The door sealed behind them, and the four humans stood in the airlock. Slowly but surely, it was completely drained of air, until it was effectively a vacuum. Once this was complete, the four vacsuit-clad spacers were showered in decontamination chemicals. As they dripped dry, Sandra spoke.

“Is this really necessary?”

“Entire civilizations have been wiped clean by pathogens. In the pre-space age disease killed more people than every war ever fought.” Janea turned to glare at her. “So, yes, it’s really necessary.”

Sandra pressed on. “I can’t get dog diseases from Snowy, and she can’t catch human diseases from me. And we’re from the same planet! We have more in common genetically with a banana or a carrot than we would with the aliens. How exactly are they supposed to all die of the flu or something when the virus isn’t even remotely adapted to live in their bodies?”

Lance cut in. “To be fair, Snowy can carry human diseases, and you can carry dog diseases. We’re from a completely separate strain of life to the aliens, yes, but it’s all the same basic building blocks. We’re just big stacks of biological resources, and there’s billions-no, trillions of species of organisms that would be inhabiting this planet’s environment. That’s trillions of chances for one of them to be perfectly adapted to exploit us. And that’s just us. There’s no telling what we could introduce from our own internal environments. Hell, there’s damn near a thousand species of bacteria living in your gut. That’s a thousand chances that one of them is the alien black plague.”

Akito laughed. “You’ve been watching those old nature documentaries again.”

Lance shrugged. “They pass the time.”

Janea was getting annoyed. “How does all of this disprove my point?”

Lance turned to her. “I know I talked it up, but…it’s not really that big of a deal. Janea, there've been dozens of first contact events before, and none of them brought some sort of apocalyptic plague with them. Just because something technically possible doesn’t mean it will happen. I mean, it’s possible that Allie’s antimatter containment unit could fail at any moment and vaporize us all, but she flew for decades and it never happened. Hell, she broke down and it still didn’t happen. Look, the harsh truth is, it’s a lot more likely that these guys will just murder us and disect our corpses than it is that some alien pestilence will kill us.”

Janea sighed. “...just wear the damn helmets.”

He held up his hands. “Hey, I wasn’t the one who started this. Blame Sandra.”

“Quiet, you!” the offending voice said.

Akito butt in. “Alright, science lesson is over, and so is decontamination. Let’s get out of this tin can and meet our hosts.”

He flipped the outer door release lever, and it popped out. The four humans were staggered slightly as a wave of alien air rushed in to fill the vacuum. They made their way out onto the alien sands as a group. Janea surveyed the landscape with her eyes, and she was…underwhelmed. It looked pretty much like every other desert she’d ever heard of, albeit bathed in the light of a perpetual sunset. It didn’t help that it was flat as a pancake.

She was decidedly less underwhelmed by the small caravan of alien vehicles she saw approaching in the distance. They were alien in their shape and aesthetic sensibilities, but they were still very obviously some kind of off road wheeled vehicle.

“Shit, I just realized we have absolutely no idea what we are doing.” Janea said, trying not to hyperventilate.

“It took you until now to figure that out?” Akito said.

“You are not helping.” she dug around in her satchel. “Shit. Who has the speaker? Please tell me I didn’t leave it in the lander…”

Sandra held it out to her, and she snatched it up. “You gave it to me in the airlock.”

Janea fumbled with the buttons, her gloved hands making her feel about as dextrous as a rhinoceros, and managed to turn it on.

“On. Battery fifty-seven percent.” the synthetic voice chimed

Lance looked at her incredulously. “You didn’t charge it?”

“Shut up!”

She connected the device to her phone, and then she loaded up the translation program.

“Ok, who wants to do the talking?” she asked.

The other three looked at her for a depressingly long moment.

“I thought you were going to.” Sandra said.

“Yes, you were a communications officer, right? Communicate!” Akito said.

“Somehow I doubt you’d want me to do it.” Lance said.

Janea groaned.

The alien convoy was audible now, and growing louder. Janea felt her heart leap into her throat, and begin beating a mile a minute. The convoy eventually came to a stop, and Janea feared what might come out of it. The doors of the middle vehicle opened, and its occupants exited.

