A microphone was thrust into Donaldson’s hands. He looked at it blankly, then at the pink face of the uniformed man, then at the ship. The inscription was in Kethlani. A language, for which Donaldson was grateful. There were two Kethlani languages, highly dissimilar, which he had labeled A and B. He knew his way around in A well enough, but his mastery of Kethlani B was still exceedingly imperfect.
“How do I use this thing?”
“You push the button on the handle, and talk. That’s all. The Kethlan can hear you. Anything he says will be picked up here.” He indicated a tape recorder and a speaker on the table.
Donaldson jabbed down on the button, and, feeling a strange sense of disorientation, uttered two words in greeting in Kethlani A.
The pronunciation, of course, was sheer guesswork. Donaldson had worked out what was to him a convincing Kethlani phonetic system, but whether that bore any relation to fact remained to be seen.
He waited a moment. Then the speaker emitted a series of harsh, unfamiliar sounds—and, buried in them like gems in a kitchen midden, Donaldson detected familiar-sounding words.
“Speak slowly,” he said in Kethlani A. “I… have only a few words.”
The reply came about ten seconds later, in more measured accents. “How… do… you… speak our language?”
Donaldson fumbled in his small vocabulary for some way of explaining that he had studied Kethlani documents left behind on Mars centuries earlier, and compared them with their understandable Martian translations until he had pried some sense out of them.
He glimpsed the pale, sweat-beaded faces of the ET men around him; they were mystified, wondering what he was saying to the alien but not daring to interrupt. Donaldson felt a flash of pity for them. Until today the bureau had concerned itself with petty things: import of Martian antiquities, study visas for Venus, and the like. Now, suddenly, they found themselves staring at an extra-solar spaceship, and all the giant problems that entailed.
“Find out why he came to the Solar System,” Caldwell whispered.
“I’m trying to,” Donaldson murmured with some irritation. He said in Kethlani, “You have made a long journey.”
“Yes… and alone.”
“Why have you come?”
There was a long moment of silence; Donaldson waited, feeling tension of crackling intensity starting to build within him. The unreality of the situation obsessed him. He had been fondly confident that he would never have the opportunity to speak actual Kethlani, and that confidence was being shattered.
Finally: “I… have come… why?”
The inversion was grammatically correct. “Yes,” Donaldson said. “Why?”
Another long pause. Then the alien said something which Donaldson did not immediately understand. He asked for a repeat.
It made little sense—but, of course, his Kethlani vocabulary was a shallow one, and he had additional difficulty in comprehending because he had made some mistakes in interpreting vowel values when constructing his Kethlani phonetics.
But the repeat came sharp and clear, and there was no mistaking it:
“I do… do not like to talk this way. Come inside my ship and we will talk there.”
“What’s he saying?” Caldwell prodded.
Shaken, Donaldson let the mike dangle from limp fingers. “He—he says he wants me to come inside the ship. He doesn’t like long-distance conversations.”
Caldwell turned at a right angle and said to a waiting assistant, “All right. Have Mathews reverse the stasis field and lower the ship. We’re going to give the Kethlan some company.”
Donaldson blinked. “Company? You mean you’re sending me in there?”
“I sure as hell do mean that. The Kethlan said it’s the only way he’d talk, didn’t he? And that’s what you’re here for. To talk to him. So why shouldn’t you go in there, eh?”
“Well—look, Caldwell, suppose it isn’t safe?”
“If I thought it was risky, I wouldn’t send you in,” Caldwell said blandly.
Donaldson shook his head. “But look—I don’t want to seem cowardly, but I’ve got three children to think about. I’m not happy about facing an alien being inside his own ship, if you get me.”
“I get you,” said Caldwell tiredly. “All right. You want to go home? You want to call the whole business off right here and now?”
“Of course not. But—”
“But then you’ll have to go in.”
“How will I be able to breathe?”
“The alien air is close enough to our own. He’s used to more carbon dioxide and less oxygen, but he can handle our air. There’s no problem. And no risk. We had a man in there yesterday when the Kethlan opened the outer lock. You won’t be in any physical danger. The alien won’t bother you.”
“I hope not,” Donaldson said. He felt hesitant about it; he hadn’t bargained on going inside any extra solar spaceships. But they were clustered impatiently around him, waiting to send him inside, and he didn’t seem to have much choice. He sensed a certain contempt for him on their faces already. He didn’t want to increase their distaste.
“Will you go in?” Caldwell asked.
“All right. All right. Yes. I’ll go in.”
Nervously Donaldson picked up the microphone and clamped a cold finger over the control button.
“Open your lock,” he said to the alien being. “I’m coming inside.”
There was a moment’s delay while the stasis field projectors were reversed, lowering the ship gently to floor level. As soon as it touched, a panel in the gleaming golden side of the ship rolled smoothly open, revealing an inner panel.
Donaldson moistened his lips, handed the microphone to Caldwell and walked uncertainly forward. He reached the lip of the airlock, stepped up over it and into the ship. Immediately the door rolled shut behind him, closing him into a chamber about seven feet high and four feet wide, bordered in front and back by the outer and inner doors of the lock.
He waited. Had he been claustrophobic he would have been hysterical by now. But I never would have come in here in the first place then, he thought.
He waited. More than a minute passed; then, finally, the blank wall before him rolled aside, and the ship was open to him at last. He entered.
At first it seemed to him the interior was totally dark. Gradually, his retinal rods conveyed a little information.
A dim light flickered at one end of the narrow tubular ship. He could make out a few things: rows of reinforcing struts circling the ship at regularly spaced distances; a kind of control panel with quite thoroughly alien-looking instruments on it; a large chamber at one end which might be used for storage of food.
But where’s the alien? Donaldson wondered.
He turned, slowly, through a three hundred sixty degree rotation, squinting in the dimness. A sort of mist hung before his eyes; the alien’s exhalation, perhaps. But he saw no sign of the Kethlan. There was a sweetish, musky odor in the ship, unpleasant though not unbearable.
“Everything okay?” Caldwell’s voice said in his earphones.
“So far. But I can’t find the alien. It’s damnably dark in here.”
“Look up,” Caldwell advised. “You’ll find him. Took our man a while too, yesterday,”
Puzzled, Donaldson raised his head and stared into the gloom-shrouded rafters of the ship, wondering what he was supposed to see. In Kethlani he said loudly, “Where are you? I see you not.”
“I am here,” came the harsh voice, from above.
Donaldson looked. Then he backed away, double-taking, and looked again.
A great shaggy thing hung head down against the roof of the ship. Staring intently, Donaldson made out a blunt, piggish face with flattened nostrils and huge flaring ears; the eyes, bright yellow but incredibly tiny, glittered with the unmistakable light of intelligence. He saw a body about the size of a man, covered with darkish thick fur and terminating in two short, thick, powerful-looking legs. As he watched the Kethlan shivered and stretched forth its vast leathery wings. In the darkness, Donaldson could see the corded muscular arm in the wing, and the very human looking fingers which sprouted from the uppermost part of the wing.