A spaceship appears, some distance out of the system's orbital plane. It gets out of the way as fast as possible, and a second ship follows, then a third. Soon there's a whole cluster of them.

Aboard the first ship, a conversation takes place:

"Did everybody make it?"

"All ships present and accounted for!" the comm officer chirps. "They'll never find us out here, sir."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," he mutters distractedly, double-checking the fuel calculations for the fourth time. Margins are going to be very, very tight, but they can hang out here for a while waiting for the Cetagandans to give up and go home, and still have enough juice to make it to Sol system without having to refuel at exorbitant disused-jump-station prices along the way. They'd need to really fuck something up in order to run out before they can get to the next disused jump point station. It'll work.

...he double-checks their supplies of food and water. Yes, all fine there too.

"Uh, sir?" says one of the techs, breaking into his reverie.

He looks up alertly. "What is it?"

She gestures to her vid plate. It takes him a couple of blinks to comprehend the image, because it makes no sense. But - that's an inhabited planet. A lively chatter of comm signals, significant orbital presence - some of that flock is moons, but two of those are inhabited too, and there's stations, shuttles, satellites -

"What the fuck," says Admiral Naismith.

"I don't know, sir."

He stares blankly at the display for a few moments longer, then straightens, jerking his chin up and adjusting his collar. "Then let's figure it out. Analyze everything you can get, find out whose doorstep we're sitting on. Whoever it is, we've just found them a tidy little shortcut to Earth. I can't believe they didn't already have a jump station here..."

Actually, they don't seem to have a jump station anywhere. He frowns at the display. What is this, Barrayar all over again? How many lost colonies can one galaxy possibly hold?

"Um," says the comm officer, "the system's not recognizing any of these data formats. I forwarded some of it to the cipher people and they say they can't detect any language we have on file."

...and that points to a different conclusion entirely. "Do you mean to tell me that we took two hops off the back route between Earth and Orient and found aliens?"

"It sure looks that way, sir."

"Well." He shakes his head. "Let me know when you've got adequate translation and data conversion. I feel that it would be rude to come all this way and then leave without saying hello."

The aliens notice them.

The aliens start trying to say hi.

The fleet notices, and prioritizes understanding the things that seem aimed at them. The very moment someone succeeds in deciphering a transmission, they pass it on to the Admiral.

What do the aliens have to say for themselves?

There are a bunch of transmissions from various countries. This one says: Welcome to Amenta! You seem to be aliens. Here is a book one of our greens wrote to explain our world to aliens. We are the nation of Cene, over here, and we're not involved in the war that is currently ongoing, and if you want to land here and it's safe for you to do that and you're clean we would be very happy to meet you!

The Admiral would like somebody to investigate that war, and somebody else to figure out what they mean by 'clean', before he replies to any of these. ...and in the meantime he'll skim the book.

The war is between the two largest countries on the planet (with some support from some friends) over the one country allowing their food exports to be rendered unclean or at least not verifiably clean. The other country wants one of their farm provinces to achieve domestic food security.

They mean this rather theologically elaborate concept by "clean". The fleet will probably qualify if they all have showers.

The book is assuming less similar aliens than it has in fact reached and has sections on things like what hands are for, and there are hints of differences it doesn't anticipate (it mentions that Amentans can only have children during their hormonal spring between the ages of four and twenty, but instead of saying "and we want a lot of kids" it says things like "most Amentans find it easier to skip a year if they have a one year old from the prior spring" and "although we can induce permanent spring, almost no one likes it, even though it would biologically allow having more children".

...oh boy. Where's that analysis of the planet's population density - order of ten billion, that's around the same as Earth, not too bad - oh, but their habitable land area is significantly smaller - how long's their year - okay, he doesn't need to worry about them overrunning the galaxy this decade, but he should tread carefully and avoid disclosing the secrets of jump tech to anybody who smells of military expansionism.

Cene actually looks like a pretty nice place to land. What are their other options? (While he looks through translated greetings, he sets some of the techs to figuring out how feasible it would be to get the locals to produce a fuel they can use. It would be a bad idea to go visit the nice alien planet and then be stuck there.)