The beings that came out of the car didn’t really pass muster as eldritch abominations. They weren’t particularly scary at all, really. They were more…weird, then anything. There were three of them. Their skin was a ghostly white. They all had what, at first glance, looked to be six limbs. Two arms, two legs, and two…tentacle things? She couldn’t get a look at their toes, but she saw what looked like four fingers on their hands, and two (pincers? Thumbs? She didn’t know) on their…let’s go with tails.

They had what looked to be earholes and nostrils, but the most striking feature was their eyes. She’d never really seen anything quite like them. They were a rainbow of colors, and it was difficult to tell what (if anything) they were looking at. The closest equivalent she could think of was something she’d seen in her darker moments of boredom, watching antiquated nature documentaries with Lance: The Mantis Shrimp. If they were anything like that shrimp, they could very well be seeing her in colors she couldn’t even conceive of.

The alien trio approached, stopping and seeming to be taking the humans in in exactly the same way Janea was taking the aliens in. One was distinctly different from the other two, with bony plates covering its head, neck, back, arms, legs, and chest. The other two seemed to be lacking plates all together. The grippers on the ends of the tails of the plated one were bony, looking almost like a crustacean’s pincers. The other two had grippers that were covered in a soft, downy-looking fur or hair. Other than that patch of fuzz, both varieties of alien seemed to be completely hairless. Different sexes? Or maybe just different phenotypes. Sure, the plated one is bigger than the other two, but that doesn’t mean anything. Just because human males are bigger than human females doesn’t mean it works that way for everyone.

They were clad in loose fitting robes that looked somewhere between a toga and a kimono. They didn’t seem particularly bothered by the heat (as far as Janea could tell from her complete lack of knowledge about their body language), which made sense, she supposed. It was their planet, after all.

The plated alien in the middle muttered something in an incomprehensible tongue to the unplated one on its left. Well, we know they communicate by vocalizations now, at least. Janea thought.

The unplated alien that had been muttered to shuffled forward. Janea held the speaker out in front of her and gestured to it. She had no idea if her gestures actually meant anything to the alien, but it started talking either way, launching into a speech. It was a relatively brief speech, and the alien seemed to be looking at her with what Janea guessed was an expectant expression.

After a moment, sound came from the speaker. “Greeting. Welcome. [Untranslatable Proper Noun; playing recording] ‘Hent’ ”

“Is that the name of their planet?” Lance wondered aloud over the internal space suit comms.

“Or the name of their species. Or the name of this desert. Or maybe it means none of those things. It’s impossible to know with a translation this basic.” Janea said back.

She looked at the being before her. It came from an entirely separate tree of life than her. Sandra wasn’t exaggerating. She really did have more in common genetically with a banana than she would with the creature standing before her. Yet, despite all of this, that creature was willing to reach out to her and communicate. Cross the vast gulf between their two species.

Oh God, what the hell do I say?

“Uh…we come in peace?”

It was fortunate the aliens could not hear the groans that sounded over the space suit comms from Janea’s companions.

—

“Arrive. Friends. Peace.” the sound came out of the wonderful little alien speaker.

“Well, I suppose that settles the argument over whether they’ve come here to kill us.” the Mediator mused.

“The day is young.” the Minister of Science said. ”And peace could very well mean something entirely different to their minds than it does to us.”

“No. It means the same thing to them that it does to us. I can tell you that much...” Ti-Ro mused aloud. She turned to the Mediator.

“I have no idea what it is they want, but I’m certain that they haven’t come here with violent intentions.”

The Mediator took the information in, then spoke. “Well, we’ve said hello. The proper thing to do next is introduce ourselves.”

Ti-Ro thought for a moment, then turned her attention back to the aliens. She gestured to herself with her hands and tails.

“Zani.” she said.

She pointed to the Mediator, and then to Tet-Yur. “Zani, Zani.”

—

“[Untranslatable Proper Noun]....[Untranslatable Proper Noun], [Untranslatable Proper Noun].”

