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  Three days later Company L, mounted on Dragons, boarded Essays and were lifted into orbit to rendezvous with the CNSS Khe Sanh for transshipment to Avionia. Of course, all anybody knew at the time was that they were going after poachers on some godforsaken, uninhabited, quarantined world somewhere out on the dismal rim of Human Space.

  "Why us? Why do we have to go way the hell out there?" Godenov wailed when they got the orders.

  "Mother Corps sends, we go," Schultz rumbled.

  Godenov cast a wary eye at Schultz and decided not to press the issue.

  Fifteen days into the nineteen-day voyage, they assembled in the ship's physical recreation compartment for a briefing by Captain Conorado. The men sat on two banks of benches laid out facing a lecturn. Top Myer paced, hands clasped behind his back, scowling out at the men while they waited for the company commander to arrive. The platoon sergeants stood watchfully behind them.

  When Top Myer spotted the company commander outside the entrance to the compartment, he stopped pacing, snapped to attention, and bellowed out, "COMP-nee, A-ten-HUT!" The Marines jumped to their feet and stood at rigid attention.

  Conorado wasn't the first officer to enter the compartment. He was followed by a navy captain none of them had seen before. The captain went directly to the lectern. Conorado stood next to him and looked at his Marines. He appeared distinctly shaken.

  After a moment he said, "Sit," and there was a brief ruckus as the Marines of Company L resumed their seats. If any of them had turned to look, he would have seen the platoon commanders join the platoon sergeants in the back row of benches, and that all of them except Charlie Bass looked even more shaken than Conorado. Bass had a look of barely controlled fury.

  The seated Marines were concerned. Captain Conorado was normally unflappable. If he was shaken, it seemed they would be going into a situation far more dire than they imagined. And who was the squid? Few if any of them had ever seen a navy officer give the final briefing before deploying Marines reached their objective.

  "This is Captain Natal," Conorado said when the noise died down, "from the New Science Division, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. He just briefed me and the company officers on what we're going to find where we are going. Now he's going to brief you." He looked at the navy officer and said, "Captain," then stepped aside.

  "Thank you, Captain," Captain Natal said. He glanced at the navy rating who, under the supervision of a petty officer third class, had begun setting up a holoprojector next to the lectern while Conorado spoke. "Thank you," he said, and accepted the control from the third class. "You may leave." The two sailors left the compartment as fast as dignity allowed. Gunny Thatcher closed and dogged the hatch so no sailors would accidentally wander into the briefing.

  Captain Natal stood erect behind the lectern and studied the Marines in front of him for a couple of seconds before saying in a crisp voice, "What I am about to tell you is classified Ultra Secret, Special Access. That means there are very few people who are authorized to know it. Therefore, you are not to talk about this to anybody. Everyone on this ship who is authorized to know is present in this compartment right now. No one in the ship's crew, from Commander Spitzhaven to the lowest seaman in the black gang, is authorized to know. The penalties for divulging to unauthorized personnel what I am about to tell you are very severe." He paused and looked at them sternly for a long moment before he folded his arms on the lectern and leaned forward.

  "We are not alone," he began in a low, earnest voice. "You are about to learn something that is classified at the highest levels. Only a few hundred people in all of Human Space know anything about this."

  He pushed a button on the control and an image of a bipedal figure that wasn't very manlike at all appeared and began rotating above the holographic projector. It was large in the chest. Massive thighs swelled above spindly lower legs. Its neck, both in length and curvature, was swanlike. A crest of something similar to feathers topped its head, and a webbing that also resembled feathers connected its chest and upper arms. Its buttocks were conically protuberant. In place of lips, a rim of horny tissue surrounded its mouth.

  "If any of you studied the history of science, you might recognize my opening sentence as the title of a mid-twentieth-century book on the search for extraterrestrial life. For a couple of centuries, encompassing both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, there were numerous serious and not so serious searches for extraterrestrial life. There was a great deal of speculation about what it might be like.

