I check the LCD screen taped near my bunk. Rocky is in the tunnel tapping on the divider wall.

“Computer! How long was I asleep?”

“Patient was unconscious for ten hours and seventeen minutes.”

“Oh crud!”

I wriggle out of my bedding and bounce up through the ship toward the control room. I carry the burrito and coffee with me because I’m starving.

I bounce into the tunnel. “Sorry! Sorry!”

Rocky taps the divider louder than before now that I’m here. He points to the Popsicle-stick numbers I taped to the divider and then to his clock. He balls one of his hands into a fist.

“I’m sorry!” I clasp my hands together as if praying. I don’t know what else to do. There’s no interplanetary symbol for supplication. I don’t know if he understands, but he unclenches his fist.

Maybe it was a mild admonishment. I mean, he could have made five fists, but he only made one.

Anyway, I kept him waiting over two hours. He’s understandably upset. Hopefully this next trick will make up for it.

I hold up a finger. He returns the gesture.

I grab my duct-taped laptops and launch the waveform-analysis software on one and Excel on the other. I press them against the tunnel wall and secure them there with tape.

I pull the Popsicle-stick numbers off the divider wall. They’re as good a place to start as any. I hold up the “I” and point to it. “One,” I say. “One.”

I point to my mouth, then back to the Eridian number. “One.” Then I point to Rocky.

He points to the “I” and says “♪.”

I pause the waveform analyzer and scroll back a few seconds. “There we go…” Rocky’s word for “one” is just two notes played at the same time. There are a bunch of harmonics and resonances in there, too, but the main frequency peaks are just two notes.

I type “one” into the spreadsheet on the other computer and note the relevant frequencies.

“Okay…” I return to the divider and hold up the “V” symbol. “Two,” I say.

“♪,” he says. Another one-syllable word. The oldest words in a language are usually the shortest.

This time, it’s a chord made of four distinct notes. I enter “two” and record the frequencies for that word.

He starts to get excited. I think he knows what I’m up to and it’s got him happy.

I hold up the “λ” and before I can even speak, he points to it and says, “♫♪.”