“The original life-support system must have been confined to the budlike structures on the stem,” Jun Davd said. “But with the fuel tanks, they’d have a hundredfold the living space in reserve, becoming available as they spilled over.”
“What kind of intelligent race,” Bram said in dismay, “would breed that unrestrainedly, with no sureties at their destination?”
Ame pushed through the surrounding press of bodies. “The longfoots,” she said. “The females had a dozen young to a litter, remember? They’ve come back.”
“Or their successors have,” Bram said. “Whatever else the longfoots were, they were a thoughtful people. That ship doesn’t look like their technology.”
“Rise and fall, Bram-tsu,” Ame said defensively. “Devolution and reradiation of species.”
On the screen, the separated globule fell with alarming speed toward the narrow rimscape. “That’s awfully big to be using as a lander, even on a low-gravity world,” Jun Davd said. “But that’s what they’re doing with it.”
“One mistake and they’ll be scattered all over the landscape,” Jao grunted.
Bram calculated spherical volume in his head. “There could be a population of thousands in that bubble. If all of the bubbles are inhabited…”
“These strangers must like to travel in large crowds and take their environment with them,” Jun Davd said. “That detachable habitat of theirs is big enough to qualify as a self-contained colony. The ship could drop more of them off here and there around the rim and leave them to fend for themselves. Then flit around the system and seed the other disks.”
“You talk as if that ship were a living organism.”
Jun Davd laughed. “If the surviving colonies grow up to build more ships like it, then it fits the definition.”
Trist’s voice cut in. “We’re getting message traffic now between the ship and the lander.”
“Radio? Laser?” Jao’s voice was impatient.
“Neither. They communicate by modulating polarized light—switching rapidly back and forth to different planes of polarization. We can’t read the signal, but it’s a signal, all right.”
“What kind of pattern? Binary, or what?”
“No, it’s positional. It codes for some kind of grid. And now that you know that, you know as little as I do.”
“Why would they modulate polarized light?” Bram asked. “If you’re going to communicate by light, there are easier ways to modulate it for a signal.”
It was Ame, unexpectedly, who answered. “Perhaps because it corresponds to their natural sensory input.”
“Now, Ame, we use radio mostly,” Jao said condescendingly. “But we don’t see by radio waves.”
“No,” she said, “but we use it the way we use visible light—by modulating its frequency. Or we use it by mimicking sound—by modulating the amplitude.”
Bram pondered Ame’s startling supposition. “But where does a positional grid come into it?”
“I don’t know, Bram-tsu. We use radio waves to build up pictures or sound. And when we use laser, we use it more or less as if it were just an improved kind of radio. It has something to do with the way they think or perceive things.”
“Trist, can you rig up something that’ll modulate polarized light?” Bram asked.
“Sure, nothing to it,” came Trist’s cheerful voice.
“Can you beam some of their own patterns back at them—just as a recognition signal? Just to get them to notice us.”
“I’ll get on it right away.”
“And get somebody working on that grid.”
“The chess club’s already taken it on as a project. So have the linguists.”
“Get them together.”
On the screen, the stick ship had moved out of the frame as Jun Davd’s remote camera followed the life-support module. It showed as a pale blob against a rim-scape that whizzed by at blurring speed.
“Looking for a spot to light,” Jun Davd said. “They had a choice of two directions. They chose yours.”
“How long before they get here?”
“At their present velocity? About two days.”
Two days later,’ the thing passed overhead, looking very large. Everybody was outside again for the passage. As it sailed by, everybody waved. A few energetic jumping jacks leaped straight up fifty feet or more, wigwagging with both hands. But the bubble took no notice. It receded into the distance, blank as an egg.
“They almost nicked one of the moonropes,” Jao said. “They’re flying much too close to the rim’s edge. And too low. The pilot’s a bit impetuous, isn’t he?”
Bram, sweating inside his helmet, hand-cranked the flywheel—mounted telescope to follow the enormous spheroid. The others crowded close to look at the photoplastic image in the visored plate at the end of the barrel.
“They’re losing speed and altitude fast,” Bram said. “They’re going to come down about two hundred miles farther on, it looks like. We’ll have them for neighbors.”
“The pilot’s braking too fast,” Jao said, squinting at the shaded image. “As if he made up his mind on the spur of the moment. Whoops! He changed his mind. He’s lifting up over that escarpment! Almost grazed it. He must be shaking up his passengers.”
Jao’s commentary may have been unjust. The huge globular object went into a long graceful glide, riding the plume of its jet, and set down with abrupt gentleness in the exact center of a flat circular feature where the plain was smooth.
“A seat-of-the-pants natural,” Bram said. “Like Lydis.”
“If he wears pants,” Jao said. “Or has a seat.”
Ame was looking thoughtful. “What do we do now, great-great-great-grandfather?”
Bram sighed. “I suppose we’d better pay them a visit.”
Everybody wanted to go. Bram fended them off as diplomatically as possible when they came barging into the bay where he was trying to work out a plan with Ame and Jao.
“The first meeting is going to be very important,” he told them over and over. “We’ll have just a few specialists, each with a job to do. We can’t take a crowd along.”
And then, of course, everybody tried to convince Bram that he or she was a specialist.
“As a sociometrician,” Silv Jaks said, getting strident, “my insight into the interrelationships of individuals will be invaluable.”
“We don’t even know if they’re human, Silv,” Bram said. “What we’re really after is a paleobiologlst.”
After she stalked out, Jao said, “That was nothing. One of the archaeologists insisted on being included because, he said, he could tell us a lot about them by studying their pottery.”
Ame wrinkled her nose. “It might not be a bad idea to take along someone from the Theoretical Anthropology group, though. It would give us some kind of benchmark for behaviors.”
“Who do you suggest?” Bram said.
“Heln Dunl-mak,” Ame said promptly. “She’s a sociobiologist. She worked with us to try to analyze longfoot society from physical clues. She’s even been studying the behavior of social insects from the old books and holos.”
“All right,” Bram said.
“And we’d better have Jorv.”
Bram hesitated. “He’s an awfully impulsive fellow. Establishing contact could be a delicate business.”
“He knows more about terrestrial life forms and their development than anybody we’ve got,” Ame said. “There’s his assistant, Harld, but…”
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Jao said, twisting around from his console. He winked. “With a steady hand like me to keep him in line, there won’t be any trouble.”