  "All along, there were those who said sentience was so improbable an evolutionary development that we were likely the only one around. It wasn't until decades after the discovery of the Beam Drive, which allowed men to explore the wide Universe beyond the home solar system, that those who said we are alone won out and the search ended. Well, they were wrong. We are not alone. There's a world we have named Avionia which has a native sentience. Avionia is quarantined, but not because of danger it represents to humans. It is quarantined to protect the sentient species that populates it."

  An interested buzz arose in the Marines. But Captain Natal noticed that one block of Marines looked appalled rather than excited by the news. He wondered why.

  He casually lifted a hand to quell the questions and exclamations. "In due time I will take questions. Right now, just sit and listen." The navy rank of captain is the same as a Marine colonel. When someone with that much rank tells enlisted Marines to shut up and listen, they do. Even if the man with the rank is only a squid.

  "The Avionians are at a level of development similar to our own fifteenth century. If you remember your history, you'll realize that means they have a broad range of cultures, ranging from neolithic hunter-gatherers to something similar to the city states of Renaissance Italy. Think about it for a moment. The highest culture on this world is centuries away from such basics as electricity, efficient mass transit, and anything we would recognize as basic public sanitation. They don't have microscopes or telescopes. They think disease is caused by bad air or by devils. In most parts of Avionia, the locals believe they're all there is; they have no idea that the rest of their own world exists.

  "Now think of the impact on them of contact with us, a twenty-fifth-century culture that spans more than two hundred worlds and can travel between the stars, which they think are lights hung on the celestial ceiling by whatever gods they believe in. Contact with us could be devastating to them. It might even kill them, literally.

  "The Confederation has a choice. We can leave them alone, let them develop on their own, or we can contact them and quite possibly destroy the first alien sentience we have encountered in three centuries of interstellar travel. We, that is, the Confederation, decided to leave them alone until they reach for the stars on their own. Avionia is quarantined for the protection of its indigenous life.

  "Unfortunately, the secret got out—at least to a few people. Avionia has a unique source of wealth, and no, I'm not going to tell you what it is." He barked a short laugh and shook his head. "That's all anybody needs, a company of Marines who find out how they can become fabulously rich almost overnight. You'd be unstoppable." He rubbed a hand across the short burr of hair on his head, then continued. "As I was saying, someone found out. A small band of smugglers has been trading with a relatively insignificant band of nomads in a fairly isolated part of Avionia."

  He pushed a button on the projector control and the Avionian disappeared, replaced by a rotating globe that showed oceans, continents, mountain ranges, large forests, and major rivers. A small red circle glowed in the vastness of an almost featureless area on a large landmass splayed across the equator. "We might think the items the smugglers are using as trade goods are incredibly primitive, but they are advanced far beyond anything the Avionians have developed themselves. Imagine the impact on the Avionians if knowledge of aliens coming and dealing with them gets out. Imagine the impact on their development if this relatively insignificant nomadic tribe becomes powerful and
manages wide conquest by virtue of having advanced technology." He shook his head. "I don't want to think about the implications, and I don't want the guilt on my soul.

  "Your job is to put an end to the smuggling. You are to capture—kill if you can't capture, but try to capture—the smugglers, and destroy their base of operations. If possible—and quite frankly, I don't have any idea how it would be possible short of going to war—you are to retrieve everything of advanced technology that has been given to the Avionians. "Now, are there any questions?"

  "Sir!" Someone from first platoon jumped to his feet. "What are the advanced trade goods?"

  Captain Natal pushed another button. The rotating globe was replaced by a primitive rifle.

  "Twenty-two-caliber repeating projectile rifles. The most advanced firearms the Avionians have developed on their own are similar to Earth's arquebus, which was a matchlock." He noted the confusion on the faces of some Marines. "You probably know what a flintlock was. A matchlock is even more primitive. These .22 caliber repeaters are centuries beyond the matchlock, and with them one insignificant tribe is well on its way to becoming the most powerful military force on its world. Any other questions?"

