"Ummmm." Jonathan leaned over and kissed her briefly. "I've got a new line of attack," he said, picking up his coffee. He patted his wife's shoulder. "If things work out well, we might get away on that vacation sooner than we thought."
"Really?" she asked, brightening.
"Really." He left the table and went back to his den.
Putting the next tape on the machine, he settled down to his job. Time passed and finally there were no more tapes to listen to.
He stacked his notes and began making lists, checking through the sheets of paper for repetitions of words Easton had used, listing the various connotations which had occurred to Jonathan while he had listened to the tapes.
As he worked, he was struck by the similarity of the words he was recording to the occasional bits of double-talk he had heard used by comedians in theaters and on the air, and he allowed his mind to wander a bit, exploring the possibilities.
Was Martian actually such a close relative to English? Or had the Martians learned English from Easton, and had Easton then formed a sort of pidgin-English-Martian of his own?
Jonathan found it difficult to believe in the coincidence of the two languages being alike, unless—
He laughed. Unless, of course, Earthmen were descended from Martians, or vice versa. Oh, well, not my problem, he thought jauntily.