The captain grinned and held up a broad, muscular pink hand. "Radio's your field, Rip. I'm just an intergalactic truck driver. I've never gotten beyond the sigma series transformations. So put it into plain English — what did you pick up?"
"A signal," Rip answered promptly. "It came across loud enough to dent my ear before the AFC cut in."
The captain nodded. "No cause for alarm, is there? I suppose it was a radio star effect?"
Halliday shook his head. "None in the vicinity."
"Deflection reading?"
"Not possible, given our present speed and coordinates."
"No chance it was a mechanically produced static effect — maybe caused by a concentration of cosmic debris grinding together?"
"No chance, sir. The configuration pattern is completely different. And what's more, the signal I got was frequency-modulated."
The captain whistled softly. "No natural discharge could account for that!"
"No, sir, John. Intelligent life produced those patterns."
"Um," said the captain.
"Any chance it might be a ship of ours broadcasting?" Rip asked hopefully.
The captain shook his head. "The nearest Terran patrol ship is clear on the other side of Fiona II."
Rip whistled softly. "I was afraid of that!"
The captain nodded. "It means that we've just contacted alien intelligent life of a type completely unknown to us, and we're closing with them fast.
"This is Earth's first contact with alien intelligent life," the captain said softly to Rip. "I think you'd better tell Marv Painter that we need a translation of those alien impulses, pronto."
Rip Halliday's freckles stood out darker against the sudden pallor of his face. "I'm on my way, John. Sir, I mean."
The door dilated to allow the red-haired radioman to pass. Alone, the captain sat and stared at the stereographs of his wife and three sons. He drank a glass of Gatorade in complete silence. Then he pushed the intercom button.
He told the crew that, unless proven otherwise, they would proceed upon the assumption that they had contacted alien life of unknown intentions. But he did not tell them about the Rand-Orey equations that predicted an unfriendly first contact at 98.7 per cent probable. His orders were not to disclose this until intention had been indicated clearly. Anticipation of disaster would have impaired the efficiency of the smoothly functioning machine that was the crew.
Engineer Duff McDermott paced stumpily along the lower catwalk, then stopped to inspect the drive gauges for the twentieth time in an hour. The needles hung placidly in the green, as McDermott knew they would. But he couldn't stop himself from looking at them since he knew that contact moment was only 2.0045 hours away.
"Waddya think they'll look like?" asked Andy Tompkins, second assistant engineer's mate, his prominent adam's apple bouncing below his good-humoured, absentminded face.
"Like something out of hell," McDermott replied. He was to remember that answer later and to wonder if there wasn't something to the discredited notion of stress-induced prescience.
"Marv," the captain asked, "how is it going?"
"Pretty good," said Marv Painter, the shy, skinny, red-haired cybernetic genius. "We should have an intelligible readout as soon as I splice in this zero-null regenerative impulse rejector into the image repro circuit and cross-tie the translator bank into the computer's second-stage input bank."
"You mean we'll be able to understand them?" Captain McRoy asked.
"Shucks, yes. It won't be an exact translation because we don't have a vocab match up. But if we set the computer to sound-match in terms of probabilities of meaning and maintain a constant feedback loop to further refine hierarchic distinctions then we ought to get an accurate analogic reading. But that's just my own haywire idea on it, sir. If you would care to try another approach…"
"Marv," said McRoy, "the primary law of interplanetary cooperation is, let those who can, do, and let those who can't sit in the parlour with their fingers up their noses and their mouths shut and drink their coffee. I'm just a spaceship driver and you're the cyberneticist around here, and what you say goes as long as you're speaking in terms of your admittedly limited speciality."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Cap," said Marv, flashing a smile. "If they worked governments on Earth like you run a ship it'd be clear sailing for the human race."
"None of that, now," the captain said with gruff, old-fashioned modesty. "I just follow the rules, use plain common sense, temper justice with mercy, and treat every person as an entire world-system and end unto himself despite social differences imposed by a functional ranking system. Is that rig of yours working yet?"
Marv Painter turned on the set. The video repeater came to life, revealing the interior of an alien spaceship. Within, a creature sat at the controls. He was bipedal; but any resemblance to humanity began and ended there. The creature was jet green, about eight feet tall, and massively constructed. He appeared to have a chitinous exoskeleton.
Antennae grew from his forehead, and his eyes extended on stalks. He had a large loose mouth behind which could be seen double rows of pointed white teeth, as on a shark.
The alien spoke: "Much greetings, inferior, wormlike, barely sentient life forms. I am Thanatos Superbum, Captain-General of the Malachite Brood, Lord of the Vulture Redoubt, Duke Extraordinary to the O'Neills, and various other titles both hereditary and conferred. Down upon your knees, baseborn scum, and make nice to your mental, moral, and physical superior. Give your name, rank, and serial number and explain in twenty words or less why I should not grind your puny bones into pulp. Over."
"He talks funny," said Engineer McDermott.
"Funny and mean," said the captain, frowning purposively. "And also weird."
"A lot of that," said Marv, "is because the computer has to analogize the alien's speech into the nearest Terran idioms, selecting from expressions it has at its disposal in its memory banks. So, of course, it comes out sounding kinda weird."
"But are the emotional and informational connotations approximately correct?" the captain asked.
"I'm afraid so," Marv said unhappily.
"Then it looks like we got a problem on our hands. My first impression is that this alien is unfriendly."
"That's my impression, too," Marv said unhappily. "Sir, I think he's waiting for an answer."
"I'll give him one," the captain said, and turned on the microphone. Angry words boiled up in his mind like gas expanding according to Boyle's Law. But he forced himself to activate the Martins-Turner Interpersonal Equations, which were part of the hypno-training of every human beyond Intelligence Level IV. Instantly, the captain was icy calm and capable of objective judgment. He thought, I have heard words which may or may not represent an objective reality. In any event I will not respond emotionally but will try (a) to deal objectively with the situation and (b) to manipulate it (if possible) to the needs of Earth and mankind.
Thank God for Korzybski! the captain thought. He said into the microphone, "Greetings, Thanatos Superbum. I am in command of this ship. My name is McRoy. I am friendly and peaceable, as are all of my race. I want to make nice with you, and I sincerely hope that you want to make nice with me."
"Blood, sweat, and sneers!" exclaimed Superbum. "I smell the blood of an Americun! To hell with making nice — not peace but a sword! Let one claw scratch the other. L'audace, toujours l'audace. If at first they don't succumb, trumb, trumb agun."
"Even allowing for anachronism-generating analogies," the captain said, "this fellow sounds mean, hysterical, and full of trouble." The captain turned on the microphone and asked Superbum if things couldn't be settled peacefully.