Properly speaking, 12-Upjohn thought, the Callean really had no head, but only a front end, marked by two enormous faceted eyes and three upsetting simple eyes which were usually closed. Beneath these there was a collar of six short, squidlike tentacles, carried wrapped around the creature in a ropy ring. He was as impossible-looking as he was fear-some, and 12-Upjohn felt at a multiple disadvantage from the beginning.
“How did you learn our language?” he said, purely as a starter.
“I learned it from you,” the Callean said promptly. The voice was unexpectedly high, a quality which was accentuated by the creature’s singsong intonation; 12-Upjohn could not see where it was coming from. “From your ship which I took apart, the dragon-of-war.”
“Why did you do that?”
“It was evident that you meant me ill,” the Callean sang.
“At that time I did not know that you were sick, but that became evident at the dissections.”
“Dissections! You dissected the crew of the Dragon?”
“All but one.”
There was a growl from Oberholzer. The Consort of State shot him a warning glance.
“You may have made a mistake,” 12-Upjohn said. “A natural mistake, perhaps. But it was our purpose to offer you trade and peaceful relationships. Our weapons were only precautionary.”
“I do not think so,” the Callean said, “and I never make mistakes. That you make mistakes is natural, but it is not natural to me.”
12-Upjohn felt his jaw dropping. That the creature meant what he said could not be doubted; his command of the language was too complete to permit any more sensible interpretation. 12-Upjohn found himself at a loss; not only was the statement the most staggering he had ever heard from any sentient being, but while it was being made he had discovered how the Callean spoke: the sounds issued at low volume from a multitude of spiracles or breath-holes all along the body, each hole producing only one pure tone, the words and intonations being formed in mid-air by inter-modulationa miracle of co-ordination among a multitude of organs obviously unsuitable for sound-forming at all. This thing was formidablethat would have been evident even without the lesson of the chunk of the Novae Washingtongrad canted crazily in the sands behind them.