“There is something gravely wrong on this planet,” Drul said. “I have never, in all my experience, come up against anything quite so freakish in a socio-cultural pattern as this one. Perhaps Babla could explain it; I can’t. A seventh level culture coupled with a second-level, savage, personality make-up—frankly, it frightens me.
“Well,” said Cakna, changing the subject, “it’s all well and good theorizing about alien races, but I’m slowly starving to death. Let’s try to get some food out of these things before I start chewing on them!! ”
After attracting the Russians’ attention by waving his tentacles, Cakna tried pointing at the toothed orifice in the middle of his round body to indicate that he wanted food. When it was evident that the Soviets didn’t understand what he meant, he tried using the pictograph vocabulary to convey his meaning. The closest he could get to “eat” with the limited number of words at his disposal was to draw the symbols for “I live,” and “I absorb.” The Russians seemed to understand what he wanted then, and in a little while a wide variety of food and drink was set before the three.
“Are you sure they understood you?” Druit asked Cakna in an incredulous tone as he gazed at the fantastic spread of smoked fishes, caviars, vodka, and sweetmeats. “You don’t suppose they actually eat this garbage, do you?”
“Oh, it’s not as bad as all that,” Drul said as he nibbled testily at a candied pear. “They’re basically hydrocarbon life, as we are. This stuff may not be appetizing, but I think it’s digestible. I suggest we eat what we can, who knows when we’ll be fed again.”
The three aliens picked cautiously at each dish, trying to keep from gagging as they swallowed some particularly obnoxious tidbit. After a few minutes Druit took a sip of the vodka.
“WOW!” he shouted, as he quivered a tentacle. “Mail from home! I guess booze is booze anywhere!”
As he joyfully raised the bottle to his mouth again, Drul stopped him with a quick tentacle.
“Take it easy, Druit; we’ve got to keep our wits about us, save that stuff for later.”
Even as he spoke, the Russians wheeled in a huge, new blackboard, and one of them began to sketch furiously. He drew a large circle which he labeled with the pictograph for “Earth.” Then he sketched a finned cigar, which he evidently meant to portray a spaceship, about two feet from the Earth circle. He labeled the spaceship with the symbol that represented the three aliens. He drew a dotted line from the spaceship to Earth, and then redrew the spaceship, complete with the alien symbol, sitting atop the Earth circle. He chalked an arrow from the aliens’ spaceship to a vacant space on the circle, about six inches to the right. At the point of the arrow he quickly drew another finned cigar, and labeled that one with the symbol for Earthmen. Then he drew a dotted line, which he started at the new “Earthmen” spaceship, and ran it till it went clear off the blackboard. With a great gesture he then lettered the pictographs that meant: “Earthmen, down”; “Aliens, up”; “Earthmen, up.” The last two symbols he circled for emphasis. At that point he stood aside and looked questioningly at the aliens.