"Alien seizure, my foot!" Commander Linder told the rest of the crew now. "Those are men down there, men working up some anti-social mischief we truly civilized people can't even imagine."
"Mischief? We just don't know that it is," Stern sighed through his grey, brush mustache. "Do we, Commander?"
"It can't be anything good," Linder snapped. The other officers nodded their agreement.
"Suppose they've become indifferent," Stern persisted, "and just want to be left by themselves?"
Linder gave a sour laugh as he moved down the catwalk, throwing one communication circuit after another to ON position. "I imagine they're going to play very coy before we wangle an answer out of them—but not because they're indifferent, Stern. It's impossible for people to be indifferent to their fellows—cooperation or hate, those are the two possibilities, and Nodar alone refuses to cooperate. Why should they be indifferent? What could they have to develop beside the universe of people around them?"
"I don't know," Stern conceded. "I don't even think my explanation's the likely one—yours is—but we do have to consider everything."
"In—dif—fe—rent," Linder repeated, provoking laughter from his crew. He whirled his bulky frame around with the usual surprising ease and snapped a receiving screen on. "Look at it again, look at what we've been picking up from them the last six days. I think they've known we're up here all along—deliberately pulling wool over our eyes."
To the tune of running squeaks and rumbles unshaped colors flowed across the screen mixed with equally shapeless flickers of black and white. "Certainly looks deliberate," said young Crawford who was Linder's second in command but not ordinarily one of the yesman chorus. "Doctor, as our Chief Semanticist, do you get any message at all out of that stuff?"
"No," he conceded again.