“You’re saying that the act itself, the attempt to communicate, suggests that the aliens believed that those receiving the communication should have the ability to understand and respond?”
Kim nodded. “Xenocommunications can be an esoteric discipline. Lots of languages have common rules, patterns, repetitions, stress indicators, algorithmic variables that the universal translator eventually figures out how to parse. Language develops from the minds and bodies of the species that create them, and the similarities between humanoid species account for much of the ease with which modern comm systems operate.”
“But the Edrehmaia aren’t humanoid, are they?”
“I’m not even sure they are carbon based,” Kim agreed.
“Could it be a computer language?” Drur asked.
Kim ordered the computer to isolate a segment of the full spectrum of emissions and applied a binary translation matrix as he replied, “If this is simply a computer language, the translator should be able to recognize those patterns. Like humanoid bodies, there are only so many ways to develop complex machines. At the root, there tend to be similarities.”
As he suspected, the results were gibberish—the computer’s way of saying it did not recognize the emissions as a language.
Drur was obviously growing more frustrated. “This isn’t going to work,” he said.
“It isn’t working yet,” Kim corrected him gently. “But knowing what the emissions aren’t is still helpful.”
“But the remaining set of what they could be is impossibly large,” Drur noted.
Kim stepped back and began to pace the small bridge. Once again, he found himself missing his clarinet. The simple act of forcing part of his mind to concentrate on a task it had mastered tended to free up the rest of his mind and allow it to wander down darker roads and interesting tributaries.
He wasn’t sure how long it would be until they could spare the power, but as soon as it was possible, Kim was going to replicate a new clarinet. He had a feeling he was going to need it in the days ahead.
Even without it, however, he could play, or rather, he could activate the part of his brain that he used while playing.
Glancing out at the main viewscreen and beholding the dazzling light display that was the baby star nursery, Kim selected a piece he hadn’t played in years—the third movement of Claude Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque, “Clair de lune.” Originally composed for piano, it had been arranged for almost every orchestral instrument, including the clarinet. Kim’s favorite was by Xi Cin, a twenty-third-century composer who had written out his arrangement in the hills above Guilin City as part of a celebration of the second century of lunar colonies.
Kim wasn’t sure why this song rose to his mind. It might have been a subtle act of rebellion—a hymn to the moon from a place where no moons were visible. Appreciating the defiance of it, Kim inhaled and imagined himself playing the first few notes, those three tones—A-flat, A-flat an octave up, then down two and a half steps to F—until the haunting melody began to flow through him in all of its wondrous, melancholy beauty.
You’re thinking too big.
Kim paused, once again enveloped in silence, wondering where the thought had come from and what it might mean.
“Lieutenant?”
“I’m sorry,” Kim said. “I didn’t mean to drift off. I was just thinking.”
“Of course, sir,” Drur said. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“You don’t have to apologize, Ensign.” Seeing a faint smile creep across Drur’s face, he wondered how accustomed this young man was to speaking his mind freely.
“It occurs to me that we might be thinking too big now.”
“In what way, sir?”
Choosing not to question the inspiration, Kim returned to the ops panel. “Bring up the initial sensor log again and isolate the first photonic emission we detected from the alien ship.”
Drur did so. The result was intriguing. “Now do the same for the initial signal from the smaller alien ships.” The aliens themselves?
The result was the same.
“The first color transmitted along several sections of both entities was pure white light,” Drur said. “The emission was sustained for less than one second, but it was there. Nothing along the invisible spectrum was contained in the very first emission.”
“And white light isn’t actually white. It contains a blending of all of the colors of the visible spectrum,” Kim noted. “Now move on to the second emission,” he suggested.
“Violet,” Drur said once the process was complete, “plus some new waves along theta band.”
“The amount of data contained in these two emissions taken together overloads the sensors easily, which is why the entire series of photonic emissions has the computer stymied. Run every translation algorithm we have against the first emission alone and see what happens.”
“It’s going to take a minute.”
“We’ve got nothing but time,” Kim said.
As Drur continued the operation, Kim began to pace once again. “Do your friends call you Michael?” he asked.
Again, that sharp, disquieting glance. “My friends?”
“The other bridge officers.”
“They call me Ensign, or sometimes Drury.”
“But that’s not your name.”
“I’m not really a people person,” Drur said. “I keep to myself.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Kim said.
“It can be taken the wrong way. As if I don’t like people. I do. I just…”
Something about this young man was slowly beginning to break Kim’s heart. He didn’t know what the ensign’s personal experiences had been in the last year, but he suspected they had been challenging. “Everybody is different,” Kim offered, “but we all graduated from the same Academy. We all had to survive the same courses and instructors, and nobody gets a seat on the bridge of a starship that doesn’t deserve it.”
Drur nodded. After a long pause, he said, “Velth was the one who used to call me Dreary Drury. I guess the
