Violent disgust rose in him, compounded from his own general dislike for animals and from the half-remembered Transylvanian folktales that formed part of every child’s heritage. He felt sick; he controlled himself only by remembering that he was in essence an ambassador, and any sickness would have disastrous consequences for him and for Earth. He dared not offend the Kethlan.
My God, he thought. An intelligent bat!
He managed to stammer out the words for greeting, and the alien responded. Donaldson, looking away, saw the elongated shadow of wings cast across the ship by the faint light at the other end. He felt weak, wobbly-legged; he wanted desperately to dash through the now-closed airlock. But he forced himself to recover balance. He had a job to do.
“I did not expect you to know Kethlani,” the alien said. “It makes my job much less difficult.”
“And your job is—?”
“To bring friendship from my people to yours. To link our worlds in brotherhood.”
The last concept was a little muddy to Donaldson; the literal translation he made mentally was children-of-one-cave, but some questioning eventually brought over the concept of brotherhood.
His eyes were growing more accustomed to the lighting, now, and he could see the Kethlan fairly well. An ugly brute, no doubt of it—but probably I look just as bad to him, he thought. The creature’s wingspread was perhaps seven or eight feet. Donaldson tried to picture a world of the beasts, skies thick with leather-winged commuters on their way to work.
Evolution had made numerous modifications in the bat structure, Donaldson saw. The brain, of course; and the extra fingers, aside from the ones from which the wings had sprouted. The eyes looked weak, in typical bat fashion, but probably there was compensation by way of keen auditory senses.
Donaldson said, “Where is your world?”
“Far from here. It—”
The rest of the answer was unintelligible to Donaldson. He felt savage impatience with his own limited vocabulary; he wished he had worked just a little harder on translating the Syrtis Major documents. Well, it was too late for that now, of course.
Caldwell cut in suddenly from outside. “Well? We’re picking up all the jabber. What’s all the talk about?”
“Can’t you wait till I’m finished?” Donaldson snapped. Then, repenting, he said: “Sorry. Guess I’m jumpy. Seems he’s an ambassador from his people, trying to establish friendly relations with us. At least, I think so. I’ll tell you more when I know something about it.”
Slowly, in fits and starts, the story emerged. Frequently Donaldson had to ask the Kethlan to stop and double back while he puzzled over a word. He had no way of recording any of the new words he was learning, but he had always had a good memory, and he simply tucked them away.
The Kethlani had visited the Solar System many years ago. Donaldson was unable to translate the actual figure, but it sounded like a lot. At that time the Martians were at the peak of their civilization, and Earth was just an untamed wilderness populated by naked primates. The Kethlan wryly admitted that they had written off Earth as a potential place of civilization because a study of the bat population of Earth had proved unpromising. They had never expected the primates to evolve this way.
But now they had returned, thousands of years later. Mars was bleak and its civilization decayed, but the third world had unexpectedly attained a high degree of culture and was welcome to embrace the Kethlani worlds in friendship and amity.
“How many worlds do you inhabit?”
The Kethlan counted to fifteen, by ones. “There are many others we do not inhabit, but simply maintain friendly relations with. Yours would be one, we hope.”
The conversation seemed to dwindle to a halt. Donaldson had run out of questions to ask, and he was exhausted by the hour-long strain of conversing in an alien language, under these conditions, within a cramped ship, talking to a creature whose physical appearance filled him with loathing and fear.
His head throbbed. His stomach was knotted in pain and sweat made his clothes cling clammily to his body. He started to grope for ways to terminate the interview; then an idea struck him.
He quoted a fragment of a document written in pure Kethlani B.
There was an instant of stunned silence; then the alien asked in tones of unmistakable suspicion, “Where did you learn that language?”
“I haven’t really learned it. I just know a few words.”
He explained that he had found examples of both Kethlani A and Kethlani B along with their Martian equivalents; he had worked fairly comprehensively on the A language, but had only begun to explore the B recently.
The Kethlan seemed to accept that. Then it said: “That is not a Kethlani language.”
Surprised, Donaldson uttered the interrogative expletive.
The Kethlan said, “It is the language of our greatest enemies, our rivals, our bitter foes. It is the Thygnor tongue.”
“But—why did we find your language and the other side by side, then?”
After a long pause the alien said, “Once Thygnor and Kethlan were friends. Long ago we conducted a joint expedition to this sector of space. Long ago, before the rivalry sprang up. But now—” the alien took on a sorrowful inflection—“now we are enemies.”
That explained a great many things, Donaldson realized. The differences between Kethlani A and Kethlani B had been too great for it to seem as if one race spoke both of them. But a joint expedition—that made it understandable.
“Some day, perhaps, the Thygnor will visit your world. But by then you will be on guard against them.”
“What do they look like?”
The alien described them, and Donaldson listened and was revolted. As far as he could understand, they were giant intelligent toads, standing erect, amphibian but warm-blooded, vile-smelling, their bodies exuding a nauseous thick secretion.
Giant toads, bats, the lizards of Mars—evidently the primate monopoly of intelligence was confined solely to Earth, Donaldson realized. It was a humbling thought.
His face wrinkled in displeasure at the mental image of the toad people the Kethlan had created for him, as he recalled the harmless little frog Paul had captured by the lake.
He spoke in English, attracting Caldwell’s attention, and explained the situation.
“He wants me to swear brotherhood with him. He also says there’s another intelligent race with interstellar travel—toads, no less—and that they’re likely to pay us a visit some day too. What should I do?”
“Go ahead and swear brotherhood,” Caldwell said after a brief pause. “It can’t hurt. We can always unswear it later, if we like. Say we had our fingers crossed while we were doing it, or something. Then when the frogs get here we can find out which bunch is better for us to be in league with.”
The cynicism of the reply annoyed Donaldson, but it was not his place to raise any objections. He said to the alien, “I am prepared to pledge brotherhood between Earth and the Kethlan worlds.”
The Kethlan fluttered suddenly down from its perch with a rustle of great wings, and stood facing Donaldson, tucking its wings around its thick shaggy body. Alarmed, Donaldson stepped back.
The alien said reassuringly, “The way we pledge is by direct physical embrace, symbolizing harmony and friendship across the cosmos.” He unfurled his wings. “Come close to me.”