"Knight to bishop's third," said Hoskins softly.
"What's that?" demanded Johnny.
"Chess again," said the Captain appreciatively. "An opening gambit."
Johnny put a cigarette to his lips, tried his lighter. "Damn. Gimme a light, Ives."
Ives complied, saying over his big shoulder to the Captain, "In case you wondered, there was no fix on that. My direction-finders indicate that the signal came simultaneously from forty-odd transmitters placed in a circle around the ship which is their way of saying 'I dunno'."
The Captain walked to the view bubble in front of the console and peered around. He saw the valley, the warm light of mid-afternoon, the too-green slopes and the blue-green distances. Trees, rocks, a balancing bird.
"It doesn't work," muttered Johnny.
The Captain ignored him. "'Men of Earth....'" he quoted. "Ives, they've gotten into Survey's squeak-box and analyzed its origin. They know all about us!"
"They don't because they can't," said Ives flatly. "Survey traverses those boxes through second-order space. They materialize near a planet and drop in. No computation on earth or off it could trace their normal-space trajectory, let alone what happens in the second-order condition. The elements the box is made of are carefully averaged isotopic forms that could have come from any of nine galaxies we know about and probably more. And all it does is throw out a VUHF signal that says beep on one side, boop on the other, and bup-bup in between. It does not speak English, mention the planet Earth, announce anyone's arrival and purpose, or teach etiquette."
Captain Anderson spread his hands. "They got it from somewhere. They didn't get it from us. This ship and the box are the only Terran objects on this planet. Therefore they got their information from the box."