"So let her put some clothes on some natives," I said. "She'll go away happy and then, for all you care, they can take 'em off and burn 'em if they insist on going around naked. Just swing with the punch, man. Don't stand up and let 'em knock your block off. Surely you have some influence with the natives. I don't hear any war drums, any tom-toms. I don't see them trying to tear holes in the sides of your bubble to let the air out. You must be at peace with them. You must have some kind of mutual cooperation. So just get a tribe or so to go along with the idea for a while."
He looked at me and shook his head sadly. Sort of the way Aunt Mattie shook her head after a conference with my psychiatrist. But Johnny didn't seem somehow happier. He had a pretty good chest, but it didn't look enormous enough to carry any burden.
"I've been pretty proud of myself," he said. "After five years of daily attempts, and after using everything I ever learned in school courses on extraterrestrial psychology, plus some things I've made up myself, I established a kind of communication with the natives—if you could call it communication. I'd go out in my spacesuit into their chlorinated atmosphere, I'd stand in front of one of them and talk a blue streak, think a blue streak. After about five years of it, one of them slowly closed his eye and then opened it again. I invited one of them to come inside the bubble. I told him about the difference in atmosphere, that it might be dangerous. I got one of them to come in. It made no difference to him."
"Well, fine, then," I said. "Just get some of them to come in again, let Aunt Mattie put some clothes on them, and everybody's happy."
He stood up suddenly.
"Take a walk with me, Hap," he said. It was more of a command than an invitation. "Over to the edge of the bubble. I want to show you some natives."
I was willing.
On the way around to the back of the building, over the crunching salt, I had a thought.
"If all he did was close an eye," I said. "How did you learn their language, so you could invite him inside, explain about the atmosphere?"
"I don't even know they have a language," he said. "Maybe he learned mine. I used to draw pictures in the salt, the way they taught us at school, and say words. Maybe it took him five years to put the thoughts together, maybe they don't have any concept of language at all, or need it. Maybe he was thinking about something else all those five years, and just got around to noticing me. I don't know, Hap."