"Dances? Are you trying to tell me that...."
"I know it sounds strange," she said, "but we...."
"Even if you have found exact points of comparison, that means nothing," said Langsmith. "These are aliens ... from another world. You've no right to assume that their language development would follow the same pattern as ours has."
"But they're humanoid!" she said. "Don't you believe that language started as the unconscious shaping of the speech organs to imitate bodily gestures?"
"It's highly likely," said Langsmith.
"We can make quite a few pretty safe assumptions about them," she said. "For one thing, they apparently have a rather high standard of civilization to be able to construct—"
"Let's not labor the obvious," interrupted Langsmith, a little impatiently.
Francine studied the team chief a moment, said: "Did you ever hear how Marshal Foch planned his military campaigns?"
Langsmith puffed on his pipe, took it out of his mouth. "Uh ... are you suggesting that a military...."
"He wrote out the elements of his problem on a sheet of paper," said Francine. "At the top of the paper went the lowest common denominator. There, he wrote: 'Problem—To beat the Germans.' Quite simple. Quite obvious. But oddly enough beating the enemy has frequently been overlooked by commanders who got too involved in complicated maneuvers."