Dard was startled into turning by her sudden cry. She was having a tug of war with the largest hopper he had yet seen, a grandfather of a clan at least. But Dessie’s strength was superior, and she wrenched away the prize the animal had just stolen from the blouse Dard had discarded in the heat.
“He opened your pocket,” she told the boy indignantly,”and he took this out, just as if it were his own! What is it? Pretty—” She crooned the word as she fingered the sheets in which colors ran in waving bands.
“Why- I’d forgotten all about that. It’s a book-or I think it is, Dessie. It belonged to Those Others.”
"A what!” Kimber reached for it. “Where did you get it., kid?”
Dard explained how he had found it in the hidden room of the gun emplacement and of his theory that Those Others might have used the bands of color as a means of communication.
“I was going to compare it with those shots you took on microfilm of that doorway in the city. And then so much happened I forgot all about it.”
“You do have a feeling for word patterns-I remember.”
“Dard makes pictures out of words.” Dessie answered for him. “Show how, Dardie.”
Under Kimber’s interested eyes Dard sketched out the pattern of a line of verse. The pilot nodded.
“Patterns for words. And that must be how you understood the importance of this. All right. Remember those rolls of some kind of recording tape we found in the first carrier? Rogan believes that they can be read by the help of our machines. You’re going down to the ship right now and tell him to get out that equipment, We didn’t see any use for it yet and it’s been left down there. But I want to know