  A big, fierce-looking Marine in the block of men who looked appalled stood up. Anger blazed from his eyes and his chest heaved with the effort to keep himself under control. "Sir, with all due respect, I don't want to protect the aliens. Aliens are dangerous. We need to call for more Marines before we go down there and kill them."

  "Or stay in orbit and nuke them," someone else in the same block said.

  Natal blinked in surprise. The reaction of the two Marines shocked him. He expected surprise and excitement, not fury and blood lust. Before he could speak, a Marine in the back row stood up and shouted.

  "Belay that, Hammer," Charlie Bass shouted. "You too, Wolfman. Both of you, sit down and shut up."

  Schultz spun around to face his platoon commander. "Gunny, this is bullshit and you know it. Protect aliens? After what—"

  "Hammer, I said shut up!" Bass's voice overrode Schultz. "You stop right now. Don't you say another word."

  Schultz gave Bass a glare that would have made a lesser man back off in fear for his life.

  But Charlie Bass wasn't any man, he was Schultz's commander, and one of the few men alive willing to go face-to-face with him when the big man was in a killing fury.

  Schultz's fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. Veins swelled on his temples and throat. Nearby Marines began to edge away.

  "Lance Corporal Schultz, sit down and be quiet," Bass said in a low, menacing voice. "That's an order."

  There was absolute silence in the compartment, all eyes fixed on Schultz to see what he'd do. Slowly, rigidly, as though a wrong move would shatter him into a million pieces, Schultz turned toward the front of the room and sat.

  Captain Natal avoided looking directly at Schultz as he scanned the company. Nobody else looked eager to ask a question after Schultz's outburst, so he turned to Captain Conorado. He had to clear his throat before he could speak. "Captain Conorado, that's the end of my briefing. It's your turn." He stepped away from the dais and headed for the hatch. Gunny Thatcher undogged and opened it for him then closed and redogged behind him.

  Conorado approached the dais slowly, obviously thinking. When he reached it, he looked directly at Schultz, who resembled a volcano frozen in the process of erupting. "I suspect you were on the verge of saying something you aren't supposed to say." He quickly held up a hand. "Don't say it now either. We'll all be in deep shit if you do. I can forgive and overlook your upset, but I can't and won't forgive you if you get us all in trouble."

  Schultz looked away and said nothing.

  The Marines in the other platoons looked at one another and cast glances at third platoon. Suddenly everyone knew what third platoon had encountered on Society 437. It wasn't microorganisms.

  "All right," Conorado said softly. "We know what our mission is. We are going to be seeing something virtually nobody has ever seen before. We'll get all the necessary details when we reach Avionia Station. We have a mission, and we are going to accomplish it. That is the beginning of it, that is the end of it. I hope everybody understands." His eyes didn't leave Schultz. "Now I'll turn you over to Top Myer, who doesn't know a damn thing more about this than I do."

  "COMP-nee, A-ten-HUT!" Myer bellowed, and everybody snapped to, even Schultz. Myer waited until Thatcher dogged the hatch behind Conorado and the other officers, then began pacing. He hadn't had time to think about what to say because he wasn't at the briefing Captain Natal had given the officers and this was the first he'd heard of the aliens. Finally he stopped pacing and stood in front of the lectern facing the company, arms akimbo.

  He looked directly at Schultz and said firmly, "Lance Corporal Schultz, the Skipper said he can forgive and forget your upset, so I have to go along with that. But if you get out of line like that again, I swear you'll find out you aren't the toughest man in this company. And I don't care how many, of us it takes to convince you of that. Do you understand?"

  Schultz returned Myer's glare, then nodded. "I understand, Top." He slumped, resting his arms on his knees.

  "See to it that you do." Then the first sergeant started pacing again and began the unofficial briefing that he always gave the company shortly before planetfall on a new operation.

