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  “So,” Anderson said, “let’s get a plank long enough to span the hole to make a way across.”

  “Okay,” Cutler said. She glanced at her notes again. She had prepared for this idea. “Where does the plank come from?”

  “How should I know?” Anderson said.

  “The crumbling part of the bridge,” Novakovich said.

  “That makes the hole bigger,” Cutler said.

  “Well, we can’t very well take it from the other end,” Mayweather said.

  She rolled bolts to see if they could dislodge the plank without hurting themselves. They did. She had made this part purposefully easy. Once they set the plank down, she said, “You have a seventy percent chance of making it across.”

  “I’ll go across first,” Anderson said.

  Cutler handed him the cup of bolts. “Anything more than two red bolts and Mr. Doom makes it.”

  Anderson nodded and shook the cup, causing a few nearby diners to glance their way. Then he tipped the cup upside down on the towel.

  One red bolt.

  Mayweather and Novakovich both burst into laughter.

  “Mr. Doom has fallen off the plank and into the water below,” Cutler said, also laughing. She glanced at her notes. “Since he has a strength quotient of five, he survived the fall. Now what are you going to do?”

  “Swim for shore,” Anderson said, not happy with the situation. “And fast.”

  “Roll the bolts to see if Mr. Doom made it,” Cutler said, gathering them up and putting them in the cup. “With a strength quotient of five, Mr. Doom needs a seven or more to make it.”

  Anderson again shook the cup of bolts and tipped it over the towel.

  Three red bolts.

  “A mutated Martian canal trout over fifty feet long has seen Mr. Doom swimming, came up and bit him in half,” Cutler said. “Mr. Doom is dead.”

  “Dead?” Anderson asked. He sounded shocked.

  “Dead,” Cutler said.

  Mayweather and Novakovich almost fell off their chairs with laughter.

  Anderson kept staring at the three red bolts. “That’s not fair. You just wanted Doom out of the game.”

  “No,” Cutler said. “I gave you the odds before you rolled.”

  “But my character can’t die.”

  “She said he could,” Mayweather said, his laughter gone except for that twinkle in his eye. “She said we all could just a few minutes ago.”

  “I thought she was kidding.”

  “I don’t kid about the rules,” Cutler said. “I warned you this was a dangerous mission.”

  “Just like in real life,” Novakovich said. “And I got the pimpled face and sand under my skin to prove it.”

  That sobered them all, and as a group, they looked at the reddish blue planet taunting them outside the windows.

  “Sometimes,” Mayweather said, “the risk is worth it.”

  “Well, the risk isn’t worth it to cross a dang bridge on a planet that’s wrong for a device that’s impossible,” Anderson said.

  “Your character is just as imaginary as the planet and the bridge,” Novakovich said, turning back to the game.

  “Yeah,” Mayweather said. “Unlike life, you can just roll another one. Right, Elizabeth?”

  “Right,” she said. “As long as Mayweather and Novakovich don’t mind.”

  “Do it,” Mayweather said, waving his hand. “But just don’t name him Doom again.”

  “Fine by me as well,” Novakovich said.

  Anderson smiled. “All right, how about Dr. Mean?”

  As all of them laughed as Cutler rounded up the bolts, put them in the cup, and handed it to Anderson. This was working out better than she had hoped.

  “Strength role first,” she said.

  Anderson’s second character, Dr. Mean, had a strength of six, a dexterity of six, a luck of four, a charisma of five, and an intelligence level of four.

  “Dumber than the last one,” Mayweather said.

  “Yeah,” Anderson said, “but I can swim faster.”

  With that laughter, the game returned to the bridge over the Martian canal, and this time, all three of the adventurers made it across just fine.

  FOUR

  Captain’s log.

  For the past half day we have held our position orbiting the planet we are now calling Fazi, for the name of the race of humanoids that inhabits it. To be honest, this waiting is driving me crazy. But at the moment I see no other option. Ensign Hoshi is still not convinced she had a handle on the Fazi language. She’s tried to explain it to me twice, but for the moment I’ll just let the records of her research speak for themselves. But there’s clearly something different about the language.

  The Fazi are at an almost identical point in their development as humanity was when the Vulcans stopped by. The only difference that I can see on the surface is that the Fazi did not have to survive any war. That’s a good thing, although there seems to be no logical reason for the uneven technological development.

  We’ve also done a number of scans of the other civilization inhabiting the small southern continent of the planet. There is clearly some sort of mutual respect, or treaty, between the two races, since there are no Fazi roads or structures at all on the entire continent.

  This other race, which has no sign of any advanced technology beyond basic building of structures, seems to live both on the shore and in the water. We’re going to have to get closer before we get clear pictures of them. T’Pol is warning us away from doing just that with either race. So far I have agreed with her, mostly because of Hoshi’s problems with the language of the Fazi. But I have to be honest, I’m excited about making this first contact. More excited than I have been in some time.

  THE BRIDGE SMELLED OF BEEF STEW AND ARCHER didn’t much care. He’d decided that he wanted to eat lunch right in his chair while studying readouts coming in from the planet scans, so he did just that. Captain’s prerogative. Besides, when things got interesting, he hated taking the time for a meal and he had learned years ago that if he ate and worked, he would at least stay nourished.

