Inwardly, Brad marveled at how calm he felt. Maybe just a little nervous, but considering the firepower arrayed against him in Professor Kosoff’s office, he faced them with unwavering determination.
I’m right and they’re wrong, he told himself. I’m right and they’re wrong.
Yes, a voice in his head answered. That’s what they’ll carve on your tombstone.
Sitting behind his desk, Kosoff looked nettled, irritated. Dr. Chang sat at Brad’s right, in front of the desk, cool and expressionless, the perfect inscrutable oriental.
The chair on Brad’s left was empty. Dr. Littlejohn had promised to join this meeting, but he hadn’t shown up yet.
Kosoff broke the tense silence. “I don’t have all day to wait for Littlejohn. You asked for this meeting, MacDaniels. What’s it all about?”
Has Littlejohn bailed out on me? Brad wondered.
“Dr. Chang and I have better things to do than to wait for your department chief,” Kosoff growled. “Either fish or cut bait.”
Brad blinked at the ancient catchphrase. But he knew he either had to start talking or Kosoff would end the meeting before it began.
“It’s about the octopods on planet Alpha,” he started.
“I assumed as much,” said Kosoff.
“I want to test the data we’ve amassed about their language.”
“If it is a language,” Chang cautioned.
“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” Brad said.
Kosoff fixed Brad with a stern gaze. “And just how do you propose—”
The office door slid open and Littlejohn stepped in, looking somewhere between harassed and apologetic.
“I’m sorry to be late,” he said, hurrying to the empty chair beside Brad. “One of my people got into an altercation with one of the crew members.”
“An altercation?” Kosoff asked.
Chang asked, “You mean a fight?”
Pulling a tissue from his pocket and mopping his forehead, Littlejohn answered, “Not a fight. No physical violence. But their voices were loud enough to hear for a kilometer or two, in every direction.”
“What were they arguing about?” Kosoff asked.
“Oh, my man was doing a routine questionnaire about the man’s duties, and he took offense, thought he was being accused of loafing on duty.”
“That’s strange,” Chang murmured.
And Brad found himself wondering if Kosoff set up the confrontation just to keep Littlejohn from getting to this meeting. You’re getting paranoid, he told himself. But the disappointment on Kosoff’s face told him that he might be right.
“Very well,” Kosoff said. “We’re all here.” Turning to Brad, he asked, “And just how do you intend to test the data about the octopods’ noises?”
“We say hello to them, in their own language.”
Chang’s eyes widened.
Kosoff’s face froze for an instant, then he snapped, “Absolutely not!”
“That would be a contact,” said Chang.
Littlejohn pointed out, “But we’ve already contacted them, haven’t we? We’ve sent the probes to study them.”
“That’s not contact,” Kosoff argued.
Brad said, “Emcee says it is.”
“The master computer?”
“Ask him.”
Clearly unhappy, Kosoff nevertheless called to the wall screen, “Master computer, please.”
Emcee’s placidly smiling face took form on the screen. “How may I help you?”
Before Brad could speak, Kosoff asked, “Do the probes we inserted among the octopods on Alpha constitute a contact between our two species?”
“In the strictest sense of the word, yes, we have made a form of contact with the alien species.”
Chang said, “But the probes have been completely passive.” Then, realizing that that was not entirely true, she added, “Except for the neutrino scans, of course. And I don’t see how those animals could detect neutrino scans.”
Emcee replied, “The octopods have given no indication of being aware of the scans. But they were certainly curious about the probes when we first inserted them among them.”
“That doesn’t constitute contact,” Kosoff said firmly.
“I’m afraid that it does,” Emcee contradicted. “Mission guidelines define various levels of contact. Passive contact, such as the probes represent, is contact nonetheless. If the octopods are intelligent, they must realize that those probes are foreign objects.”
“They talked to them,” Brad said.
“When they first encountered them,” said Kosoff. “They’ve ignored them ever since, except to avoid their communications bursts when they send data to us.”
Littlejohn suggested, “Perhaps they’ve accepted them as visitors.”
“Nonsense,” Kosoff retorted.
“I know how we can test whether they’re intelligent or not,” said Brad. Before anyone could interrupt him, he went on, “We say hello to them. Use the probes to broadcast the sound cluster we’ve identified as their phrase for greeting.”
Chang said, “We don’t know for certain that it’s their phrase for greeting. It could be a million other things.”
“But we could find out,” Brad insisted, “by trying to talk to them.”
Shaking her head almost violently, Chang said, “We’ve got to study them for a much longer time. Build up a vocabulary, correlate the sounds they make with their actions, their brain activity.”
“We’ve been doing that for six months now,” Brad said. “How much do you need before you test the data you’ve collected?”
Littlejohn said, “Dr. Chang, I understand that you’ve only put three of your people into studying the octopods’ language.”
“That’s all the manpower I can spare,” Chang replied, almost defensively. “Most of our effort is dedicated to the bipeds on planet Gamma.”
“So it could take years before you’re ready to speak to the octopods.”
Surprisingly, Kosoff said, “We don’t have years.”
They all turned squarely toward him.
Looking unhappy, troubled, Kosoff said, “This mission is supposed to study the Mithra system for five years, then return to Earth. We’ve already spent more than six months here.”
“We’re making excellent progress on the Gamma aliens,” Chang said.
“Yes, but we don’t really know yet whether the octopods are intelligent, do we?” said Brad.
“What difference?” Chang replied. “We can drop the shielding generators into their ocean and protect them from the death wave. Later expeditions can determine if they’re intelligent.”
“No,” said Kosoff. “It’s our mission to make that determination. I think the impetuous Dr. MacDaniels is right. We need to test whether or not we really can converse with those creatures.”