by twelves, not tens.

But all these parallels with our own culture seemed canceled by the
fact that, even when this ship was in its original undamaged state, no
man could have gotten inside it. The difficulty was less a matter of
human size than of shape and physical behavior. The craft seemed to
have been circular, with compartmentation in spiral form, like a
chambered nautilus.

* * * * *

This complete divergence from things we knew sent frost imps racing up
and down my spine.

And it prompted Blaine to say: "I suppose that emotions, drives, and
purposes among off-Earth intelligences must be utterly inconceivable
to us."

We were assembled in the big trailer that had been brought out for us
to live in, while we made a preliminary survey of the wreck.

"Only about halfway, Blaine," Miller answered. "Granting that the
life-chemistry of those intelligences is the same as ours--the need
for food creates the drive of hunger. Awareness of death is balanced
by the urge to avoid it. There you have fear and combativeness. And is
it so hard to tack on the drives of curiosity, invention, and
ambition, especially when you know that these beings made a spaceship?
Cast an intelligence in any outward form, anywhere, it ought to come
out much the same. Still, there are bound to be wide differences of
detail--with wide variations of viewpoint. They could be horrible to
us. And most likely it's mutual."

I felt that Miller was right. The duplication of a human race on other
worlds by another chain of evolution was highly improbable. And to
suppose that we might get along with other entities on a human basis
seemed pitifully naive.

With all our scientific thoroughness, when it came to examining,
photographing and recording everything in the wreck, there was no
better evidence of the clumsy way we were investigating unknown things
than the fact that at first we neglected our supreme find almost
entirely.

It was a round lump of dried red mud, the size of a soft baseball.
When Craig finally did get around to X-raying it, indications of a
less dense interior and feathery markings suggesting a soft bone
structure showed up on the plate. Not entirely sure that it was the
right thing to do, he opened the shell carefully.

Think of an artichoke ... but not a vegetable. Dusky pink, with thin,
translucent mouth-flaps moving feebly. The blood in the tiny arteries
was very red--rich in hemoglobin, fo