Topaz, wearing a thin nightdress, gratefully climbed into her bed after a long day working in her farmhouse studio. It was a warm summer night in Nebraska, so she only pulled the sheet up to cover herself. She'd decided to leave the window wide open for ventilation, also. There wasn't very much wind, so the fields of ripe wheat that surrounded her house made only gentle whispering sounds as their heads brushed against each other. Out in the fields, crickets chirped their nighttime communications. That susurration was quite soothing and Topaz quickly slipped into slumber.
Sometime later, the crickets hushed their melody, reacting to some stimulus.
The craft descended from the sky and silently aligned itself with Topaz's bedroom window. Sensors probed the interior of the room. A dim beam struck the sheet covering Topaz, whereupon it gracefully and soundlessly folded itself to the foot of the bed. No one saw the beam, since Topaz was sound asleep and there was not another farmhouse for miles. That same beam then scanned up and down her recumbent form several times, as if measuring or calculating something. The beam vanished, and there was a long interval.
A slightly brighter beam of a different wavelength emerged from the craft and enveloped Topaz completely. Bathed in its eerie luminescence, she didn't awaken. Perhaps some property of the beam even deepened her state of sleep. Therefore, she didn't swim her way back to consciousness, even as the beam lifted her gently up above her bed. As the width of the beam decreased, Topaz rotated in the air until her head was pointed at the open window.
"Careful now, Grendel. Don't let her bump against the window," Matrix said.
"I've got it. I can handle this. I'm not an idiot, you know," Grendel complained.
Perhaps it should be pointed out that their names were not Grendel and Matrix. But that's as close as we can get to the strange sound patterns of their actual designations. Also, strictly speaking, they weren't talking to each other using vocal speech. They were communicating in a manner that we humans would call mental telepathy. But it seems easier, for the purposes of the story, to act as if they were talking. Oh yes, in case you hadn't figured it out by now - these two were aliens.
Grendel deftly maneuvered Topaz through the window and in through the open hatch of the craft. The hatch closed without a sound, and the craft lifted skyward. "See? I got her in just fine - not a scratch on her."
"Okay, okay! Can you rotate her vertically now?" The beam moved, activated by the controls being manipulated by Grendel. Topaz inverted into a head down position. "I meant the other way, stupid," Matrix complained.
"Well, you didn't say!" Grendel rebutted. But careful manipulations of the beam followed, and soon Topaz was floating, head upwards. "There! Happy now?"
"Yes, I think so. Now put those things... ummm... earthlings call them 'feet' I think... against the deck for balance and then carefully narrow your beam upward until it only covers the top part of her."
"You mean her head, don't you? You may as well practice the correct designations."
"Yes, yes! Till the beam just holds her head, Grendel. You can be such a ojiwetz, at times, you know!"
Grendel controlled his anger at being called a 'ojiwetz' like that, because he needed to have a delicate touch on the beam controls. When its luminescence only covered Topaz's head, he paused, feeling a bit drained, but triumphant. "Now what?"
"Now I use this," Matrix replied. Again the dim beam sprang to life and move to Topaz's shoulders. The cloth of her nightdress started into motion, slipping slowly off her shoulders and moving downward. The smooth pink skin between her neck and shoulders was revealed, as was the skin over her collarbones. The beam slid lower, and the top of the nightdress followed it downward.
When the nightdress top reached the region of Topaz's areolae, it seemed to snag. Matrix had to gently jiggle the beam until the cloth finally slid free of her nipples. Similarly, it took a little jiggling to work the material free when its sleeves reached her wrists and hands. Finally, the nightdress rippled down to the floor, leaving Topaz fully naked. Matrix used the beam to move her nightdress to a nearby bench.
"OK," Matrix said. "Can you get her onto the examination table?"
"Piece of utzka," Grendel said, confidently.
"Well, if it's so easy, then get on with it, instead of bragging about your prowess," Matrix complained.