They have invitations from most people including Tapa (the warfare aggressor). The invitations are clad in more or less desperation to figure out FTL. The industrial base could probably handle it with some delay.

He firmly tells himself that no good will come of meddling in this war, and composes a response to Cene's message explaining that they didn't come here meaning to find aliens and their fuel margin is tight enough that they'd really like to have a promise of refueling (here are the specs) before they approach the planet, but once that's settled they would be pleased to accept this invitation.

(Secondary priorities: what is a 'green'?)

Yes, they think they can produce that amount of fuel.

(A green, says the book, is a member of the intellectual and artist caste, and most of them have green hair.)

Then the fleet can come park in a nice out-of-the-way orbit and send down a shuttle!

There are people waiting to greet them! Blues greens yellows.

It's kind of unsettling how humanlike these aliens are. If it was just the hair colour he might be tempted to conclude they were someone's project, but that and the hormonal springs... he can't imagine why anyone would create this species on purpose. Well, the medical people will have answers about the exact degree of similarity soon enough.

"Hello!" he says, pausing to let the translation software catch up. "My name is Miles—Admiral Miles Naismith. It's a pleasure to meet you. We should probably sort out translation first thing, since good communication is the foundation of goodwill—" he beckons to a couple of bright-eyed techs, who come forward ready to discuss the details with their local equivalents "—but I think what we've got will suffice for now."

"Welcome to Cene!" beams a blue. If one observes closely one can see her taking cues from the people around Miles about how to interact with his height, which she proceeds to imitate as though it were her own idea. "I'm President Icalena. Do you have the translation project in hand yourselves or would you like to borrow a local linguist or computer scientist?"

Miles looks to his translation techs.

"Both, ideally," says one.

"From what I can tell, your translation software is comparable to ours in effectiveness but works differently," says the other. "Comparing our respective solutions and sharing linguistic information should be both useful and fascinating."

"There you have it," says Miles.

President Icalena gestures to a yellow, who types into a gadget. "Someone will be along shortly."

"Good, good."

"How is it you got here? We would have expected to notice your ships from farther away and I'm told that when we did notice you more suddenly appeared."

"Wormholes. Gravitational anomalies that lead predictably from one point in space to another."

"That's amazing. Where does the one here lead?"

"You're a couple of hops off the route from Earth to Orient, closer to Earth. Earth is the first planet humans ever lived on; Orient is one of the earlier planets we settled. Preliminary reports suggest there's more than one wormhole in this system, but the others might not lead anywhere interesting; most don't, unfortunately. My own home planet fields the best-trained, best-equipped astronomical survey corps in the galaxy, and finding a system with a habitable planet is still big news."

"But it does happen."

"Oh yes. There's about two hundred inhabited systems in the galaxy, nearly all of them less dense than this place. On the other hand I think some of the difference in density can be attributed to humans having a much lower reproductive drive than Amentans; nearly all of us are satisfied with two or three children over a lifespan of about thirty of your years, and many choose to have fewer than that."

"That's very interesting."

"Sadly we don't have a nice tidy book explaining our species - the general assumption is that if there were aliens we would've found them sooner, a hypothesis I am happy to have disproved. But I think the basic summary of the major differences is 'thirty-year lifespans, average two and a half kids per family without population controls, no universal caste system'."

"I hope you found the book helpful even though you didn't need a primer on the opposable thumb."

"It was extremely informative!"

"I'll tell the author you said so! Do you happen to have a way to tell if our food will be safe for you?"

"Yes, we brought appropriate scanning equipment."

"Would you like to come to dinner at the Presidential Residence, assuming initial scans of - does someone have snacks on them?"

A green has a bag of fruit.

"Assuming initial scans suggest it's not unlikely to be edible?"

"That sounds like a fine idea!"

Another one of his handful of techs comes forward to scan the bag of fruit. The scanner pronounces it edible.

"Marvelous. We've got plenty of room for your party in these cars here."

Friendly mercenaries pile into cars!

Cars proceed from the landing site towards a city on cordoned-off roads. People can be seen peeking out of windows and from past the cordon.

Icalena is in a car with Miles. "Are you an exploratory party?"

"Not as such, no. Actually we're a mercenary fleet."

"Really? Why this jump, then?"