  On the big screen in front of him, the Fazi major continent was passing, its greens and reds stark contrasts to the deep blues and white clouds.

  Porthos lay on the floor beside the captain’s chair, sleeping, his leg twitching as he chased something in a dream. Archer wished that he could sleep as soundly as his dog sometimes. But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon, not as long as they held off first contact with this planet.

  Around the bridge everyone worked pretty much in silence. Chief Engineer Charles “Trip” Tucker even had his head stuck under a panel near Hoshi’s station, doing adjustments.

  “I must say, Captain, I am quite surprised that they haven’t seen us up here yet,” Lieutenant Reed said, also staring at the screen.

  He seemed as fascinated by the planet as Archer was, although his fascination was couched in statements like that one instead of overt enthusiasm. T’Pol seemed to handle Reed’s restraint a lot better than Archer’s clear excitement.

  “However,” Reed said, “every bandwidth I check I find nothing mentioning any ship in orbit or referring to a threat from above.”

  “Societies of this level often do not look to their sky for visitors,” T’Pol said. “It is not logical to look when you have no expectation of finding anything.”

  “Doesn’t that assume that they think they’re the center of the universe?” Trip asked from underneath the console. “I mean that’s not a universal constant, is it? I remember reading about some Earth tribe from a couple hundred years ago that had no word for ‘I.’”

  “That’s right,” Hoshi said. “Their language was one of the most fascinating discoveries of its day.”

  “How can you have conversation if you have no word for ‘I’?” Reed asked.

  “It’s unbelievably difficult,” Hoshi said. “Even trying to converse about where you’re standing becomes next to impossible. The anthropologist
s who studied these guys—”

  “I’m sure that’s fascinating and may even be relevant,” Archer said, “but don’t you have enough of a linguistic puzzle without explaining an ancient Earth one?”

  Hoshi grinned at him from her console. “That’s no longer a puzzle, Captain. It’s easier to explain something I understand than something I haven’t yet figured out.”

  “That’s all right,” Archer said, finishing his stew and setting the plate beside the chair. Porthos didn’t even wake up. “I don’t buy T’Pol’s argument anyway. Humans spent a lot of time searching the skies back before the Vulcans arrived.”

  “You searched for bombs from your enemies,” T’Pol said. “And only in low orbits. We are above even that level at the moment. The Fazi would have no reason to see us, other than by chance.”

  “That doesn’t seem quite right to me,” Reed said. “After all, they have the ability to go into space. Why would they assume that no one else does?”

  “Well, no one else on their planet does,” Trip said, taking a different side in the argument.

  Archer smiled. Predictably, Trip’s vacillation distracted T’Pol.

  “I thought you believed that my argument was incorrect,” she said.

  “Never said that.” Trip’s hand appeared in the aisle and groped for another tool, not finding it. “The captain said that.”

  “I didn’t say it was incorrect,” Archer said, suppressing a grin. “I said I didn’t buy it.”

  “Well, I’m beginning to buy it,” Hoshi said. “This society is more structured than anything I could have ever imagined developing. In fact I have no idea why it did, but that’s for later research.”

  “Okay, I missed the connection,” Archer said. “What does being structured have to do with not seeing us?”

  Beside him, Porthos grunted and rolled over. He licked his chops, but his eyes were still closed.

  “Because,” Hoshi said, bending down to hand Trip the tool he’d been groping for, “for them to look for us, it would have to have been planned, carefully, and in great detail.”

  “Now you lost me,” Archer said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Trip said, coming out from under the board and closing up the panel. “How can you plan to look for something you don’t know exists?”

  “Exactly,” Hoshi said as she turned from her panel to face Archer and the rest of the bridge crew. “Every sentence of their language has an exact structure. And the structure dictates meaning of the sentence, sometimes even more than the words. Two words simply inverted can change the entire meaning of a phrase.”

  “Got that much,” Archer said, “but I’m not following why that would mean they wouldn’t see us up here.”

  “There is only one word for anything they do,” Hoshi said, “unlike most Earth languages, which often have two or three or more words for any given act.”

  Archer motioned for her to get on with her idea.

  “Every word the Fazi use has an exact meaning. It seems to me that every single thought of these people is controlled by the structure of their language.”

  “I thought that’s how all languages worked,” Trip said. “We’re always trying to overcome our preconceived notions as expressed in our language.”

  Archer raised an eyebrow. Occasionally Trip dropped his rough-edged Southerner exterior and showed the intelligence that lurked beneath. He usually didn’t realize when he’d done it.

  “Yes and no,” Hoshi said. “Most languages adapt to change quickly—inventing new terms or adopting them from other languages. I’m not even sure this one can do that. The Fazi language structure, from what T’Pol and Reed have discovered, also carries through to every detail in the Fazi world. Right?”

  “It does seem that way,” Reed said. “The roads are uniform. The cities are perfectly laid out, and the patterns of repetition of services are everywhere. Even their broadcasts are exact and very structured.”

