"I wonder how we look to them," Paul Meillard said.

That was something to wonder about, too. The differences between
one and another of the Terrans must puzzle them. Paul Meillard, as
close to being a pure Negro as anybody in the Seventh Century of
the Atomic Era was to being pure anything. Lillian Ransby, almost
ash-blond. Major Gofredo, barely over the minimum Service height
requirement; his name was Old Terran Spanish, but his ancestry
must have been Polynesian, Amerind and Mongolian. Karl Dorver,
the sociographer, six feet six, with red hair. Bennet Fayon,
the biologist and physiologist, plump, pink-faced and balding.
Willi Schallenmacher, with a bushy black beard....

They didn't have any ears, he noticed, and then he was taking stock
of the things they wore and carried. Belts, with pouches, and knives
with flat bronze blades and riveted handles. Three of the delegation
had small flutes hung by cords around their necks, and a fourth had
a reed Pan-pipe. No shields, and no swords; that was good. Swords
and shields mean organized warfare, possibly a warrior-caste. This
crowd weren't warriors. The spearmen and bowmen weren't arrayed for
battle, but for a drive-hunt, with the bows behind the spears to
stop anything that broke through the line.

"All right; let's go meet them." The querulous, uncertain note was
gone from Meillard's voice; he knew what to do and how to do it.

* * * * *

Gofredo called to the Marines to stand fast. Then they were
advancing to meet the natives, and when they were twenty feet apart,
both groups halted. The horn stopped blowing. The one in the yellow
robe lifted his staff and said something that sounded like,
"_Tweedle-eedle-oodly-eenk_."

The horn, he saw, was made of strips of leather, wound spirally
and coated with some kind of varnish. Everything these people had
was carefully and finely made. An old culture, but a static one.
Probably tradition-bound as all get-out.

Meillard was raising his hands; solemnly he addressed the natives:

"'Twas brillig and the slithy toves were whooping it up in the
Malemute Saloon, and the kid that handled the music box did gyre
and gimble in the wabe, and back of the bar in a solo game all
mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgabe the lady
that's known as Lou."

That was supposed to show them that we, too, have a spoken language,
to prove that their language and ours were mutually incomprehensible,
a