Kenneth Gantz - Not in Solitude

He saw Yudin’s face and Humphries’ distorted by the effort of concentration. Then he was no longer aware of anything around him but the opaque glass mask of the plane table, veined with the fitful pattern of the spark fires over the map pickup.

At last the signal began to wink. Dane followed it breathlessly, feeling his lips spell out the letters like a child in school. W-h-o a-r-e y-o-u ? W-h-o a-r-e y-o-u? His own signal had merely been repeated.

“He wants to know who we are,” Humphries said uncertainly.

“Tell them,” Yudin said.

Dane shook his head. “It couldn’t know English. It’s only repeating our signal.”

“Maybe it’s an echo,” Humphries suggested.

“Not from this planet,” Yudin said. “Not with radar waves traveling 186,000 miles a second. Too slow. It couldn’t be an echo. Impossible. Look,” he added soberly, “I don’t like this. Supposing there really is some kind of Martian. Underground cities and that stuff they used to write stories about. What are they going to think about us? What do they do next? Maybe they’re getting ready to come after us!”

Humphries said, “Jesus!”

“That’s a point I tried to make with Colonel Cragg,” Dane said. “But if they’re really intelligent, they’re curious. They will want to find out about us. Study us. Like we came to study things here. If they’re intelligent enough to try to communicate with us, very likely they wouldn’t want to destroy us. At least at first. It would be half-intelligent things, like primitive tribes on Earth, that would be dangerous.”

“What do you mean, ‘at first’?” Yudin demanded.

“They might decide we are dangerous to them.” When he had said it, the little room contracted to a point of conspicuous light in the black darkness that peered into the ports. The expanse of red dust and drab green lichens was no longer the monotonous scenery of a barren, dead landscape but alive with watchful eyes. A place to be gone from.

Dane pushed the thought away. “There is one language that’s universal. We’ll try them in mathematics. Let’s see if they can add.”

He began to send again. He sent one dot, then another dot, and after a pause two dots. He followed with two dots, then two dots, then after a pause, four dots. Finally he sent four dots, four dots, then after the pause eight dots.

An answer came back at once, an exact repetition of the dots and pauses.

“ E-E I. 1-1 H. H-H. And a string of dots. That doesn’t make sense,” Yudin complained.

“I wasn’t sending code. Something Martian wouldn’t know code numerals. I’m using one dot for the number one. Not for E. Two dots is for the number two . Four dots is the number four. I sent three equations. One plus one equals two. Two plus two equals four . Four plus four equals eight. ” He rested his hand on the switch. “Now we’ll see if they get the idea. Their first signals showed us they could count. Now we’ll see if they can add.”

He sent, One, one … two. Two, two … four . He waited a few seconds and sent, Three, three… then stopped. “Let’s see if they get the idea and add three and three.”

“I wish you wouldn’t stand there and talk like a professor lecturing,” Yudin broke out. “You’ve got me believing this thing! Not that it’s possible.”

“I’m surprised at myself,” Dane told him. “Considering what we have discovered, I don’t see how I can stand still at all. Wait!” he exclaimed suddenly. “We forgot all about it!”

Yudin jumped. “What!”

“The camera. We should have been recording— There it goes!”

“ One, one … two ,” they counted. “ Two, two… four . Three, three … six. ”

“Six!” Humphries shouted. “They added it!”

He knew then. “They’re there!” he exclaimed. “Whatever they are, they’re there. There’s something alive and intelligent on this planet, and they’re trying to communicate with us.”

Full realization stabbed him with wild pride of accomplishment. He had done it! For the first time in the history of mankind, a man had established a mental union with a being from another world and had exchanged intelligible information. He had been that man!

Yudin clutched at his sleeve. “They’re still sending!”

“ Four, one… three, ” they counted. “ Four, two… two . Four, three… ”

“They’re subtracting!” Dane exulted. “They left the last equation incomplete. Now they’re testing us!” Quickly he sent back the answer, Four, three… one , and got confirmation in reply, Four, three… one .

“One more test,” Dane told them, “then we send for Colonel Cragg.”

Yudin was reminded of his duty. “I’ll have to tell him now. He’d better know right away.”

“Better not use the intercom,” Dane advised. “With the engines dead it might be smart to keep this quiet.”

Yudin decided to polish his glasses once again. “I had forgotten about the drive. This thing drove it out of my mind. If we’re really getting signals from the Martians, we could be in a helluva fix. We could if they take a notion to be mean.”

“You thinking ‘be mean’ like Earth people?” Dane was surprised at how he resented the man’s remark. After Yudin left, he called again across the tenuous bond of the radar waves. He tested the unknown signaler in multiplication and division and was exuberant when it sent him like problems in return. Then the winking responses became uncertain. They flashed on a time or two again but made no sense, then ceased.

Dane sat on the observer’s stool and spun out his dream. His friend, his mind friend, had got the confirmation it wanted. The strange visitors from space were intellectual and rational. They seemed to be friendly. At least they had tried to exchange identification. Perhaps when this good news was digested, the unseen would show themselves. What the morrow might not reveal! Maybe yet tonight. It was unfortunate that the expert in the patterns of languages was lying unconscious in the hospital.

The rasp of heavy boots on the ladder broke his reverie. He thought of the difficulty of explaining all this to Colonel Cragg. If Dane knew his man, Cragg would call for battle stations.

When the hinged cover of the manhole pushed up, it was followed by the curly blond head and athletic shoulders of Captain Spear.

Half emerged, Spear held the cover back and ran his eyes once around the observation deck. “Dane,” he said abruptly, “follow me. You’re wanted.”

Some more of Cragg’s officiousness. Nobody, particularly the scientists, was going to forget who was boss. Well, it wasn’t Spear’s fault. Dane put his foot on the ladder and swung through the deck, wondering a little at Cragg’s sending an officer as messenger. “Yudin tell you anything more?” he called down to Spear treading just below him. He rather liked the guy, for all his everlasting physical exercises. The American girl’s dream, he thought. And in an Air Force uniform too. That took away the extra ten years, even for the junior misses.

Spear didn’t say anything, running on down the rungs with the familiarity of an acrobat, or if he did, it wasn’t audible over the noise of his boots. When Dane set foot on main deck and turned around, Major Noel stepped stock in front of him. Behind him on the open deck with Captain Spear, Dane saw Lieutenant Yudin and behind him an airman named Jerves.

They’re jittery, Dane thought. They know. Yudin must have told them.

Noel’s arm shot up. Dane felt the hard slash of the palm edge at his neck. Lights showered. Something hard drove into him. Then he realized that he was sitting on the metal deck and that Jerves was holding his arms. He felt a little sick from the neuralgia that streaked down his shoulder. When he cleared a little more, he found that chain-linked steel cuffs bound his wrists.