“Ministers of the Great One, be gracious to me!”
The phonetic transcription is as follows:[9]
AND THEY TALK ABOUT PINK ELEPHANTS!
He watched awestruck as Halov, undaunted by his former experience, again went directly into the fifth approach. The stick in Halov’s digit traced a circle in the dirt with rays coming out of it, then pointed up at the setting sun.
The biped moved his head forward and back and spoke again. Trubz’s conjecture here is:
“The great sun, the giver of life.”
Phonetic transcription:
BUGS THAT DRAW PRETTY PICTURES YET!
Then Halov drew a series of concentric ellipses of dotted lines about the figure of the sun. He drew tiny circles on these orbits to indicate the first and second planets, then larger ones to indicate the third and our own. The biped was by now following the drawing with intense absorption.
Halov now pointed to the drawing of the third planet, then to the biped, and back again. The biped once more moved his head forward, apparently as a gesture of agreement. Finally Halov in like manner pointed to the fourth planet, to himself, and back again, and likewise in turn for each of us.
The biped’s face was blank for a moment. Then he himself took a stick and pointed from the fourth planet to Halov, saying, according to Trubz:
“This is really true?”
Transcription:
YOU MEAN YOU’RE MARTIANS?
Halov imitated the head movement of agreement. The biped dropped his stick and gasped out sounds which Trubz is sure were the invocation of the name of a potent deity. Transcription:
ORSON WELLES!
We had all meanwhile been groping with the biped’s thought patterns, though no success had attended our efforts. In the first place, his projection was almost nil; his race is apparently quite unaccustomed to telepathic communication. In the second place, of course, it is next to impossible to read alien thought patterns without some fixed point of reference.
Just as we could never have deciphered the ancient writings of the Khrugs without the discovery of the Burdarno Stone which gave the same inscription in their language and in an antique form of our own, so we could not attempt to decode this biped’s thought patterns until we knew what they were like on a given known subject.
We now began to perceive some of his patterns of the Solar System and for our respective worlds. Halov went on to the second stage of the fifth approach. He took a group of small rocks, isolated one, held up one digit, and drew the figure one in the dirt. The biped seemed puzzled. Then Halov added another rock to the first, held up two digits, and drew the figure two, and so on for three and four. Now the biped seemed enlightened and made his agreement gesture. He also held up one digit and drew a figure beside Halov’s.
His one is the same as ours—a not too surprising fact. Trubz has been working on the psychology of it and has decided that the figure one is probably a simple straight line in any numerical system. His other figures differed markedly from ours, but his intention was clear and we could to some extent follow his patterns.
Using both forelegs, Halov went on to five, six, and seven, with the biped writing down his number likewise. Then Halov held up all his digits and wrote a one followed by the dot which represents zero and is the essence of any mathematical intelligence. This was the crucial moment—did these bipeds know how to calculate or was their numerical system purely primitive?
The biped held up eight digits and wrote a new figure, a conjoined pair of circles. Halov, looking worried, added another rock to his group and wrote down two ones. The biped wrote a circle with a tail to it. Halov added another rock and wrote a one followed by a two. The biped wrote a one followed by a circle.
Then Halov understood. We have always used an octonary system, but our mathematicians have long realized the possibility of others: a system of two, for instance, in which 11 would mean three, a system of four (the folk speech even contains survivals of such a system) in which 11 would mean five. For 11 simply means the first power of the number which is your base, plus one. This system of the bipeds obviously employs a decimal base.
(Trubz has been working on the psychology of this. He explains it by the fact that the bipeds have five digits on each forelimb, or a total of ten, whereas we have four each, a total of eight.)
Halov now beckoned to Karnim, who as astrogator is the best mathematician among us, and asked him to take over. He studied for a moment the biped’s numbers, adjusted his mind rapidly to the (for the layman) hopeless confusion of a decimal system, and went ahead with simple mathematical operations. The biped followed him not unskillfully, while the rest of us concentrated on his thought patterns and began to gather their shape and nature.
The growing darkness bothered the biped before it incommoded Karnim. He rose from his squatting position over the numerals and went into the structure, the interior of which was soon alight. He came back to the doorway anci beckoned us to enter. As we did so, he spoke words which Trubz conjectures to mean:
“Enter my abode and stay in peace, O emissaries from the fourth planet.”
Phonetic transcription:
YOU’LL BE GONE IN THE MORNING, AND WILL I HAVE A HEAD!
Murvin to Falzik:
What a yarn! A planet of intelligent beings! What a future for the art! Maybe I never was sold on this expedition, but I am now. Keep the reports coming. And include as
