The time seemed long aboard ship — where nobody slept well or ate with any appreciation of the food — but it was not really — until circuit diagrams crossed the gap, and circuits were built, and pictures and sounds began to pass to and fro.
Nansen chimed Sundaram’s door. It opened. He entered the cabin. Austere furnishings revealed little that was personal other than some views and mementos from the India that had been. An incense stick sweetened the air. Sundaram sat studying a recorded image. He would activate it for a few seconds, then stop it and think.
“Good evenwatch, Captain,” he greeted absently. “Please be seated.”
Nansen took a chair. “I’m sorry to disturb your concentration,” he said, “but I do need to know how your work is progressing, and you didn’t want to discuss it openly.” Sundaram had practically sequestered himself.
“Not yet. Too early in the game.”
“I understand. I wouldn’t have asked for this meeting, except that — Well, Zeyd has now examined those biospecimens the others shot over to us from their spacecraft, in that capsule full of containers. The quarantine conditions were unnecessary, he’s found. Not that the aliens would mean to harm us. If they did, they could blow us apart with a nuclear warhead.” Nansen seldom spoke superfluously. He was under stress. “No hazard of disease. The biochemistries are too unlike. Mokoena confirms. I daresay the others have reached the same conclusion about the material we sent them. So, how soon can we communicate well enough to take the next step, whatever it may be? Can you give me some hint? Lying idled like this is beginning to fray people’s nerves.”
Sundaram gestured at the screen. Although by now Nansen had often seen what it showed, and pored over similar images for hours, a tingle went along his spine.
A being stood unclad against a background of enigmatic apparatus. The first word aboard for it had been “centaur,” but that was like calling a man an ostrich because both were bipeds. It stood on four stout legs with four-toed, padded, spurred feet. The body was likewise robust, lacking a tail and any obvious genitalia. Its back rose in a shallow ridge. The torso in front did not rear very high above. Two long, sturdy-looking arms ended in hands around each of which four nailless fingers were symmetrically arranged; they seemed flexible, boneless, like an elephant’s trunk.
The head was big, round, high-browed, a lipless mouth in the blunt muzzle but no nose. Apparently the being breathed through two slits, somewhat resembling gills with their quivering protective covers, in the neck under the jaw. Above the muzzle, two elliptical eyes — presumably eyes — were set close together, while two large circular ones flanked them on the sides of the head. The inner orbs were black, the outer green, and none had whites, nor pupils resembling the human. From the brow rose two short antennae crowned with clusters of cilia. Pointed earflaps stood a trifle higher than the head, hairless, thin, and yellowish; Mokoena had guessed that that was the color of blood, or blood’s equivalent.
Neck and shoulders were blanketed by a mane of small, leaflike growths, of the same hue, like a kind of ivy. They were constantly astir, as if winds blew changeably through them. Otherwise a velvety pelt decked the skin, dark brown on this individual; on others it had been seen to vary from black to pale green.
From direct observation the humans knew that they — adults, at any rate — ranged from about 130 to 140 centimeters long and stood about as tall: the height of a child some ten years old, though with more mass. They moved gracefully, sometimes quite fast.
“They shall have to take the initiative,” Sundaram said.
“Can we do nothing?” asked Nansen. “We did send the first keys to language.”
“That was the easy part.” Sundaram leaned back, bridged his fingers, and looked straight at his visitor. “On ancient Earth and in the Age of Discovery, explorers found people new to them, speaking languages unrelated to theirs. They could soon talk to each other. But you see, they shared the same world, the same body pattern and needs and instincts; they could point, they could pantomime, and be understood. Here we begin with separate origins and evolution of life itself, from billions of years ago.”