Ross hung on.
Helena landed the ship with her usual timber-shivering crash. “Now,” she said briskly, “we’d better allow a little time for it to cool down. This is nice, isn’t it?”
Ross dragged himself, bruised, from the floor. He had to agree. It was nice. The landing field, rimmed by gracious, light buildings (with the cooling fins), was dotted with great, silvery ships. They didn’t, Ross thought with a twinge of irritation, seem to be space vessels, though; leave it to Helena to get them down at some local airport! Still—the ships also, he noticed, were liberally studded with the fins. He peered at them with puzzlement and a rising sense of excitement. Certainly they had a function, and that function could only be some sort of energy receptor. Could it be—dared he imagine that it was the long-dreamed-of cosmic energy tap? What a bonus that would be to bring back with him! And what other marvels might this polished technology have to give them …
Bernie distracted him. He said, “Hey, Ross. Here comes somebody.”
But even Bernie’s tone was awed. A magnificent vehicle was crawling toward them across the field. It was long, low, bullet-shaped—and with cooling fins. Multiple plates of silvery metal contrasted with a glossy black finish. All about its periphery was a lacy pattern of intricate crumples and crinkles of metal, as though its skirts had been crushed and rumpled. Ross sighed and marveled: What a production problem these people had solved, stamping those forms out between dies.
Then he saw the faces of the passengers.
He drew in his breath sharply. Godlike. Two men whose brows were cliffs of alabaster, whose chins were strong with the firmness of steady, flamelike wisdom. Two women whose calm, lovely features made the heart within him melt and course.
The vehicle stopped ten yards from the open spacelock of the ship. From its tip gushed upward a ten-foot fountain of sparks that flashed the gamut of the rainbow. Simultaneously one of the godlike passengers touched the wheel, and there was a sweet, piercing, imperative summons like a hundred strings and brasses in unison.
Helena whispered, “They want us to come out. Ross—Ross—I can’t face them!” She buried her face in her hands.
“Steady,” he said gravely. “They’re only human.”
Ross gripped that belief tightly; he hardly dared permit himself to think, even for a second, that perhaps these people were no longer merely human. Hoarsely he said, “We need their help. Maybe we should send Doc Jones out first. He’s the oldest of us, and he’s the only one you could call a scientist; he can talk to them. Where is he?”
A raucous Jones voice bellowed through the domed control room: “Who wansh ol’ doc, hargh? Who wansh goo’ ol’ doc?”
Good old doc staggered into the room, obviously loaded to the gills by a very enjoyable backslide. He began to sing:
“In A.J. seven thirty-two a Jones from Jones’s Valley,
He wandered into Jones’s Town to hold a Jonesist Rally.
He shocked the gents and ladies both; his talk was most disturbing;
He spoke of seven-sided doors and purple-colored curbing—”
Jones’s eyes focused on Helena. He flushed. “ ’m deeply sorry,” he mumbled. “Unf’rgivable vulgararrity. Mom’ntarily f’rgot ladies were present.”
Again that sweet summons sounded.
“Pull yourself together, doctor,” Ross begged. “This is Earth. The people seem—very advanced. Don’t disgrace us. Please!”
Jones’s face went pale and perspiration broke out. “ ’Scuse me,” he mumbled, and staggered out again.
Ross closed the door on him and said, “We’ll leave him. He’ll be all right; nothing’s going to happen here.” He took a deep breath. “We’ll all go out,” he said.
Unconsciously Ross and Helena drew closer together and joined hands. They walked together down the unfolding ramp and approached the vehicle.
One of the coolly lovely women scrutinized them and turned to the man beside her. She remarked melodiously, “Yuhsehtheybebems!” and laughed a silvery tinkle.
Panic gripped Ross for a long moment. A thing he had never considered, but a thing which he should have realized would be inevitable. Of course! These folk—older and incomparably more advanced than the rest of the peoples in the universe—would have evolved out of the common language into a speech of their own, deliberately or naturally rebuilt to handle the speed, subtlety, and power of their thoughts.
But perhaps the older speech was merely disused and not lost.
He said formally, quaking: “People of Earth, we are strangers from another star. We throw ourselves on your mercy and ask for your generosity. Our problem is summed up in the genetic law L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the minus T-over-two-N. Of course—”
One of the men was laughing. Ross broke off.
The man smiled: “Wha’s that again?”
They understood! He repeated the formula, slowly, and would have explained further, but the man cut him off.
“Math,” the man smiled. “We don’ use that stuff no more. I got a lab assistant, maybe he uses it sometimes.”
They were beyond mathematics! They had broken through into some mode of symbolic reasoning that must be as far beyond mathematics as math was beyond primitive languages!
“Sir,” he said eagerly, “you must be a scientist. May I ask you to—”
“Get in,” he smiled. Gigantic doors unfolded from the vehicle. Thought-reading? Had the problem been snatched from his brain even before he stated it? Mutely he gestured at Helena and Bernie. Jones would be all right where he was for several hours if Ross was any judge of blackouts. And you don’t quibble with demigods.
The man, the scientist, did something to a glittering control panel that was, literally, more complex than the Wesley board back on the starship. Noise filled the vehicle—noise that Ross identified as music for a moment. It was a starkly simple music whose skeleton was three thumps and a crash, three thumps and a crash. Then followed an antiphonal chant—a clear tenor demanding
