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My opinion of her tactics did not improve when she spoke to the hastily assembled hunting party several minutes later.

“I want to make something very clear here—this is not a hunting party. It’s a search party. We know very little about this thing. Federation history is replete with encounters with life-forms that we thought were utterly hostile and became good friends—ranging from the Klingons, whom we knew to be sentient, to the Horta, whom we had thought of as simple animals. Now it’s possible that this, too, is just a nasty animal—it’s also possible that we provoked it in some way. We will defend ourselves if we have to, but we are not going to hunt this creature down. For now, my main concern is to find the creature, retrieve the heads of the people it’s killed, and learn more about it.”

One of the party—an Osina named D’Ren—muttered under his breath, “And how is she supposed to do that?”

People from the Federation apparently have very good hearing, because she replied to that, even though she was not meant to hear. “We won’t know until we make the attempt.”

“Right,” D’Ren said, louder this time, “I forgot. You’re Starfleet. You can do anything.”

Commander Gomez looked up and down the line of men she was leading. “No one is to fire their weapons without my authorization. Anyone who does will be confined in the Culloden until the next window and shipped out of here. Is that understood?”

That surprised me. The threat was a very serious one—to lose this work would mean sacrificing great wages, and also virtually guaranteeing that the person in question would never work for the government again. And only the government pays this well.

After her speech, we marched out of the camp, following the trail of silver blood. There were nine of us, for luck.

This is an ugly, unpleasant world. There is no shading here—it is all glare and blinding light. The plants all have sharp edges and the ground is difficult to walk on. Aside from the occasional burst if the suns reflect the right way, there is no color here. It is bland and lifeless—no less than one would expect from a place so evil.

The blood trail became harder to follow after a certain amount of time, but the animal seemed to be going in a straight line, which we followed.

Before long, the suns started to set. Commander Gomez led the way—her weapon had a lamp attached to it, which became our beacon. Our own lights were much poorer, and since I brought up the rear of our “search party,” I got the least benefit from that light. Only Commander Gomez had her weapon unholstered, at her order—and no one was willing to contravene an order that came with such potentially disastrous consequences.

We saw many creatures on the way. Some of them were even normal shii. Once D’Ren started at the sight of one, thinking it was the monster, and reached for his weapon. Before he could, though, the shii itself ran off. I assured him that that was not it—it was far too small.

This did not stop D’Ren from panicking once again when we happened upon a pride of shii, but they ignored us. All of them were fairly diminutive—nothing at all like the monster I saw in the camp.

Then we came to the cave.

Commander Gomez shone her light into the cave—and then gasped. Thinking that we would never get a coherent answer out of her, I ran to the front to see what she saw.

What I saw were skulls.

The skulls of animals. The skulls of men.

Hundreds of skulls.

As repellent as the sight was, the smell was worse.

In the camp every day are the mixed smells of food, the chemicals from the cooking units and the lamps, and the various materials used for the machines we construct. The smells of life.

When we left the camp, those smells dissipated to be replaced by nothing—for just as there is no color, there is no odor to this world, either. Nothing to indicate that anything worthwhile has ever come here. It is as sterile and antiseptic as that idiot Gallamite wishes his hospital was.

But the cave . . .

I hope, my