“She wasn’t trying to kill him, if that’s what you mean. But look, we had to discuss where we are and what comes next.”

“We finished with all that half an hour ago. Those two want to talk — but not about here and now. And not with us.”

Danny Casement and Tarbush Hanson stared at each other. Tarbush, who had said not a word for the past three hours, slowly nodded and spoke. “I think she’s right, man. They got serious catching up to do. Twenty years of it.”

Danny walked across the room to one of the observation ports that studded the side of the Hero’s Return . He stared out. The sea lacked the abyssal black of ocean depths, and an eye adjusted to the darkness could make out an occasional glint of phosphorescence.

“Twenty years,” he said at last. “I guess it really has been that long. It is going to take a while.”

Somewhere above them, far along the ship’s side, a glare of orange fire threw the sea and the seabed into sharp relief. The three at the port saw startled sea-creatures darting away and felt the plates of the Hero’s Return shudder beneath their feet. They heard a roar like a wounded sea-monster. In seconds the fiery light came from above, rapidly dimming. Within half a minute the darkness returned.

“Rocket launch,” Danny said into a new and uneasy silence. “One of the orbitals is on the way. It must be getting calmer up on the surface.” He turned away from the port. “You’re right, Tarb, catching up is going to take a while. Let’s hope they — and we — live long enough to see it happen.”

20: MEET THE MALACOSTRACANS

Friday Indigo could not move a muscle.

Not even eye muscles. He was lying on his left side on some kind of iron-hard table, low and sloping, and he could see only in one direction. Out-of-focus black objects moved jerkily in front of him against a dull gray background. He could not gauge their size, but the fuzzy outlines had the shape of the creatures who had gunned him down on the shore.

Gunned him down; paralyzed him; but not taken away the capacity to feel pain. He hurt . His head ached, a knife blade was in his left knee, and the side that he was lying on sent jolts of agony up and down his body each time he took a breath.

At least he could breathe. How was that possible, when no amount of effort would move arms, legs, and head a millimeter?

He could also hear. The clicking and chattering was still going on, louder than before and with new sounds added to it. Suddenly he realized that the extra noises were coming from the translation unit attached to his own belt.

He concentrated on that. It was gibberish, hoots and whistles and obscene gurgles. But then the occasional word started to emerge. “Water. Bubble, burble, splutter, click. Air .” A sequence of fizzing sounds, like gas escaping from a bottle. “Live — a-live — alive — alive.” And then, after a suite of musical buzzes from the unit, “Mala-costra-cans.”

The translator was a piece of junk, just like the other one. If ever he got back to the solar system he was going to saute the liver of the crooked swine who had sold it to him.

The unit babbled on. He had to stop listening, because suddenly his tongue and throat had a column of fire ants walking up and down on them.

He coughed, swallowed, and almost fainted with pain. A voice from the translation unit said, “Malacostracans.” Then, “Air — breath. Wake. It live.”

“You rotten bastards.” He could speak! But what he had said wouldn’t do him much good, even if the translator did work. “Greetings, alien strangers.” Every word was agony. Keep it short. “I — Friday Indigo — captain of the Mood Indigo — come in friendship.”

The muscles that controlled the lenses of his eyes were coming back to life. His eyeballs were on fire, but he could focus. He counted half a dozen creatures over by the wall. There was some variation in size, but the basic body plan was constant: a broad, blue-black carapace, held close to horizontal; ten supporting legs, each one with a pouch attached to its upper end; at what he assumed was the front, two pairs of formidable front claws surrounded by mobile bristles like thin fingers; stalked eyes positioned high on the body, above a trio of fringed slits. ‘Ugly’ didn’t even begin to describe them.

The translator hummed and said, It live. It wake.

Were they deaf, or just plain stupid? “Did you hear me? My name is Friday Indigo, and I am the owner and captain of the space-going yacht, Mood Indigo. I come to you in friendship.”

“ Fridayindigo. Fridayindigo. It live. S-s-speak. Us—” a pause and a fart-like groan from the translator “—us Malacostracans.”

What was it with the “malacostracans” bit? That was the third time the machine had said the same nonsense word.

Maybe the key to getting something sensible was to talk more, and to make the Indigoans talk back. “Hello. My name is Friday Indigo, and I have come here from another star system. I am the captain of a starship, the Mood Indigo . I am the representative of all humans, and of all other intelligent species who are members of the Stellar Group. I am a new arrival to your world, and I would like to compare your civilization with ours.”

While Friday spoke he was taking a first hard look at his surroundings. Perhaps “civilization” was the wrong word. By any standards, the place he had been brought to was a dump.

He was lying on the sloping table with his head slightly lower than his feet, at the upper end of a chamber that was also sloping. Maybe twenty meters long and half that across, it was lit by cylindrical wall lamps of a sickly yellow-green. It was, in fact, not so much a room as a pool or tank. The creatures nearest to Friday stood in water only a few inches deep, but down at the far end he saw four more of them, all half-submerged and sloshing around. With its hundred-percent humidity, deadly chill, dank walls and ceiling of muddy gray, this wasn’t a place where anyone in his right mind would stay for more than a minute.

Friday lifted his head, realizing as he did so that part of his discomfort came from the fact that he was still in his suit with his cheek resting on the hard edge of the open helmet. He worked his jaw from side to side and said, “Is the translator getting anything I’ve said across to you? It’s doing a lousy job sending stuff this way — all I’ve received so far is about five words. Can you hear me? Do you understand me?”

The translator was certainly doing something . As Friday spoke, it produced a simultaneous string of stuttering clicks and squawks. Two of the Indigoans splashed their way closer to the table and leaned over it with waving eyestalks. Their interest seemed to be not in Friday, but in the translator unit at his waist.

“Hell-o!” He lifted his right arm and waved feebly. “You down there. I’m up here — that’s just a machine that you’re staring at. Can you hear me? Can you understand me?”

One of the creatures slowly turned to face him. The topmost of the three fringed slits began to move.

“ It speak. This the it speak?”

“If you mean, am I the one who’s talking to you and being translated by the machine there, then yes. I am the it who’s speaking.”

“ It breath air. It live air.”

“That’s quite right. I live in air, and I breathe air. I am” — was it worth the effort? Well, try it one more time — “I am Friday Indigo. I am a human, and so far as I know this is the first contact between your people and mine. This is a very significant meeting. Is there any chance that we could go someplace else if we’re going to keep talking? This underwater dungeon gives me the willies.”

“ We you same. Live air, live water. Hu-mans you. Malacostracans we.”