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knowledge of the English language." He smiled again. "It is, I suppose, too much to hope that you also know Russian."
    "I am afraid, General, that puzzling out even one of your languages from a study of your broadcasts was the limit of our capabilities. Let me introduce Miralann hle'Shahya, who was largely responsible for that achievement—and who I am sure would be fascinated to be introduced to 'Russian.' " The man who bowed in response was younger than Varien, a little shorter and plumper, and he did, indeed, look intrigued. DiFalco couldn't avoid the impression that what intrigued him were the service dress uniforms they had donned for the occasion—his own USSF black and Sergei's dark bottle-green, both with the red-and-gold RAMP shoulder patch.
    "And my daughter, Aelanni zho'Morna, who is already known to Colonel DiFalco," Varien continued. Kurganov did a small bow of his own, complete with a soft heel-click, and she smiled tentatively. Alright, Sergei, enough with the Old World charm , DiFalco found himself thinking.
    "And now," Varien said impatiently, "if you gentlemen will be seated, I will finally satisfy your curiosity." He indicated a semicircle of chairs around a slightly raised platform on one side of the spacious chamber. (At least it seemed outrageously spacious to DiFalco, considering that they were aboard a space vessel.)
    "I will be most interested," Kurganov said as he took a seat. He had the look of a man trying to delicately impart a painful and embarrassing piece of news. "You see, Varien, I must tell you that from our standpoint you are, ah . . . impossible."
    "So I have been told." Loftily: "I have chosen not to take it personally."
    DiFalco squirmed uncomfortably in the chair that insisted on trying to conform itself to the contours of his butt. "Look, Varien, it goes beyond the fact that you people are human, which you've admitted is a stumper—one of our science fiction writers once compared the chances of the same species evolving on two planets to the chances of one locksmith making a lock while another locksmith working independently on another planet makes a key that fits it, and I imagine he was understating the improbability by several orders of magnitude. But aside from that, our scientists have decided that we're the only technological civilization—and probably the only tool-makers—in the history of the galaxy."
    "Whatever led them to this extraordinary conclusion?" Varien was frankly curious.
    "Well . . . for one thing, we've never been visited by anybody else."
    "But you have. Now. By me." Varien spread his hands in a gesture of bogus self-deprecation. " Someone had to be the first, after all."
    "I think," Kurganov put in, "that Colonel DiFalco is referring to Fermi's Paradox: the fact that our planet has never been colonized during all the hundreds of millions of years it has existed as a life-bearing world—which seems inexplicable if civilizations are as numerous as they ought to be if life is a normal occurrence in a galaxy of four hundred billion suns."
    "But," Varien said with an air of fully stretched patience, "the same objection applies: there has to be a first. Even if no star-travelling race has existed heretofore, the fact dosen't logically preclude the possibility of one or more now. And your astronomers must be aware that your sun, like ours, is an exceptionally old star of its generation—which is the first stellar generation to have formed from a medium enriched with heavy elements by numerous supernovae. Planets suitable for life are very common, and in the normal course of events they will give birth to it; but relatively few are old enough to have done so to date. Highly-evolved, sentient life is a recent galactic phenomenon."
    "Okay," DiFalco resumed doggedly, "so there was nobody around to colonize Earth during the Precambrian. But what about the total failure of our SETI programs?" Seeing Varien's blank look, he amplified. "Search for extraterrestrial