nd to demonstrate the need for devising a means of communication.
At least that was what the book said. It demonstrated nothing of
the sort to this crowd. It scared them. The dignitary with the staff
twittered excitedly. One of his companions agreed with him at length.
Another started to reach for his knife, then remembered his manners.
The bellowsman pumped a few blasts on the horn.

"What do you think of the language?" he asked Lillian.

"They all sound that bad, when you first hear them. Give them a few
seconds, and then we'll have Phase Two."

When the gibbering and skreeking began to fall off, she stepped
forward. Lillian was, herself, a good test of how human aliens were;
this gang weren't human enough to whistle at her. She touched
herself on the breast. "Me," she said.

The natives seemed shocked. She repeated the gesture and the word,
then turned and addressed Paul Meillard. "You."

"Me," Meillard said, pointing to himself. Then he said, "You," to
Luis Gofredo. It went around the contact team; when it came to him,
he returned it to point of origin.

"I don't think they get it at all," he added in a whisper.

"They ought to," Lillian said. "Every language has a word for self
and a word for person-addressed."

"Well, look at them," Karl Dorver invited. "Six different opinions
about what we mean, and now the band's starting an argument of their
own."

"Phase Two-A," Lillian said firmly, stepping forward. She pointed
to herself. "Me--Lillian Ransby. Lillian Ransby--me _name_.
You--_name_?

"_Bwoooo!_" the spokesman screamed in horror, clutching his staff
as though to shield it from profanation. The others howled like
a hound-pack at a full moon, except one of the short-tunic boys,
who was slapping himself on the head with both hands and yodeling.
The horn-crew hastily swung their piece around at the Terrans,
pumping frantically.

"What do you suppose I said?" Lillian asked.

"Oh, something like, 'Curse your gods, death to your king, and
spit in your mother's face,' I suppose."

"Let me try it," Gofredo said.

The little Marine major went through the same routine. At his first
word, the uproar stopped; before he was through, the natives' faces
were sagging and crumbling into expressions of utter and
heartbroken grief.

"It's not as bad as all that, is it?" he said. "You try it, Mark."

"Me ... Mark ... Howell...." They looked bewildered.

"Let's try objects, and play-acting," Lillian suggested