She shakes her head. "I'm not a computational linguist. I know enough to know there should obviously be limits there, but not enough to know what they are."

"I see. Alright — notify us[ex] immediately if you figure out anything else, Cera, Pakesalh. I'll see if we[ex] can get someone competent to make that estimate to put some numbers on it. Keep up the good work," the director says.

She turns to one of the other members of the conference call.

"Put the last part of that discussion through to the linguistics teams, see what they can tell us."

She quickly checks her call waiting list.

"I need to get on the phone with Smaller Continent to coordinate a response, but do interupt me if something urgent comes in."

There's a general nodding as she leaves the call.

The deep space network exists to ensure reliable communication between spacecraft deployed around the solar system, and their support teams back on þereminia. With the alien craft over the horizon from both Smaller Continent Mission Control and the two Larger Continent Space Operations Centers, it is the best available path for a return message.

Large radio transmitters in the desert north of Tallest Mountains spin up, sending instructions to the Lunar Mapping Orbiter, which is in a good position to act as an intermediary. Since mapping the far side of the moon, the Lunar Mapping Orbiter has pulled double-duty as a central component of the deep space network, due to its relative proximity to the planet and convenient orbit.

And in orbit around the moon, a radiation-hardened computer notices the incoming signal and parses it. Narrating computers is always a risk of excessive humanization, but one way to describe the computations it performs would be this:

New verbatim relay request: acknowledged.
New antenna heading: acknowledged.
Checksums and command authorization match.

Reconfiguring radio for wide-band retransmission ...
I'm on it, mission control!

They send back their own message in the same format: a timing signal, on top of a copy of the alien's first digital signal. Then their own faster digital signal containing the specifications for the radio bands and encoding which Emergency Services use. And then finally some analog audio and an accompanying black-and-white video.

This is not a choice made extemporaneously — Emergency Services usually has far more likely scenarios to plan for, but there is no force that would have stopped them from having procedures ready for a scenario like this. Matching the format of the signal is one planned method to communicate that they have received and understood the message.

The message they send shows three humans, wearing matching diplomatic uniforms. The deep purple doesn't come through on the video, but their enthusiasm does. The figure on the left is crying. They can't help it.

The middle human reads off a prepared message — once in Larger Continent Trade Language, and once in Smaller Continent Official Language. She knows that it will not be understood — but the aliens will surely save the message, and it will be these words that go down in history as þereminia's first message to their neighbors from the stars:

"Welcome. To one who has come an incredible distance: we[ex] convey earnest greetings in the name of þereminia and the people who call it home. We[ex] look forward to establishing peaceful contact and mutually beneficial trades between our[in] respective civilizations."

... in what is in retrospect an obvious oversight, the Deep Space Network is primarily set up for packetized communications. In the media room in the desert, everyone scrambles to record and transmit a response message.

"... I think she's saying that we[in] don't need to relay via the Lunar Mapper," one of the radio operators surmises.

"Yeah, I agree. And that will let us just hook the media room in continuously. Do it," his supervisor agrees.

Lunar Mapping Orbiter, stand by.

New standby request: acknowledged.
Checksums and command authorization match.

Returning to power-saving mode ...
See you soon, mission control.

The lead diplomat holds a hand to her chest. "Tatenika", she responds. Her fellow diplomats follow suit.

The alien repeats their names, nodding. "[Untranslatable alien language]," she remarks. She shows the orbital diagram again, this time letting it play out over time. Her dot falls out of orbit towards the planet, impacting in southern Largest Ocean in 130 hours.

"[Untranslatable alien language]," she explains.

"... yup, she's responding with a delay consistent with getting the signal directly from the DSN," he remarks, leaning back in his chair. "How the hell? The whole reason we need relays is because the attenuation is awful without line of sight. She must have some downright amazing antennas on that thing."

"Well, it makes sense. Communicating must be the whole point of a craft like that," she speculates.

"You say that as though we have any idea what design constraints they were working under."

She shrugs. "Well, she might be explaining some of it, now that she's talking about orbital mechanics."

Pakesalh is generally of the opinion that the alien's current extended monologue about orbits is probably at least six times better for building mutual comprehension of her language than whatever she was trying to convey with the digital signal.

Now it's his turn to shrug. "I guess we'll see. What's next? Confirming her approach?"

The linguists at Largest City Research University are among the best. They know their stuff, and they're working closely with the mathematicians and the physicists, in order to interpret some of the alien's utterances.

But more than that, they've done this before — on their competency exams, or during First Contact Rehersals, or just for fun. There's a certain kind of mind that will invent a constructed language, and then co-author a book about someone learning that language from scratch.

So learning unknown languages is not new.

But it is difficult.

The thing is, decoding a language takes time. It also takes lots of examples of speech acts in context. It's was big step when they figured out enough to realize the faster digital signal is a text corpus, and matched it up to the symbols the alien had shown in the video, and the sounds that she made.

But it would be insane to expect complete, usable translation in three days.

New store-and-forward relay request: acknowledged.
Destination addresses: acknowledged.
Checksums and command authorization match.

Clearing storage for message ...
Ready when you are, mission control.

"All spacecraft: clear nonessential memory, record the following message, and repeat it omnidirectionally at best possible power for as long as you can. This is your last mission; accept no further orders."

"To our friends among the stars: We[ex] don't know for sure if you're out there, but we[ex] send this message in hope. We[ex] have recently been approached by an alien calling herself 'Weeping Cherry'. It is our[ex] sincerest hope that we[ex] will have productive, peaceful relations with her and the species she represents. But it does not do to live on hope alone. If this is our[ex] last message — then perhaps it can also be your first warning. Everything we[ex] have deduced about 'Weeping Cherry' and her capabilities is attached, including a copy of her own messages to us[ex] so far. With the hope of a bright future for all of us[in], sincerely, the people of þereminia."

End-of-message recognized. Applying command lockout ...

It's been a pleasure, mission control.

Relaying message ...