“Very helpful…” Akito muttered.

“Oh, come on. It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Sandra said, looking at Janea.

“We’ll find out.” Janea said through her helmet speakers. She gestured to herself in a broadly similar manner to the alien. “Human.” Then she gestured to her three companions. “Human, human, human.”

The alien tilted its head, and then seemed to understand. Probably. It tapped its chest with its hands.

“Ti-Ro”

“[Untranslatable Proper Noun]” the speaker said.

“Why do we even have this thing?” Lance asked.

Janea ignored him, and tapped her chest with her hands in the same manner that the alien had.

“Janea.”

“Sha…zaa…zya-nee-ha…zyaneeha?” the alien managed to get out

Lance butted in. “Why’d you give her the hardest name first?” He turned to the alien, and tapped his own chest. “Lance.”

“...Lahns.” the alien repeated.

“Sandra.” Sandra said, waving hello.

“...Zaahn-...tra.” the alien said, attempting a wave of her own.

Akito gave a thumbs up. “Akito.”

“Ah-geeto.” the alien said, she looked at her right hand for a moment as she created an approximation of the gesture. She then curled her lower tail-(thumb? Pincer?) inward and attempted to make the gesture with her tail as well.

The plated alien stepped forward.

“Keb-Soot-Ferri.” it said.

The third alien stepped forward and imitated the first’s attempt at a thumbs up..

“Tet-Yur.”

—-

The alien turned to each Zani one by one.

“Tie-Row…Geb-Soot-Fairy…Det-Yer.” it managed to get out.

“Eh, close enough.” Tet-Yur said.

Ti-Ro turned to the Mediator. “What should we do, now?”

He gave a breathy Zani laugh. “Who knows? There isn't exactly a manual for this. Saints, if anything they seem as clueless about what to do next as we are.”

He pondered it a bit more. “Well, let’s start with the Leviathan in the room.”

He turned to speak to the aliens. “Why have you come here?”

The speaker sounded out something in their incomprehensible language.

They seemed to have some kind of silent argument amongst themselves for a moment, then they returned their attention back to the Zan.

The one that had been doing the talking said something in its language. An instant later, the speaker sounded again.

“Need. Help.”

—

Ti-Ro donned her protective gear, and entered the sealed environment. She heard the clacking of claws on polished floors, and was amused. Her favorite alien was coming to greet her.

“Hi Snowy!” she greeted in her best attempt at the aliens’ tongue

The fuzzy little mammal yipped excitedly and tried to jump on her legs.

“Easy! Don’t want to tear it.” she scolded in her own language.

The sub-Ministry of biology was extensively monitoring the sterile sealed environment they had created for the aliens. So far, they had yet to find anything that had a negative effect on Hent-based life among the microorganisms that the aliens brought with them. The general consensus was that they would be allowed to leave the confines of their sealed environment within one or two work cycles. The prospect of not having to don the biohazard suit everyday was an appealing one.

“Ti-Ro! Nice to see you.” Lance said, walking into the foyer.

“Lance! It is good to see you as well.” she replied, feeling a secret rush of triumph when he didn’t correct her.

“Hello, Ti-Ro.” Akito said, giving her a wave as he went to stand next to Lance.

Janea spent most of her time fine tuning the wondrous translation software she had brought with her, and Sandra spent most of her time trying to translate technical documents with the data Janea gave her. This had left the two males with little to do, so they had been attempting to teach Ti-Ro their language. According to Lance, she had made astonishing progress considering the short time they had been at it. Ti-Ro took him at his word, as she had no frame of reference to form her own opinion about her progress.

Ti-Zan had only one language, and so the idea of learning a “new” language was a concept that did not exist outside of the abstract for the species. While there were a few scholars and linguistic experts who specialized in the study of the more archaic forms of the Zani language written in ancient texts, learning an entirely separate language was not something that had been studied extensively. The hypothesis of “lost tribes” of Zan that had gone out and settled other parts of Hent had been a popular myth in the earlier parts of the industrial revolution, but it had soon been debunked. Once air travel had been mastered and exploration of Hent opened up fully, it had quickly become clear that the valleys and fields and crags of their homeland were the only places on Hent where their species lived.

