The solution certainly was plausible: If fireflies can produce a ninety-five per cent efficient light, and if electric eels can generate a current sufficient to kill a horse, why should not an insect be able to send out and receive radio messages over short distances? If animals can create light and electricity in their bodies, why can they not create radio? Perhaps Doggo could enlighten me.
“Doggo,” wrote I, only I called him by his number, 334-2-18, instead of Doggo, “can ant-men and Cupians communicate in any way other than writing?”
“Of course they can,” he replied. “They use their antennae to talk and to hear.”
Or “to send and to receive”; I don’t know just which way to translate the words which he used, but I caught his meaning.
“In my world,” I wrote, “people send with their mouths, and receive with their ears. Let me show you how.”
So speaking a few words aloud, I wrote on my pad: “That constitutes our kind of sending.”
But he shook his head, for he hadn’t received a single word.
He then sent, and of course this time it was I who failed to receive. But at least we had made a beginning in interplanetary communication, for we had each tried to communicate. Was it not strange that all this time, while I had been accusing the inhabitants of this planet of deafness and dumbness, they had been making the same accusation against me?
At this moment the electric lights went on, and they gave me an inspiration.
Pointing at them, I wrote: “Where are those things made? Is there a department at the university devoted to that subject?”