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it’s quite likely you will be hounded as soon as you step out of a military base.  I advise you to avoid that sort of attention.”
     
    John sighed inwardly, but nodded.  The media had swarmed over him once before - the last survivor of HMS Canopus , before Ark Royal had returned with a captured alien battlecruiser in tow - and he hadn't enjoyed it, not even slightly.  Now, with half the population considering him a hero and the other half demanding his immediate execution, it would probably be worse.  Much worse.
     
    “Yes, sir,” he said, finally.
     
    “Good,” the First Space Lord said.  “I’m afraid your next posting will make the Society of Interstellar Brotherhood even more pissed at you.”
     
    He smiled, rather thinly.  “You may have heard that talks about keeping Vesy in strict quarantine have broken down,” he continued.  “The Russians tried to insist they had a claim to the system, the Indians flatly refused to honour an agreement that cut them out of a quicker route to their colonies, the French and Chinese started considering which way to jump ... right now, in short, there is no legal barrier to anyone going to Vesy and trying to make contact with the natives.  This is likely to be utterly disastrous for them, Captain.”
     
    “Yes, sir,” John said.  He’d seen Vesy - and he’d seen the damage caused by a handful of Russian-supplied weapons.  Even if the Vesy were cut off from all further human contact, they knew how to make gunpowder and everything from basic muskets to cannons.  The slaughter on their homeworld would rise rapidly until their society managed to integrate the new weapons.  “They don’t need our encouragement to slaughter one another.”
     
    “It gets worse,” the First Space Lord said.  “The Brothers” - the Society of Interstellar Brotherhood - “were barred from trying to communicate with the Tadpoles.  No one in their right mind wanted the Brothers lecturing the Tadpoles about how their reproductive systems are dangerously immoral, not when the Tadpoles could easily have won the war.  It would be a really stupid reason to restart the war.”
     
    “Yes, sir,” John said, again.
     
    “However, it has made the Brothers more determined to approach the Vesy and start transferring technology to them,” the First Space Lord warned.  “Not all of the Brothers are keen to supply weapons, but medical science and building materials will do real damage to their society in the short term.  The influx of human ideas and ideals will probably do worse damage.  They’re not human, they’re not men in rubber suits, but I don't think the Brothers grasp that point.  And they may succeed in turning the Vesy into a threat to humanity.”
     
    “Sir,” John said doubtfully, “the Vesy aren't much more advanced than ... than the Elizabethans.  Even gunpowder was unknown to them five years ago.”
     
    “They will have the advantage of knowing that more is possible,” the First Space Lord said, darkly.  “Our most optimistic assessment suggests that the Vesy might start experimenting with primitive rockets in four hundred years, perhaps less.   It would depend on just how much technology - and ideas - have already slipped into their system.  If the Brothers actually start guiding the Vesy down the right path, they might get into space in a much shorter time.”
     
    “It seems unbelievable, sir,” John said. 
     
    “We would prefer not to take chances,” the First Space Lord said.  “Unfortunately, with a lack of general consensus on the issue, it is impossible to prevent other nations from making contact with Vesy factions and working with them to take control of the entire planet.”
     
    He leaned forward.  “You will return to Warspite , Captain, as CO of the squadron assigned to Vesy,” he continued.  “Unfortunately, this is something of a poisoned chalice.  On one hand, you have orders to prevent cultural contamination, either