"Evading pursuit by an interplanetary empire we recently annoyed. Jumping through an unexplored wormhole is risky; they'll have expected us to keep going along the charted route, and when we appear to have vanished instead, even if they think of checking all the blind jumps behind all the offshoots along the chain, it would be insane for them to actually try it."

"What's the associated risk?"

"Sometimes a ship goes into a wormhole and doesn't come out again. Second most common cause is a new pilot's first jump; the most common is a jump through an unexplored wormhole. We assume most of the rest are equipment failures - a tighter maintenance schedule improves your odds; so does a more experienced pilot - but it's hard to say for sure, because you can't recover wreckage from a failed jump, the ship is just gone."

"How is jumping done?"

"A jump drive operates on some of the same principles as gravity manipulation technology, which we also have, and to operate one successfully you need a jump pilot with specialized cybernetic implants. The ship approaches the wormhole, disappears, and reappears out the other end a few seconds later, unless something went wrong in which case it doesn't."

"...that seems challenging to have invented in the first place, do you happen to know the history of the technology?"

"Yes, I got curious about that once too. So, it turns out you can build a jumpship that'll cross a wormhole without a pilot - in one out of ten tries. The other nine ships never make it to the other side - and then you've got the same odds of failure on the return jump. Somebody on pre-Jump Earth was sufficiently convinced of their theory to keep flinging expensive machinery into the void until some of it finally came back. As for the pilots - the trouble with autopiloting through a wormhole is that no computer is adaptable enough, you have to make too many decisions too quickly based on too complex a model - and cybernetics technology was just getting going at the time, and a pilot sitting at a console wouldn't nearly be able to move fast enough to input the right commands, but hook their brain directly into the computer and they've got a decent chance."

"It comes as a surprise to me that computers lose on complexity and speed."

"'Complexity and speed' is an oversimplified summary. It's more the wrong kind of complexity than too much of it. Computers aren't any good at, oh, diplomatic negotiations either, and those afford much longer response times and more leeway to survive small errors."

"I wonder how difficult it would be to adapt the implant procedure to Amentan brains."

"It'll be interesting to find out. There are various tests and signs to detect people with the right kind of brain to be a jump pilot, but of course none of them were designed with Amentans in mind."

"I'm sure we'll have no shortage of volunteers. We've wanted to be able to go looking for planets to live on for a long time."

"I expect Betan Astronomical Survey will be delighted to accept some Amentan recruits, even if you don't start producing pilots right away. A survey team needs more than just a working ship to bop around in."

"Oh? What else is customary?"

"Navigator to map the route and tell them where to go, scientists to study any planets they find, engineer to ensure that they continue to have a working ship..."

She nods. "How many distinct polities of your species are there?"

"I don't have an exact count, but it's approximately on the same order as the number of inhabited systems, which is about two hundred - there are a couple of interplanetary empires and a handful of subgoverned planets, but one polity to a planet is the customary arrangement, and the usual number of habitable planets in a system is one or fewer. What about yours?"

"Fewer than that, although not by very much - though most of the small countries have long-term alliances or protectorate relations with larger ones or each other so they aren't steamrolled for territory as soon as they annoy someone, so we can be approximated as a few dozen."

"Interplanetary conquest is happily not so much of a concern; the only people who seriously try it anymore are the Cetagandans, and I expect they will eventually learn from their mounting pile of expensive failures."

"It'll be much less of a concern with a program to direct that kind of expansionism up and out instead of across borders."

"Yes. Although I can imagine some human polities getting a little nervous if they hear that you're coming out into the galaxy under such urgent population pressure, given that strictly speaking there aren't any uninhabited planets for you to claim at the moment. You could probably soothe those worries by being very friendly and very interested in joining Betan Astronomical Survey and similar ventures - and maybe by sending some people to immigrate to some of the less populated or more recently colonized planets, as a concrete demonstration that peaceful coexistence is possible."

"A mixed strategy like that sounds like a great idea. We're currently under an immigration protocol that requires swapping people between countries and a place for people to just straightforwardly go will help alleviate the pressure all on its own."

"Yes, I imagine it would. Well, it's a great big galaxy out there, and there's plenty of room."

