thing with Jones’ rank still stuck in his craw.
He swallowed with a gulp. In the whole universe, Jack Wong was probably the hungriest god in captivity. And the most frightened.
∞
Ten days earlier, he’d managed to drag his pod onto circular orbit around this torrid jungle planet that baked just a little too close to its hot bluish sun. Well, actually it was the artificial intelligence system who’d done the most boring parts of piloting their way onto orbit, but that’s what it was for, after all. Jack spent a full day and a half spinning around the planet, finding out as much as he could at long range about the world’s geography, ecology and especially its dominant life form. Its native inhabitants were aliens, of course, because no human had ever come this way before. Chances were, given how horribly lost he and the pod were, none ever would again. A couple of times he’d found himself weeping, and once he just broke down in a fit of shivering terror. The AI pulled him out of it each time, with its eerie calm tones.
The pod’s automatics broke out a series of excellent instruments from the hull, and pointed them at the whirling hot planet, sucking in data that the system patiently stored and sorted into files that only a machine could care about. His polariton telescope brought him vivid images of the small shifting settlements where the native aliens lived. There were many different kinds of habitat, of course, because a world is a large place. Still, he detected no radio messages, no hints of power generation or even large-scale water irrigation and dams, or roads, or wheeled carriages. The swarming vegetation of the planetary jungle seemed to have closed out some of those options. Jack realized—recalling his history lessons in the Academy—that unless some external influence came into the picture, this world’s intelligent inhabitants would need to wait for a change of climate before they built their Romes, their Babylons, their Jerichos. An ice age or two, that’s what they needed. Jack had squinted at the glaring bluish star that was their sun. Not much chance of that.
Under normal circumstances, Jack Wong would have been studying to act as just that external influence. No doubt about it, from the time he’d graduated from Paul Joseph Goebbels High School at the age of seventeen, he’d been getting ready to share in the greatest and grandest adventure humankind had ever seen. He would follow Earth Culture’s great Primary Heuristic: Wherever possible, find the weak spot in an alien civilization and interfere as much as possible for the benefit of humanity. Deliberate imperial intervention was the name of the game. Humans, luckily, had found the methods of science and correct psychology centuries ago, and it was their duty—his duty, in this case—to carry this wonderful knowledge across the galaxy to all the beings who lacked it, and bring them into the imperium, kicking and screaming if need be. Wiping them out entirely was frowned on these days.
Imperial Earth Culture had been spreading through the galaxy for more than two centuries, following prospector Amanda Bufon’s discovery of the first known wormhole in the asteroid belt, on the far side of Mars and nearly to Jupiter. That’s where the Academy was located nowadays, in a grand set of habitat bubbles just a thousand kilometers from Wormhole One. Jack had spent happy teenage years there, getting his spacelegs, learning how Earth Culture was welding the universe into a league of peaceful species. So far they had never found a civilization quite as advanced as Earth’s, though a few had space travel and powerful weapons. Artful negotiation for trading rights had done the trick in nearly every case—there hadn’t been need for a genocidal war, Jack’s instructors told him proudly, for more than a hundred years.
Whirling lost and confused above the unknown planet in his pod, Jack Wong had kept his head. With the AI system’s help, he readied a swarm of spy probes disguised to resemble a local insect. Ugly things, he thought with a shudder, but then suppressed his reaction. He was the visitor here, even if he hadn’t planned to be. It was up to him to fit in, for the moment. However horrible the local life forms seemed, Earth Culture lore had taught him, he was to take a deep breath and step forth boldly to greet them as a leader and adviser. This was his proud duty as a human being from Earth. By comparison with some of these backward aliens he was almost a god, but he shouldn’t let it go to his head. The Primary Heuristic was the guiding principle of the empire.
Jack Wong fired the myriad tiny probes into the atmosphere. They dispersed, humming to themselves. Quite soon they sent back a great supply of local sights and sounds to the pod’s AI system, and it was the work of only an hour or two for the machine to select a suitable continent, listen to the weird screeches and bubblings the aliens used as a language, and crack the basics of its vocabulary and grammar. By the time Jack Wong had got up enough nerve to go down to the surface, his translating module was ready for service, awaiting only a fine tuning for the local dialect. Just as well, he’d told himself with a wry grin. He certainly couldn’t have made any sense of the jibber-jabber by himself.
He’d landed his pod in the early morning, so most of the aliens were up and about, getting ready for a day’s hunting and gathering. The pod came down in a clearing off to one side of the village, blasting brush and purple roots and rocks with the hot flame of the landing venturis. Luckily the jungle vegetation was wet with the clinging humidity of the whole planet, except for the cooler poles of course, so no major fires were started. Several sad cases were on record of Earth Culture spacecraft incinerating the first village they tried to contact, so now foam fire extinguishers were standard fitting on all landers.
Jack Wong had climbed free of his landing web and activated the outside cameras and microphones. In his viewing screen, aliens were swarming toward the pod, shouting to each other and gesticulating wildly. At a cautious distance, they ground to a halt, consulting with each other in a shrieking babble. The noise set Jack’s teeth on edge. One or two held primitive weapons they’d been carrying when the pod came crashing down, but none of them appeared to be menacing the craft.
Oh well. He might be lost thousands of light years from home, but this was the job he was in training to do. Heart swelling with a mixture of pride and sheer terror, he said aloud, “I’ll have the suit now, thanks.”
“You feel quite ready to go outside?” the AI system asked him. “There’s no rush, you know.”
Jack’s stomach jumped. “You haven’t had a signal from—?”
Regretfully, the AI told him, “No. I am still unable to establish contact with the empire. I will keep trying. Meanwhile, you should feel under no obligation to leave the safety of this pod. You could continue your ballistic lessons from the comfort of your—”
“No, no,” Jack said hastily. “Really, it’s my duty to make First Contact with these people. I’ll have the suit, thanks.”
It took several minutes of bending and twisting to get into the rigid frame of the protective garment. His right foot started to itch just between the big toe and its neighbor the moment he closed the final seal. Jack took a deep breath, opened the airlock, stepped outside onto the scorched ground.
A muffled muttering spread among the aliens, then screams and shrieks, and they fell down on their faces before him.
“Oh my god!” Appalled, Jack Wong took a step back, pressed against the warm hull. His very presence had killed them all! The aliens lay stretched out in front of him like swatted flies. No, they weren’t dead yet, a twitch or two and the blink of a beady eye proved they were still alive. He sagged in relief, then stiffened again in fresh panic. What had he done to cause this? Everything he’d learned in months of Contact training deserted him. The aliens stayed where they were, heads down and tails up, and they moaned. A silly giggle caught in Jack’s throat, but he sternly forced it down. This was no time for laughter. He had no idea what to do. Not the faintest clue.
“I’m coming back in,” he told the pod.
“Not advisable,” said the Mac, his suit’s on-board
