Naudsonce | Page 3

asked Lillian.
"They all sound that bad, when you first hear them. Give them a few
seconds, and then we'll have Phase Two."
When the gibbering and skreeking began to fall off, she stepped
forward. Lillian was, herself, a good test of how human aliens were;
this gang weren't human enough to whistle at her. She touched herself
on the breast. "Me," she said.
The natives seemed shocked. She repeated the gesture and the word,
then turned and addressed Paul Meillard. "You."
"Me," Meillard said, pointing to himself. Then he said, "You," to Luis
Gofredo. It went around the contact team; when it came to him, he
returned it to point of origin.
"I don't think they get it at all," he added in a whisper.
"They ought to," Lillian said. "Every language has a word for self and a
word for person-addressed."
"Well, look at them," Karl Dorver invited. "Six different opinions about
what we mean, and now the band's starting an argument of their own."

"Phase Two-A," Lillian said firmly, stepping forward. She pointed to
herself. "Me--Lillian Ransby. Lillian Ransby--me name. You--name?
"Bwoooo!" the spokesman screamed in horror, clutching his staff as
though to shield it from profanation. The others howled like a
hound-pack at a full moon, except one of the short-tunic boys, who was
slapping himself on the head with both hands and yodeling. The
horn-crew hastily swung their piece around at the Terrans, pumping
frantically.
"What do you suppose I said?" Lillian asked.
"Oh, something like, 'Curse your gods, death to your king, and spit in
your mother's face,' I suppose."
"Let me try it," Gofredo said.
The little Marine major went through the same routine. At his first
word, the uproar stopped; before he was through, the natives' faces
were sagging and crumbling into expressions of utter and heartbroken
grief.
"It's not as bad as all that, is it?" he said. "You try it, Mark."
"Me ... Mark ... Howell...." They looked bewildered.
"Let's try objects, and play-acting," Lillian suggested. "They're farmers;
they ought to have a word for water."
* * * * *
They spent almost an hour at it. They poured out two gallons of water,
pretended to be thirsty, gave each other drinks. The natives simply
couldn't agree on the word, in their own language, for water. That or
else they missed the point of the whole act. They tried fire, next. The
efficiency of a steel hatchet was impressive, and so was the sudden
flame of a pocket-lighter, but no word for fire emerged, either.
"Ah, to Nifflheim with it!" Luis Gofredo cried in exasperation. "We're

getting nowhere at five times light speed. Give them their presents and
send them home, Paul."
"Sheath-knives; they'll have to be shown how sharp they are," he
suggested. "Red bandannas. And costume jewelry."
"How about something to eat, Bennet?" Meillard asked Fayon.
"Extee Three, and C-H trade candy," Fayon said. Field Ration,
Extraterrestrial Service, Type Three, could be eaten by anything with a
carbon-hydrogen metabolism, and so could the trade candy. "Nothing
else, though, till we have some idea what goes on inside them."
Dorver thought the six members of the delegation would be persons of
special consequence, and should have something extra. That was
probably so. Dorver was as quick to pick up clues to an alien social
order as he was, himself, to deduce a culture pattern from a few
artifacts. He and Lillian went back to the landing craft to collect the
presents.
Everybody, horn-detail, armed guard and all, got one ten-inch bowie
knife and sheath, a red bandanna neckcloth, and a piece of flashy junk
jewelry. The (town council? prominent citizens? or what?) also
received a colored table-spread apiece; these were draped over their
shoulders and fastened with two-inch plastic pins advertising the
candidacy of somebody for President of the Federation Member
Republic of Venus a couple of elections ago. They all looked
woebegone about it; that would be their expression of joy. Different
type nerves and different facial musculature, Fayon thought. As soon as
they sampled the Extee Three and candy, they looked crushed under all
the sorrows of the galaxy.
By pantomime and pointing to the sun, Meillard managed to inform
them that the next day, when the sun was in the same position, the
Terrans would visit their village, bringing more gifts. The natives were
quite agreeable, but Meillard was disgruntled that he had to use
sign-talk. The natives started off toward the village on the mound,
munching Extee Three and trying out their new knives. This time

tomorrow, half of them would have bandaged thumbs.
* * * * *
The Marine riflemen and submachine-gunners were coming in, slinging
their weapons and lighting cigarettes. A couple of Navy technicians
were getting a snooper--a thing shaped like a short-tailed