Destroyer of Worlds by Larry Niven

hyperdrive shunt would activate. If Jeeves decided the crew was acting under duress,
it
would activate the shunt. Either way, the ship would be forever beyond the reach of the Gw’oth.
    The precaution was Eric’s idea, and he had the decency to look embarrassed when he suggested it.

15
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    Despite the motorized exoskeleton of his pressure suit, the trek to the alien ship left Er’o exhausted. A trace of memory from Ol’t’ro condescended about how easy Er’o had it. Early pressure suits had been only garments made from the tough hide of deep-sea creatures, trailing hoses to leather-bag “pumps” kneaded by helpers who remained beneath the ice.
    The echo of memory did not dwell on how many had died in their explorations.
    The alien hatch controls were intuitive enough but above Er’ o’s reach, and he waited for those inside to cycle the access mechanisms. The outer hatch shut and he got his first surprise. Gas, not water, gushed in. The pressure leveled off at a very low value. Without his protective gear, he would burst before he could suffocate.
    Soon enough, the inner hatch opened into a long, dim, curving corridor. Two immense creatures, disturbingly asymmetrical in all but one plane, waited within. They towered over him. Somehow they balanced on two limbs. Loose coverings obscured most of their bodies, which glowed in far-red.
    One of the humans stepped forward. A slit opened and closed in its top/central mass (some sort of sensory pod?). Er’o felt low-pitched, unintelligible sound. With his amplifiers set at maximum, he heard without understanding what the alien was saying.
    Sound rumbled from a device grasped by an alien limb. “Welcome. I am . . .”
    A translation device of some sort. No wonder they spoke so poorly. Er’o knew seven languages and was about to learn an eighth. He wondered why anyone would bother with a translator. The untranslated noise burst, Sigmund, might be a name.
    So: introductions. Er’o modulated his voice to the frequency rangeSigmund had used. The sound would not carry far through water, but it did not need to: A transducer in his suit captured his speech and an external transducer repeated it. If need be, the speech would be routed to his suit radio.
    â€œI am Er’o. Welcome.” For now that exhausted his vocabulary of humanish, so he let the humans’ translator deal with, “Thank you for answering our call.”
    The other, Eric, introduced itself. Together they moved deeper into the ship. Er’o chose a tripedal gait, bearing two tubacle tips aloft, the better to observe ahead and behind. Somehow the humans managed to move on two curiously rigid lower limbs.
    They came to a large interior chamber. At Eric’s self-explanatory upperlimb gesticulation, Er’o climbed onto a four-limbed structure (another untranslatable term, chair) and from there up to the table. The humans folded onto chairs and Er’o did not feel quite so tiny.
    And so it began.
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    BEHIND THE LOCKED DOOR OF HIS CABIN , Baedeker listened over the intercom. He observed via security cameras. Through Jeeves, he monitored life-support sensors for subtle treachery. And he trembled, plucking at his mane.
    The procession finally reached the relax room. Er’o, wearing a transparent, mechanically assistive suit, sprawled across the table. Inexplicable instruments hung from its harness. Eric and Sigmund, seemingly without a care in the universe, took seats on either side of the table, inches from the Gw’o.
    How did they do it? How could they bear it?
    Baedeker permitted himself for the first time to marvel: How did Nessus and the very few like him bear to scout for Hearth?
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    HALF AN HOUR WITH ER’O and Sigmund had begun to feel dim-witted.
    Within a day Er’o could be speaking English like a native. The Gw’o never needed to hear a word or a conjugation more than once. It caught on immediately to grammar