bout a mysterious
crash in the paper forests, and the death of a forest ranger. Naturally
those who _did_ know were curious about how Mr. Rogov had learned so
much about the incident. He told them.

"By the time the alien made his second call, a meeting had been
arranged. When he showed up, those of the Board who were still of the
opinion that the call had been made by a crank or a psychosis case
changed their minds very rapidly."

"I can see why," murmured someone.

"The alien's ability to use Russian is limited," the speaker continued.
"He picked up vocabulary and grammatical rules very rapidly, but he
seemed completely unable to use the language beyond discussion of
concrete objects and actions. His mind is evidently too alien to enable
him to do more than touch the edges of human communication.

"For instance, he called himself 'Nipe' or 'Neep', but we don't know
whether that refers to him as an individual or as a member of his race.
Since Russian lacks both definite and indefinite articles, it is
possible that he was calling himself 'a Nipe' or 'the Nipe'. Certainly
that's the impression he gave.

"In the discussions that followed, several peculiarities were noticed,
as you can read in detail in the reports that the Board and the
Government staff prepared. For instance, in discussing mathematics the
Nipe seemed to be completely at a loss. He apparently thought of
mathematics as a _spoken_ language rather than a _written_ one and could
not progress beyond simple diagrams. That's just one small example. I'm
just trying to give you a brief outline now; you can read the reports
for full information.

"He refused to allow any physical tests on his body, and, short of
threatening him at gunpoint, there was no practicable way to force him
to accede to our wishes. Naturally, threats were out of the question."

"Couldn't X rays have been taken surreptitiously?" asked one of the men.

"It was discussed and rejected. We have no way of knowing what his
tolerance to radiation is, and we didn't want to harm him. The same
applies to using any anesthetic gas or drug to render him unconscious.
There was no way to study his metabolism without his co-operation
unless we were willing to risk killing him."

"I see. Naturally we couldn't harm him."

"Exactly. The Nipe had to be treated as an emissary from his home
world--wherever that may be. He has killed a man, yes. But that has to
be allowed as justifiable homicide in sel