Starplex

Rissa nodded. “It does look like one, doesn’t it?” She touched some controls. “Okay, Cat’s Eye, let’s see how intelligent you are.” A horizontal black bar appeared floating in the holo bubble, about a meter long and fifteen centimeters tall. “That bar represents a series of fusion lamps on the probe,” said Rissa. “The lamps have been turned off since the probe was deployed. Now, watch.” She tapped a key on her console. The black bar turned electric pink for three seconds, went black again for three seconds, turned pink twice in rapid succession, blacked out for another three seconds, then blinked on three times. “When the bar is pink, I’ve got all the fusion lamps on,” said Rissa. “The probe is also broadcasting white radio noise when the lights are on, and silence when they’re off. I’ve set the bridge speakers to the frequency used by Cat’s Eye.”

The speakers were silent, but Keith could see indicators blinking on Rhombus’s panel, showing chatter on some of the other frequencies.

Rissa waited about half a minute, then touched a key. The whole sequence—one blink, two blinks, three blinks—repeated itself.

This time there was an immediate response: three darmat words, which PHANTOM translated over the speakers as three distinctive patterns of bleeps and bloops.

“Well,” said Lianne, “if we’re lucky, that’s darmat talk for one, two, three.”

“Unless,” said Thor, “it’s darmat for ‘what the hell—?’ ”

Rissa smiled, and pushed the same key. The probe winked out one, two, three again, and Cat’s Eye responded with the same three words. “Okay,” said Rissa. “Now for the real test.” She pressed another key, and everyone watched as the indicator bar winked in reverse sequence: three, two, one.

The darmat responded with three words. Keith couldn’t quite tell for sure, but—

“Got it!” crowed Rissa. “Those were the same three words Cat’s Eye said before, but in the opposite order. He understands what we’re saying—and therefore has at least a rudimentary intelligence.” Rissa ran the sequence again, and this time PHANTOM substituted the English words “three, two, one,” in a synthesized male voice with an old-fashioned French accent—apparently that was to be the standard for darmats.

The bridge staff was rapt as Rissa pressed on, learning the Darmat words for the numerals four through one hundred. Neither she nor PHANTOM could detect any kind of repeating pattern in the word construction that would allow one to deduce the base the darmats used for counting; it seemed that each numeral was represented by a word unrelated to all the others. She stopped at one hundred, afraid the darmat would get bored by the game and cease communicating with her at all.

Next came exercises in simple math: two blinks, a six-second pause—double the normal length—two more blinks, another six-second pause, and then four blinks.

Cat’s Eye dutifully provided the words two, two, and four each of the first five times Rissa repeated the sequence, but on the sixth, it finally caught the intended meaning of the prolonged gaps: a six-second gap meant a word was missing in the middle. PHANTOM didn’t wait for Rissa’s confirmation; when Cat’s Eye next spoke, it translated the darmat sentence as “two plus two equals four”—adding the terms for the two operators to the translation database. In short order, Rissa also elicited the darmat words for “minus,” “multiplied by,” “divided by,” “greater than,” and “less”.

“I think,” said Rissa, grinning from ear to ear, “that there’s no doubt that we’re dealing with highly intelligent beings.”

Keith shook his head in wonder as Rissa continued to use mathematics to work out more vocabulary. She soon had the darmat terms for “correct” and “incorrect” (or “yes” and “no”)—which she hoped would also be their terms for “right” and “wrong” in other areas. She then had Rhombus move the probe in specific ways (carefully avoiding splashing the darmat with hot ACS exhaust), and that led to the darmat words for “up,” “down,” “left,” “right,” “in front,” “behind,” “receding,” “approaching,” “turning,” “tumbling,” “circling,” “fast,” “slow,” and more.

By moving the probe in a path right around Cat’s Eye, Rissa was able to get the darmat word for “orbit,” and soon had picked up the words for “star,” “planet,” and “moon,” as well.

By using colored filters on the probe’s fusion lamps, Rissa then elicited the darmat words for various hues. She next broadcast her first simple original sentence, beginning with the arbitrary sign they’d originally assigned to the probe that was Starplex’s mouthpiece: “Starplex moves toward green star.” Rissa then had Rhombus make the probe do precisely that.

Cat’s Eye understood at once, responding with the word for “correct.” He then sent his own sentence: “Cat’s Eye moves away from Starplex,” then turned word into deed. Rissa replied with “correct.”