Tinat spent the period of time that the pink native was gone poking at the computer's translation algorithm, at one point taking direct control of one of the mobile probes to seek some hint as to how the natives measured the passage of time. The words "hour," "minute" and "second" had come up, but their meanings seemed vague and inconsistent to the computer, beyond some idea that the first unit was longer than the other two.
When he finally identified a native timepiece, it turned out to be something he couldn't possibly have imagined. On Konsor the first clock had measured time by the flow of liquid methane, filling up a column full of stacked chambers that corresponded to their units of time. Ever since, every clock made on Konsor showed either a column filling up as the day progressed or a gauge rising from a low marking to a high marking, even after digital displays allowed electronics to replace mechanical devices.
But the natives- the ponies- used neither columns nor limited gauges. Their timepieces displayed two or three arms on a dial, and the arms didn't rise and fall- they cycled, around and around, and surprisingly quickly at that.
In retrospect, that could have been predicted. Konsor was a moon of a gas giant, far out in its solar system. The dim light of the distant primary, reflections from the giant planet nearby, and an atmosphere that experienced only fleeting moments without thick cloud or haze all added up to the sundance being the longest period of time his primitive ancestors had had. (The period between times when the primary and the gas giant were on opposite sides of Konsor was one sundance.) Each sundance was divided up into twelve works, corresponding roughly to work-sleep cycles of autrenkt such as himself. Logically, each work was divided into twelve hours, which in turn were divided into twelve minutes, and thence to twelve seconds.
This planet (Tinat was toying with either Hotworld or Crazyplanet for names) was a planet, not a moon, and it had a large, apparently lifeless moon of its own. There were clear and roughly equal periods of blinding light and comparative darkness (which was still about a quarter as bright as the most clear day on his homeworld). Most of the natives were active in the day and slept at night, so they called their work a day. They divided up day and night each into twelve hours (which made no sense, they used base 10 numerals and not base 12 as his people did, so where did that come from?). And then, for some reason, each hour got divided into sixty minutes, which in turn were divided into sixty seconds.
Sixty? That meant it took about sixty-seven pony seconds to make up one autrenkt- one Konsorian- second. Who besides a scientist or engineer needed such tiny measurements of time? Tinat couldn't understand it. Maybe it was part of the equally insane metabolisms of the locals, which had to deal with the hellish temperatures.
All in all, fascinating and confusing, but the computer got to the important point: what Tinat called an hour was as long as two and two-thirds of the units the pink one called "hours".
And, in fact, only about half of one of the native hours had passed before the pink one returned at full gallop through the camouflage projections, this time wearing some sort of carrying bags on either side of her torso. "Back I!" called the cheerful, shrill voice the translation algorithm chose to give her. "Brought things you for I!"
Tinat winced, resisting the urge to rub his resonator. The native was right; the translation algorithm really needed tweaking when it came to word order. He didn't want to even think about how he sounded to her. (Assuming it was a her; he was mainly taking the computer's word for it, and Acc help him if he caused offense because that was wrong.)
She ducked her head into one of the bags and brought out an object with her teeth. It was clearly a book, but obviously not a book printed on polymon. (Good thing, too; the pages would probably stick together in the heat, if they didn't spontaneously combust in the oxygen.) Whatever it was, the pages were white. "Book of pony-talk this is," she said as she transferred the book from her mouth to one hoof, where she balanced it effortlessly. "Does use this teach to young Cheery."
Ah! A textbook! And if Tinat had interpreted the translator gabble correctly, a primer! The computer had been scanning whatever signs and visible writing the probes could find, but it hadn't a clue as to what symbols lined up with what sounds, if the natives used phonetic alphabets at all. But between that book and the excessively friendly native, that problem could be solved!
The pink one stepped forward and tapped the book on the glass. There was a brief resonance through the glass which the computer declared untranslatable, followed by, "Put inside this you how?"
The last thing Tinat wanted was that book in his ship. The cold temperatures and thick methane atmosphere would probably destroy it. "Open the book to the first page," he said. "I will send a little machine out to look at it for me."
The native complied, and she cooed in wide-eyed wonder as one of his probes buzzed over to begin taking images of the pages. Tinat had to ask several times that she hold her questions for later before the first page got turned, but after that the book was quickly scanned into the computer. (The book had only about a hundred and twenty pages, with large pictures and not all that much actual text, as you'd expect of a book for fairly young students.)
