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Lisa laughed. “No, it’s just a bad human habit. If a human has a friend who lives in a distant city, and they meet someone else from there, they will always ask if that person knows their friend -- even if the city has 20 million inhabitants. It comes from our species’ difficulty in comprehending the scale of the universe, I suppose.”

“We Taff look at the universe differently, Lisa. We spend so much of our time in space that we tend to cling to immediate surroundings. It is … psychological, is correct?”

“Psychological is correct.”

Sar-Say paused for a moment and then said, “I fear that Captain Landon is angry with me.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked to remain in the control room during the contact. I know that you humans fear that I have lied to you, and that you wish to take precautions against my acting against your interests, but I can be of much use to you if you would just let me.”

Lisa considered her reply carefully. This was, she believed, an important point with the alien and she did not want to be misunderstood. Over the past eighteen months, their moments of misunderstanding had dropped nearly to zero -- Sar-Say was that quick a learner -- but occasionally he said something that reminded her that beneath that funny looking cranium there lay an alien brain.

“I know you understand how dangerous this expedition has been for my species, Sar-Say. Try to put yourself in our shoes. Would you take such a risk with your own species?”

“I understand, Lisa, perhaps better than you. I have personal experience with the Broa, while you have only my word. It does not bother me that you do not take everything I say at … face value. I would do the same were I in your position. It is right to take precautions. However, precautions can be taken too far. You are about to interact with an alien species of which you have no knowledge, not even the knowledge of the name they give themselves -- I believe Klys’kra’t is the name of their planet. True, I am as ignorant of them as you are. However, I am familiar with customs throughout the Sovereignty and I can be of great aid in guiding you.”

“I know you can. You must understand that our orders from our rulers do not allow us to take advantage of your offer. Not now, anyway.”

Sar-Say nodded. “But later. Once you have visited Klys’kra’t and have discovered that all I have told you is the truth, what then?”

“Then I’ll talk to the captain about it. I agree that you can help us greatly in getting the information we seek. You know right where to look and we do not.”

“I can perform another service for you.”

“What?”

“Although I personally have no knowledge of these aliens, surely others of my kind have visited this world. We Taff are a well-traveled race, you know. My presence in your party will convince the locals that you are what you say you are, a trading ship from some distant corner of the Sovereignty.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Please bring the matter to the captain’s attention. It is to my benefit to prove my trustworthiness to you if I am ever to see my family again. Agreed?”

Lisa did not reply. She liked the little alien, but was realist enough to know that if the Sovereignty was as he said it was, that there was little chance that he would ever see home again. No matter how much they trusted him, it was very unlikely that the Coordinator or Parliament would allow him to return home. So long as the Broa remained ignorant of humanity’s existence, the Earth was safe. She doubted that Sar-Say would betray them intentionally, but what if he got drunk, or the Taff equivalent, and started talking about the strange bipeds that had rescued him off a damaged wreck of a starship?

She quickly put the thought out of her mind. What to do with Sar-Say after all of this was over was a conundrum with no solution. Thinking about it depressed her.

#

“All right, shall we try again?” Dan Landon asked. The blue-white world had grown considerably on the forward viewscreen, although they were still nearly half a million kilometers distant -- slightly more than the distance between Earth and Luna. This “Earth” was unlike home in at least one important respect. It lacked the Earth’s massive companion. In Luna’s place where half-a-dozen smaller objects, all in the asteroid size class. There also appeared to be numerous large objects in orbit, one of which might have been classed as an asteroid were it not obviously artificial.

“Klys’kra’t Orbital Control. This is trading vessel
Wanderer
, prepared to communicate. Please
respond.”

The wait was considerably less this time. The reply came four seconds later, as though they had been waiting for the call. “
Trading vessel
Wanderer.
We have been monitoring your approach.

Identification of species!”

“Our species is called Vulcan. We are from the Shangri-La system on the other side of
Civilization.”

