-manager with the two hacks in its head sack indicating promotions. It spoke slowly, flapping its arms in big motions and slapping them together in powerful claps.

“Buuuutttt wwwhhhyyyy?” said Henry, almost dislocating his arm. He eyed the translator sitting on the edge of the Blash’s work-pond. It was a modified standard model, speaker-microphone on one end, a set of wavy arms on the other. It was deactivated.

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The Blash believed that the best way to integrate aliens was to make them learn Blish-blosh as fast as possible.

Galactic protocol said that a translation computer had to be available at all official meetings between intelligent aliens. The Blash interpreted this in a very literal sense — there was nothing in the galactic law that said the translator had to be switched on.

Henry could activate the translator, but he was allowed a total of 11.3 minutes per 22-day Blash work cycle, and paying for more would cost him an arm and a leg. Quite literally, as the Blash regrew severed arms and ate everything they were offered, including themselves.

“No danger,” said the Blash. “No need for asylum. War stop. Human go home.”

“But where?” said Henry.

“Hoooomeeee,” repeated the Blash, slowing down its waving arms the way it would when talking to a newly emerged hatchling.

“But Earth is destroyed!” yelled Henry, then calmed himself enough to convey the message in Blish-blosh.

The Blash popped its eyes, extruding the ten orbs slightly from its skull-sack, the equivalent of a nod.

“Yes,” it said. “No war.”

“No home!” Henry said.

“Home,” said the Blash, pointing to a holo-vid of the Solar System. The Sun was a whirling red cloud, with slowly heating spots of cooled matter, each larger than Jupiter, drifting across its surface. The effects of gravitation rippers, at least the way Henry had seen them on the newscasts.

Mercury skimmed the outer edge of the Sun’s corona, a blob of melted, glowing rock. Venus was largely untouched, as was Saturn. Earth was a mass of loose rocks and dust, slowly spreading into the orbits of several planets.

Tears threatened to rise in Henry’s eyes. He’d gone to school on Earth, before passing his zero-gravity tests and shipping out into the Galaxy.

He tried not to think about his family. He failed.

“No eating in office,” said the Blash. “Salt forbidden.”

It pointed to the tear on Henry’s cheek, and Henry quickly wiped it away with the salt-nullifying cloth the Blash required humans to possess at all times. The cloth left a greasy, itching smear on his cheek.

“No home,” Henry said, pointing to the cloud of asteroids that used to be Earth.

“Rock,” said the Blash. “Human live rock.”

“Not like this!” screamed Henry. “Not on an airless, lifeless, chunk of iron.”

He didn’t think that his waving made sense in Blish-blosh. The Blash must have understood something of his agitation. It zoomed in on the cloud of previously Earth matter.

“Rock,” it said, pointing to a chunk of ground. There was a piece of an arcology, one of Earth’s miles-high super-buildings, sticking up from it. It was a sizable chunk, if the rear half of the United Space Force corvette tumbling beside it was to scale.

There was a light on in the arcology. A few of the rooms had power.

“Earth rock,” said the Blash. “No war. No danger.”

It pointed to the glyph on the print-sheet in front of Henry. Refugee status denied.

“ET go home,” the Blash said, and waved its arms for the security officers to come and take Henry away.