President Icalena grins at him. "You can't imagine how pleased we are to hear that."

"I'm beginning to get an idea!"

They arrive at the Presidential Residence. It's very nice, and it does have a fair amount of garden around it, but it's vertically oriented and there are other buildings that could reasonably be called neighbors beyond the house and its outlying structures. They built it with a view towards conservatism with their land area. The cars pull up a path that looks like being driven on is not its primary purpose and discharge their passengers and drive away. They are greeted at the door by uniformed purples with water glasses on trays; they surreptitiously count the aliens.

There are one two three four five six seven eight nine aliens! All of them except for Miles are unusually tall; maybe humans have a higher average height.

The aliens, Miles included, are happy to accept glasses of water, although the person with the scanner scans one in case of unwholesome trace minerals or something. The trace minerals turn out to be sufficiently wholesome.

There are exactly the right number of place settings when they are shown into the dining room. Miles gets to sit next to President Icalena. They are joined by some greens who are REALLY EXCITED TO BE THERE.

Ooh, excited greens! Miles is so pleased to meet these excited greens!

The greens are SO EXCITED. Wormholes and languages and alien biology and foreign cultures and WORMHOLES and pilot brain surgery and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Miles and his entourage will happily discuss these subjects with excited greens. The translator folks are delighted to talk languages, the person with the med scanner is up on alien biology, and Miles knows a little bit about everything and may in fact end up holding three simultaneous conversations with three different excited greens on assorted subjects.

The excited greens are SO excited. Planets! Planets planets! They will get ahold of some cutting-edge neurology oranges after dinner, they tell the humans, and start talking about finding would-be pilot greys who want to try it first.

Cutting-edge neurology oranges may be disappointed by the available literature on jump pilot implant science in this mercenary fleet, but he'll happily talk to them anyway, and it'll be handy to have them already introduced to the concepts involved when he goes and retrieves better literature.

(Also, humans, having no universal caste system, will be happy to accept pilot applicants from any background, but Amentans may of course organize themselves however they like.)

It's interesting they don't have one at all! Of course aliens were not expected to have an identical system but not having one seems oddly primitive. They don't mean that in a bad way.

"I admit the whole concept kind of goes against my Betan instincts—Beta Colony is famous for taking egalitarianism to an extreme, everyone should have the same rights and opportunities and acceptably pleasant minimum standard of living—but evidently it works for you."

"A lot of political scientists expect things to smooth out once there's more space," says a green. "Blues want as many kids as anyone, they'll multiply a bit, run out of blue things to do."

"Sounds like it's going to be a sociologically fascinating transition."

"It will!"

"So, it's clear from the existence of that book I read that as a people you've put more thought into contact with aliens before today than I have; do you have thoughts on what you'd like to see happen?" he says, addressing the Amentans present in general rather than any specific person.

"We're definitely most interested in faster than light travel, ways to terraform and season planets and moons -"

"Trade in general -"

"Especially of information, since moving physical goods is more expensive and less valuable per unit cost -"

"Terraforming's a reasonably well-developed science by now, but it has limitations, and of course we've never had to worry about seasons in particular. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the exchange of ideas," he says.

"My main concerns as I think about how to establish contact between Amenta and the rest of the wormhole nexus are making sure the Cetagandans don't get to you before everybody else, getting you in touch with the people who will be the most help to you as quickly as possible, and making sure you have a good foundation for smooth galactic relations in the long term. So far it seems like you'd get along pretty well with Beta Colony, if they can be encouraged to get over their flinch reaction to the caste system; I'd also like to find out who's got the most room to accept immigrants right now so I can point you in their direction."

"What's Beta Colony like?"

"It's a nice place. Very - stable, well-regulated, egalitarian, democratic. Galactically famous for cutting-edge technological development and a high standard of living. The Betan Astronomical Survey Corps is also famous but less broadly so; most people aren't interested in galactic exploration in the first place, it's not such a pressing concern for us."

"It sounds lovely. Our greys are going to be so eager to go exploring - and the nerd greens too -"

He laughs. "I'll bet! What an exciting moment to be a part of!"

"The Internet's already going ballistic."

"I can imagine."

"Everyone's going to want to know all about all of you."