“We are not familiar with your species. Switch to screen so that we can converse like advanced
beings.”

“Stand by.”

“All right, everyone. Here goes. Send our picture and put their reply on the main viewscreen.” To his unseen interrogator, Landon said,
“Visual transmission activated.”

The being on the viewscreen could have been the twin of those in the long-range recordings made by the two starships. The Orphean, or Krys’ka’tian, was in close-up, which made him (or her) look like a fat fence post near the top of which someone had pinned three oversize obsidian marbles. The oculars were attached near the top of the cranium, each in its own bulged-out eye socket. Whether the eyes were fixed or mobile was not obvious. What was obvious was that the three eyes (and the three others they could not see) gave the being full circular vision. Below the eyes were a series of small circular membranes that might be the being’s hearing apparatus, and below that, slits that periodically widened in time with his breathing. Whether the method used to extract oxygen from the atmosphere involved lungs or gills could not be discerned merely by looking at him. There was no evidence of a mouth, but nowhere in the book of nature was it written that the mouth must be in the head. And, in truth, the creature lacked a head as humans defined the term. Its trunk went all the way to the top.

Below the breathing slits, if indeed that was what they were, the attachment point of the tentacles could be seen, although the tentacle ends were out of the picture frame. Their previous studies of the physiology of Orpheans measured the average tentacle at more than one meter in length, giving the creatures the same reach as human beings. There were six tentacles, each sprouting from a point on the torso equidistant between two eyes at the top of the trunk. The skin was gray and leathery, like a lizard, adding to the being’s resemblance to a tree trunk.

The physiology of the Orpheans had been a subject of hot debate back at Brinks Base. The upper portion of their bodies appeared to be axially symmetric -- that is, designed around the central axis of the body, like a starfish. The peculiarly jointed tripod legs were obviously designed to move primarily through rotation of the full body. The argument had raged over what sort of environmental conditions would result in such an odd arrangement of limbs and sense organs.

“I see you,”
the orbital controller said after a few seconds.
“However, our data base does not appear
to have any reference to your species or star.”

“Nor does our database include your esteemed world,”
Landon replied. As he said it, an irreverent thought flashed through his brain. It occurred to him that he was telling his interrogator the literal truth.

“One reason that we are on this long voyage of trade is to seek new markets for our wares. The
people at the last star suggested that you would be interested in what we have to trade.”

“The Bool’el are not usually so helpful to us.”

“It is that way everywhere, is it not?”

“It should not be so. Those Who Rule would be better served if their various servants cooperated
with one another more.”

“We agree.”

“But enough of this talk. They might not like it. What sort of beasts are you?”

Landon reeled off a code number that Sar-Say and the biology department had developed together. The code was Broan shorthand for defining the environmental conditions human beings required. The biologists had tasked even Sar-Say’s patience with their requests for explanations regarding the meaning of the code groups. Their concern was to provide aliens with information that roughly defined the parameters human beings needed to survive, but not to define them so precisely that they would give the Broa a description of Earth. On the other hand, any exo-biologist worth the title should be able to learn a great deal about Mother Earth merely by looking at the creatures it had spawned. So telling the Orpheans their environmental needs ought not reveal any secrets that they would not soon find out anyway.

Dan watched the screen for signs of any adverse reaction to the code he gave. That was the problem with having to rely on an advisor that you did not know to be perfectly trustworthy. Each time you used his advice, you had to ask whether things were as you had been told. For all he knew, Sar-Say’s code could have ranged from pure gibberish to, “Help, I am being held hostage by aliens in a fortune cookie factory.”

The alien appeared to have no reaction to the code at all. Of course, with his eye arrangement, it was impossible to tell where he was looking. Perhaps the Orpheans did not “look,” in the human sense.

Perhaps they had equal awareness of circumambient space at all times. What the brain that could take signals from six different eyes simultaneously would look like, he could not imagine.

