50 in 50

"Take a pair of insulated gloves and carry that tank to the lab. Run the contents through the usual air-examination procedures that we use for testing planetary atmosphere. As soon as you have taken the sample evacuate the tank and fill it with our own air, then throw it out through the lock."

The analyzers worked on the sample of alien air, and presumably the aliens were doing the same with their tank of ship's atmosphere. The analysis was routine and fast, the report appearing in coded form on the panel in control.

"Unbreathable," Gulyas said, "at least for us. There seems to be enough oxygen, more than enough, but any of those sulphurated compounds would eat holes through our lungs. They must have rugged metabolisms to inhale stuff like that. One thing is certain, we'll never be in competition for the same worlds…"

“Look! The picture is changing.” Tjond said, drawing their attention back to the viewing screen.

The alien had vanished and the viewpoint appeared to be in space above the planetoid's surface. A transparent bulge on its surface filled the screen, and while they watched, the alien entered it from below. The scene shifted again, then they were looking at the alien from inside the clear-walled chamber. The alien came towards the pickup, but before reaching it the alien stopped and leaned against what appeared to be thin air.

"There's a transparent wall that divides the dome in half," Gulyas said. "I'm beginning to get the idea."

The pickup panned away from the alien, swept around to the opposite direction where there was an entrance cut into the clear fabric of the wall. The door was open into space.

"That's obvious enough," Hautamaki said, rising to his feet. "That central wall must be airtight, so it can be used for a conference chamber. I'll go. Keep a record of everything."

"It looks like a trap," Tjond said, fidgeting with her fingers while she looked at the invitingly open door on the screen. "It will be a risk…"

Hautamaki laughed, the first time they had ever heard him do so, as he climbed into his pressure suit. "A trap! Do you believe they have gone to all this to set a trap for me? Such ego is preposterous. And if it were a trap — do you think it possible to stay out of it?"

He pushed himself free of the ship. His suited figure floated away, getting smaller and smaller.

Silently, moving closer together without realizing they did so, they watched the meeting on the screen. They saw Hautamaki drawn gently in through the open doorway until his feet touched the floor. He turned to look as the door closed, while from the radio they heard a hissing, very dimly at first, then louder and louder.

"It sounds like they are pressurizing the room," Gulyas said. Hautamaki nodded. "Yes, I can hear it now, and there is a reading on the external pressure gauge. As soon as it reaches atmospheric normal I'm taking my helmet off."

Tjond started to protest, but stopped when her husband raised his hand in warning. This was Hautamaki's decision to make.

"Smells perfectly breathable," Hautamaki said, "though it has a metallic odor."

He laid his helmet aside and stripped his suit off. The alien was standing at the partition and Hautamaki walked over until they stood face to face, almost the same height. The alien placed his palm flat against the transparent wall and the human put his hand over the same spot. They met, as close as they could, separated only by a centimeter of substance. Their eyes joined and they stared for a long time, trying to read intent, trying to communicate. The alien turned away first, walking over to a table littered with a variety of objects. It picked up the nearest one and held it for Hautamaki to see. "Kilt," the alien said. It looked like a piece of stone.

Hautamaki for the first time took notice of the table on his side of the partition. It appeared to hold the identical objects as the other table, and the first of these was a lump of ordinary stone. He picked it up.

"Stone," he said, then turned to the television pickup and the unseen viewers in the ship. "It appears that a language lesson is first. This is obvious. See that this is recorded separately. Then we can program the computer for machine translation in case the aliens aren't doing it themselves."

The language lesson progressed slowly once the stock of simple nouns with physical referents had been exhausted. Films were shown, obviously prepared long before, showing simple actions and, bit by bit, verbs and tense were exchanged. The alien made no attempt to learn their language, he just worked to ensure accuracy of identity in the words. They were recording too. As the language lesson progressed Gulyas' frown deepened, and he started to make notes, then a list that he checked off. Finally he interrupted the lesson.

"Hautamaki — this is important. Find out if they are just accumulating a vocabulary or if they are feeding a MT with this material."