"Troniff," said the Commander, "the delay is inexcusable. Does the computer have its belly full yet?"
"Your Loftiness, the reference tapes are full, but the machine is unable to present a full picture of the dominant life form. It appears, however, that they are much like us in general body shape. Unfortunately, we can get no reference point from which to judge their size. They are exceedingly ferocious and blood thirsty, and apparently war among themselves continuously."
"I'm tempted to leave now," said the Commander. "I'll have to use the dredge, I suppose.... Are you sure it won't do some good to listen to their communications awhile longer?"
The speaker was silent for a moment, then Troniff spoke.
"I don't like to mention this, Your Loftiness, but my engineers have found several unidentified types of emission besides those carrying speech frequencies. They think that one particular type characterized by an extremely broad frequency range just might be transmission of visual images...."
"I don't believe it," said the Commander. "We've been trying to do that for hundreds of years without success and so far as we've been we've never found another race in the galaxy as far advanced technologically as ours. These people don't even have space flight."
"They have artificial satellites up," said Troniff, "We're monitoring signals from one, and from what I gather they're apt to have something up on this moon before long."
"Any chance of finding out how they transmit visual images—if they really do?"
"Not a chance," said Troniff. "My engineers can't even conceive of a device that could convert these signals into a picture."
"That's all, Troniff. Notify Montresig that he's to meet me immediately in the dredge room with the anthropologist and a dredge operator."