Explorer

He drew a breath. “One is grateful, aiji-ma.—Thank you, Gin-aiji.”

Nods from both. To that extent, Gin had taken in the adjacent culture. And both understood the value of a tea break.

“ Takehold, takehold minor, takehold, three minute warning. ”

He stood up quickly, turned over his teacup—bowed, and with Banichi and Jago, headed back to his borrowed quarters.

Braking. What the senior captain called a gentle braking. One hoped the teacups were safely put away.

Chapter 7

The bridge was calm when he arrived, the captains momentarily converged at the edge of the corridor. “It’s braked,” Jase reported. “It’s braked, we’ve braked.”

“Excellent news.” It was. Thank God, he thought.

“Our courses are not head-on. Closest approach in three hours fourteen minutes. We signaled with all lights, then braked. They mirrored all actions.”

“Good. Very good.”

“Glad you approve,” Sabin said dryly.

“It was the right answer, captain,” Bren said, deliberately oblivious. Then: “Is the station armed, captain?”

Sabin gave him an odd look. “Yes. I would be, wouldn’t you?”

“We’re human. We’re both human. I can say atevi would be, too. We don’t know what it expected. What would Reunion have done, back then, if something like this just showed up and came close?”

Small silence. “I frankly don’t know.”

“They could have fired?”

“I have no way to know.”

“They’re human. They could have fired.”

“Not ours to estimate, Mr. Cameron.”

Near white-out of thought. It was possible. “We have to be careful not to give that impression, captain. My advice—last thing we want to do,” Bren said, watching that central monitor, “is send anything substantial outside our hull. If, on the other hand, they do it—don’t shoot at it. Evade.” He had no desire to divert any energy into a debate with Sabin. He had more faith Jase was on his side—if sides there were. The train of actions from the alien craft so far mirrored theirs, all the way. Now they paused. Waiting, both ships careening along a converging diagonal, facing one another.

They had to do something before someone made a frightening move, something one side or the other might misinterpret.

“Blink lights one and eight,” Bren said. “Any possible confusion of communications with attack, if we try to talk to them in a voice transmission?”

“At low energy,” Jase said. “Not likely.”

“I take it that it still hasn’t transmitted.” He heard traffic via the earpiece: blink sent. And very quickly answered. They were that close.

“Negative,” Sabin said.

“They’ve been sitting here for six years. I’d think they’d have learned something about our communications. At least our frequencies.”

He didn’t know the capabilities of the equipment.

“Nandi,” Banichi said. “Our line is thus far infelicitous eight. Multiply by felicitous nine. One has television.”

“Television, nadi?” Line by line transmission. Black and white, yes/no. Blank space off. Object area on. Or reverse.

Damn. Yes .

“ I have a proposition,” he said to Sabin. “Banichi suggests a matrix. Line by line. Like television.”

Jase had already heard. Now Sabin listened, frowning intensely.

“Tell it to C1,” Sabin said, and he went to that console and made his request, not even betting the alien’s hearing was compatible. Light was. Bright dark. They had a matrix of eight by eight, and a black line. Then a new image.

He made a block of eight by eight, image of a man.

“Transmit,” Jase said.

A delay. A delay that stretched on into seconds. Half a minute.

Flashes came back. Image of a man.

“Do you suppose they get it?” Jase asked.

There was no way they could do a matrix entire. It had to be assembled to be read.

“Try sound,” Bren said. “Can we transmit a series of beeps, Imitating the lights? Eight by eight? Simultaneous with the lights?”

C1 looked at Sabin, who nodded.

They transmitted.

Beep.

“Again,” Bren said.

They beeped. It beeped. Series of eight .

“Long beep. Short beep.”

It mirrored.

“One long. Forty-nine fast and short. Do that three times.” He didn’t wait for confirmation. “Give me our ship and their ship in pixels. Nothing fancy. Forty-nine wide by forty nine high.” Felicitous numbers. Entirely arbitrary. His choice. And he hoped to God the opposition didn’t have the atevi’s obsession with numbers.

“C2,” Jase said. “Create an image.”

“Yes, sir.” The next man keyed up. A real image appeared—broke up into largish pixels, became a shape.

“S3,” Jase said. “Alien ship image to C2. Stat. C2, form the image.”

Bren drew a deep breath. Banichi and Jago were near him, Jago in low and quiet tones informing Banichi and their other listeners the gist of what they were doing. Sabin watched as they created their pixel-image. Couldn’t rely on perspective-sense, not on anything fancy. Step by step and no assumptions.

“Transmit?” Bren asked. Sabin nodded.

It went. It came back. The alien mirrored their transmission.

“There was a bird called a parrot,” Bren said quietly. “It mimicked. Didn’t understand all it repeated. I don’t know if they’ll understand us. Transmit: one short, forty-nine long. We see if they figure this. Get me a station image.”

“What when we’ve got it?” Sabin asked. “Attach labels?”

“We’re going to animate our image,” Bren said. “Old-fashioned television. We give them our version of history. We see what they have to say.”

“Do it,” Sabin said, and for a worrisome few minutes, with a flurry of instructions and corrections, several stations scrambled to produce their images. Reunion Station appeared, a simple ring. An alien ship approached. A jagged dotted line went out from the alien craft. Station showed damaged. Alien ship went off and parked.

Their ship arrived.

Diverted to confront the alien ship.

Now what ? Bren asked himself. It was his script. They reached present-time. They were real-time with events. He had to script the next move. And he was petrified.

“Nadiin-ji. How shall we address these strangers? Shall I offer to go to their ship?”

“By no means,” Banichi said. “By no means, Bren-ji. But we would go with you.”

By all means they would. And could they look unwarlike?

“Invite one of them aboard,” Jago suggested.

“We have no knowledge even what they breathe,” he said, sweating, resisting the impulse, uncourtly like, to mop his brow. “We should tell them what we intend,” he said. “We should propose our actions to them.”

“Reasonable,” Jase said.

“Do you mind,” Sabin asked, “to conduct the affairs of this ship in some recognizable language?”

“Pardon,” Bren murmured—bowed, his mind racing on the problem. “I need to sketch.”

“Sketch.”

“If you please.”

He’d puzzled Sabin. The ship had no paper, to speak of. Didn’t work in pen and pencil. Jago came up with a notepad, from an inside pocket, and he never asked what was on its other pages, just sketched a rapid series of images and tore the paper free. “This,” he said to C2. “Can you render this sequence? That’s a ship. That’s the station.”

“Yes, sir,” C2 said with a misgiving glance toward Sabin for permission: C2 produced the figures: the two ships. Phoenix left the alien ship for the station.

Arrived. Established a link. And a line of human figures appeared one by one, moving from station to ship.

The last human marched aboard. Phoenix sucked up its co