The voice hung in the air. The words stuck in the silence like insects
wriggling upon a pin. Then the voice was gone, and the silence was
complete and heavy. The carrier hum ceased. With a spine-tingling brief
blaze of high-frequency sound, Hoskins' oxygen-bottle hit the steel
deck.
Then they all began to breathe again.
"There's your farmers, Johnny," said Paresi.
"Knight to bishop's third," said Hoskins softly.
"What's that?" demanded Johnny.
"Chess again," said the Captain appreciatively. "An opening gambit."
Johnny put a cigarette to his lips, tried his lighter. "Damn. Gimme a
light, Ives."
Ives complied, saying over his big shoulder to the Captain, "In case you
wondered, there was no fix on that. My direction-finders indicate that
the signal came simultaneously from forty-odd transmitters placed in a
circle around the ship which is their way of saying 'I dunno'."
The Captain walked to the view bubble in front of the console and peered
around. He saw the valley, the warm light of mid-afternoon, the
too-green slopes and the blue-green distances. Trees, rocks, a balancing
bird.
"It doesn't work," muttered Johnny.
The Captain ignored him. "'_Men of Earth...._'" he quoted. "Ives,
they've gotten into Survey's squeak-box and analyzed its origin. They
know all about us!"
"They don't because they can't," said Ives flatly. "Survey traverses
those boxes through second-order space. They materialize near a planet
and drop in. No computation on earth or off it could trace their
normal-space trajectory, let alone what happens in the second-order
condition. The elements the box is made of are carefully averaged
isotopic forms that could have come from any of nine galaxies we know
about and probably more. And all it does is throw out a VUHF signal that
says _beep_ on one side, _boop_ on the other, and _bup-bup_ in between.
It does _not_ speak English, mention the planet Earth, announce anyone's
arrival and purpose, or teach etiquette."
Captain Anderson spread his hands. "They got it from somewhere. They
didn't get it from us. This ship and the box are the only Terran
objects on this planet. Therefore they got their information from the
box."
"Q.E.D. You reason like Euclid," said Paresi admiringly. "But don't
forget that geometry is an artificial school, based on arbitrary axioms.
It just doesn't work where the shortest distance is _not_ a straight
line.... I'd suggest we gather evidence and postpone our conclusions."
"How do you think they got it?" Ives challenged.
"I think we can operate from the fact they got it, and make our analyses
when we have more data."
Ives went back to his desk and threw a switch.
"What are you doing?" asked the Captain.
"Don't you think they ought to be answered?"
"Turn it off, Ives."
"But--"
"Turn it off!" Ives did. An expedition is an informal, highly democratic
group, and can afford to be, for when the situation calls for it, there
is never any question of where authority lies. The Captain said, "There
is nothing we can say to them which won't yield them more information.
Nothing. For all we know it may be very important to them to learn
whether or not we received their message. Our countermove is obviously
to make no move at all."
"You mean just sit here and wait until they do something else?" asked
Johnny, appalled.
The Captain thumped his shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll do something in
some other area than communications. Hoskins--are those landing suits
ready?"
"All but," rapped Hoskins. He scooped up the oxygen bottle and
disappeared.