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dictionary; but when I thought I could use it to win an argument with Semyon, I was out of my mind. He came wandering in one afternoon for coffee and found the first pages of a typed report summarizing what we had learned of Essential Cat.
    I tapped him on the shoulder, "It says 'Most Secret' at the top of the page," I reminded him.
    "Eh?" He looked at me absently. "Of course, Logan. Most interesting. I will return it in the morning."
    I stopped him as he was walking out the door and took it away from him. I said gently, "You'll probably get a copy, but not from me. Anyway, you won't enjoy it, because it makes a liar out of you."
    "Oh?" He twinkled at me. "Is difficult, Logan. How often can a maiden be betrayed? And what is this lie?"
    I hesitated, then showed him—after all, he'd already looked at it. "Cat," I said. "Look them over, Semyon. Fifty-eight symbols, that's all. Seven tail movements, three kinds of rictus, twenty-two noises—add them up. Fifty-eight; and you said the animal vocabulary would be larger than the human."
    "I did," he acknowledged. "And I still do. Fifty-eight symbols, but are they fifty-eight words? I think not. Call them phonemes, like the sounds of English. There are forty-some of those, I think? But put them together this way and that, and you have three, four, I do not know how many hundred thousand words." He sighed. "Do you see?"
    Oh, I saw. But I didn't believe him. But if Semyon hadn't convinced me with all of his logic, he had still accomplished something, for he got me interested in the work we were doing.
    Consider the jackdaw. Browsing among the reference materials in our library, while my overworked WAVE programmed like a mad thing, I found that there was a man named Konrad Lorenz who managed to talk Jackdaw back when Hitler ruled Germany. That was interesting. I hadn't thought of birds talking—the sailor's parrot, yes; but "parroting" had become a symbol of empty and uncomprehending making of sounds, and it was rather a surprise to find that Lorenz had managed to speak to jackdaws, to understand their mating terms and their rattling "Hey, rube!" warning call. Lorenz had learned how to call a greylag goose to him: "Rangangang-ang, rangangangang." And the same term in Mallard was: "Quahg, gegegegeg; quahg, gegegegeg!"
    I learned how to say "hello" in Chimpanzee, a sort of coughing "Oo-oo-oo!" And at last I learned what Semyon was talking about, when I discovered how the beaver's slapped tail on the water is colored by context, how the white-tail deer's lifted "flag" can signal either alarm or all-clear.
    But all the same, when he came in and found me in our room, surrounded with ancient texts, I told him: "You're wrong. The animal vocabularies are smaller than ours. They make one word do the work of many—but so do we.
    He sighed. " Khorashaw ," he said. "That is to say, all right, never mind, I agree with you. It is the Russian for 'okay.' Have it your way. It is an argument, you must understand, which can be won by either side, and I do not wish to pursue it further."
    Because he'd lost, of course. It was disappointing to have him give in so easily. I suppose I looked a little irritated, because he said anxiously: "You are not angry, Logan? It is a foolish argument if it angers friends. We shall not be angry, shall we?"
    I looked at him, as friendly and as wistful as his own little dog, and there was only one answer.
    I glanced at the book in my lap and I said: "Hok hug-hug, hag kuag, guaggak."
    He stared at me.
    "That," I explained, "is Gibbon for Khorashaw ."

IV
     
     
    IT WAS black night. The stars were bright outside our window; and the Project Mako alarm bell was ringing General Quarters.
    Semyon snored, sputtered, choked and sat up. I jumped out of my own bed, slammed down the shades, slapped on the light. It was the first GQ I had heard since I left Spruance , but the old habits didn't die. General Quarters meant get to your combat stations now . I was in my pants and on my