"I feel like my nose is filled with cement," I said.

"Okay. Let's go in, then." He extended a tendril to the door. At his touch, it opened inward.

Two things struck me immediately as we stepped through. The first was that the Yherajk tradition of visual monotony continued unabated — the room consisted of an unadorned dome over a large circular floor that sloped downward to where a small central dais jutted up modestly, itself unadorned. On the floor, large clumps of Yherajk assembled here and there, pretty much like humans do before a meeting gets down to business.

The second thing was that even through my nose plugs, the smell of the room slammed into me like a rocket in the chest. It was as if someone had fermented an entire horse stable. It was unbelievably strong. I leaned back against the wall.

"You all right?" Gwedif asked.

"I think I'm getting a buzz from the smell," I said. "And not in a good way."

"It's because everyone's talking at the moment. It'll get better when we start the meeting and everyone shuts up," he said. "For now, just take deep breaths."

In the middle distance, a Yherajk broke from the clump and approached us. It briefly touched Gwedif — I was beginning to think this was their way of greeting or saluting each other — and then extended a tendril at me. I looked at Gwedif.

"Carl, this is Uake," Gwedif said. "Uake is theIonar's ientcio — our leader in both ship's operations and social interactions. A captain and a priest. He welcomes you and hopes that you have had an interesting visit so far. He'd like to shake your hand."

I extended my hand, let Uake's tentacle envelop it, and shook. "Thank you, ientcio. It has been a very interesting visit, and I thank you for allowing me the honor to make the visit to begin with." I directed my comments directly to Uake, assuming Gwedif would translate, without prompting.

He did. "I've passed the message on and added my own comment that we should start the meeting soon, before you pass out from the fumes. To you, Uake says that the honor is ours, that you would visit. To me, he says that if we will accompany him to the dais, we will begin the meeting and get the rabble under control. Shall we?"

Uake, Gwedif and I walked through the crowd to the dais. As we arrived, three Yherajk also arrived, carrying a block of something, and set it on the dais.

"I thought you might like to have something to sit on," Gwedif said. "We don't have any chairs, but this should work just as well." I thanked him and took my seat. Uake took up a position on the far side of the dais from me, and Gwedif sat between us.

Some signal scent must have gone up, because the Yherajk on the floor broke up their clumps and encircled the dais, forming concentric rings. The room became noticeably less smelly; everyone must have shut up.

"The ientcio is about to begin his speech," Gwedif said. "He has asked me once again to translate for him so that you will understand what is being said. The translation will not be exact, I'm afraid — Uake will be using a lot of High Speech, which we use to quickly pass along large amounts of information. But I'll be able to give you the gist of it. If you have any questions, let me know — our talking isn't going to disturb the speech." He fell silent for a few minutes and then started speaking again, starting and stopping as Uake made his statements.

"The ientcio welcomes all to the meeting, with the hope that this moment of our journey finds them all well and at peace with themselves. He asks us all to look back on that moment, over seventy years ago now — your years — when the first faint signals of intelligence from this world were picked up by our scientific arrays, and the confusion, turmoil, joy and fear that those signals, first sound, then picture, brought to our race.

"He asks us also to remember the day when this ship began its journey to this place, our people's emissary to a people so strange and unlike ourselves. The ship was to serve two purposes: to learn about those people, to find if they could be communicated with; and if they could, then to make contact, with the hope of joining our two peoples in friendship and comity.

"The ientcio now recounts the difficulties of the journey — its length, both in distance and time, a number of accidents that diminished the number of the crew and caused damage to the ship, and the mutiny attempt that resulted in the soul death of Echwar, our first ientcio, and the loss of a tenth of the crew. This recounting is made to remind us even in this moment of happiness that we must not lose sight of all that this journey has required of us.

"Now, the ientcio says, our journey comes to the cusp, in which we learn if our efforts form a memory epic for all Yherajk, to be told to the days when our race is old and the stars red with age, or if they disappear into darkness. We have made contact with one of the humans, one who we believe will be wise, and whose actions will determine our path. It is difficult to assign our fates to the will of one who is not one of us, but that is the way of such encounters as these — though we prepare for the moment, the moment itself is not a thing we can control."

Tom, I was dumbfounded by what I was hearing. These creatures had traveled across the stars, over unimaginable distances. And if what I was hearing was correct, the success or failure of their trip was being placed into my hands. It was a burden that I didn't want or even frankly that I understood. I asked Gwedif if what I was comprehending correctly what was being said.

"Oh, yes," Gwedif said. "your actions in this meeting will determine what happens to us and to our journey. It's something that we've known for a long time, and something that is characteristic of the Yherajk — the surrender of control in the hope that the moment germinates into something greater. This is that moment."

"Wait a minute," I said, becoming angry. "I didn't come up here to play God for you. You're asking me to do something I don't know that I can do. I don't even know what it is that you want me to do, much less if I can do it. I feel like I've been tricked."

Gwedif sprouted a tentacle and placed it on my hand. "Carl," he said, "you're not being asked to play God. Your part is about to be explained. If you refuse it, then we go back home, and our people plan a new way to try to contact your people. That's all. We're not going to launch our ship into the sun if we fail — the drama you hear is part of the formal nature of High Speech. You've been around me enough to know we don't usually talk like that. But we do need your perspective on this. You know your people like we could never know them. We need to see through you whether we can make contact with humans here and now. Do you understand a little better now?"

I nodded.

"All right," Gwedif said. "The ientcio is speaking to you now. He formally welcomes you to the Ionar, wishes you happiness at this moment in your journey, and presents to you the host of the ship, the crew of the Ionar, and hopes that you will acknowledge them thusly."

"How do I do that?" I asked.

"Got me," Gwedif said. "No human's ever done it before. Try waving, and I'll wing the speechifying."

I stood and waved. Two thousand Yherajk sprouted tentacles and waved back.

"I have said that you acknowledge the host of the ship and wish them happiness at this moment of the journey," Gwedif said. "It's more or less the correct response and doesn't commit you to anything further. Was that all right?"

"Yes," I said, sitting back down.

"Good," Gwedif said. "Uake is now speaking to you about the journey, and what we have learned of your people through your radio and television transmissions. What he's saying is completely untranslatable due to the complexity of the High Speech structures he is using, but the upshot of it is that while your transmissions point to a rich and fascinating culture, we also have found them contradictory and confusing at the same time. There is no structure to your planet's transmissions into space."