Once the last page was scanned, he entered a few commands to the computer. "Thank you," he said. "Now I need one more favor." The computer pointed out the page with the most complete combination of letter combinations. "Please turn to page thirty-seven and read it aloud, exactly as written."
Apparently the translator scrambled the words pretty badly, because it took three tries before the pink one got the instructions. She turned to the page and read slowly and clearly (and loudly, to the point that Tinat felt her resonance clearly for himself, even through the glass).
When it was done, Tinat said, "Thank you. This will help us talk better." Not that he was supposed to talk to her at all, but since she wasn't going away and he didn't want to leave early, he might as well get full value for whatever punishment he was going to get.
"Wait!" Pinkie reached into the other bag on her back and pulled out another book. "Is science all about this book! Chemistry and elements and things!"
This book was significantly thicker, and although there were still illustrations (including a chart of the elements that, rather than separating them by electron orbits, arranged them all in one table except for the very highest orbitals.) Tinat was even more eager for this book than the first, and the pink one cooperated without complaint as the pages got imaged one after the other, and then a couple of pages got read aloud- though not without an apology that she wasn't sure she pronounced a few of the words properly.
"Thank you again," Tinat said. "This will help solve a lot of mysteries about how your world's life even works. It is so different from-"
"Wait! There is more one thing!" The pink one reached into the second bag and pulled out... something covered in blue, with a not-quite-white wrapper. "Is here your 'Welcome to Pony Village' food thing!"
Ah! A processed food sample! Well, that would be worth an hour or two of analysis. And the data would be far superior to any extrapolations from analysis of cellular samples from the life around the ship. "My machine will take a sample," he said.
That seemed to annoy the native. "No, no!" she insisted. "Eat for is not machine! Eat for is you!"
How to explain? It would take hours before the computer had fully collated and refined the data from those books. So long as he and the native were talking, that couldn't even begin, which meant more garbled exchanges. "I can't eat it," he said. "It might be poison. It might be something my body can't use. I might not even be able to get it inside me." He gestured to his proboscis, which had none of the white shiny mouthparts the pink one kept flashing at him.
The pink one let out another resonance the computer refused to translate, stroking below her mouth in obvious thought. "See I," she said. "Come back next work I. Bring else something I can that eat you!"
That sounded like a winner to Tinat- not necessarily the new food (or the possibility that she actually did intend to bring something that could eat him), but her going away for a while. As useful as this had been, he really wanted some research time, to say nothing of rest, without the pink native around. "Let my machine get the sample first," he said. "When you come back I'll know if it has poison or not."
The pink one said something untranslatable, set down the colorful foodstuff on the hull next to the waiting probe, and waved goodbye before skipping down the hill in a manner no autrenkt could even attempt.
With a sigh of relief, Tinat ordered the probe to collect samples from different parts of the foodstuff. At the end the object was so many crumbs and smears on the hull. Tinat felt a little sad about that, but often destruction was necessary for science.
He stopped feeling sad when the flock of flying creatures began pecking at the leftovers, sending loud sharp reverberations through the ship that made it impossible for him to think clearly until they'd cleaned the last of the leftovers away.
The creatures of the copse had had more than enough.
First there had come the shaking of the ground, which had made the chipmunks, moles and bunnies flee their burrows, only to see them crushed by the great big hard thing. The hard thing made a loud, high-pitched sound all the time, and it hurt their ears.
Then the big hard thing released the smaller but still frighteningly large flying hard things, which had chased them down, grabbed them, and poked them. They'd been let go afterwards, but the poking had hurt, and some of the creatures had been poked two or three times already.
When the pony showed up, the animals thought something would finally be done about the intruder. Instead, to their outrage, the pony came back and offered up perfectly good pony food, which the flying hard things had ruined. The songbirds pecked up the crumbs afterwards, bruising their beaks on the big hard thing in the process.
Enough was enough. They wanted all the hard things gone. They wanted their burrows back (once they'd dug them out again). They wanted the poking to stop.
And if the pink pony (who they knew wasn't particularly reliable as ponies went) couldn't or wouldn't do the right thing, they knew one pony who definitely would do the right thing.
Once she got over being terrified out of her mind, of course, and that always took a lot of doing.
So, in ones and twos, then in a great group, the inhabitants of the hilltop glade began the trip over the fields to the edge of the Everfree Forest, to the cottage of She Who Listens.
They'd make her listen.