For the Members of the Aardvarks, the oldest established SF-writing workshop in Minneapolis and/or St. Paul (We also do mysteries and doctoral dissertations.)

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the following people who read this novel in manuscript and gave me advice on changes:

Ruth Berman, John Douglas, David G. Hartwell, Eric M. Heideman, Albert W. Kuhfeld, Mike Levy, Sandra Lindow, and Shoshona Pederson.

Al Kuhfeld designed the wonderful starship and read the novel with an eye for errors in science. The manuscript went through three revisions after he saw it, and he is in no way responsible for any new errors that may have been introduced. Susan Pederson helped me design the culture of the Iron People. Ruth Berman came up with my favorite name for the starship. P. C. Hodgell drew the map.

My special thanks to Bill Gober, who heard me talk about the novel years ago at Minicon. Every year since then he has come up to me at Minicon and loomed over me and said, “Have you finished the novel about the furry people yet?”

Here it is, Bill. I hope it’s worth the wait.

FROM: The Committee on the First Contact Problem

TO: The Members of the First Interstellar Expedition

The problem, as we see it, divides in three: (1) You may meet people who have a technology more advanced than ours; (2) You may meet people with an equal technology; (3) You may meet people with a less advanced technology.

(We will leave aside, for the time being, the problem of what is meant by “more” and “less” advanced. We will also leave aside the possibility that the aliens may have a technology so different from ours that there is no way to compare the two.)

We think you are most likely to encounter problem number three: the aliens with a less advanced technology. But we’ll discuss all the possibilities, just in case.

The aliens with an equal technology present the least problem. We certainly cannot hurt them, not at a distance of 18.2 light-years. If their technology is more or less the same as ours, they won’t be...