They stood there for long minutes and the Bird Folk did just about the same, staring through the wall. They made quick, jerky movements with their two slender arms, moving their long necks sideways and jerking their beak-mouths. It was easy to see them as birds who had replaced wings with arms, but as well, they had a lightness and grace to their gait, an elegance of motion that recalled no creature of Earthly origin. Beth found this enchanting, a sort of dance she had never seen before.

The newcomers did not make any move to open the lock. After a while, Cliff poked a finger at Fred and Irma Michaelson. Irma was one of the recently revived crew, a plant biologist. “Go forward. Make hand gestures about opening the lock.”

The Bird Folk seemed excited when Fred and Irma approached, beaks flapping—but they did not answer the hand signals and gestures. They gawked. They talked to one another. They fingered the various burdens they carried on belts and vests.

Beth watched them closely—the humans were all recording visual and audio, of course—and decided the Bird Folk didn’t wear clothes at all beyond appliance wear like packs and belts. They had long swaths forming colorful patterns all over their bodies, particularly at the neck. Some wore what looked like headsets, or else ornamental hats. The backs of their heads had multicolored coxcombs of astounding profusion. Every one was different, with intricate bursts of color interwoven in rubbery pink combs, some nearly a meter long. They were tall, the biggest maybe 2.5 meters high.

Redwing’s voice said on comm, “Company. About time! Fred, keep me posted.” Fred didn’t answer.

More Bird Folk appeared, came forward, and seemed to talk to the others. Body language: strutting, bowing, fluffing of feathers. Plenty of beak flutter, speaking. Cliff reported, “We’ve got two species—at least two species—call them big and medium. Medium is still bigger than we are. Big defers to medium. Big carries sacks under the neck or on the ramp of its back.”

First contact was turning out to be entirely a spectator event.

They stopped using their beamers on the wall for fear that the Bird Folk would take it as an attack. So everybody stood there and looked.

Beth chuckled. They had come light-years, met an obviously intelligent species—and neither could do much but gawk.

The tension of it finally got to Cliff. “Let’s all go back inside. Maybe that’ll provoke them to do something.”

Beth thought this was a good idea; their suits were running low on reserves of air and power, anyway.

Nothing happened the next day, either. Some Bird Folk came and went, but came no closer to the lock.

The humans made a more elaborate camp: pressure tents, stores of water, microwave stoves. Maybe that would give the aliens some idea of how they lived, Beth thought. With guard duties assigned, someone was always watching the Bird Folk, capturing every move on video.

They all invented theories about why the Bird Folk did nothing—Captain Redwing had half a dozen—but without any way to check them, it seemed futile. So they had meetings and talked to Seeker and tried ideas.

More Bird Folk appeared. They formed loose ranks and stretched beyond view. Over a thousand of them, by Abduss’s camera-count. Irma wondered, “Maybe they don’t have much technology anymore? Or are they just the local animals?”

“They’re carrying things,” Abduss pointed out. “Not just the neck sacks. Those three Bigs are towing … what? Something big, five meters long. Made of metal, looks like.”

More waiting. More Bird Folk.

Cliff, mostly just to break the impasse, suggested they cut through the wall. Even diamond wouldn’t stand up to what they had for tools. Go straight through the outer door of the air lock. Maybe they could find and work interior controls.

There were objections, of course. This was a crucial moment; don’t make any moves that might be taken as aggressive. This view held sway for a full day, until Irma asked just how long they would wait, doing nothing. Until SunSeeker ran out of air? That would be centuries.

Biggest of all, there was the problem of cutting their way in. Nothing had worked before. So a team tried high-intensity gas lasers, tuned to an ultraviolet frequency that the air lock wall totally absorbed. It worked in trial runs, cutting in quickly, blowing off a carbon vapor.

They set up the laser outside the air lock. By now they had an extensive audience of Bird Folk. Beth felt uneasy working under their gaze. They just watched. Were they waiting for something? Certainly their steady stares implied a remarkable calm. Or, she reminded herself, a remarkably alien consciousness.

Redwing wondered on comm if this was some sort of test. Maybe the Bird Folk weren’t interested in strangers who couldn’t figure out how to get in?

They started in the middle of the outer lock door. As they worked, their acoustic detectors on the lock picked up a hissing sound. The Bird Folk were filling it with air! Celebration!

… but the lock did not open. What did this mean? The Bird Folk just looked at them, eyes glittering. Beak-mouths working. Even some odd moves, like dancing.

Pressure in the lock, with vacuum outside, made the job more difficult. Nobody wanted the atmosphere jetting out suddenly. For safety, they built a chamber around where they wanted to cut, to hold the pressure. Then the laser punched all the way through.

Through their first cut they slid a small pipe, just to sample air. Breathable, barely—high in CO2, warm, a bit lower in oxygen, humid and with minor differences from Earth’s. Had the aliens figured out human tolerances? That seemed unlikely. But the molecular ratios fit the measurements SunSeeker had made in its first studies.

“Earth’s oxygen level is as high as it can be without igniting spontaneous fires in summers,” Howard said. “Maybe biospheres generally run up to that limit, then stop—or else they burn themselves back to our levels.”

“Never thought of it that way,” Beth said, her voice hushed. “This place stays warm all the time. Maybe that draws down the optimum oxy level a little.”

They were all in awe of this place, moving quietly, trying to take it all in.

Howard said, “The more I see, the less I know. Some of these plants and animals are clearly evolved from Earth. Some clearly aren’t. Cliff, I think this thing—Bowl—went to Earth and picked up some life-forms. The birds are a maybe. I’d need to see a skeleton. Cliff? Anyone? What do we do next?”

This was clearly the captain’s call, despite a lightspeed gap of four minutes. Redwing dithered; this was far outside his leadership skill set. They all finally got him to realize that they needed an exploratory plan. Some wanted to explore the Cupworld, at least enough to restore Seeker’s depleted stores. But they needed crew with the lander, too. The Bird Folk wouldn’t wait forever … would they?

Cliff won the draw to lead an exploring party through the door they would cut. As pilot, Beth stayed with the shuttle party. The two of them didn’t like this, but they were short of crew, and nobody else had the right mix of skills. Beth grimaced at Cliff, and they made it up to each other that night.

Or at least that was their excuse. Nobody wanted to admit being afraid.

NINE

They started the next morning—not that there were any sunrises here.

Cliff’s team were four men and Irma, all muscular and tall and athletic. Beth and Cliff did not like being more than a few meters from each other, but they overcame that.

They followed Greenwich Meridian morn, of course, because the sun never set on the British Empire and certainly not here; the reddish star always hung in the sky at midafternoon. The star’s jet was a furious neon line scratched across the sky, adding diffuse shadows. The eerie landscape confused their eyes and unsettled the mind.