"—the grenade vibrating in my hand!" Uncle Ezra waved his fork. "I reckoned I had maybe eight seconds before it went off!"

Glennis tried not to sigh. Uncle Ezra told this story every year. It was one of the reasons he had to sit at the kids' table, Mother had told her earlier.

"So I popped the access panel beside me," Uncle Ezra was going on, "shoved the bomb in, ejected from my battle armor, and charged the Dorthanti soldier who'd lobbed the thing at me!"

Beside Uncle Ezra, Matty was staring with wide eyes, his dinner forgotten. "In your skinsuit?" he asked. "But waddn't he wearing his armor?"

"Not waddn't." Glennis couldn't stop herself. "Wasn't." She puffed a breath. "You're six years old, Matty. Stop talking like a baby."

Matty spun and glared at her. "I don' talk like a baby!" He spun back to Uncle Ezra. "I talk good! Don' I, Unca Ezra?"

Uncle Ezra was chewing and swallowing, a process that made Glennis shiver to watch. "Language," he said, "is the most important tool you'll ever use, Matty, so it's good to always be careful with it." His smile showed his teeth. "What if I hadn't been able to talk clearly to your Aunt Clair? She might've shot me instead of saving me!"

"Wow..." Matty sat back, his tentacles flexing as his mouthparts arranged themselves more precisely than Glennis had ever seen them. "Wasn't," he said, then he turned to Uncle Ezra once more. "Like that?"

With a shrug, Uncle Ezra poked one of his little ears. "I'd say, but I can barely hear some of the sounds you make." He gave his big smile again. "But I could hear that Dorthant shout when I dove past him. His systems were so focused on my armor, he couldn't get a bead on me."

For the first time, something clicked in Glennis, looking at Uncle Ezra. He came to all the family gatherings with Aunt Clair, sure, but they couldn't really be married, could they?

"So when the bomb blew, my armor and the Dorthant were both between me and it!" Uncle Ezra swept his hand over his plate, chunks of salad flying. "The pressure differential sucked what was left of them into space while I grabbed the hoverscoot he'd left in the hallway and raced toward the escape pods. Of course, when I came around the corner to see that whole squad of Dorthanti, well, it's not so odd that I lost control of the scoot, is it?"

Matty was bouncing on his perch, but Glennis hardly noticed. Because Ms. Wallpole in health class had been talking about marriage all this term, and Glennis just couldn't see how Aunt Clair and Uncle Ezra could possibly—

"—shredded the whole squadron!" Uncle Ezra was saying, smashing his fork into his special potatoes. "Later, I learned that I'd accidentally taken out the Dorthanti commander, but all I knew then was that the ship was exploding around me, and the escape pods were all on the other side of the burning bodies! And then? An angel spoke over my comlink."

"Ezra?" A shadow loomed in the doorway, and Aunt Clair drifted in, her gasbag bigger than Mother's and the tentacles around her mouthparts more muscular than Father's. "Don't you get tired of that story?" she asked, and Glennis again hoped that someday she would sound as musical as her aunt.

Uncle Ezra smiled up at her. "I was just coming to where you saved me."

Aunt Clair settled to the floor, her finest tentacle stretching over to stroke his face. "You saved us, Ezra." Her eyes, all bigger than the whole table, shone. "Saved the whole Confederation from the Dorthanti."

"Nah." Uncle Ezra got quiet. "After they destroyed Earth, I just wanted to kill and die. Till I heard you on the radio looking for survivors, and we got to talking, and you swooped through the fire, grabbed me up, and pulled me into your escape pod." He winked at Glennis. "You get to know a person pretty well crammed together like that for three weeks." The way his fingers danced along Aunt Clair's tentacle made Glennis imagine what they might feel like, and her whole gasbag heated up.

Then Aunt Clair was rising into the air. "Still, it's time to light the candles and sing."

"Hooray!" Matty zoomed through the doorway, and as Aunt Clair picked Uncle Ezra up, Glennis started wondering if any other humans might have survived...