Cuckoo's Egg Read online

  * * *

  There was quiet in the room. Technicians stood about the walls, hatani, tanunin and kosanin. "Sit by me," Thorn said, and Duun settled down in the seat beside him. Thorn hesitated over the keys, checked this and that.

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  He spoke, quietly, steadily into the microphone and it went out, starting the long journey messages would take each day. Minutes to the earth and hours to Gatog Two and Dothog; nine years to another star. Duun's skin tightened. He had heard that voice, speaking that language, for two years before they silenced it the first time; doubtless others had the same reaction. It would create new panic on earth, in the station. Perhaps Nonnent would hear it in their lonely journey, if they had waited to hear it, and know that they had won.

  There was a translation. Thorn read that out, which was only for their solar system. ("I'll have to keep working with the tapes," Thorn had said, for there were the originals at Gatog: there were written documents. They had a vast library of them here; and other tapes. Thorn dreaded it; Duun knew how much. Thorn had heard that voice too, twin of his own, in its rage and agony. But the computers built more and more complex fields. They had certainty on some words. They had broken the alphabet. They worked out the phonics and that study branched and multiplied, on a strange story of strange people a hatani had learned to read.)

  "The message is," Thorn said: "I am Haras. One. Two. Three. I am Haras.

  Star G. Oxygen. Carbon. I am Haras. I hear you. The world is the earth.

  The star is the sun. I am a man. Hello."

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  Cuckoo's Egg

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