Deb still held him by the arm. “Good luck, then — for Tully’s sake. What do you think your chances are?”

“With you?” Chan pulled himself away. “Zero. With Chrissie and the Tarbush, excellent. I’ll find them, and I’ll bring them to Ceres.”

“Cocksure as ever.”

“It’s all relative, Deb. Compared with the past few hours, anything in the Oort Cloud has to be easy.”

13: LEARNING FROM THE BUBBLE PEOPLE

Bony was fascinated by the array of waving bubble arms on the seabed outside. He was also frightened of them, as any rational person was afraid of the totally unknown. How long he might have stood staring was anyone’s guess, but a sudden clatter and a shout of “Rombelle! Rombelle!” brought his attention back to the inside of the ship.

It was Friday Indigo, dropping from the upper level without using the ladder. He shouted, “Look outside!” and then, when it became obvious that’s exactly what Bony and Liddy were doing, “Why didn’t you dummies wake me up?”

“We only just noticed them. We were asleep.”

It was a measure of Indigo’s excitement that he didn’t blister Bony for a failure to keep watch. Instead he crowded with them to the port.

“I woke up,” he said, “and I noticed it was light, and I went to look outside. And there they were, standing on the sea floor! Waving! Rombelle, they want us to meet with them.”

That was not news to Bony. He said carefully, “Do you think that would be a good idea, sir? We know nothing about these creatures.”

“Well, of course we don’t. How could we, this is first contact. You hear me? First contact . No human or alien in the Stellar Group ever encountered these beings before. Of course we have to go out and meet them.”

Bony should have expected that answer. He sighed, and reluctantly started toward the airlock.

Friday Indigo said, “And just where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“I was going for a suit — to wear outside.”

“And who told you to do that?” Indigo moved to Bony’s side. “You don’t seem to understand, Rombelle. This is first contact . A historic event. Naturally, the leader of the party conducts the initial meeting. You can come with me — provided that you stay a few steps behind and don’t open your mouth. All right?”

Without waiting for an answer Indigo took a suit and allowed it to enclose his body. Bony did not move. At last Indigo said impatiently, “Come on, man. First you’re trying to get out of the ship ahead of me, then you’ve turned into a statue. Get that suit on.”

“Yes, sir.” Bony knew what he needed to say, but he was afraid that it would offend Liddy. “I was just thinking, if we have people outside the ship, wouldn’t it be really important to have somebody back on board in case there’s an emergency? Someone who knows all the ship’s rescue systems inside and out.”

He had tried to phrase it tactfully, but tact was an unknown quantity to Friday Indigo. The captain looked at him, then at Liddy.

“Hm. You think she’s a dumb female who doesn’t know what she’s doing?”

“Well, I didn’t say—”

“I agree with you. Liddy has her uses, but handling emergencies isn’t one of them. All right. Change of plan. Rombelle, you stay here. Liddy, you put a suit on and come with me.”

“Does she need to go outside at all, sir? I mean, what would she do there?”

“She’ll carry the translation equipment. You don’t think I’m going to lug it around myself, do you, when I’m trying to establish contact with the bubble people? Remember, we’ll be recording this for posterity.”

If we have a posterity, thought Bony. But the choice was pretty clear: either Liddy stayed here, or he did. And if there was trouble, he had a better chance of saving her than she did of saving him.

“You’ll need to be able to communicate with the ship, sir, if everything is to be recorded.”

“Sure, sure. Make arrangements for that while Liddy puts her suit on. You can’t expect me to do everything. And jump to it!”

Bony jumped to it — but not because Indigo had ordered him to. For Liddy’s sake he wanted the best possible link between the ship and the outside party. The easiest way was to run a cable directly from the ship’s external line tap to the portable translation unit. It would handle only voice communication, but Friday Indigo and Liddy didn’t need to see what was happening to Bony, and he would be able to watch their every move using the ship’s imaging systems.

As Bony worked he kept an eye on what was happening outside. The Limbics maintained their circle around the ship, but they had backed away and risen a couple of meters above the seabed. Apparently they had some invisible way of varying their buoyancy and could hover at any depth they chose. They had moved beyond the region flattened by the arrival of the Mood Indigo , to where the forest of spears still stood upright. One by one they drifted downward. Bubble arms stretched down, gripped, and broke off the sharp-tipped spikes. Bony watched in amazement as the long spears were lifted and then inserted, sharp end first, into the wide dark slit on the top of the globular body. It was the ultimate sword-swallowing act. Slowly and easily, centimeter after centimeter, the whole long shaft vanished.

Were they eating the pikes? What else could it possibly be? Bony recalled how the shafts had broken under his slightest touch. Like the strange ship that he and Liddy had seen on their trip to the ocean surface, the Limbics were not just alien, they were alien alien.

“Why the hell are you standing there gaping?” Friday Indigo’s voice was loud in Bony’s ears. “I’m all set to go. Do you have that communication connection ready?”

“Just a couple more minutes.” Bony bent over the translation equipment and went back to work at maximum speed. He hated the idea of Liddy going out there among those creatures. They had a soft, jellyfish appearance, and they hadn’t done anything threatening so far; but they also had had no opportunity to do so. It was his fault that Liddy was going. Why hadn’t he kept his stupid mouth shut?

He adjusted a final setting and lifted the translator. It wasn’t big, and it wasn’t heavy. Friday Indigo could have carried it easily enough without any help from Liddy. She was waiting patiently at Bony’s side with her suit helmet ready to close, and he handed the instrument to her. “Here, Liddy. Be careful. It looks safe enough out there, but it may not be. If you see anything you don’t like, don’t wait to find out what it is. Head straight back for the ship.”

He had spoken softly, but not softly enough. Friday Indigo came over to him, his boots clanking on the deck plates. “How many captains can a ship have, Rombelle?”

“One, sir.”

“And who’s the captain of the Mood Indigo ?”

“You are, sir.”

“Quite right. Don’t forget it. You don’t give orders, I do. Come on, Liddy.”

He led the way into the airlock. Liddy, carrying the translator, followed. As the inner hatch closed she gave Bony what seemed to him like a forlorn little wave. It was a long minute before he could see her again on the imaging display, dropping silently toward the seabed with Friday Indigo.

Their exit from the ship had been noticed elsewhere. The Limbics ceased their grazing on the sea-spears and drifted back toward the Mood Indigo . They formed a compact group, about five meters away from the humans.

Indigo held up one hand and said loudly, “Greetings, people of this planet. I, Friday Indigo, captain of the Terran ship Mood Indigo , and representative of all Terrans and all species of the Stellar Group, come in peace to your world.”

There was a silence, during which Bony wondered if the Limbics used sound at all as a means of communication. At last, a pair of slits opened in one of the bubble creature’s rounded sides. After a preliminary few seconds in which the openings pulsed like a bellows, Bony heard a strange mixture of hoots, whistles, gurgles, and hiccups.