As George rounded the corner, he saw the protector’s Volkswagen parked a short distance up the street.  The big man George had seen on the park bench the day before was sitting in the driver’s seat, staring straight ahead.  George slowed down and approached the car cautiously.  The protector leaped through the passenger window and stood on the passenger seat with his paws on the dashboard.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, seeing George’s hesitation as he came slowly up to the car.

“Martin,” said George quietly.  “I don’t think my mom would want me to go with him.”

The protector laughed.  “That’s very logical and you’re right, you should never go in a car with strangers.  But you have nothing to worry about.  Martin is an ant.”

George stared blankly at the protector.  “An ant?” he said dumbly.

“That’s right,” replied the protector.  “Ant #4, to be exact.  Have you ever noticed how ants always seem to know where they’re going, and can always find any little speck of food or crumb on the ground?  And how they can work their way through hordes of other ants without getting confused?”

“Yeah,” said George slowly, wondering what the protector was talking about.

“Well,” continued the protector, “I figured if ants have that good of a sense of direction and that much ability to handle traffic jams, they should be pretty good as drivers!  So I used the transformer to change an ant into a human to become my driver.”

“Wow!” said George, looking at Martin in amazement.  “So, he’s an ant!”

“That’s right,” said the protector.  “Actually, he’s ant number four.  Ants don’t live very long, you know, so I’ve had to replace my driver four times.”

“Replace him?” said George uncomfortably.

“Yep,” replied the protector.  “Each ant’s human form aged very quickly so I could tell when he was getting close to the end.  Then I would just change him back into an ant and get a new driver.  It was hard saying good-bye to my old drivers, of course, since I got rather attached to them.”

“That’s terrible,” said George without thinking.

“I agree,” said the protector.  “It’s a shame ants have such short lives, and that no one seems to care when they die.  Where I come from, every form of life is greatly respected.  But I’ve found that most people on this planet don’t feel that way.  Whoever cares if an ant lives or dies?  Whoever cares if they step on an ant?”

“Well, I guess that’s true,” said George, feeling confused.  He found himself wondering how many times he had stepped on ants without paying any attention.  “But people would care if the ant looked like a human.”

“Probably so,” replied the protector.  “But it would still be an ant.”

  Still confused, George slowly got into the Volkswagen, and sat down on the back seat. 

“So, where are we going?” asked the protector.  “Where is the fallen star?”

“Just outside town, right past the orchard,” said George slowly. 

Immediately Martin started the car and began driving towards the outskirts of town.

“He understood me?” asked George in surprise.

“Yep,” replied the protector.  “I don’t know why, but the ants I’ve transformed understand everything I say.  Maybe when they go through the transformer they take on some human attributes.  But they never talk.  Martin has never said a single word to me.”

“He hasn’t?” asked George, turning to stare at Martin again.

“Have you ever heard an ant talk?” replied the protector.

“No,” said George.  There was silence for a moment while Martin drove silently on. 

“What I’m going to be looking for at the fallen star is just any clue we can find,” said the protector, changing the subject.  “I don’t actually know what it might be – it could be anything.  Hopefully we’ll find something that helps.”

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“We’re getting close,” said George, looking out the window.  “It’s right over there, past the end of the orchard.”

Martin brought the car to a stop at the specified place and George and the protector got out.  “It’s just over that rise, out of sight.”  The protector trotted ahead with George following close behind.

The site was the same as when George had been there last.  The circular fallen star lay half submerged in the earth where it had landed, with the hook-like appendage pointing up to the north.  There was nothing else around or any sign that anyone had been there.  George felt a twinge of guilt at being here again.  His mother had not wanted him to come back here.  But he had only promised to not come here alone, and since the protector was with him, it was easy to rationalize that he had not broken his promise.

The protector looked closely at the fallen star and tapped it with his paw. 

“It’s not a meteor or an asteroid.  It looks like it was made by somebody, and I would guess it’s not here by accident.  I would think that hook-like part pointing up has a definite purpose, although I can’t imagine what it would be.”

“Huh,” said George.  “I thought it was just something that fell randomly from space.”

“I doubt it,” said the protector.  “It looks almost like it’s positioned for something.”  He paused.  “Where did you find the Uth rock?”

George pointed out the spot in the grass near the fallen star, and the protector went over to it.  “This is another reason why I decided to be a dog today.  Their sniffers are much better than those of a human.”  He then sniffed all around the grassy area George had pointed out, and looked carefully for a time, but found nothing.

“It can’t be a coincidence that the Uth stone was right here with the fallen star,” muttered the protector.  “The two must have come together.  But why?”  After looking around for another minute, the protector said to George, “there’s a camera on the front seat of the car.  Can you get it?  I need to take some pictures so we can analyze them.”

George quickly went back to the car and retrieved the camera.  Unlike the protector’s other gadgets it looked perfectly normal. 

“I bought it at Wal-Mart,” said the protector sheepishly when George brought it back, and he noticed George looking at it curiously.  “Your earth cameras work pretty well.”

The protector then had George take several pictures of the fallen star from different angles.  When they were finished, the two walked slowly back to the car.  Ant number 4 was still sitting in the driver’s seat, staring straight ahead with a vacant expression on his face.

“Take us back to the street we started from,” instructed the protector after he and George had got into the car.  As the car began to move forward, the protector said to George, “as you recall, yesterday I had my settings arranged so that you would shrink when you came in the window—“

“Yeah, that’s right,” said George, remembering.

“Today, I’ve got it set to shrink only when you actually touch the little door into my home,” said the protector.  “Watch.”  He reached out a paw and bumped it against the tiny door.  Instantly he shrank to about an inch in height.  It was as if George were watching him through a zoom lens working in reverse.  The protector was still a dog though, who now looked like a toy.

“Wow!” he said in amazement.

The protector’s tiny voice reached up to him.  “Remember to whisper so you don’t deafen me.  Now it’s your turn.  Come here and touch the door, but be careful you don’t crush me in the process.  Then we’ll go inside and look at the pictures.”

George moved to the front seat and cautiously stretched out his finger toward the door.