        It was then that the fears and doubts began creeping in.  He’d made all the preparations he could think of, but he knew it wasn’t enough.  He knew that when he got there, he was going to be blindsided.  There would be something that he had that offended them, or something he failed to bring that insulted them.  There would be while-coated technicians there to vivisect him, right on the beach, to avoid the risk of contaminating their spaceship.  Or maybe he would get there and there would be nothing at all, because there weren’t any aliens, and there never had been.