That was one of the dangers of this mission. Just as looking at a few hundred hours of holovision would not allow aliens to understand human beings; so, too, their knowledge of Orpheans was virtually nil. After perhaps 30 seconds, the being responded,
“You appear to have no need for special environmental
support here on Klys’kra’t. You are approved to approach Za’ltrel Station. Stand by to record
approach instructions.”

“Standing by.”

A few seconds later, there was a short burst of sound and a diagram popped up on their screens in Broan symbology. Like trade talk, the instructions were in a simplified format that sacrificed elegance for efficiency, but which they had no trouble understanding.

“Message received,”
Landon said.

”Proceed to Zal’trel Station on the path we have given you. Contact their orbit control when you
are 123srota from the station. Klys’kra’t orbit control ends communication.”

“Shangri-La trading vessel
Wanderer
ends communication.”

Zal’trel Station turned out to be the large habitat that was nearly the size of one of Klys’kra’t’s moons.

Radar measured the globe at more than 20 kilometers in diameter. If the station had originated on an asteroid, over the centuries it had completely engulfed its parent. Alternatively, perhaps it had been built free floating and had merely consumed an asteroid or two for raw materials. Whichever the case, it was huge!

Mark Rykand was seated at his workstation in the cramped astronomy cubicle and watched the artifact grow ever more giant as they slowly made their approach. Down in the control center, the captain was in nearly continuous communication with the aliens. They had discovered that Klys’kra’t was indeed the name of the planet, and that its inhabitants called themselves the Voldar’ik, with a final syllable that would make one’s throat sore if pronounced too enthusiastically. In fact, they had discovered that the Voldar’ik vocal apparatus was substantially more adaptable than its human counterpart. That fact had not been surprising once they finally identified the mechanism by which the aliens generated sound.

It turned out that they spoke not through their “mouth,” but rather through their “ears.” They made sounds by vibrating the tympanic membranes spaced around their upper torsos, just under the eyes. One of the biologists noted that whenever their interrogator had spoken, a concave circle on his upper torso had become indistinct. By zooming in on that spot, it became obvious that one of his tympanic membranes was vibrating at high frequency. Rather than vibrating strings in a larynx, the Voldar’ik vocal mechanism seemed to have evolved from the woofer in an ancient stereo system. That the aliens could generate substantial volume with the arrangement was surprising, but no more so than the inordinate noise a cricket makes when it rubs its hind legs together. The holo recordings also revealed that the tympanic membrane next to the vibrating one seemed not to be moving. Evidently, the alien used one to transmit sound and the other to receive it, or possibly, they were interchangeable. The discovery started an argument as to whether the Voldar’ik used the capability for sonar sensing, much as a bat or a whale on Earth.

With the discovery of the beings’ speaking apparatus, the exo-biologists began looking for the aliens’

food intake orifice. They found it tucked inconspicuously away about where a human being has his or her navel. The discovery caused a spate of ribald and insensitive jokes to circulate through the ship. Upon hearing one, Lisa made the observation that the Voldar’ik would probably have the same reaction to human anatomy. Her observation did not stop her from chuckling at the improbable mental picture the joke had triggered.

The last several hours had seen a steady stream of findings broadcast throughout the ship and put on the tight beam toward their two consorts out in the Oort cloud. When the
Whale
closed to within one hundred thousand kilometers of Klys’kra’t, however, Captain Landon ordered the long-range communications system shut down. There was too much chance of their hosts detecting it as they got closer to the planet.

While most of the starship’s crew manned their stations and listened to the interchange between the control room and Zal’trel Station, the exo-biologists and anthropologists worked feverishly to evaluate the transmissions they were receiving from the hull sensors in real time. Mark sat at his workstation in the cluttered astronomy cubicle and listened to the continuous chatter on the science channels. He found that he was developing an aversion to the whiney voice of Dr. Mendoza, the ship’s exo-sociologist.