No one knew.

Kane looked up from his console. He seemed to be alone in the pilot’s room. “Kile,” he said to the commlink.

Tripley and the others showed up literally within seconds.

“We’re getting power leakage,” he told them. “It’s not dead.”

“Magnificent!” Tripley jabbed his right fist in the air and turned toward the women. “Ladies,” he said, “I do believe we’ve done it! “

They embraced all around. Emily kissed Kane’s cheek while he pretended to be annoyed, and Yoshi threw her arms around him.

“From this point,” said Tripley, “we will proceed on the assumption that they’re alive over there.”

When they overtook the turtle-shell they were looking down on the rings from a point somewhere over the north pole. Kane closed to within forty meters of the object. He’d arranged the approach so that Alnitak was behind the Hunter, to prevent its blinding the imagers.

Everybody was in the mission control center, save Kane, who stayed in the pilot’s room. Tripley sat down at a comm console, looked at his colleagues, and signaled to Kane, whose virtual image occupied a chair. Kane nodded and Tripley put his index finger on the transmission key. Kane had pointed out that the AI could handle all the transmissions, but the moment was a bit too historic for that.

“Okay,” said Kane. “When you’re ready—”

Tripley pressed the key once. Then twice. He looked up at his colleagues and beamed. “Maybe,” he said, “the first communication–”

He tapped it again, three times.

“—between humans and their starborn siblings–”

Four.

“—has just been sent.”

They looked at one another expectantly. In the windows, the turtle-shell tumbled slowly across a moonscape.

“It’s dark over there,” said Kane.

Emily shook her head. “It’s too small. It’s a pity. But I’ll settle for the artifact.”

“You give up too easily,” said Yoshi. “Try again, Kile.”

Tripley resent. One, two, three, four.

The room glowed with the colors of the rings.

“I think Emily’s right,” said Tripley. “If anybody were there, they’d certainly want to respond.”

They tapped out the signal a third time. Then Yoshi sat down at the key and continued patiently to send.

“Something to consider,” said Kane, studying the image. He pointed at an object mounted in the nose of the turtle-shell. It looked like a bracket or fork. “It might have an attack capability.”

“Why would they attack?” asked Emily.

“You’re poking a strange animal. What I’m saying is that it could happen. It might be a good idea to think about it.”

“They’re not going to shoot at us,” said Tripley. “Why would they bother? They don’t even know us.”

Kane’s voice was unemotional. “Think about our relative sizes. We’re what, several hundred times as big as they are. If there’s really something alive over there, I’d expect them to be nervous. If our situations were reversed, I sure as hell would be.”

“So what are you suggesting?” asked Emily.

“That we be prepared to back off on short notice. Which means if I say we’re leaving, I’ll want everyone to belt down quickly, and to do it without argument. I doubt that the occasion will arise, but I won’t want to get into a discussion if it does.”

“Okay,” Emily said, without bothering to conceal her amusement. “If they shoot, we run. I don’t think anybody’s going to argue with that.”

“So what’s next?” asked Yoshi. “They don’t seem to have their radio turned on. What else can we do?”

“Blink the running lights,” said Emily.

Tripley nodded. “Okay.”

Kane turned them off and then on again. Waited a few seconds. Turned them off. Turned them on.

They kept it up for a while. After a few minutes Tripley asked whether anyone else had an idea.

“Yes,” said Yoshi. “Why don’t we back away so they don’t think we’re pushy? Let them make a move, if they’re inclined. They have to be as curious as we are.”

They agreed it was worth trying, and Kane withdrew to a range of five kilometers and assumed a parallel orbit.

They spent the next few hours in a long, generally pointless and often circular discussion. The turtle-shell seemed unlikely to be a warship under any circumstances because the Alnitak region was a no-man’s-land, a place that could not conceivably be of strategic value. It was also probably not a trader or commercial vessel for the same reason. And that left only survey and research, the vessel was not completely automated, and if it was in fact a vessel, then it should be staffed by scientists. But if that were so, why hadn’t they responded?

Tripley suggested they try the radio again. They changed the transmission to one-three-five-seven and put it on automatic. It ran for two hours before they gave up and shut it down.

“We need to start talking,” said Emily, “about what we do when they don’t answer.”

“That’s easy,” said Kane.

Everyone looked at him, surprised. Kane customarily avoided making policy suggestions that concerned the mission, as opposed to technical matters or the operation of the ship. “We take a lot of pictures and go home.”

“No,” said Tripley. “It’s out of the question.”

“Even if there were no other considerations,” Yoshi said, “they seem to be adrift and in a decaying orbit. If there’s anybody in there, and we leave them, they’ll die.”

“If we go back with nothing more than pictures,” said Tripley, “the scientific community would excoriate us.”

“I can think of three possible reasons why they aren’t responding,” said Kane. “One, it is automated. Two, they’re all dead. Three, they’re playing possum. Floating out here in a decaying orbit suggests they’re damaged. They can’t run and they probably can’t put up a fight. They’re looking at a vessel of monumental dimensions, probably by far the biggest they’ve ever seen. So they’re hoping we’ll go away. Or—”

“Or—?”

“That help will arrive.”

“You think they’ve been sending out a distress call?”

“Sure. If they can.”

“Do we have any way of intercepting it?”

“We don’t know enough about their equipment. If it’s hypercomm, which it probably would be, we’d have to be astronomically lucky to pick it up.”

Emily suggested they try the radio again.

“Why would it be any more likely to work this time?” asked Tripley.

“They’ve had time to see we mean no harm. They may feel more willing to take a chance now.”

Kane directed the AI to begin sending, counting to four.

“I never considered the possibility,” said Tripley, “that anything like this could happen. We always assumed that, in the event of contact with celestials, they’d be just like us, curious, anxious to communicate, amicable.”

A new tone sounded in the speaker.

A blip.

And then a pair of blips.

And then three.

“Coming from the turtle,” said Kane.

Four.

Analyze.

Tripley banged a big hand down on the console.

They continued counting through to eight.

Joy reigned. They pumped fists, embraced, shook hands. And there were a few tears.

“My God, they’re really there,” said Tripley.

“Are we getting this?” Emily asked Kane. “For the log?”

The captain looked directly at the imager. “Yes,” he said. “They’ll be watching this in classrooms a thousand years from now.”

Tripley broke out four glasses and a bottle of wine.

And they got another blip.

Then a pair.