"You know what I think, Hiko. It's a waste of time to compare all the
Galactics' speech sounds to passages from the Koran." She shrugged.
"But for all we know actually they could be closer to a solution than
anyone else in...."
The door behind her banged open. Immediately, the room rumbled with
the great basso voice of Theodore Zakheim, psychologist with the
Ural-Altaic team.
"Hah-haaaaaaa!" he roared. "We're all here now!"
Light footsteps behind Zakheim told Francine that he was accompanied by
Emile Goré of the Indo-European Latin-Root team.
Zakheim flopped onto a chair beside Francine. It creaked dangerously to
his bulk.
_Like a great uncouth bear!_ she thought.
"Do you always have to be so noisy?" she asked.
Goré slammed the door behind them.
"Naturally!" boomed Zakheim. "I am noisy! It's my nature, my little
puchkin!"
Goré moved behind Francine, passing to the head of the table, but she
kept her attention on Zakheim. He was a thick-bodied man, thick without
fat, like the heaviness of a wrestler. His wide face and slanting
pale blue eyes carried hints of Mongol ancestry. Rusty hair formed an
uncombed brush atop his head.
Zakheim brought up his briefcase, flopped it onto the table, rested
his hands on the dark leather. They were flat slab hands with thick
fingers, pale wisps of hair growing down almost to the nails.
* * * * *
She tore her attention away from Zakheim's hands, looked down the
table to where Goré sat. The Frenchman was a tall, gawk-necked man,
entirely bald. Jet eyes behind steel-rimmed bifocals gave him a look
of down-nose asperity like a comic bird. He wore one of his usual
funereal black suits, every button secured. Knob wrists protruded from
the sleeves. His long-fingered hands with their thick joints moved in
constant restlessness.
"If I may differ with you, Zak," said Goré, "we are _not_ all here.
This is our same old group, and we were going to try to interest others
in what we do here."
Ohashi spoke to Francine: "Have you had any luck inviting others to our
conferences?"
"You can see that I'm alone," she said. "I chalked up five flat
refusals today."
"Who?" asked Zakheim.
"The American Indian-Eskimo, the Hyperboreans, the Dravidians, the
Malayo-Polynesians and the Caucasians."
"Hagglers!" barked Zakheim. "I, of course, can cover us with the
Hamito-Semitic tongues, but...." He shook his head.