"I'm Lalita and this is my friend Isabella. What's your name, ground person?"

"Viv!" giggles the child.

"It's very nice to meet you, Viv!"

"It's nice to meet you too! What are you doing here? All the sky people who want us to join the Federation of Unfriendliness go to Baraia."

"Well, we don't want you to join the Federation of Unfriendliness, so we came here instead," he says reasonably.

"Oh, okay. That makes sense," says Viv.

"In fact, we left the Federation of Unfriendliness to come here," he says. "Because here is much friendlier."

"It is!" Viv agrees.

"Do you think anyone will mind if we leave our ship here, or should we move it somewhere else?"

"It's on the priv," she says, plucking at a nearby stalk. "But no one is going to harvest it till it seeds. And it's already squished all the stalks it's going to squish."

"I tried not to squish very many. Did I do a good job?"

"Yes," says Viv. "The sky boat feet are only on a little bit of the priv and it wouldn't even make a bowlful."

"That's good."

"Yes," Viv agrees.

"Should we tell anyone we're here, do you think? I guess they'll probably find out," he says, glancing at the sky boat perched at the edge of the priv.

"I could go tell my daddy," Viv offers.

"Okay," says Lalita.

"Federation of Unfriendliness, I succeeded at not squishing too much of the priv, our new friend Viv is going to go tell her daddy the sky people are here."

"Federation of Unfriendliness," laughs Isabella. "Yes, this was a good place to go."

"Wasn't it just?"

"That would be one way to put it," Lalita agrees. "They disapprove of distributing useful technology to prewarp civilizations. You might have heard."

"It's all over the nets," says Viv's father. He pauses. "I don't wish to pry, but it would form a more complete picture if I knew why that would cause someone to run from it."

"You might also have heard that a little while ago, someone posted a few juicy equations on a popular physics board and then was never heard from again."