This meant that Ti-Ro had accidentally become the closest thing to a subject matter expert for Ti-Zan when it came to the learning of new languages. While there were teams of scholars, linguists, and scientists she consulted with, she was the one who was “in the field”. It was a lot of pressure, to say the least.

“Where Janea?” she asked Lance.

“Where is Janea?” he corrected. “And she’s in the same place she always is. The office.” He said, pointing down the hall.

“Thank you.” she said. She “nodded” to Akito (a bit of human body language she had grown fond of) and started down the hall, Snowy clattering after her.

She knocked on the door to the office.

“Come in.” Janea said. Ti-Ro stepped in.

“Ah, Ti-Ro, just who I needed to speak with.” Janea said.

While she had a good idea of what Janea had said, she had to wait for the translation when speaking with her, in order to better refine the program. For that same reason, she spoke in her native tongue to Janea.

“[Ah, Ti-Ro], just who I needed to talk to.” the synthetic voice said over the speaker.

Ti-Ro was shocked. “Wow, so fluid!”

“Yeah, we’ve finally gotten it to the second level of its translation matrix. It happened the other night while I was fiddling with it. It’s gotten enough of a mechanical understanding of your language to speak fluidly, the only thing left is filling in the blanks of its vocabulary. For now, it will just fill in the words it does not know with the audio recording of the word itself, but its grammar should be impeccable. Go ahead, say something.”

“Wow, fascinating. Do you use programs like this to communicate amongst yourself? I was shocked when Lance told me your people had thousands of languages. It’s a wonder you’re able to do anything with that many.”

“Well, we technically have thousands of languages, but the [vast majority] of them are not spoken on a large scale. Almost everyone speaks Standard these days, it’s just so easy.”

“That is what Lance and Akito teach me, yes? An artificial language. So fascinating!”

“Yeah, it’s gotten a lot more popular…recently. It was designed [idiom: “from scratch”] to be incredibly easy to learn and pronounce. Well, for humans anyway. For you Zani it might not be the same.”

There it is again. Ti-Ro thought. When talking about themselves and their people, there was definitely something off about it. As she grew to rely on the translator less, she’d noticed it more. She didn’t think it was anything malicious, but there was a wrongness to it. She knew precious little about human body language, and she wasn’t quite able to put her finger on it, but it was noticeable nonetheless. It was if they felt some conscious need to speak more carefully when talking about themselves, as a species.

Trying to avoid an awkward pause, Ti-Ro breathed a laugh, and continued the conversation. “I think it is still working out the kinks for proper nouns. ‘Zani’ refers to one individual. ‘Ti-Zan’ would be the proper word here, as you were referring to my species as a whole. ‘Zan’ would also have worked, as it's the plural.”

“Yes, and I could have sworn I’d set that correctly…wait, we’re getting even more off topic. I didn’t finish my original point: with the translator working at this level, we will be able to communicate properly with your government. In theory, we could pre-write a presentation, and then just translate all of the words the program doesn’t know.”

Snowy, who had been staring at Janea for the whole conversation in the hopes of drawing her attention, finally just walked over and put her paws on Janea’s lap. Janea idly scratched behind her ears, and bared her teeth (which was evidently used to convey happiness or amusement and not to convey a desire to tear out a throat, as a Zani grin did). “Let’s get to work, Ti-Ro.”

—

“Why the hell are you so insistent on this? Let’s just get what we need, fix Allie, and go.” Akito asked.

“We cannot have the first official interaction between our two species be based on a lie.” Janea insisted.

“I’m something of a fence sitter for this argument, but I will add that it will involve a lot more than just ‘getting what we need’, Akito. Allie’s damn near totalled. It’s gonna take a lot more than a patch job to fix her. She’ll need a full rebuild, and even that might not work.” Sandra said.

“And they don’t exactly have dockyards for us to work in. I think we’re gonna have to cooperate with them pretty damn extensively to get anything done.” Lance chimed in.

