Zeke was right, of course; there were a lot of radio transmissions, but they were difficult to decipher.  Not only were they an alien encoding system, they were also in an alien language and, Derek believed, encrypted.

However, there was an oddity about them.  He had his computer and his robot working on the problems, and everything was similar to what was used back on The Wanderer.  It wasn’t the same, but the transmission modulation was the same using a different set of standard frequencies, the math was octal, the encryption techniques seemed similar, and when he picked up unencrypted speech it was almost as if it were a different dialect of the same language--like Portuguese instead of Spanish, or maybe even closer.

There was one obvious conclusion.  The aliens surveying the planet were this universe’s counterpart to the eight-fingered little green men on that lost colony spaceship from which he got his robot and his shuttlecraft.  That probably didn’t help him terribly.  These probably were not a lost colony spaceship filled with generations reverted to primitivism, or they wouldn’t be sending out scout ships (unless, it occurred to him, the ancestors in this universe had established a robotic planetary survey protocol).  He knew nothing about the culture from which his little green men had come, and no way to know how it might have changed for those in this universe.  It told him nothing about them.

Well, not exactly nothing.  It did appear that their language was similar, possibly similar enough that between his own meager linguistics ability and the programming on his computer and his robot he might be able to crack the language barrier and install their language into his translator.  It wouldn’t enable the birds to communicate with the aliens--he had not even begun to figure out how to translate to Parakeet.

Of course, he did translate to Parakeet every day--using that psionic trick, tapping into the speech center of a nearby bird and using its language processing to understand what the birds around him were saying.  He could do that with the aliens.  Indeed, when he was on the ship he had contacted one of them telepathically--it had not been so easy, as if their minds were very different from his own, and he had rarely done it.  But it was a possibility.  Unfortunately, for either of these to work, he would have to find the mind of one of the aliens, and in his experience, at least, if he hadn’t already contacted someone’s mind he could only find it if they were within sight.

He would try to remember to use it if he actually saw one of them.  Meanwhile, he had work to do on a translation program.

There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #476:  Versers Deduce.  Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter.  It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.

As to the old stories that have long been here:

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