The darmat responded with three words. Keith couldn't quite tell for sure, but — "Got it!" crowed Rissa. "Those were the same three words Cat's Eye said before, but in the opposite order. He understands what we're saying — and therefore has at least a rudimentary intelligence."

Rissa ran the sequence again, and this time PHANTOM substituted the English words "three, two, one," in a synthesized male voice with an old-fashioned French accent — apparently that was to be the standard for darmats.

The bridge staff was rapt as Rissa pressed on, learning the Darmat words for the numerals four through one hundred.

Neither she nor PHANTOM could detect any kind of repeating pattern in the word construction that would allow one to deduce the base the darmats used for counting; it seemed that each numeral was represented by a word unrelated to all the others. She stopped at one hundred, afraid the darmat would get bored by the game and cease communicating with her at all.

Next came exercises in simple math: two blinks, a six-second pause — double the normal length — two more blinks, another six-second pause, and then four blinks.

Cat's Eye dutifully provided the words two, two, and four each of the first five times Rissa repeated the sequence, but on the sixth, it finally caught the intended meaning of the prolonged gaps: a six-second gap meant a word was missing in the middle. PHANTOM didn't wait for Rissa's confirmation; when Cat's Eye next spoke, it translated the darmat sentence as "two plus two equals four" — adding the terms for the two operators to the translation database. In short order, Rissa also elicited the darmat words for "minus,"

"multiplied by,"

"divided by," "greater than," and "less

"I think," said Rissa, grinning from ear to ear, "that there's no doubt that we're dealing with highly intelligent beings."

Keith shook his head in wonder as Rissa continued to use mathematics to work out more vocabulary. She soon had the darmat terms for "correct" and "incorrect" (or "yes" and "no") — which she hoped would also be their terms for "right" and "wrong" in other areas. She then had Rhombus move the probe in specific ways (carefully avoiding splashing the darmat with hot ACS exhaust), and that led to the darmat words for "up," "down," "left," "right,"

"in front," "behind,"

"receding," "approaching," "turning," "tumbling," "circling," "fast,"

"slow," and more.

By moving the probe in a path right around Cat's Eye, Rissa was able to get the darmat word for "orbit," and soon had picked up the words for "star,"

"planet," and "moon," as well.

By using colored filters on the probe's fusion lamps, Rissa then elicited the darmat words for various hues. She next broadcast her first simple original sentence, beginning with the arbitrary sign they'd originally assigned to the probe that was Starplex's mouthpiece: "Starplex moves toward green star." Rissa then had Rhombus make the probe do precisely that.

Cat's Eye understood at once, responding with the word for "correct."

He then sent his own sentence: "Cat's Eye moves away from Starplex," then turned word into deed.

Rissa replied with "correct."

When alpha shift was over, Keith went back to his apartment to shower and eat, but Rissa kept on long into ship's night, building up a bigger and bigger vocabulary.

Never once did Cat's Eye show the slightest sign of impatience or fatigue. By the time gamma shift was coming on duty, Rissa herself was exhausted, and she turned the translation duties over to Hek. They worked for four days — sixteen shifts — slowly building up a darmat vocabulary.

Cat's Eye never let his attention falter. Finally, Rissa said, they could engage in a simple conversation. Keith, as director, would vet the questions, but Rissa would actually pose them.

"Ask him how long he's been here," said Keith.

Rissa leaned into the microphone stalk emerging from her console.

"How long have you been here?"

The answer came quickly: "Since the time we started talking, times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred."

PHANTOM's voice came on, interpolating: "That is approximately four trillion days, or roughly ten billion years." "Of course," said Rissa, "he could be speaking figuratively — just meaning to convey a very long time."

"Ten billion years," said Jag, "is, however, a rough approximation of the age of the universe."

"Well, if you were ten billion years old, I suppose you'd have a lot of patience, too," said Thor, chuckling.

"Maybe ask him a different way," suggested Lianne.

"Is that how long all of you have been here?" said Rissa into the mike.

"This group that duration," said the translated voice.

"This one, duration since the time we started talking, times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred times fifty."

"That translates to approximately five hundred thousand years," said PHANTOM.

"Perhaps he's saying this group of darmats is ten billion years old," said Rissa, "but he's only half a million himself."

"'Only,'" said Lianne.

"Now tell him how old we are," said Keith.

"You mean Starplex's age?" asked Rissa. "Or the age of the Commonwealth? Or the age of our species?"

"We're comparing civilizations, I guess," said Keith. "So the comparisons would be the oldest Commonwealth race."

He looked at his little hologram of Rhombus. "That's the Ibs, who have existed in their current species form for about a million years, right?"

Rhombus's web rippled in agreement.

Rissa nodded and keyed her mike. "We duration since the time we started talking times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred times one hundred. This one duration since the time we started talking times one hundred plus one hundred." She touched the off switch. "I told him that as a civilization, we're a million years old, but Starplex itself is just two years old."

Cat's Eye replied by reiterating the number for its own personal age, followed by the word for minus, then repeating the equation for Starplex's tiny age, adding the word for "equals," and then reiterating the same sequence it had used to express its own age. "Very loosely," said Rissa, "I think he's saying that our age is nothing compared to his."

"Well, he's right about that," said Keith, laughing. "I wonder what it would feel like to be that old?"

Keith rarely entered any of the ship's Ibese areas. Gravity was kept at 1.41 times Earth normal there (and 1.72 times ship's standard); Keith felt as though he weighed 115 kilograms, instead of his usual 82.

He could stand it for short periods of time, but it wasn't pleasant.

The corridors here were much wider than elsewhere aboard Starplex, and the interdeck areas were thicker, making for lower ceilings. Keith didn't have to stoop, but he found himself doing so anyway. The air was warm and dry.

Keith came to the room he was looking for, its door marked with a matrix of yellow lights forming a rectangular shape with a small cimle just below the rectangle's base at each end. Keith had never seen a train with wheels, except in a museum, but the pictogram did indeed look like a boxcar.

Keith spoke into the air. "Let her know I'm here, please, PHANTOM."

PHANTOM chirped acknowledgment, and a moment later, presumably having received Boxcar's permission, the door slid aside.

Ib living quarters were unusual by human standards. At first, they seemed luxuriously big — the room Keith had entered measured eight by ten meters. But then one realized that they were actually the same size as every other apartment aboard ship, but weren't divided into separate sleeping, living, and bathing areas. There were no chairs or couches, of course. Nor was there any carpeting; the floor was covered with a hard robber material. On their home-world, in preindustrial times, Ibs built mounds of earth just wide enough so that they would fit between their wheels — so that the frame and the other components could be supported when the wheels temporarily separated from the body.