“All the more reason not to poison our entire relationship with a lie.” Janea added.

“So, what? We just waltz up and say: ‘Hey, we’re not actually important at all! We’re just four space tramps who had our engine break down on us. Also, we’re actually from one of, if not the least influential and important species in the galaxy.’ What’s stopping them from just killing us and stealing our tech if we tell them that?”

“Not much.” Janea said.

“But, I’m guessing you still haven’t changed your mind.” Akito said with a sigh.

“Yes. This is bigger than the four of us. Like it or not, we’re humanity’s ambassadors here. We don’t have the right to poison our species relationship with them for our own personal gain.”

—

Janea stood in what she was told was the assembly room of the “Primary Council”. While the intricacies of the Zani government were a complete mystery to her, she had been made to understand that the Zan who sat in front of her were effectively at the top of the food chain. She cleared her throat.

“Greetings. The presentation today will serve to communicate the basics: who we are, why we are here, and what we can offer you. Please refer to your cultural references when you encounter a word that could not be translated, and understand that the translation program will automatically make conversions for things like measurement units. We ask that you hold any questions until the end, and also wish to inform you that the quality of translation will decline outside of scripted communication.” she took a breath.

“I am Janea Kaur. I served as a crew member on a rocket ship called the Albatross, owned by the Tanakas, Sandra and Akito, who are sitting behind me, along with our pilot Lance Kristiansen. While transporting cargo on the edge of settled space, we encountered a raiding ship owned by a species known as the Diln. The Diln [enslave] the crews of ships their raiders capture, so we did not deem surrender an acceptable outcome. We made a gamble, and it paid off.”

“We destroyed the raider, but it came at the cost of our ship. We were drifting, far away from rescue, when we found your planet in our star charts. An automated probe had done a flyby of your star system, and your presence was detected. We gambled again.”

“That is who we are, now why we are here: our ship is severely damaged. We have no way of accelerating, or returning to Dark Space, the plane of existence through which we move to travel faster than light. All we desire is to return home. Our hope is that, with your assistance, we can repair our ship and do just that.”

“We have little of material value to offer you in exchange for your help, but we do have knowledge.”

An image of the albatross, taken from her launch day. “This is our ship, the Albatross. She is a Stork class light cargo freighter of Human design. She was built [65 Harvests] ago, and is considered fairly elderly by modern standards. Even in her time, she was not designed for power or speed, but rather to provide the most cost effective means possible to perform bulk transport to colonies without significant space infrastructure. In short, she is old, cheap, and not particularly powerful. She also generates more power from her main reactor than your civilization has generated since your discovery of electricity. Or, at least it did when it was still functioning.

“She can provide [1.03 Hent gravities] of constant acceleration for multiple days at a time, with a maximum acceleration of [5.58 Hent gravities]. Again, this is technology that is older than most of you, and from Humanity -my own species- who is still fairly new to space travel by the standards of Interstellar Civilization.”

“This is just one of the technologies we can offer to you. Give us a few [harvest fractions], and you’ll have your orbit. A full [harvest] and you’ll be able to fly to any location in your star system in a matter of [work cycles]. “

The Mediator raised a tail.

Janea was annoyed at having her ‘no questions’ stipulation ignored, but she nodded to him. “Mediator.”

“You speak of your own species in less than flattering terms. Why?”

“We are very small, compared to most of our peers. As I said, we have little in the way of material wealth. We are somewhat…strapped for resources.”

“How so? Does your homeworld…” he read his cultural reference. “...Earth lack resources?

Janea closed her eyes and breathed deep. The old familiar pain came, from the open wound on the spirit of the human species.

“I...was hoping to reach the end of the presentation for this, but that seems to no longer be feasible.” Inside her was a vault, a secure place in her psyche where she could store the horrible swirling vortex of despair and agonizing loss and utter, absolute hopelessness that every human carried with them. It had been banging at the door in anticipation, and now it came crashing out. The tears were unbidden, undesired, resented, but they came all the same, and a tidal wave of memories she longed to forget flowed with them.

“You see, Mediator, there is no Earth anymore.”