Grendel held his rebuttal, and concentrated on enveloping Topaz with the beam again, lifting her, rotating her, and floating her to land softly on top of the table. The beam vanished for the most part, leaving only a tiny spot on her forehead to keep her sedated, and they both gathered around their specimen.
They started methodically at the top, examining Topaz's flame red hair, which fell in soft waves almost to her shoulders. Her eyes were closed, and they left them like that for the moment. Her nose, ears and mouth seemed to conform to the manual they were studying as they examined her.
"This specimen seems to have excellent mammary glands," Matrix remarked, pushing them gently from side to side.
"Oh?" Grendel sort of mentally grunted. "And what are those for again?"
"The manual says they're for nourishing the young. They give off some form of liquid." He scanned down the page. "A footnote says they also contain pleasure sensors, perhaps to insure that she spends enough time feeding her offspring."
Grendel gave one of Topaz's tits a firm, but careful squeeze. "I don't see any fluid," he complained.
"Did you ever stop to think that maybe she has no young that she's nourishing?" Matrix said, with overtones of smugness.
Grendel failed to rise to the challenge. He continued his examination down her torso, giving a cursory look at the curious indentation in the center of her abdomen, and moving lower. "Aha!" he almost crowed. "You picked a defective specimen!" He couldn't help but sound both gleeful and disappointed.
"What do you mean?" Matrix asked, a tinge of worry coloring his mental communication.
"Look down here," Grendel said, indicating Topaz's rather untamed pubic bush. "This one lacks a sexual opening. See?" He practically shoved the manual at Matrix. "Right here on the diagram. It shows a sexual slot. This specimen has none! Crap! We wasted the trip! We'll be a laughingstock."
Matrix examined the area, covered with the matted flame colored hairs. He produced a couple of tools rather equivalent to forceps, except they were glowing bands of hardened light. Prodding extra delicately in the pubic forest, he said, "Wait... wait. Look. Look here. If I pull these back, like this... there! There's her slit! It's just concealed!"
"Then why does it look so different on the diagram?" Grendel almost whined.
"Maybe that's why this craft comes equipped with the solution rack. Did you ever think of that?" Matrix offered. He carefully snipped off a few of the pubic hairs, collecting them. He also brushed off several flakes of her nearby skin. "Let's test these samples."
Grendel placed a hair, and some skin cells on a reaction plate, and added a drop of solution with the equivalent of the symbols 'KHE32' on its label. They waited. Nothing happened.
On another reaction plate, Matrix used a new hair and skin cells, and tried solution KHE65. In seconds, both the hair and the skin cells dissolved completely.
"Too strong, idiot," Grendel complained. He harvested some more pubic hairs, and skin, and tested them with solution KHE51. To their delight, it worked perfectly! The hair dissolved completely, but the skin cells were totally unharmed. "Yes! This is the right one! Make a note, Matrix." A suction device snaked up from under the table and was placed close to Topaz's sexual region. Grendel carefully sprayed the area with more KHE51, and, as the hairs dissolved in it, the resultant fluid was briskly sucked away. He then flushed the region with water, which also whisked into the vacuum.
With the suction device retracted, Matrix compared the diagram in the manual to the place where Topaz's thighs met. The depilatory solution had performed perfectly - her sexual region was now fully exposed, and met all the proper criteria. Grendel was still holding the spray device. "Should we use this solution elsewhere? Like up here? Or in here?" First, he pointed at Topaz's head, and then at her armpit.
Matrix did the equivalent of hemming and hawing. "I don't really see any reason to make alterations at those places. Listen. We can't keep her unconscious for much longer. Let's do the rest of the initial inspection before we bring her out of it. Otherwise she might be squirming around or something." Grendel indicated his agreement.
Strangely enough, as eager as they'd seemed to be to uncover Topaz's sexual area, they both acted reticent to start looking there. Instead, they got magnification devices, and looked into her ears, nose, and mouth. They lifted her breasts in all directions, as if expecting to find something under them. They inspected the strange depression in the center of her abdomen, but remained clueless as to its purpose. They spent an inordinate amount of time examining her toes.