Twenty-five.

And now, little more than twenty.

Perhaps nobody has heard me. Among the captains and other informed parties, that possibility makes itself plain. The assumption is that life is plying its way through that darkness. But really, why is life reasonable? The slow ships could be stupid machines left behind by some lost species. The rivers of ionized water vapor might have natural origins, as do the warm little worlds. What do we know about the dark nebula? Not enough, plainly. And even if there are intelligent species lurking within, what does the evidence show? The neighboring worlds describe a multitude of forms and designs. Perhaps it is exactly that simple. A titanic volume of space and matter has enough room for hundreds of species. But unlike the Great Ship, they aren’t united under a single golden hand. They could be a rabble, happy or otherwise, and for reasons that haven’t yet been imagined, none of these species are able or willing to answer the calls from the hot bright universe beyond.

Without evidence, that idea blossoms.

And then just as the new possibility begins to generate strategies and benefits—just as the experts start to craft a menu of new voices for me, perhaps to be used in one great chorus—the answer finally arrives.

Brief, it is. Compressed, and elegant, and thorough, and in every way, reassuring. The face that first shows itself is smiling. The face seems altogether human. Handsome and male, he is. And the voice is smooth and happy, and warm, the smiling mouth producing a smooth rain of greetings wrapped around the simple and unlikely admission:

“My name is O’Layle. 1 was a passenger on the Great Ship. When things looked very bad for us, I fled.” He pauses long enough to laugh at his own cowardice. “I probably would have died, like most of the scared bats. But I was lucky. One of the polypond scout ships was far from home, and it heard my beacon, and luckily it was able to track me down. It caught me and saved me, and you can imagine how pleased I was.”

This is the first time that a name is heard.

Polypond.

Explaining the name, O’Layle admitted, “I’m not a linguist. But the name seems to do a fair job of capturing what they call themselves.”

The image widens.

The one-time passenger sits lightly in a web-chair. A thousand cues show that the resident gravity is barely ten percent of one gee. “This is my home,” says the lucky man. “As it happens, this is where they’d like you to send a mission. Diplomats. Crew members. Passengers like myself. They want a good fair cross section of humans from every part of the ship.”

A knowing twinkle passes through the man’s pale yellow eyes.

“It’s my fault, I suppose. Their stock in humans, I mean. I explained how we found the ship and won control, and that matters to them. They take great stock in ownership, it seems.”

Again, the eyes twinkle.

Behind O’Layle is his present home. Visual cues and easy conjecture point to a floating structure drifting on the surface of a watery body. Walls are defined by dark ribs and arching panes of some transparent material. The panes aren’t diamond, probably Nor glass. But the refractory properties and the available materials hint at some flavor of plastic, very strong and easily manufactured. There are a few scattered furnishings, and to one side stands a round platform, flat on top except for a few tidy lumps. A bed, in other words. Beyond the farthest walls is open water, reassuringly blue under a high cloud-blotted sky. The horizon is close. The world seems to be Martian in size but considerably less massive—not unlike a ball of water wrapped around a small core of stone and common metals. The atmosphere has to be very deep and warm, and it is lit by an array of circular lights fixed to some kind of ceiling. The human says as much, explaining, “The Blue World has a roof to keep in the heat, to keep in the atmosphere. The daylight is for my sake. Most of the time, this is how things appear …”

With those words, the lights in the sky are quenched.

Moments later, the unseen camera adjusts its eye, and what has been brilliantly bright becomes a different kind of brilliant. The world that was lit from above is now illuminated from below, from just beneath the surface and from realms considerably deeper. The high wet clouds manage to glow with an occasional lick of lightning, and their bellies reflect the glow of the endless sea. But most interesting is the water. What was just visible before becomes obvious now. Objects are moving beneath the surface. Careful eyes make out the hints of fins and tentacles and fleshy appendages with no clear shape. Something vast swims close enough to make the house roll on the sudden waves, and afterward, O’Layle laughs gamely while remarking, “I have many neighbors.”

His own floor is transparent. Probably plastic like the walls, and with darkness above, it turns perfectly clear.

He looks between his bare feet, watching some great shape swim away. Except for a small swatch of fabric around his groin, the human is naked. By every visible measure, he looks healthy. Well fed and rested. He looks like a man near the end of a wonderful long holiday, and with a matching voice, he says, “The polyponds are rather different from us.”

He is happy, but more than one human observer makes the same comment: it is an ageless, enduring happiness. The smile and hearty voice are too steady and certain, if that is possible. The accounts supplied by O’Layle’s old friends, plus the volumes of recorded moments from his various public lives, show a man who has never been so easily blissful, nor as thoroughly satisfied as he seems now.

“Polyponds are very large creatures,” he announces.

Somehow the smile brightens, and he adds. “They are patient and thorough, and from what I gather, they’re very well organized. I know they haven’t shown it, but they heard your broadcasts. They’ve been analyzing them. They’ve shown them to me, inviting my comments. My help. And because their ocean … what you call the Inkwell … is a big place, their response has been slow in coming.”

Again, the happy laugh interrupts the monologue, stealing away some of its slight momentum.

“Polyponds don’t have a Master Captain,” he explains. “Decisions require time and some measure of consensus. But their leaders, their most important voices … they want you to come visit us here. A meeting between emissaries. And as I said, they’d prefer a human entourage. Since our species has control of the ship, we have won the honor.”

A new motion grabs the careful eye.

O’Layle straightens his back for a moment, and with a voice meant to sound casual, he mentions, “They aren’t a genuine species, by the way. Not like we think of species.”

Behind and to the right of O’Layle, something moves. From among the pillows of his large round bed, a figure sits up and gives a lazy, long stretch. With the light coming up from below, the area above the bed is in shadow. A long limb stretches, but details are scarce. But then the sleepy body turns just enough to supply a silhouette, and every human notices the rounded form of a breast and the meaty nipple riding on the tip.

“They aren’t a species,” he repeats, facing the unseen camera. “Not so much as they are all species. Whatever they wish to be, I guess you’d say.”

Again, he says the name.

“Polyponds.”

The alien slides out of the bed. She is long and well proportioned. She is perfectly naked and absolutely unperturbed by her appearance. To the eye, she looks as if she is the end product of a billion years of life on a terran world. And as far as any eye can tell, she is human.