"But they know we're up here," Mac protested. "They even know the name of our ship!"
"And our language," I added. I wasn't bored any more.
Larson nodded slowly. "What kind of devilish intelligence have we run into? I need time—to think."
The way he said it sent a cold draught down my spine, and then my imagination started catching up to his. At our rate of approach to the star system, how could any living being have had time to sense our presence, pick our brains to learn our ship's name, our language, master our method of communication, contrive a transmitter and get on the air?
The magnitude of the accomplishment sent the importance of our little triumph of space travel tumbling into a cocked limbo of insignificance.
For a moment I considered the old curvature of space concept. Could we have somehow doubled back—completing a mystic circle? Was that old Sol up there burning through our green shield? What a laugh that would be! The mental giants of our times backtracking and circling like a tenderfoot lost in the woods on Lake Minnetonka.
Mac cut off the transmitter reluctantly, but he said, "Yeah, I guess I see what you mean, skipper." Larson got to his feet and paced the crowded wedge of space, punching a fist into his other hand with meaty slaps.
He stopped and listened to the soft muttering of the speaker and shook his head. "It makes no sense. It's impossible. Utterly impossible!"
The man's voice from the planet implacably continued repeating the message—no trace of an accent, nothing to suggest an alien origin in its tone, pitch or enunciation.
Perhaps that's what threw Larson so hard. If there had been the faintest taint of other worldliness about it, I think he'd have hauled stakes and gotten us out of there. But the song of the siren was too powerful—the irresistible mental image of a fellow human out here in the bottom of space was salt in the bleeding wounds of Larson's loneliness.