“Point made, sir,” Bill replied with a grin.
“And somebody get Miss Moon on deck. It’s about time our linguist earned her passage.”
“We are receiving various EM frequencies only,” Communications Specialist Elav said. “There are neutrino and quark emissions, but I have determined that they are random and probably leakage from their engines. The initial communication was short pulses in a specific frequency of EM. Following that they began sending a continuous transmission on several frequencies but the transmission is odd. It varies in pulse and does not appear to be binary data. I have determined that it is probably their equivalent of sodee, but it does not parse correctly. I surmise they are primarily an EM detecting species. Thus they are sending us EM reflectance data instead of sonic reflectance data. I am attempting to replicate this for our own use and to translate our sodee data for theirs. There is also an audio channel, but so far I have been unable to parse it for translation. I deeply regret my failures thus far.”
“They have a drive system that is far superior to our own,” Kond replied. “Given the speed of their drive, they undoubtedly have far more first contact experience than we. If they are unable to translate our transmissions when they are that far in advance of us, it is unlikely that you will do better. Continue to work on the problem, but in the meantime I think that we can leave it up to them.”
“Their transmissions are giving me fits. I think it’s some sort of binary, but there’s no change in modulation. And most of it seems to be based on the neutrino emissions rather than the EM. I’m beginning to think that one’s audio and the other video.”
The commo officer of the Blade always knew that someday he’d have to figure this stuff out. But he also figured it wouldn’t be this hard or that the other species would crack the human’s code rather than the other way around. But the two ships had been sitting opposite each other at a bare light-minute for the last four hours, sending lots and lots of “stuff” back and forth and not getting anywhere.
“Sonar is three dimensional,” Miriam said, looking at the signals. “Video is designed to create phosphors of light on a two-dimensional screen. A sonar signal would be designed to produce sound, but very layered and complex. What we really need is a sonarman working on this, sorry. Can you transfer this over to the lab? I’d like to play with it and let the three guys we picked up listen to it.”
“Can do, ma’am,” Commo said happily. “Should I send it over to Sonar and see what they can do with it?”
“Send it to Tactical, yes,” Miriam said. “Tell them to try pumping it through their sonar systems and radar systems. It might look a bit like radar as well. Parse the neutrino pulses into analog data. I’ll play with all of it at the same time.”
“Getting anywhere?” Dr. Chet asked.
“I think so,” Miriam replied. She had set up in front of a small flat-screen monitor and the desk was liberally covered with sheets of paper. Most of it was equations, but some looked like doodles. There were various half-shots of the faces of their visiting aliens. “I’m having to think what they would look like to each other, in sonar. I’ve been looking at what we have in the ship’s computer on dolphin brain imagery, which is the nearest analog I can find. And I think I’m starting to get somewhere.”
She opened up a screen and coded rapidly, her fingers flashing across the keyboard. The small program compiled quickly, then she opened up a freeware open-source video program.
“Now to see what this does with the signal,” she said, dropping a portion of the signal data into the program.
The screen changed to a gray pattern of images while a series of squeals came out of the speaker. There was nothing to truly see, though; it was worse than any surrealist painting. There were some angles and a few moving shapes, but nothing that could be parsed out.
“Not quite,” Miriam said, opening up the code again. She considered her equations for a moment, jotted down a long series of cryptic notations then added some code, removing others.
“There we go,” she said as if to a child. The screen now showed the interior of what was clearly a spaceship. Portions were strangely distorted, cubistic in many ways, with screens taking prominence, positions of some of the beings very odd, translucency to others and one central figure in the room apparently huge. But the aliens on the screen looked, somewhat, like the aliens in isolation.
“Can you change our signals to look more like theirs?” Dr. Chet asked.
“Maybe,” Miriam said. “But I’m not sure what they’ll actually get. We can try.”
“And we still don’t have language,” the M.D. pointed out.
“But this actually helps,” Miriam replied. “It almost automatically subtracts the sonar portion of their sounds. But that makes it harder in a way as well. They seem to use their sonar the way we used body language. It might be one of the things that makes them seem so flat. Communicating with them will always be hard. I don’t think we think exactly the same. Not even as close as we and the Adar. I’m going to see if we can change our transmissions to match theirs, use another frequency to substitute for the neutrinos which were acting as a third dimension modulator. It should work, if they can change their system to figure it out.”
“Their transmissions have changed,” Elav said. He cupped his headpiece for a moment, then pinged excitedly. “I think I can now parse their transmission. It will take me a few kleg.”
“Very good,” Kond replied. “Change your own transmission to a series of short pulses. Perhaps they will get the point that we’re having to work on our own end.”
“Conn, Commo. Miss Moon modified our transmissions. She thinks she’s cracked the sonar to video code. We sent them the modified video and we’re now getting a single band EM series of pulses. No neutrino, just EM. Simple pattern, just about a quarter send pulse, pause for a second, quarter second pulse at 4.2 gigahertz. No clue what that means.”
“It means: Hold Please,” Commander Weaver said.
“Agreed,” Spectre replied. “So now we wait. Commo, hook in Miss Moon’s changes to the main viewer and run that program as soon as you get something else from them.”
“Aye, aye.”
“Ship Master, it is a very strange signal,” Elav said. “But I think I have it parsed. Do you wish to see?”
“Immediately,” Kond said, rising from his couch.
The image was very strange, two dimensional, the beings pictured moving only side to side and having no depth. Walking through the sonar image, Kond saw that they appeared the same from the other side. The actual figures of the crew of the alien ship were hard to separate from their controls but they appeared to be bipedal. So were some Blin units, but these assuredly were not Blin. They could be a Blin subject race, like the haired ones or the multi-legs, but so far they had not acted hostile at all.
“Is there any way to get depth?” Kond asked.
“I am trying, Ship Master,” the commo specialist replied. “But there is no signal for depth. I think that it is somehow interpreted by their sensory organs. They appear to be EM detectors in a limited range.”
“Send an image of our interior,” Kond ordered. “Let them sense us as well.”
“Here we go,” the commo officer said over the intercom. “Sending through the sonar to vid processed signal.”
“Ouch,” Spectre said, shaking his head at the weird view on the forward screen. It was a bit stomach wrenching in its weird distortions, more like a bad acid trip than a video. But he nonetheless stood up and nodded at the image. “Greetings. I am Captain Blankemeier, commander of the Alliance Space Ship Vorpal Blade. We greet you in peace and friendship.”