  "The Skipper said I don't know any more about the situation we're going into than he does. Well, in the sense of what these ali... the Avionians are like, or who the smugglers are, or how the trading is taking place, he's right. Without more information, I can't tell you a damn thing about what's happening planetside or what we're going to do about it." He paused in his pacing to look over the company. "But I can put the situation into historical perspective for you. Captain Natal—" He rolled his eyes when he said the name of the navy officer, nodded when many of the Marines chuckled in response, then resumed pacing. "—said this is for the protection of the Avionians. There are a couple of instances in human history that clearly demonstrate the dangers involved when a relatively backward culture encounters a vastly more advanced culture.

  "A millennium ago, at the time of the Renaissance, Europeans discovered that they could cross the Atlantic Ocean. On the other side of the Atlantic they discovered a whole new world, two complete continents that nobody had seen before. Well, no Europeans other than some wandering Norsemen who didn't stick around very long had seen them. Except, the two continents were already populated.

  "In many ways the Europeans were the most technologically advanced people the world had ever seen. They were on the threshold of discovering the basic principles of physics. They were making major breakthroughs in agriculture, animal husbandry, optics, and machining. They had firearms, armor, and the horse. The people who inhabited the Americas were far from that advanced and ran a broad gamut of development. Some of them were so primitive they might have been paleolithic. Others were neolithic hunter-gatherers or agriculturalists. The most developed cultures were the equivalent of ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom, though maybe none were as advanced as the Babylonia of Hammurabi." He looked over the Marines again. "If that wasn't enough, few of them had writing, not many of them had metalurgy, and the little they had was gold ornamentation. And none of them had the horse or had even figured out how to use the wheel.

  "You want to talk about disparity?" He shook his head. "The thing that saved the native populations at first, most of them, was the difficulty the Europeans had in crossing the ocean. It took time for enough Europeans to get into the Americas and do more than enslave a few small populations, or upset balances of power in selected locales. Eventually that changed as transportation became easier and more affordable and more European nations began sending colonists to the ‘New World,’ as they called it, and reaping its resources for their own benefit.

  "That's when all hell broke loose. Over the next two or three centuries the European colonists effectively destroyed the native populations of
the Americas. Many populations were completely wiped out. Sometimes it was accidental, sometimes the result of miscommunication, often the result of sheer malice. Ultimately, the uncontrolled contact between Europeans and the aboriginal Americans reduced the native population by as much as ninety percent. Many of the survivors, these descendants of neolithic hunter-gatherers and horseless and wheelless neo-Babylonians, devolved to a form of mysticism in which they claimed their ancestors had talked to trees, animals, and the wind, and lived in full harmony with nature—despite massive evidence that they had depopulated broad areas of their food animals, deforested large tracts, and collapsed water tables. It took another couple of centuries for these remnants of the native American populations to get over it and join with the larger human population for the common good.

  "That was an example of contact with an advanced culture destroying a relatively backward one. It's also possible for it to work in the other direction, and the Japanese present a case that nicely illustrates the point.

  "Incidentally, for the later reference, during the Rennaissance, the nations of the West, that is Europe and later the Americas, began a period of technologic development unparalleled in human history.

  "The ancient Japanese were a warrior people, though isolated on their islands the way they were they fought mainly among themselves, and with great vigor. Nearly the entire history of Japan is one of overlapping wars. When they weren't fighting among themselves, the Japanese had ambitions of foreign conquest. They conquered Korea on more than one occasion, and at various times held portions of China. Then came an event on the other side of the world, in a place the Japanese had no idea existed—once more, it was the European Rennaissance.

  "The Europeans didn't stop with the discovery and conquest of the Americas. Hell, that was an accident. The Europeans knew about China and its wealth and wanted direct trade. So they didn't only go west across the Atlantic, they went around Africa and headed east as well. By another accident, they found Japan. Japanese development at that time was roughly analogous to the European Age of Chivalry. It didn't take the Japanese long to realize that European might was a threat to their way of life, and they managed to rid themselves of Europeans and close themselves off before Europeans had a strong enough hold to prevent the closure.