Dozsa returned Williwaw to her former height and path. The dance continued. The visitors watched and recorded as best they could.
The ember sun passed noon. More Danaans came.
There was no longer any doubting their sapience. The dance dissolved, and those took over who had brought equipment. Some had curious objects hung on their titanic persons, some guided vehicles of various shapes (platforms? birds?
chambered nautiluses?) from which projected devices (telescopes? cobwebs?
interlocked rings?). They did not attempt to meet the spacecraft, but came to rest well beneath her and adjusted their apparatuses.
The radio receiver brought in ordered sounds, in the same wide range as earlier tunes but plainly speech.
“Give me five minutes,” Rueda muttered, and got busy with a reflection spectrometer which had been preset for him aboard Chinook. Dozsa held the boat in a steady wheeling at a steady speed, though an afternoon wind was rising to drone around her structure and thrill through it. Aches, exhaustion, the drag of gravity were forgotten.
“How do we respond?” Caitlmn inquired out of exultation; and immediately: “Och, aye, a notion, if you’ve none better, boys.”
“The mike is yours,” Dozsa said. “What have you in mind?”
“A patterned signal, to show them we wish to communicate. Why start with mathematics? They know full well that we know the value of pi. But if we recognize their music for what it is and enjoy the same, faith, they can ours.”
Caitlin reached down to the webbing on the side of her chair. “Well that I thought to bring my sonador.”
She inserted a program and touched the keyboard. Elne Kleine Nachtmusik tumbled forth. “They offered us mirth,” she explained. “Let us offer it back.”
A screen at high magnification showed the Danaans reacting. At least, they moved about… to confer?
“Ha!” Rueda said. “I expected this.” He tapped the spectrometer. “Those vehicles, most of those gadgets are metal. No alloys I can identify, but unmistakably metal. Tell me how that was mined, on a planet whose surface is hot Side 122
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The liquid hydrogen.”
“It wasn’t,” Dozsa declared. “It came from outside.”
Seen against purple heaven and a tower of cloud, two Danaan carriers linked together. One of the pilots withdrew on mother-of-pearl wings, the other remained. Suddenly he (?!) and the machines were hidden behind great sheets and curtains of light. Outward and outward they flared, every color, a created aurora. It wavered about for a short while, as if uncertain. Then- “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Caitlin whispered. “They’re replying to Mozart.”
She must show the men how this was true, how the lambencies matched the notes (in no simple fashion, but ever more truly as the unseen artist strengthened a grasp on the intent of an Earthling centuries dead) until spectrum and scale became a single jubilation. Her understanding of the fact was not strictly scientific, demonstrable by any standard analytical technique; it was the kind of insight that came to Newton and Einstein.
Later sendings and transformations confirmed it. Attempts at television exchange failed; evidently the electronics were too unlike. Only music and radiance could say, back and forth:
“Hello, there; we love you.”
The short day drew toward a close. Caitlin stayed ecstatic, while her companions grew slowly grim.
At last:
“We must go,” Dozsa said. “We have no choice.”
“We’ll be back.” Caitlmn spoke as if in dreams.
“No, I hardly think we will,” Rueda told her with compassion. “Haven’t we agreed? It’s death to linger, down here or up in orbit. Oh, yes, we may be wrong about that, but what can we do except proceed on our best guesswork… and haven’t we agreed?”
She bowed her head. Twilight closed in; it was golden. The Danaans waited below for her next message.
Rueda leaned around in his seat to clasp the hand Caitlin lifted to him.
“Those are not the Others,” he reminded. “They cannot be. I guess that they are a… a favored race. One that the Others come to openly, maybe because they’re happier, kindlier, more creative than most. If that’s right, then the Others give them metal things, for them to realize the better what they are – born artists, and who knows what else? But not scientists. Not engineers. They can’t help us. And we, we can’t survive long in these parts, unless we put Chinook into spin mode and make her unable ever to leave. And how often do the Others visit these adopted children of theirs? Maybe they will next week, but maybe they won’t for a thousand years. How can we tell?”