Bergman's senses were at their most alert.

He let the alien leader see that he was attempting to open a dialogue. Slowly, he raised his arms and set his forearms in a horizontal position - palms upward.

Without directly staring into the leader's chrome eyes he intimated that there would be a demonstration. Then he reversed his right wrist and tapped once on his left palm.

Then, after a momentary pause, twice, three taps, and then up to five.

He had showed them a handful of prime numbers.

The alien leader must have given the female some form of signal but nothing Helena could see - and she was watching closely, for the alien woman stepped forward and waited to see what Victor would do next.

He repeated the sequence. One tap, two, three, and five, just as before. Numbers indivisible, except by themselves and one, the essential fabric of mathematics.

Without delay, the tall, athletic female readied her own hands, and when Bergman repeated the sequence, she accompanied him.

Helena Russell detected with amazement that there was a tiny smile on the woman's face.

Bergman was smiling too, having forged a connection with this alien. She was like him somehow, he was certain.

A scientist. A seeker of knowledge. Kindred. But also colorful. An individual. For even amongst this group of distinct personalities, she stood out.

She practically shone.

Despite the personal connection between human and alien, precious little progress in communication had been forged. True, they could follow the simple math. And true too, they could recognize something within one another and even empathize with it. But words - language, were required to go to the next step.

Helena identified with the alien leader's frustration. She couldn't tell for sure, but he didn't appear to be a patient man.

Koenig wondered about that too.

Did his counterpart also have the wild hope that these intruders in his domain had knowledge that would benefit his companions?

The leader stepped forward, gently pushing the willowy alien woman aside. He spoke in a softer tone to Bergman. It was a string of sibilants, clearly a reassurance.

But then came mixed signals, at least by Koenig's way of thinking. Although the aliens suddenly lowered their weapons, Alpha's commander also saw that the alien woman was no longer smiling, no longer giddy from the pursuit of knowledge. Her eyes had narrowed. Her body was tense. She disapproved of something her leader planned.

"What's happening?" Koenig asserted himself.

It was one thing to deploy Victor for a peaceable communication, but he was getting vibes that the alien leader felt dialogue was moving too slowly. That he wanted to push things - perhaps past the breaking point.

The alien leader raised a long, strong hand to stop Koenig from protesting. Then he touched his palm to his forehead. It was, to the watching Alphans, a seemingly innocuous move.

However, it only increased the alien woman's sense of perturbation.

With considerable strength, she confronted her leader. Her hand lashed out in a positive, unmistakable gesture of dissent. When she grasped the alien leader's arm firmly, half-turning him away from Victor, he cut off her dissent with what sounded like a dismissive howl.

It was a command. No mistake about that.

Back off. Remember your place.

But the woman didn't relent, instead holding her ground with ferocity.

The other aliens watched the woman's behavior in what appeared to be shock. Apparently they were unfamiliar with such a brassy display of individuality.

Or was it insubordination?

The leader moved her aside gently now, and still she showed her intense disapproval, even while accepting his authority.

The confrontation was over, and Helena Russell was intrigued both by her intervention, and the way the alien female held her gaze on Victor Bergman.

Their rapport, though brief - had been memorable to both of them, Helena understood.

Victor and the female had exchanged... what? An appreciation of their situation? An understanding of one another?

Russell's training demanded that she should record minutely and memorize every moment of the Alphans' first contact with the aliens, and now she was microscopically scanning every reaction, trying to understand.

"I don't like this, Victor," Koenig protested again.

He wasn't sure how to interpret the situation, but he couldn't escape the feeling that the woman - an ally? - had been summarily overruled.

"Commander," said Bergman speaking directly to Koenig for the first time since the aliens had slid through the solid fabric of the pods. "Please, I believe there may be an attempt at some form of communication. Let matters take their course."

Koenig signaled reluctant agreement, but Tony didn't like it.

"Don't intervene, Tony," Bergman instructed, "no matter what occurs."

Bergman gave Verdeschi a hard stare and the big security chief shrugged. Yet his stance had subtly altered. The heavy laser-rifle was in a stronger grip. Ready, just in case.

The alien commander pointed to the spot on his own temple immediately below his violet-black hairline where his forefinger had rested. Bergman held his palms out.

He saw the tall woman flinch.

Then the alien leader swiftly reached out and touched Victor Bergman on the exact spot he had touched on his own head.

Bergman felt a dazzling charge at the moment of the light touch.

Radiant energy swirled about him and a kaleidoscope of shapes suffused his mind. Fragments of conversation hammered about him, and strange imagery began to shout out for cognitive interpretation.

It was not an unpleasant experience, but it was also terribly intimate, even invasive. Victor felt like a man encountering, for the first time, a wholly new level of understanding. But he also felt remarkably exposed.

Vulnerable.

Another mind was peering inside of him, upending his memories and feelings, rifling through them, even as the professor was gathering knowledge about the alien leader and his world.

No. You go too far, Bergman's mind protested at the violation.

The alien leader had touched his soul in a place no other person had witnessed. A tender spot.

An open wound clotted over a word. A female name.

Dorothy.

But then Victor opened up to the mental images again and witnessed a world of incredible beauty and prosperity. Flashes at first then moving images - like movies behind his eyes.

He turned to the Alphans, dizzy.

A smile graced his kindly features. But then it soured, and Victor's eyes and mouth seemed to freeze in an expression of pain.

He wanted to share with them his sudden understanding of the aliens, his new knowledge, but found that he no longer had command over his senses. There was no strength in his muscles, no power at all left in his body.

"Victor!" Helena cried.

Victor felt himself crumpling slowly, and then a tidal wave of new and all-together alien imagery crashed over his consciousness.

He folded, feeling as though he had been subsumed inside the identity of another person.

An alien. With a story to tell.

Victor fell.