At first, understanding was slow to develop. "Why does it keep requesting sexual intercourse?", asked Peniakov desperately. "The size difference alone would make it impractical."
"But the larger ones with it might be more suitable", mused Sorensen. Then, snapping back to reality, she added, "I think it's just a figure of speech. It's almost a form of punctuation. And I don't think its name really is 'Large creature with pouch that hops intelligibly on a vidscreen'; for one thing, it's only two syllables before translation. I think 'Paste made of crushed seeds' sounds more likely."
Over a few hours, though, some form of understanding began to emerge. "Definitely a heirarchical social system", said McFee. "These pit slaves [click]" - they had completely failed to translate the odd sound that always appeared at the end of these, and some other, words - "at the bottom - literally - and the Drivers [click] at the top. What I can't figure out is where these three maintainers-of-the-collection- of-names [click] belong in the structure. And Paste-made-of-crushed- seeds says neither can he, which doesn't help much. Still, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like to be one of the pit slaves [click]!"
"I wouldn't like to be anything on this misbegotten dirtball", said Peniakov. As the words left his mouth he turned away from the screen, and so failed to see the strange creature take out a small device and start pressing buttons on it. "Eight species. Eight! Call that an ecology? They say they wiped out the rest. Vandals! Morons!"
From the screen behind him came an ominous reply: "Maintainers-of-the- collection-of-names [click]!"