In the Crab Nebula the problem was acute and immediate. The future relationship of the two races would be settled here and now. If a process for friendship could be established, one race, otherwise doomed, would survive and both would benefit immensely. But that process had to be established, and confidence built up, without the most minute risk of danger from treachery. Confidence would need to be established upon a foundation of necessarily complete distrust. Neither dared return to its own base if the other could do harm to its race. Neither dared risk any of the necessities to trust. The only safe thing for either to do was destroy the other or be destroyed.
But even for war, more was needed than mere destruction of the other. With interstellar traffic, the aliens must have atomic power and some form of overdrive for travel above the speed of light. With radio location and visiplates and shortwave communication they had, of course, many other devices. What weapons,did they have? How widely extended was their culture? What were their resources? Could there be a development of trade and friendship, or were the two races so unlike that only war could exist between them? If peace was possible, how could it be begun?
The men on the Llanvabon needed facts—and so did the crew on the other ship. They must take back every morsel of information they could. The most important information of all would be of the location of the other civilization, just in case of war. That one bit of information might be the decisive factor in an interstellar war. But other facts would be enormously valuable.
The tragic thing was that there could be no possible information which could lead to peace. Neither ship could stake its own race’s existence upon any conviction of the good will or the honor of the other.
So there was a strange truce between the two ships. The alien went about its work of making observations, as did the Llanvabon. This tiny robot floated in bright emptiness. A scanner from the Llanvabon was focussed upon a vision plate from the alien. A scanner from the alien regarded a vision plate from the Llanvabon. Communication began.
It progressed rapidly. Tommy Dort was one of those who made the first progress report. His special task on the expedition was over. He had now been assigned to work on the problem of communication with the alien entities. He went with the ship’s solitary psychologist to the captain’s room to convey the news of success. The captain’s room, as usual, was a place of silence and dull-red indicator lights and the great bright visiplates on every wall and on the ceiling.
“We’ve established fairly satisfactory communication, sir,” said the psychologist. He looked tired. His work on the trip was supposed to be that of measuring personal factors of error in the observation staff, for the reduction of all observations to the nearest possible decimal to the absolute. Lie had been pressed into service for which he was not especially fitted, and it told upon him. “That is, we can say almost anything we wish to them, and can understand what they say in return. But of course we don’t know how much of what they say is the truth.”
The skipper’s eyes turned to Tommy Dort.
“We’ve hooked up some machinery,” said Tommy, “that amounts to a mechanical translator. We have vision plates, of course, and then shortwave beams direct. They use frequency-modulation plus what is probably variation in wave forms—like our vowel and consonant sounds in speech. We’ve never had any use for anything like that before, so our coils won’t handle it, but we’ve developed a sort of Code which isn’t the language of either set of us. They shoot over shortwave stuff with frequency-modulation, and we record it as sound. When we shoot it back, it’s reconverted into frequency-modulation.”
The skipper said, frowning:
“Why wave-form changes in short waves? How do you know?”
“We showed them our recorder in the vision plate; and they showed us theirs. They record the frequency modulation direct. I think,” said Tommy carefully, “they don’t use sound at all, even in speech. They’ve set up a communication room, and we’ve watched them in the act of communicating with us. They made no perceptible movement of anything that corresponds to a speech organ. Instead of a microphone, they simply stand near something that would work as a pick-up antenna. My guess, sir, is that they use microwaves for what you might call person-to-person conversation. I think they make shortwave trains as we make sounds.”
The skipper stared at him:
“That means they have telepathy?”
“M-m-m. Yes, sir,” said Tommy. “Also it means that we have telepathy too, as far as they are concerned. They’re probably deaf. They’ve certainly no idea of using sound waves in air for communication. They simply don’t use noises for any purpose.”
The skipper stored the information away.
“What else?”
“Well, sir,” said Tommy doubtfully, “I think we’re all set. We agreed on arbitrary symbols for objects, sir, by the way of the visiplates, and worked out relationships and verbs and so on with diagrams and pictures. We’ve a couple of thousand words that have mutual meanings. We set up an analyzer to sort out their shortwave groups, which we feed into a decoding machine. And then the coding end of the machine picks out recordings to make the wave groups we want to send back. When you’re ready to talk to the skipper of the other ship, sir, I think we’re ready.”
“H-m-m. What’s your impression of their psychology?” The skipper asked the question of the psychologist.
“I don’t know, sir,” said the psychologist harassedly. “They seem to be completely direct. But they haven’t let slip even a hint of the tenseness we know exists. They act as if they were simply setting up a means of communication for friendly conversation. But there is ... well … an overtone—”
The psychologist was a good man at psychological mensuration, which is a good and useful field. But he was not equipped to analyze a completely alien thought pattern.
“If I may say so, sir—” said Tommy uncomfortably.
“What?”
“They’re oxygen brothers,” said Tommy, “and they’re not too dissimilar to us in other ways. It seems to me, sir, that parallel evolution has been at work. Perhaps intelligence evolves in parallel lines, just as ... Well … basic bodily functions. I mean,” he added conscientiously, “any living being of any sort must ingest, metabolize, and excrete. Perhaps any intelligent brain must perceive, apperceive, and find a personal reaction. I’m sure I’ve detected irony. That implies humor, too. In short, sir, I think they could be likable.”
The skipper heaved himself to his feet.
“H-m-m,” he said profoundly, “we’ll see what they have to say.”
He walked to the communications room. The scanner for the vision plate in the robot was in readiness. The skipper walked in front of it. Tommy Dort sat down at the coding machine and tapped at the keys. Highly improbable noises came from it, went into a microphone, and governed the frequency-modulation of a signal sent through space to the other spaceship. Almost instantly the vision-screen which with one relay—in the robot—showed the interior of the other ship lighted up. An alien came before the scanner and seemed to look inquisitively out of the plate. He was extraordinarily manlike, but he was not human. The impression he gave was of extreme baldness and a somehow humorous frankness.
“I’d like to say,” said the skipper heavily, “the appropriate things about this first contact of two dissimilar civilized races, and of my hopes that a friendly intercourse between the two peoples will result.”