Astra was not amused. [i]No trust. Primitives.[/i] she thought, recalling the alphabet she managed to learn, as well as the few associations that could help her explain. Drawing with her finger into the air, orange trail was left where it was as she used an illustration program to convey what she needed to say. In front of her, three words were floating, written is a somewhat broken alien language, but legible if one counted what a child after one year of school might write.

[center]Machine
Dictionary
Factory[/center]
The downside of this bit of linguistic aid was that one could only learn associations of what could be portrayed in a picture and objectively given unanimous association. Which left mostly nouns, hence why Astra tried to use the best ones to convey that the device was made to aid in translating a language. She had her doubts whether it would work, but she figured reaching out with her hands to touch the alien being and scour it’s brain for information was a bad idea.