Herbig-Haro

"Just the one launch?" the scout pilot asked tensely.

"So far." Praise of Folly was a confirmed pessimist.

"Might be a shot across our—" A new star bloomed in the forward screen, a supernova burst that went from white through yellow and orange to red and slowly guttered out.

"Fission explosion," the computer said matter-of-factly. "Thirty kiloto

"It lit up these," Praise of Folly said. Another screen came on, its images grainy with high magnification. The scout pilot did not recognize the craft displayed, but he knew warships when he saw them. They bristled with launchers and also sported two turrets each: quick-fire guns for close-in work, he guessed.

He weighed his options. Even wi

But the boat stopped at more than twice that distance. It retreated to its own ship, leaving behind a small metal canister made conspicuous by a floodlight and radar beacon. "Playing it very cozy, aren't they?" Chang said.

"Probably booby-trapped."

"Probably," he agreed. "Shall we find out? Send the probe over for a look." The little robot sped toward the canister. The scout pilot wondered what the nonhumans would make of it. It would tell them something of the technology he had, but he hoped to learn more about theirs.

The light on the canister was incandescent, not a plasma tube; the battery pack that powered it was larger than the Terran equivalent. The canister itself looked suspiciously like a wastebasket. A foil cover had been taped across the top; the paper tape was already begi

At Chang's direction, the probe peeled back the foil. Nothing untoward happened. The camera pickup showed that inside the canister there were only two rectangular sheets of thick, parchment-like paper, one perfect, the other with a ragged edge, as if it had been torn from a book. The book page had a line of incomprehensible script, but a black-and-white print took up most of the surface: an irregular pattern of lines and spaces. The scout pilot was used to seeing them in color, but he recognized it at once. "Spectrogram!" He had an inspiration. "Match it against the sun their fleet was heading for."

After a few seconds, the computer said, "It checks." Chang fancied that he heard a note of puzzled respect in the electronic voice. He hid a smile. The computer was smarter than he was, but it did not make intuitive leaps.

The other sheet proved that the aliens were used to contacting other races. A series of skillful cartoons instructed Chang to go into hyperdrive between the two nonhuman ships and let them pace him to the star. They also warned that he would be attacked if he dropped into normal space on his own; he was to let one of the aliens bring him back by cutting across his drive field.

"Sensible enough precautions." he said. "They'll have scrambled every warship in that system to look out for me as I emerge. too. I would, in their shoes."

For Praise of Folly, the jump into hyperdrive was smooth. Chang's escorts hovered close, just far enough away to let their fields operate. To his regret, they kept up when he increased speed. Though the rest of their skills seemed a bit behind those of the Terrans, their hyperdrive systems were first-rate. Shortly before he expected to return to normal space. the scout pilot gritted his teeth and injected himself with several cc's of memory-RNA. For the next ten days to two weeks he would have nearly total recall—and a raging headache.

Like Terrans. the aliens preferred to emerge well away from a system's ecliptic plane, to minimize the risk of encountering sky junk. Chang listened torpidly as radio traffic crackled back and forth between his escort and the ships that, as he had guessed, were standing by awaiting his arrival. Several formed up in a globe around him. Another message canister showed him that he was to stay in the center of the formation as they approached the system's second planet. "If it weren't for the honor of the thing. I'd rather walk," he grumbled; reading Frost had gotten him interested in other ancient authors.

The lead ship in the escorting array slowed until it was only a couple of kilometers ahead of Praise of Folly and began flashing its lights on and off. After a minute or so, the scout pilot understood. "Folly, if you will."

"So it is," the computer said, but went after the alien in spite of his slip of the tongue. Spaceports on civilized worlds have a depressing sameness; it is next to impossible to make vast expanses of concrete interesting. The perimeter buildings, though, caught Chang's eye when Praise of Folly dipped below the last cloudbank; they had the massive look of fortifications. Atmospheric flyers screamed overhead as Praise of Folly touched down near the center of the field. Gun-carrying armored vehicles that reminded Chang of the ones he had seen in B'kila's ancient tape rumbled toward the ship.

There were also footsoldiers ru

Their hand-weapons gave the scout pilot a momentary start. The guns' curved magazines reminded him of the Kalashnikovs that were still ubiquitous in human space. He quickly saw, though, that it was only coincidence; the rest of the design was not similar at all.

He checked the atmosphere analysis. The air seemed good enough, barring some noxious oxides of nitrogen and sulfides that probably came for the noisy, smoke belching iron monsters out there. He didn't worry about diseases. Few alien germs found humans tasty, and his broad-spectrum immunity shots left him doubly safe.

After instructing the computer, he strapped on a sidearm and cycled through the airlock. The pistol meant nothing as a weapon against the firepower out there, but no race with an organized military could fail to grasp what it represented.