n't the analyzer hear
them alike?" Karl Dorver demanded.

"It has better ears than you do, Karl. Look how many different
frequencies there are in that word, all crowding up behind each
other," Lillian said. "But it isn't sensitive or selective enough.
I'm going to see what Ayesha Keithley can do about building me
a better one."

Ayesha was signals and detection officer on the _Hubert Penrose_.
Dave Questell mentioned that she'd had a hard day, and was probably
making sack-time, and she wouldn't welcome being called at 0130.
Nobody seemed to have realized that it had gotten that late.

"Well, I'll call the ship and have a recording made for her for when
she gets up. But till we get something that'll sort this mess out
and make sense of it, I'm stopped."

"You're stopped, period, Lillian," Dorver told her. "What these
people gibber at us doesn't even make as much sense as the Shooting
of Dan McJabberwock. The real information is conveyed by telepathy."

* * * * *

Lieutenant j.g. Ayesha Keithley was on the screen the next morning
while they were eating breakfast. She was a blonde, like Lillian.

"I got your message; you seem to have problems, don't you?"

"Speaking conservatively, yes. You see what we're up against?"

"You don't know what their vocal organs are like, do you?" the girl
in naval uniform in the screen asked.

Lillian shook her head. "Bennet Fayon's hoping for a war, or an
epidemic, or something to break out, so that he can get a few
cadavers to dissect."

"Well, he'll find that they're pretty complex," Ayesha Keithley
said. "I identified stick-and-slip sounds and percussion sounds,
and plucked-string sounds, along with the ordinary hiss-and-buzz
speech-sounds. Making a vocoder to reproduce that speech is going
to be fun. Just what are you using, in the way of equipment?"

Lillian was still talking about that when the two landing craft
from the ship were sighted, coming down. Charley Loughran and Willi
Schallenmacher, who were returning to the _Hubert Penrose_ to join
the other landing party, began assembling their luggage. The others
went outside, Howell among them.

Mom and Sonny were watching the two craft grow larger and closer
above, keeping close to a group of spacemen; Sonny was looking around
excitedly, while Mom clung to his arm, like a hen with an oversized
chick. The reasoning was clear--these people knew all about big things
that came down out of the