Little Henry moves in to the farm house with me and accompanies me on my rounds.  LH can detect aliens.  I don't want to be surprised by aliens and there's little else I can do, but use the senses of Little Henry.  Well, I can think.

I'm a kid.  Back in school, I was taught the usual range of subjects for a high school student.  The obvious purpose of my education was to develop me into a younger copy of one of my teachers.  It seems to me that I should instead try to develop into the best older version of me that I can be.  It's not yet clear exactly what will be important to me later on and what won't be of use.  For now, I'll just have to learn as much as I can and learn rapidly.

In about a week, more aliens come to the farm.  Thanks to LH's educated nose and ears, they don't surprise me.  I greet the aliens, with Uncle Henry’s pistol at the ready.  There are three of them.  They look pretty much like the earlier aliens.

The aliens want Uncle Henry.

I tell them of the earlier alien invasion trouble and also of Uncle Henry’s current condition.  I let them chew over the situation for a bit and then I tell them that we need to talk.

It starts just about as I had thought.  I'm just a kid, talking to adults.  Adults never pay any attention to what a kid has to say.

The aliens want to just harvest the crop and leave.

I point out to the aliens, “First there's the matter of payment for the crop, ... or do the laws of your society just permit three armed adults to take whatever they want from a kid?”

The aliens hold a brief conference, in some alien language.

The Chief then asks me, “What do you want for the crop?”

I tell them the sum that Uncle Henry wants for the crop.  I also point out that there will be trouble about the other aliens that Uncle Henry and I killed.  I tell them that I expect the friends of the dead aliens to come, seeking their dead companions.

Once again, the aliens confer.  The Chief again asks, “Exactly what do you want?”

(Okay, I can't tell anything from the alien's expression.  I have to sort of fly blind here.  However, I haven't yet really learned the adult skill of reading another person's emotional state from their facial expression.  Thus, I'm not at all that much of a disadvantage in dealing with the aliens.)

I lecture them, “Whatever Uncle Henry is raising, in secret is obviously dangerous.  It's also obviously illegal, in your world.  The only thing that would prompt a group, actually two groups, of aliens to deal with such backward folk as we, is drugs.  I find myself in the middle of an alien drug war.”

The aliens don't respond for a while the Chief obviously goes through whatever process it is that adults use in place of thinking.

The Chief alien then speaks, “We will remove all of the crop that your Uncle Henry was growing.  We will further remove the dead aliens.  We must also have any weapons the aliens carried.  We can find the weapons, if we have to.”  The alien watches me closely, after the normal pattern of adults.  They have told the child what he can have; now they wait to see if the child will just cave in under adult authority.

I point out to the Chief alien, “You aliens obviously don't want any publicity about your little operation here.  If you just take the crop and go, there will still remain the matter of the other aliens, the dead aliens and their friends.  The friends of the dead aliens will return to the farm and cause trouble.  Trouble with the other aliens will more than likely get back eventually to the people who actually run your operation.  That last is something you really don't want.”  I can see that the Chief of the aliens doesn't want to have to deal with bad news getting back to the people who actually run his operation.

The Chief alien apparently tries to think over the problem.

I let him stew for a bit.  I then tell him, “Since Uncle Henry and I can't defeat armed aliens in a drug war, we'll have to run.  Before we run, we need a plan.  I have a plan that will work.”