“Uh, thanks,” Jerry said. By the way Dave and Jack looked at him, they thought that was a bigger deal than he did. Well, they were career CIA guys. What if you’re a career alien-relations guy all of a sudden? he asked himself. Yeah, what if?

“How did you think of something so simple and so brilliant?” Dale asked.

“You really wanna know?” Jerry laughed. Then he told him, and the others.

Dale, Jack, and Dave all wore identical Am I really hearing this? expressions. Steve said, “Gentlemen, I’d like to remind you John P. chose Jerry for a reason. Now you see what the reason was, and that it’s a good one. I’ve thought so all along.”

“It worked. Hard to knock stuff that works.” Jack then proceeded to do just that: “But how did it work? Why? You’re not going to tell me Humpty Dumpty understands English?” By the way he stuck out his jaw, he’d get mad fast if Jerry tried telling him that.

“Humpty Dumpty doesn’t understand English,” Dave said decisively, before Jerry could answer. “Paul went out there and said ‘Friend’ at it over and over, and it didn’t open up.”

“When Gandalf did it in The Fellowship of the Ring, he said, ‘Mellon!’ That’s Elvish for ‘friend,’” Jerry said. By the looks on the older men’s faces, they didn’t want to hear about Elvish. Jerry went on anyway: “I don’t think Humpty Dumpty speaks English, either. Or Elvish, for that matter. But when I said ‘Friend,’ I wasn’t just saying it. I was thinking about everything friendship means, and that I wasn’t dangerous to the starship. My guess is, it picked up on that, not on the word itself.”

“A spaceship that does read minds?” Jack rolled his eyes. “Give me a break!”

“Could explain why Jerry got the door to open and Paul didn’t,” Dave observed. “Far as I know, Paul was going through the same motions Jerry did, but without the feeling behind them.”

“Sounds … pretty wild,” Dale said. Jerry guessed he got as much mileage with that as one of the pipe-farm guys did with ten minutes of inspired cussing.

“Maybe it isn’t. We can measure brain waves and stuff,” Jerry said. “If Humpty Dumpty’s sensitive enough and smart enough to do it at a distance and analyze what it means … It wouldn’t be telepathy or anything.”

“It would be about as good, though,” Steve put in.

“Doesn’t seem likely.” Jack thrust out his jaw again and looked stubborn.

“Nothing about this seems likely,” Dave said. “How likely is it that we’ve got a spaceship lying in the moon pool? Based on everything we thought, everything we knew, before the Halibut took those photos, unlikely as hell. But Humpty Dumpty’s there. Likely or not, that’s true. We’ve gotta deal with it.”

“That is a scientific attitude,” Dale said.