mb and into the brain at the base
of the skull. I couldn't understand how the system functioned, but now
I see it. Each of the larger membranes on the outside responds to a
sound-frequency band, and the small ones on the inside break the bands
down to individual frequencies."

"How many of the little ones are there?" Ayesha asked.

"Thousands of them; the inner comb is simply packed with them. Wait;
I'll show you."

He rose and went away, returning with a sheaf of photo-enlargements
and a number of blocks of lucite in which specimens were mounted.
Everybody examined them. Anna de Jong, as a practicing psychologist,
had an M.D. and to get that she'd had to know a modicum of anatomy;
she was puzzled.

"I can't understand how they hear with those things. I'll grant
that the membranes will respond to sound, but I can't see how
they transmit it."

"But they do hear," Meillard said. "Their musical instruments,
their reactions to our voices, the way they are affected by sounds
like gunfire--"

"They hear, but they don't hear in the same way we do," Fayon replied.
"If you can't be convinced by anything else, look at these things,
and compare them with the structure of the human ear, or the ear
of any member of any other sapient race we're ever contacted.
That's what I've been saying from the beginning."

"They have sound-perception to an extent that makes ours look
almost like deafness," Ayesha Keithley said. "I wish I could design
a sound-detector one-tenth as good as this must be."

Yes. The way the Lord Mayor said _fwoonk_ and the way Paul Meillard
said it sounded entirely different to them. Of course, _fwoonk_ and
_pwink_ and _tweelt_ and _kroosh_ sounded alike to them, but let's
don't be too picky about things.

* * * * *

There were no hot showers that evening; Dave Questell's gang had
trouble with the pump and needed some new parts made up aboard the
ship. They were still working on it the next morning. He had meant
to start teaching Sonny blacksmithing, but during the evening
Lillian and Anna had decided to try teaching Mom a nonphonetic,
ideographic, alphabet, and in the morning they co-opted Sonny to
help. Deprived of his disciple, he strolled over to watch the work
on the pump. About twenty Svants had come in from the fields and
were also watching, from the meadow.

After a while, the job was finished. The petty officer in charge
of the work pushed in the switch, and the