"We'll be ready by the time you're back."

"Make sure you're ready before that," Radford said, "because if any alien spacecraft appear, you're to take off immediately. We're expendable; the information you've got isn't."

"Yes, sir." Kyle didn't sound very happy with the situation.

Radford wasn't especially thrilled with it either, but as it happened, the necessity for heroic self-sacrifice never arose. The aliens watched impassively as Radford eased back through the door; the shuttle regained orbit without anything like fighter aircraft appearing; and all screens were still clear as the Pathfinder shifted into hyperspace.

"Damn rotten luck," Kyle growled as they reviewed the films of the aliens later.

"The place was absolutely perfect."

"We don't know that for sure," Radford reminded him. "Anyway, finding out man isn't alone in the universe is at least as important as finding new planets to colonize."

"If they're friendly, you mean."

"If they're not, at least they don't know where we came from." Radford touched the rewind control. "Cheer up, Kyle— chances are good we'll find something else before we head home. And even if we don't, either the Aurora or the Celeritas is almost certain to."

"Maybe."

"Beautiful." Mario Civardi smiled at the planet centered in the telescope display.

"Simply beautiful."

Captain Curt Korczak suppressed his own smile at the Italian's exuberance, which echoed his own, more private feelings. The European Space Agency had taken a lot of knocks for the delays that had enabled the Americans to launch their two ships first; but the Celeritas had just paid back the skeptics, with interest. A brandnew world, where mankind could start over again with a clean slate. No pollution, no acid rain, no overpopulation, no nationalistic posturing. It was almost like getting into Eden again.

"Captain!" the man at the radar shouted suddenly. "Something approaching from astern—"

The main vision screen flashed with light as something with a fiery tail shot over the Celeritas and vanished far ahead. "What the hell!" First Officer Blake gasped.

"That was a bloody missile."

"Backtrack it," Korczak snapped. "I want to know where it came from."

"Got it, sir. Bearing down on us from—"

The chair slammed hard into Korczak's spine and a dull roar rattled his teeth.

"Shift, Civardi!" he managed. "Get us out of here!"

And, for a miracle, the equipment worked. Safe in the blackness of hyperspace, the Celeritas limped toward home.

"I don't believe it." President John Kennedy Allerton shook his head, laying down the report. "Fifteen reasonably Earthlike worlds, and every one already occupied?"

General James Klein shrugged. "I agree it's pretty hard to swallow, but the Pathfinder's films can't be argued with." He hesitated. "I've also heard that the ESA's Celeritas showed signs of damage when it got back early this morning, so I'd guess they ran into them, too."

Allerton pursed his lips tightly. "If that's true we'll want an immediate meeting to compare notes. Probably better bring the Soviets and Chinese in on it, too. An alien race hemming us in on all sides isn't something we can afford to play politics with. I suppose we should tell the UN, too."

Admiral Davis Hamill snorted. "The Russians won't believe a word of it, at least not until they get their own firsthand data, and Chinese security is so lax these days that if we tell them, we might as well broadcast it to the Islamic Confederation and the Africans. I can just hear what they'd say."

Allerton smiled faintly. "You take the tirades at the UN too seriously, Dave. The Third World may think we're the cause of all their problems, but there's really no way they can blame Project Homestead's failure on us."

"They can blame us for alerting the aliens that we're here, though," Klein pointed out.

"Oh, come on—they surely already know we're here. They surround us, for heaven's sake. If they wanted to fight they would've moved in years ago."

"What about the Celeritas"?" Klein objected.

"What about the Pathfinder! The aliens let them go."

Klein's rejoinder was lost in the simultaneous buzz of all three men's phones.

Twisting his wrist to point the directional speaker at his face, Allerton clicked the switch. "Allerton."

"Situation room," a tense voice answered. "Sir, we've picked up a flash of light from a point near Mars orbit. We think it's a star ship … except that the flash was red, not blue-white."

Allerton looked up to meet Klein's and Hamill's hardening expressions. The shift flash represented wasted energy … and the lower-energy red burst meant the newcomer had a drive far more advanced than anything on Earth. "Full military alert," the President ordered quietly. "Worldwide. Prepare for possible invasion.

I'll be down there shortly to take charge." He signed off. The two military men, still talking into their own phones, were already heading for the door. Thumbing the White House operator, Allerton got to his feet and followed. "Get me the Kremlin, Chinese Premier Sing, and UN Secretary-General Saleh—conference call, scramble, and rush it."

The long star ship drifted delicately into high Earth orbit shortly afterward, stifling the Soviets' official disbelief and touching off near-panic all across the globe. But the end of the world didn't come on the anticipated schedule. Instead, the alien briefly blanketed the airline radio frequencies with a message, in passable English, requesting a conversation with Earth's leadership.

Considering the norm of international politics, the response to that call was remarkably swift.

" … We welcome you on behalf of the Security Council, the United Nations, and the entire Earth. We look forward to the mutual exchange of knowledge and culture, and to a growth of true friendship between our peoples."

Secretary-General Hammad Ali Saleh sat down in his chair at the head of the semicircular table and reached thankfully for the water glass at his elbow. He hadn't been this nervous in thirty-five years, not since the Iran-Iraq border wars of the eighties. Then, he'd been a young Yemeni volunteer recognizing on an emotional level that the shells dropping out of the sky could kill him very dead.

Now, his position was uncomfortably similar. No one knew why the alien wanted to talk to mankind's leaders, but the Celeritas's experience suggested the answer might not be a pleasant one. Certainly the superpowers thought so; all three had voted in favor of letting the UN take the hot seat. Point man, stalking horse … the expendable ones. Sipping his ice water carefully, Saleh consciously relaxed his jaw and waited.

"The Ctencri greet you in response," the voice came abruptly. "It is ever an honor to welcome a new people into space. Your race has advanced greatly in the eight hundred years since you were last studied. It is hoped that we may find a solid base for trade and mutual profit."

Something in Saleh's chest seemed to loosen up slightly. Trade and profit were business, not political, terms. Was this, then, merely a trading expedition? Saleh couldn't decide whether he would feel relieved or annoyed if the Ctencri government had indeed left their first contact with Earth to the aliens' version of AT&T.

Whoever it was out there, though, he had one very important point to clear up right away. "We would certainly be interested in discussing trade possibilities,"

Saleh said. "However, we have several questions we would like to ask first.

Foremost among them is why your ships fired on one of our unarmed probes."

There was a short pause. "The question is meaningless. The defense units of Hreshtra-cten did not use force. Your lander was allowed to leave peaceably."

"You're referring to the incident with the Pathfinder," the American delegate spoke up from halfway around the table. "The Celeritas was in a different solar system when it was attacked."