"Yes, sir."

Stepping around his chair, Radford made his way to the airlock door, where the rest of the landing party was assembling. "Looks beautiful, Captain," Lieutenant Sherman smiled, reaching up to fasten Radford's helmet to his suit neck. "With all that green out there, it has to be running on chlorophyll."

"We'll find out soon enough." Carefully, refusing to rush, Radford completed his pre-EVA suit check. Then, giving the rest of the team a thumbs-up gesture, he stepped into the airlock. A ninety-second eternity later, the outer door snicked open … and Captain Radford of the U.S.S. Pathfinder stepped out onto mankind's first colony world.

He'd thought a lot about this moment, and he was ready. "In the name of—" He stopped short, the words dying in his throat.

"Captain?" Sherman's voice asked tentatively.

"All outside cameras on," Radford ordered quietly, wondering if the words would be audible over the thunder of his heart. The alien who had risen from the waisthigh grass fifteen meters away was holding an oddly shaped metal device … and if it wasn't pointed directly at Radford, it wasn't off by very much.

"Uh-oh," someone muttered. "Captain—we're surrounded."

"Acknowledged," Radford said. "Kyle, are you getting all this?"

"Perfectly," the clipped voice of the Pathfinder's first officer said. "We're on full alert; no sign of spacecraft up here."

"Yet," Radford said tensely. The aliens—he could see four more, now, in backup array behind the first one—were definitely wearing clothing of some sort, and the devices they held were identical enough to have been mass produced. No primitives, these—and the fact that the Pathfinder had spotted no traces of widespread civilization from orbit strongly suggested the aliens were themselves visitors here. "All right. I'm going to try backing into the airlock. We'll lift as soon as I'm aboard. Kyle, get the ship ready to shift."