jellyfish skin to slow themselves down.
For a few seconds, Tyiieye pushed the drawings around, "OK, here's what we're going to do. We are making much bigger balloons than ever before. I'll ride on top of one, then you and the acolytes will be in a basket underneath.
"You want me to go up there?" Cairun looked hard at Tyiieye, trying to decide if this were a joke.
"It's perfectly safe. You'll be under the surface at all times, and you'll have these jellyfish skins. People do mid-water jumps all the time these days. I've tried it, it's really fun!"
"Tyiieye," said Cairun, "your idea of fun, and my idea..." There were shouts of alarm from the far side of the cave. One of the balloons had slipped its’ ropes and tipped sideways. The air came gulping out, rose to the roof and stopped. Workers from all over the cave ran to catch the ropes. Despite being one of the farthest away, Tyiieye was one of the first there.
By the time Cairun reached his friend, the balloon had been pulled right-side down again. "Looks like you lost about half your air," he said. "Will that slow you up much?" Cairun tried not to sound too hopeful.
"Oh, replacing the air won't take that long," answered Tyiieye. He pointed to the pocket of air above them, "The real problem is going to be geting it off the roof."
Cairun stared upward. It looked as if the surface of the sea had been brought down to them. The sight got him thinking. "Could we do something like that to fill one of the smaller caves completely with air?"
"I suppose so," answered Tyiieye, "But why?"
"Well, it seems to me that bringing a small piece of the surface to you in this case would be a lot faster and safer than trying to go to it."
Tyiieye stared at the trapped air, then back down to his drawing, and at last around the busy room. "But, we...I mean, we couldn't just..."
Cairun reached out and took the plans out of Tyiieye's tentacles. "Let’s just try it the easy way first. Even if it works, I'm sure someone else will want to build this air-wagon thing." Cairun wanted to add, 'Unfortunately'.
Barbara made ready for bed slowly. It had been a depressing day. After their trip to SETI, James had all but begged her to drop the whole thing. She had promised to do nothing for at least six months, to give him time to publish, and for their research on dreams to hopefully stand on its’ own. She was not sure though, that she would not end up giving him a lot longer. It would take a lot of courage to stand up to the kind of ridicule that her ideas would bring. Worse than the ridicule was the fear that she just might be dismissed altogether, as just another nut. Dismissed not only in this idea, but in anything she might ever do again. She was not sure she had that kind of courage, she was not even sure she wanted that kind of courage.
Barbara pulled back the cover of her newly-made bed and paused for a moment. The sheets showed an eerie blue in the light from the fish tank. They looked as if they were underwater, too. "Sleep," she whispered. "Even that is not an escape any more, is it Doctor Johnson?" she said aloud. Then she lay down and tried hard to think of more pleasant things.
Barbara dreamed that she was he. Or was it he dreaming that he was she? Barbara laughed in her sleep, and an image of a butterfly danced across her/their dream. This caused Tyiieye some confusion and for a moment contact was lost.
When contact came again Barbara reached out for it, and it became clear almost at once. She/they were in a small cave the top part of which was filled with air, or some kind of gas. She felt as if she was standing on a ledge just over a pool of glowing water which filled most of the rest of the room. It took her time to realize that it was not the water, but the things in it that were glowing.
They were stranger even than the picture that one of the girls had tried to draw. They looked like octopi with large chambered shells and insect-like eyes. Each carried a ball of blue light. There were maybe a dozen such beings in the large pool beneath her. Barbara refused to panic. She knew that she was not in a room of true "air", but she would not let that get to her like Teresa had. If necessary, she would breathe water. Besides, her real body was safe back in her bedroom.
"So what do we do now?" She asked. "Talk, or make hand signals, or tap in Morse code?"
"Yes." Came the reply inside her head, which the teacher side of her noted wasn't quite fitting to the question.
Stopping to think, Barbara realized that the voice she had heard had been her own. "You're totally telepathic then, you can read each others’ thoughts, not just send words back and forth."
