Arcturan n. 2

‘The Arties who picked me up after I grounded near the camp jabbered a lot while they brought me in. I was too dazed to try to run for it at first, and when I did I got this.’ He fingered the discolored onion protruding from his skull. ‘But before that some of the things they said came through. Arcturian was basic training in the Squadron, you know, and it’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it.’

‘I did not expect you,’ he said, choosing to speak Kleweski's language despite the sessions the engineer had put in to learn Arcturan by means of hypno-records. [Ibid. 73/2] He considered the mechanism. His knowledge of written Arcturan was nonexistent, but there seemed to be an automatic calling key. He depressed it and waited. [Ibid. 76/2] ‘That's fine!’ growled Kleweski, wondering in passing if the Arcturan translation would still be sarcastic.

The Arcturian took it, and crossed the room to Hanson, spitting Arcturian expletives at the amazingly rapid rate his race used when excited, his bland, unhuman face tight, round eyes flat with anger.

Science-fiction writers carry this farther than most: there are very few that have not at least once constructed an extensive glossary of an ‘alien’ language, (If a story contains five words of Arcturan, you may be assured that a lexicography of 50 or 500 more was on a wall chart or in a notebook at the author’s left hand as he worked.)

How do you say hello in Arcturian?

It’s a long-established human set-up, whose name comes form the Old Arcturean quickspeak for “Family Organization”—because they like to affect a patriarchal system and because they demand the same absolute loyalty and devotion that one would show to close kinfolk.

One human, an assistant postmaster in Asia, wrote him back immediately, asking what life was like on Arcturus, and whether he had a family waiting for him; and another—a prime minister of an African nation, in fact—wrote back just as quickly to ask for his autograph (‘with your name written in Arcturian for my daughter, if this is not an imposition’) on a photograph of the Terran night sky with Arcturus shining brightly, ‘star of joy’ that it was.