"Which gives us plenty of land to choose from," I promised Chee, "and many types of terrain. To land safely, we'll choose somewhere fairly flat. To survive the first few hours, we'll pick a place with sparse vegetation and little animal life…"

"But not too sparse," Yarrun added. "We don't want to find ourselves in the middle of a desert if we suddenly go no-comm."

"Close to fresh water, far from any oceans…"

"I like the ocean," Chee protested.

"So do thousands of other lifeforms," I told him. "We must think defensively, Admiral. We know nothing about this planet except that it's dangerous. If we set down near an ocean, we have to worry about nasty ocean things as well as nasty land things. The fewer environments and ecologies we have to contend with, the fewer variables we need to think about and the more likely we are to be here this time tomorrow, drinking lukewarm chocolate and mushrooms. All right?"

"You don't have to snap, Ramos," he pouted. "I'll bow to your expertise on every point… which is generous of me, considering that standard Explorer techniques work like shit on Melaquin."

"Admiral," Yarrun said quietly, "we recognize the standard methods have proved inadequate. Even so, we shouldn't abandon them entirely. Sometimes all the procedures in the book can't protect you from the perils of a planet; but that's no reason to walk up to something that looks like a lion and kick it in the ass."

"On the contrary," Chee answered with a gleam in his eye, "suppose the first thing I did on Melaquin was boot some large toothy animal in the butt. What would happen?"

"Depending on its ecological niche," I replied, "it would run, kick you back, or bite off your foot."

"And what would you do?"

"Depending on the size of its teeth, we would run, laugh, or shoot it with a stunner."

"What would happen to me?"

I threw up my hands. "There's no way to know. How fast is the animal? How deadly is its attack? How susceptible is it to stunner fire? Does it sever a major artery or just give a flesh wound? Does its saliva happen to be poisonous to human life? How fast can we get you back to the ship's infirmary?"

I stopped, realizing what I just said.

Chee nodded happily. "Standard policy says when a party member is injured, you must request immediate pickup."

We all pondered that a moment. Yarrun said, "Suppose the Admiralty have ordered Prope not to pick us up."

"They can't do that!" Chee snapped. "Get it through your head — the Admiralty, the Technocracy, the whole damned galaxy, is constantly monitored by the League of Peoples." He suddenly broke off. "Look," he said in a lower voice. "Let me tell you a story."

And he did.

Chee's Story

"Off in the Carsonal system," Chee said, "there's a planet with the stimulating name of Carsonal II. And living on Carsonal II was a species called the Greenstriders. Looked a lot like six-armed watermelons the size of a man, with long spindly legs.

"Now," he continued, "the Greenstriders joined the League of Peoples long before humans did, but they aren't one of the ancient races. They still have physical bodies, they still have to eat and excrete… in other words, they're small potatoes compared to the big boys in the League. But the Greenstriders had pretensions; they did indeed. And for a long time, the only contact between them and humanity was the occasional communicator message: 'You are attempting to colonize a planet in Greenstrider territory. Please to vacate it immediately.'

"The first time that happened, the Technocracy said, 'Sorry,' and left. The second time, we said, 'All right, we'll go, but give us a map of the territory you claim, so this won't happen again.' The third time, we said, 'This planet wasn't on your map, and it's time we had a heart-to-heart talk… in front of League arbitrators.'

"That's where I came in," Chee told us, "because the Admiralty always sent as many people as it could to an arbitration. Not to take part, but to watch. Or to spy, if you want a more colorful word. A few were assigned to spy on the Greenstriders, but most of us kept our eyes on the three arbitrators, to gather as much information as possible about the high mucky-mucks who really hold power in the League. In this case, the tribunal was a cloud of red smoke, a glowing cube, and a chair that sure as hell looked empty. But forget it, that's not the point.

"The point is that the hearing took place, the arbitrators asked a lot of questions, blah, blah, blah, everything you'd expect; and at the end, the tribunal decided the Greenstriders had been acting too highhanded. They got a slap on the wrist, and we got rights to colonize several new planets.

"Admiral Fewkes, who was fronting for our side, tried to soften the blow in good diplomatic style. Too bad, he said, that there were misunderstandings in the past, but now the problems had been straightened out, Fewkes hoped that humans and Greenstriders could open friendly diplomatic relations… You can fill in the rest. And then Fewkes held out his hand for a cordial little handshake.

"Now you have to understand," Chee said, "that as far as we knew, this was the first time humans and Greenstriders had ever been in the same place together. All previous communications were by radio and hypercom. And throughout the hearing, we had always been kept separate from the Greenstriders by order of the tribunal. Fewkes wanted this handshake to be a memorable moment, first contact, a photo-op to please the folks back home. But when the head strider chiggered over to shake the admiral's hand, the moment was even more memorable than Fewkes expected. Within five seconds, he was lying on the floor gasping, and ten seconds later, he was dead."

Yarrun and I nodded gravely. "Secretions on Greenstrider skin," Yarrun said. "Their perspiration acts as a lethal nerve toxin on human beings. We learned that in the Academy."

"Thank Fewkes for the information," Chee replied. "He learned the hard way. Looked hellishly painful too, the way he screamed just before the end; but these things happen. It wouldn't be the first time that alien lifeforms turned out to be intrinsically deadly to each other — just a tragic accident.

"But… the arbitrators were still in the hearing room, and the cloud of red smoke said, 'That was a non-sentient act.' Seems there had been previous contact between humans and Greenstriders, and the red smoke knew all the details. A pair of Explorers had met some strider scouts, when both sides were checking out the same planet for possible colonization. There'd been diplomatic handshakes back then too; the Explorers had died so fast, they couldn't report why.

"So the Greenstriders knew what contact would do to us. Or more accurately, the knowledge existed somewhere in Greenstrider society. The strider who shook Fewkes's hand didn't personally know what would happen, but the cloud of red smoke said that was no excuse. A warning should have been conveyed to all striders who might come in contact with humans. Anything else was homicidal negligence on the part of the Greenstrider government as a whole."

"Harsh," Yarrun murmured. "If the strider who shook Fewkes's hand really didn't know…"

"The tribunal said he should have known," Chee answered. "When the Explorers died that first time, it was truly an accident. But after that, someone should have passed the word. I agree with the League on this. Someone in the chain of command was blatantly non-sentient if the information wasn't deemed important enough to be conveyed through channels. Not even the Admiralty is that sloppy; every Explorer in the Corps is meticulously instructed in how to interact with known alien races for maximum mutual safety. Right?"

"We hope so," I replied.

"You are," Chee said. "If only because the High Council wants to avoid what happened to the Greenstriders. Their entire governmental system was declared non-sentient: negligently careless. The whole damned race was grounded — barred from interstellar travel until they reorganized into a more conscientious society. A few of them tried to defy the ban… and for the next few years, our fleet kept finding strider ghost ships drifting through space, every strider aboard killed the second they tried to leave their home star system. Not a mark on the bodies. Just dead. The League has no qualms against exterminating non-sentients to protect the rest of the galaxy."