The door opened, and the captain Igor entered the small interrogation room only furnished with a table and a chair. Close to the opposite wall, stand piteously the fallen mutineer who did not dare to look up.

Igor quietly sat and said, 'I knew it was likely that the Senate had placed a mole on the mission.' He banged on the table. 'But it had to be my own brother in arms!' He paused. 'We ate each other's arms; don't you remember?'

'I despise you, Grishka. You're a disgrace. I would have you drowned, quartered and eaten, if it was not for the Senate who somehow still protects you. Never mind, they'll dump you once I show them the evidence that you are a terrible assassin. You should have guessed that as the Security Chief Officer, I had access to all the video camera recordings, even the one the captain asked me to install personally in his rooms. That was plain stupid from you.'

The insults met a wall of disdain, so he kept on.

'Grishka, I wish to emphasize that you are nevertheless very lucky. Because I have not come here to announce that I have found a way to dispose of you. Instead, I have to endure the additional shame of asking you a favour. We need you to communicate with the aliens.'

The prisoner's face, which was so far hardly recognisable, regained some composure and lifted up to stare piercingly at his brother. From his chair, Igor felt that the standing position, which was meant to be humiliating, was now giving him a vantage point.

So, before he could open his mouth, Igor pressed on to show he was still the boss, 'Don't even think of coming back. And keep your mouth shut or I'll peel off a centimetre of your trunk plate for each misplaced comment.'

Grishka nodded coldly but not quickly enough to the taste of Igor. He received a vicious kick in the trunk.

'And that's what I'll do in case of ambiguous behaviour.'

Lying on the floor, eyes bulging, he managed to wave a sign of submission.

'Good. Now you'll follow me to the communication room where we have installed your machine. And you will do as I say.'

The same gesture ensued.

A few moments later, in another more comfortable chair, the captain officially launched the ceremony: 'Start with identifying their leader.'

'As you wish, dear brother.'

After many years of unidirectional communication between humanity and Centaurians, the knowledge accumulated by the chief information officer during his imprisonment was finally becoming of use. The linguistic scientist closed his eyes, faking the intense concentration required for designing a critical message that he had in fact dreamed of every night for over a century. He carefully typed the human letters on the interface especially built for the occasion. The machine processed the letters and sent across space the message to the humans.

'WHO EAT MORE ROBOT?'

***

'What the fuck?!?!!?' was the disruptive effect it produced on Adam, who heard the transmission while under the shower. While Adam continuously flooded the intercom with a series of half sentences alternating between exclamation and question marks, Eve, who was already working at the lab, rolled her eyes.

She considered that as just another item on her to-do list, and proceeded to convince Adam that it was indeed so.

'Calm down. We don't what they meant. It may take time to adjust. Let's answer in a constructive way.'

She instructed the ship to answer: 'NO ONE EATS ROBOTS.'

***

On the Centaurian ship, the communication specialist was at odd.

'Weird. It seems that we are facing an egalitarian society, which is a hypothetical form of organisation that few scholars theorised upon, but that many dreaded silently.'

'Avoid the subject then,' came the order of his captain who was not sure whether he better understood his brother or the aliens.

Grishka executed and sent: 'IS YOU DANGER?'

***

Eve sighed. 'Did he mean that we are in danger or that we are the danger?'

Adam, who had joined her in the lab, shrugged. 'I have no clue, but we might just say that.'

And he typed: 'NO UNDERSTAND. WE NEED HELP.'

Eve commented, 'I was thinking you rather needed clothes.'

Adam shrugged again, definitely not in the mood for any kind of small talk.

***

Grishka, who had already gained enough confidence to talk without his captain asking him to, commented casually, 'I don't understand their last sentences but I'll say something that tell them just that.' With a smile, he added, 'Look at how the mathematics can be useful.'

'1+1=3. How kill humans?'

Igor nodded at the math formula, but eyed his brother suspiciously for the second part.

***

Adam grinned, 'I told you, they understood the message "I don't understand.". We should confirm that acquired knowledge.'

'(1+1=3) = NO UNDERSTAND.'

And almost as an afterthought, he asked the ship to add: 'NO ONE WANTS TO KILL HUMANS.'

'Ah,' said an irritated Eve, 'finally a concrete and useful message. Thanks for asking me.'

***

'We make progress,' started Grishka again.

'HELP = NO UNDERSTAND. HELP = WE KILL HUMANS?'

He shared a broad smile with his brother, while waiting for the answer. The interface soon displayed it : 'NO! NO!'

'Ah, they disagree,' let escaped the captain.

Grishka was in his own thoughts. 'Twice an inversion. That might be a stronger form of inversion, but since they understand math it's more likely to be a yes.'

'Meaning?' asked Igor.

'They probably want us to help them to remove their internal lower life form. It may be a parasite. Though we can't rule out a symbiot. You see, maybe the carbon-based life inside is delivering some kind of useful compensation to the worthy life form encasing it.'

'We need to study that!'' shouted Igor standing up. And relieved to have a legitimate opportunity to ask for some help in understanding his own brother, he ordered his aid of camp: 'We need more than a communication expert. Bring me the exobiologist!'