"Gorgioskio family!" shouted Georgio as he bounded up to the front door and swiped a card across a screen. "Your lord and master has returned!" He winked at Nicola. "My little joke. I'm not really their lord and master."
"Ha ha," said Nicola politely. It seemed that dads all across the galaxy made similar terrible jokes.
The door sprang open and Nicola followed Georgio into a circular room with brightly colored murals painted on the walls and a strangely springy floor that seemed to make her do a cheerful little bounce with each step.
"It's an Easy-Walk floor," explained Georgio. "It puts a spring in your step. Or so the advertisements say."
One whole wall of the room was taken up by a giant movie screen. Lying on the floor in front of it was a boy sucking his thumb.
"That's my son, Squid," said Georgio proudly. "Come and say hello to the Earthling Ambassador, Squid!"
The boy bounced to his feet and ran to his father. He was probably only about two or three years old, but he was exactly the same height as Nicola.
"Earthling!" Squid pointed at Nicola. "I want an Earthling!"
"Earthlings are not toys, Squid," said Georgio firmly
.
"Well, hello! I've been wondering when you'd get home!"
A woman walked into the room. She was just a little shorter than Georgio, with apple-red cheeks and short, curly blond hair. She could have been any one of the moms from Nicola's school, except that she was as tall as a stilt-walker.
"Nicola, I'd like you to meet my wife, Mully," said Georgio. "Mully, this is Nicola Berry, the Earthling Ambassador. I've had a terrible time tracking her down but she's definitely the one for the job!"
"Lovely!" Mully squatted down to shake Nicola's hand. "Congratulations! You must be starved."
"Well, I'm starved, if anyone is interested! Hey, Dad, guess what, we won the play-off!"
A girl wearing a sports uniform walked into the room. Her thick black hair was tied back in a ponytail and she had sparkling blue eyes just like Georgio. She was about the same height as Nicola's dad, but Nicola guessed she was probably about her own age.
"This is my daughter, Shimlara," said Georgio.
"Hi!" Shimlara gave Nicola a big smile. "Wow! You sure are short!"
"Shimlara!" said her mother crossly. "Manners! You know perfectly well that Nicola is an Earthling!"
"I'm sorry," said Shimlara to Nicola. "Sometimes I just say the first thing that comes into my head. It's always getting me into trouble. I didn't mean you were short in a bad way. I just meant you were, ummm, short."
"It's okay," said Nicola. "Actually, I'm the shortest one in my class. I always have to sit right in the front row for school photos."
"Me too!" said Shimlara. "So I guess you don't like zucchini, hey? That was my question. I told Dad that anybody who liked zucchini could not possibly be the Earthling Ambassador. Mom's question was whether you were good at writing stories, which I didn't think was at all relevant."
Mully said, "I felt the Earthling Ambassador needed to be someone with a good imagination.You've got quite a challenging task ahead of you, Nicola!"
"Dad's question was pretty good," said Shimlara. "The one about whether you'd ever convinced somebody to change their mind if it was already made up! So you must be pretty good at making people change their minds, hey?"
"Well, actually--" began Nicola uncertainly.
"Actually, I sort of changed that question at the last minute," said Georgio. "Just slightly. So when's dinner?"
"You changed the last question?" Mully looked shocked.
"Well, my instincts were telling me that Nicola was the right person for the job, and the last thing you said before I left Globagaskar was to follow my instincts," said Georgio. "So I happened to notice something red in Nicola's hair and I thought to myself, Now that's a good question: Are you wearing something red in your hair? and by golly she was! Ha ha!"
Nobody laughed.
"You told Dad to follow his instincts?" said Shimlara to her mother. "What about when the king and queen first went away and Dad said he had a 'good feeling' about Princess Petronella?"