  “And in all the broadcasts we’ve listened to, and that we have scanned,” Hoshi said, “we haven’t found one word about art, or one note of music, or one mention of a sport.”

  “How dull,” Reed said.

  “No kidding,” Trip said.

  “You’d think they’d play games,” Archer said. “Games are structured.”

  “But the outcomes are not,” T’Pol said. “My research shows that this culture believes in control and precision. An unexpected outcome violates their sense of structure.”

  “So unless it was planned to look at this exact location in the sky, no one would do so?” Archer asked.

  “That would be my guess,” Hoshi said.

  “Makes Vulcan society look downright free-form,” Trip said, then laughed at the blank stare from T’Pol.

  Archer sat back and stared at the images of the planet rotating past on the screen. “Seems we’re about ready for a first contact.”

  “I would strongly advise against it,” T’Pol said.

  “Why?” Archer asked, glancing back at the Vulcan subcommander.

  “For precisely the reasons we discussed,” T’Pol said. “A first contact might violate their sense of structure.”

  “They’ve got to be able to deal with surprises,” Archer said. “No one’s life can be planned to the nanosecond.”

  “You are making an assumption,” T’Pol said. “We do not have enough information to make such a contact successful.”

  “What more do we need?” Archer asked. “We know they are not threatening or dangerous in any fashion. They are starting to work toward real spaceflight by testing warp engines. And we know they love set structure in their world. It would seem to me that your people didn’t know much more about us.”

  “I’m afraid, Captain,” Hoshi said, “I have to agree with T’Pol. I’m just not secure enough on all the details of the Fazi language to guarantee success.”

  Archer stared at Hoshi, then back at T’Pol.

  “All right,” Archer said, sighing and turning back to sit facing the big screen. “You’ve all got another twenty-four hours and I’ll decide then, if they haven’t already spotted us before then.”

  “Perfect,” Trip said. “I got three different tests I can run.”

  “Just make sure to keep us ready to move if we have to,” Archer said.

  “Oh, trust me,” Trip said as he headed for the lift, “we’re more than ready to move.”

  The sound of licking came from the floor below. Porthos was no longer asleep. He was finishing the stew in Archer’s bowl.

  “Porth—oh, never mind,” Archer said. After all, he’d set the bowl there. As far as Porthos was concerned, anything on the floor with food in it belonged to him. Archer had never disabused him of that notion.

  Archer looked back up at the planet. He wanted to go down there so badly he vibrated with it. However, for the moment, it made more sense to trust his officers and their judgment. But controlling his own excitement about making a first contact with the Fazi was becoming harder and harder.

  He picked up his bowl. Porthos looked at him expectantly. “Come on, boy,” Archer said. “Let’s go for a walk. I think we both need it.”

  As he left the bridge, he glanced at the other officers. All three hovered over their scanning equipment, lost in the search for information.

  FIVE

  THE LAUGHING AND THE BOLTS BANGING ON THE TABLE had either driven the remaining crew members from the mess area or brought them over to watch. Those who did watch wanted to give advice, and Cutler wouldn’t allow it. She did offer them a chance to roll up and sit down, but she insisted that they’d have to start where the ship touched down instead of joining the adventure in progress.

  Everyone declined, and one by one the kibitzers left.

  The planet slowly displayed its colors outside the windows, intriguing in its strangeness. Cutler was used to seeing Earth—the big blue and white mass against the blackness of space—but she wasn’t used to the hints of red, the shape of the continents, the way the
clouds formed over this distinct ball.

  She caught herself looking at it from time to time, remembering that there were other adventures in her life—real adventures, just waiting to be had.

  “Waiting” was the key word. No one had told her that patience would be a virtue in space.

  But the game was helping her, Mayweather, Anderson, and Novakovich kill time. Except for the loss of Anderson’s first character, Mr. Doom, things had gone along smoothly. The players had managed to make it across the bridge and through a crossing in a road that had traps. Novakovich’s player, Rust, had used one hand-grenade-like bomb to clear out a roadblock, and it had worked. Otherwise, all three players still had their full ammunition and weapons.

  “Now you’re approaching the outskirts of the ruined Martian city,” Cutler said, describing the scene that faced them. “The main road in front of you goes between tall buildings, with lots of debris in the street. There is a staircase entrance on the right side of the street that goes down into a subway system.”

  “What about going up?” Anderson asked. He was proving her most inquisitive and competitive player. “Are the buildings connected?”

  Cutler tried not to show her surprise. She had designed the path into the city to have three main routes, underground, surface, and through the connecting bridges between the buildings. But she hadn’t planned on telling the players about the connecting bridges unless they asked. And she hadn’t expected anyone to ask so soon.

  “The buildings are connected by sky bridges in most cases,” Cutler said, “Some of the sky bridges are in need of repair, just as the rest of the buildings in this ruined old city are.”

  The players sat in silence for a moment, all clearly thinking. Novakovich checked his padd as if it gave him answers about where he was going. All it did, of course, was tell him where he’d been. He was the only one who assiduously followed her advice to map their progression. The others had dropped that suggestion in the game’s first real hour.

  Finally Mayweather said, “I vote we stay together and stay on the ground.”