Chapter 6

The hurkle, that is Earl's hurkle, immediately bounced up from it spot on the floor upon seeing a fellow hurkle. The other hurkle just sat on the floor despondent. The hurkle, that is Earl's hurkle, stopped abruptly. It could sense something was wrong. In fact, everybody could sense the wrongness in what had just happened; that is everybody except one person.

"So how did you know that there was a problem?" asked Earl.

Earl's hurkle, which we'll call Dan just because I don't want to keep writing 'Earl's hurkle', walked over to the other hurkle, John, for reasons stated above, and talked to him.

Hurkle's have a unique way of communicating with one another. To the untrained eye it would appear that the two animals were staring at one another and then yelping at completely random intervals. In fact hurkles stare at each other and yelp at slightly timed, somewhat planned, consciously thought out intervals. The slightly timed, somewhat planned yelps convey whole concepts and ideas that allow hurkles to carry out complete conversations in a matter of a few yelps. Unfortunately nobody in the room was trained in hurkle communication. If anyone had been, then the problem in space could have been solved much sooner; and this story would have been much shorter.

"What are those two animals doing, Earl?!" said Mr. Blithers annoyed by the yelps.

"Yelping sir," replied Earl.

"We know that! Why are they yelping?!"

"I don't know sir, I don't yelp hurkle," replied Earl.

Just as suddenly as 'Dan' had started yelping he stopped. The news that he had learned from 'John' was bad, very bad. Almost enough to depress him. Almost, but not quite enough.

"They stopped sir," said Earl trying to be helpful.

"Thank You Earl. We can see that," said the woman who had spoken earlier.

"I still don't see how you knew there was a problem with the space program. And I still don't see why I'm here or who all of you are."

"The answers to those questions are simple Earl. First we are the people who actually run things, or in other words we're your bosses. Second you are here to solve the problem in space. And lastly we know that the problem in space has become a crisis even though we can't see it or even know where it is, because that hurkle," pointing her finger at John, "is depressed".

Earl, who knew even less about hurkles than the average person, knew that was impossible. And he said so.

"Apparently not," replied the woman.

Earl looked at the hurkle and realized he did seem a bit down for a hurkle, in fact he looked ... depressed.

"But what could make a hurkle depressed?" asked Earl.

"That's what you're here to find out," said the woman, glad that at least now something would be done and the situation was no longer her responsibility.

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