Hammond frowned. He had almost forgotten the utter strangeness of the entire experience, but it came back to him now, and with it the clamor for explanation.
The girl read his thoughts. "I, Gena, am not of Earth. Nor did I, before you entered this room, know your language, or know that your people call this planet Earth and the planet from which I come Mars. All this, and as much of Earth and your civilization as you know I have probed from your mind while you stood there."
She came around the desk, smiling now. "Your thoughts are confused. You do not readily believe. Mars—impossible! No ship has yet been constructed that can negotiate the airless void of space—no Earthian craft!" she emphasized. "But we of Mars have."
Hammond looked about him, out through the transparent hull wall to the far low maroon cliffs that he knew were the boat sides. He shrugged. Fantastic or no, this was the reality, and with a true scientist's adaptable mind he accepted it.
"How is it then," he questioned calmly, "that the warriors that captured me did not learn my language, nor read my thoughts?"
Gena's imperial features held dignity. "I am a commander," she answered. "Which means that I am a thorough master of that which your scientists call ESP—extra-sensory perception—as well as its opposite, which they have not yet recognized, but which they might call EST—extra-sensory transmission. It takes a certain type of personality, even on Mars, and years of training to attain to the power to perceive what is in other minds, plus the power to transmit to them, selectively, and at will, that which I wish them to know, understand, or obey."
Hammond relaxed, his keen mind enjoying itself. "Then you are not speaking to me in American? Yet to me it seems you are talking my language."
Gena's eyes quickened. "Precisely. I am speaking the language of the mind. Your mind reinterprets what I say in the phonetic symbols you call American, due to speech habits, just as it interprets such phonetic symbols as thoughts and ideas. If you spoke another language the written symbols and sounds conjured up by your mind would be different, but the thoughts and ideas conveyed would be the same."
Hammond frowned. "Then, if you and your people use only the language of the mind, how does it happen that I heard spoken words which I did not understand?"
"I did not say we use only the language of the mind. We have our own phonetic symbols; in fact, I am talking audibly to you now. When you first entered I probed your mind, and put you en rapport as you might call it, not only with our mind language, but with our thought symbols, so you now reinterpret both as your own language."