The captain nodded. “Sure, we can go anywhere.”
The helicopter landed. Two Russian men and a Russian woman disembarked, along with the copter pilot. They came over to the American captain.
“Sergei Korolov,” said the Russian, a thickset man in his thirties. He saluted. “I’m— first officer, you’d call it, on the Suvorov.” He nodded to the woman. “Our doctor, Valentina Danilova, and our radio officer, Piotr Pushkin. Neither of them speaks English.”
“Great,” muttered Frank. “I’m Frank Nobilio, science advisor to the president of the United States. This is Cletus Calhoun, astronomer, and Captain Raintree.”
“I point out,” said Korolov, “that the lander only settled on your ship because it was not possible to settle on our submarine. But under international salvage laws, the lander is clearly ours—we got to it first.”
Frank sighed. “It’s not our intention to steal the lander, Mr. Korolov. In fact, I want to take it to the United Nations in New York.”
“I will have to consult with my captain, and she will have to consult with Moscow,” said Korolov. “It is not—”
The man with the Geiger counter returned. “It’s clean, sir. Just normal background radiation.”
“Very good,” said Captain Raintree. “Do you want to go have a closer look, Dr. Nobilio?”
“By all means. Let’s— my God.”
A portion of the curving wall of the lander was sliding up. The hatch had been completely invisible when closed, but the opening was obvious. Inside was a gray-walled chamber—an air lock, in all likelihood. And standing in the middle of the chamber was a figure.
A figure that was not human.
“Damn,” said Captain Raintree, under his breath. “Sir, if that thing is carrying alien germs, we’ll have to, er, sterilize this ship.”
Frank spoke firmly. “I’ll make that determination, Captain.”
“But—”
“Captain, shut up.” Frank stepped closer to the lander. His heart was pounding in his ears.
An alien.
An actual, honest-to-God alien.
It didn’t have the big head, the large eyes, the tiny body, or any of the other characteristics associated with UFO sightings, of course. Frank had always taken such unimaginative descriptions of alien beings as proof that UFOs had nothing to do with extraterrestrial life, Packwood Smathers’s ridiculous contentions notwithstanding. No, this was clearly something that had evolved somewhere else.
The creature was not humanoid.
It stood about five and a half feet tall and, at a wild guess, probably weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. It had four limbs, but all four of them seemed to be attached at the shoulders. The left and right ones were long, and reached down to the ground. The front and back ones were shorter, dangling freely. The head was a simple dome rising up from the shoulders, and on top of it there was a topknot or tuft of white tendrils that seemed to be waving independently of the gentle breeze. Positioned near the front of the dome were two mirrored convex circles that might have been eyes.
Below them was an orifice that could have been a mouth. The being’s hide was blue-gray. It wore a dun-colored vestlike affair with many pockets.
Clete had moved to Frank’s elbow. “No space suit,” he said. “It’s breathing our air, and it’s standing in our gravity.”
The alien began to walk forward. Its left and right limbs were jointed at three places, and its stride length was close to six feet. Although it didn’t seem to be hurrying, it managed to close half the distance between itself and Frank in a matter of seconds—then it stopped, dead, still about fifty feet away.
The meaning seemed plain enough: an invitation to come closer. The alien wasn’t going to invade Frank’s territory, and it clearly wasn’t looking to grab Frank and steal him aboard the lander. Frank walked forward; Clete fell in next to him. The Russians began to move as well. Frank turned around.
“Just one of you,” he said. “We don’t want it to think we’re ganging up on it.”
Korolov nodded and spoke briefly to Pushkin and Danilova. They both looked disappointed, but they obeyed the order and moved back to stand next to Captain Raintree.
The three humans closed the remaining distance. Clete held up a hand when they got within eight feet of the alien. “Better stop here, Frankie,” he said. “We don’t know what it considers to be its personal space.”
Frank nodded. Up close, he could see that the creature’s skin was crisscrossed with fine lines, dividing it into diamond-shaped scales or plates, and—Frank couldn’t help smiling. There was a small adhesive strip, perhaps three inches long and three-quarters of an inch wide, attached to the side of the alien’s domed head—apparently a bandage, as if the alien had bumped its head on something. Somehow, the small sign of fallibility made the alien seem much more accessible, much less formidable.
The alien was presumably studying the humans, but there were no visible pupils in the mirrored lenses—no way to tell where the alien was looking.
How to proceed? Frank thought for a moment about making the hand sign from Close Encounters—and that thought gave him a better idea. He held up one finger, then two—he was conscious that he was making peace sign—then three, then five. He then brought up his second hand and added two fingers from it, for a total of seven.
The alien lifted its front arm and raised the hand attached to it, which ended in four flat-tipped fingers, equally spaced around the circular end of the arm. The fingers seemed undifferentiated—they were all the same length, with no obvious thumb. The first and third fingers opposed each other, and so did the second and fourth.
The alien raised one finger, then two, then three. It then reached its second hand around from behind its body, and raised two of its fingers—making a total of five—and then the remaining two, making a total of seven.
So far, so good. But then Frank thought perhaps he’d made a mistake. Maybe the alien would now assume humans communicated through a gesticular language, rather than a spoken one. He touched a hand to his own chest and said, “Frank.”
“Frank.” The alien was a gifted mimic—it sounded just like Frank’s own voice.
No, no, that wasn’t it—it had recorded his voice and immediately played it back to him. There must be some sort of recording equipment in the vest it was wearing.
Frank pointed at the alien. There was no reason to think the gesture would make sense to the creature—pointing might only be meaningful to beings who had been spear carriers in their past. But almost at once the alien’s mouth moved. It was a complex structure, with an outer horizontal opening and an inner layer of tissue that had a vertical opening, letting it make a variety of rectangular holes. “Hask,” said the alien. Its voice was smooth and deep—Frank had seen nothing on the being that might be genitalia, but it sounded male. The voice started softly, but the volume lifted by the end of the word.
But then Frank realized that he hadn’t really established anything. Was Hask the being’s personal name, or the name of its race? Or did the word mean something else? “Hello,” maybe? Frank pointed at Cletus. “Clete,” he said. The alien repeated the word back, and this time Frank was positive that the sound was coming not from the mouth, but the alien’s chest. One of the pockets on its vest contained a small rectangular object; its outline was apparent by the way the fabric was distorted, and the top of the unit was peeking out of the pocket’s flap. The sound had apparently come from it.
The alien pointed at Frank and said his name—this time it did come from the alien’s mouth. He then pointed at Clete and said Clete’s name. Both times the word started softly, but grew louder over the length of the syllable. The alien pointed at the Russian. Frank looked at him, but was damned if he could remember the man’s name. “Sergei,” said the Russian.