"Yes." Came the slow response. They were not quite sure if Barbara realized that her idea of telepathic and theirs were not quite the same thing. Also the concept of being totally telepathic bothered them. It was not quite right.
Barbara had thousands of questions to ask. But one was more important than all the others, "What is it you need from me?"
"You will tell Earth we are here. You will tell them, how do you say it? ‘Hi.’ Then they can help you find more like yourself, and we can grow together."
"They'll put me in a padded cell, that's what they'll do!" Desperately Barbara tried to think of a way out of her growing fear. "Is there anything you can do, or tell me, that will prove that you exist?"
"How does one prove one exists?"
“No," Barbara fought for control of the rapidly deteriorating situation. "I will not go back to freshman philosophy. There has got to be something I can give people to save my credibility."
"You can give them these images," said the voice inside her head. "Surely that will be proof that we are real."
It was too much. These poor beings had no idea of what they were asking. They had no idea how useless such an act on her part would be. Nor how destructive it would be to her just to try.
"No, I can't. I might have been willing to try when you only might have been trying to reach us. But now that I know you've reached me, I can't." Even to her that sounded wrong, but it wasn't.
"I mean, if I tried to tell people that it was just possible that maybe there was something to a group of test subject's dreams that just maybe had something to do with extra terrestrial intelligence? A few just might believe enough to look into it. But if I tell them I've been contacted, and personally asked to say ‘Hi’ to Earth, no
one at all will believe me! Hell, I don't even believe it myself!"
Barbara sat down on a rock hard. She should have been surprised that it hurt a little, but in her worst nightmares she could feel pain, as well as see and hear. This was worse than her worst nightmare come true. She felt not only as if she was betraying these beings, but also the human race. This made her afraid. She was afraid that despite the uselessness of it, despite the hurt it would do her, she still might try. It was a fear every bit as real as any physical threat. And the others felt it too. They were not going to make the same mistake they had made on their first attempt at contact. They broke the link.
In the next instant she awoke in her darkened bedroom, listening to her fish tank bubble softly in its pale blue light. For the first time since Barbara was a broken hearted freshman in love, she turned her head in to her pillow and wept uncontrollably. There seem no end to the injustice of the universe.
Cairun and the others recovered slowly from the contact. It was like nothing they had experienced before. The contact itself had been strong, but the images and fears at the end made no sense at all.
It was time to call in the oldest of the races; The First Speakers. Surely now they would help. Somehow, someone had to explain to them the meaning of all of that fear. Somebody had to know! Didn't they?
The First Speaker of the First Speakers was called Speaker One. Earth might have thought of him as a whale, but for the fact that he had four eyes, two on the top and two on the bottom.
Here there was no land at all and the bottom of the endless sea was far below its surface. Yet
Speaker One's people could breath both water and air.
Speaker One was not surprised to feel the presence of his counterpart and friend. He was told that the members of the Great Wing would be listening. He broadcast his agreement to this.
A moment later, The First Flyer spoke."Earth," he said. "Your forefathers had a very similar problem to the one we have today. It was Us."
There came the watery equivalent to laughter. Speaker One sent images and emotions of the past and present becoming one because they were so a like. His message was also filled with doubt.
"Use words my old friend," said the mind of the ‘The First Flyer’. "There will be other races that will someday want to know what was said here. I think they will be unhappy if we cannot tell them in words."
"Yes, a similar problem," replied Speaker One. "And now you think it is time that we used a similar solution?"
"We do!" was the reply. "I have taken the voice of all the Wings on this, and by far most feel it must be done. If I know you, old friend, you have already heard the sounding of your people. I can tell by the flavor of your voice that they too agree. Is it 'you' that have some doubts?"
The great creature turned on one side to see the image of his winged friend better. This was more in the way of a habit, than a need. "Have you given any thought as to what this will do to the humans?"
"Yes. Many of my people talked