text: In walks the Folvan, as naturally as if it has been here before. In the artificial light of the room, you can see its features quite clearly: tall, gray-skinned with a mane of wooly black hair extending down its back, long and powerful-looking legs, and large, yellowed nails at the end of its four thick fingers. A kilt-like garment made of interwoven grass covers the being from the base of its ribcage to just above the knees.
  
  It regards each of you with its dark eyes, and then the holographic display with its life-like image of the Folvan village. That's when a fleshy sac on its throat puffs out like a frog's, and the Folvan emits a strange series of hoots, chirps, and whistles.
  
  Is it trying to intimidate you? Quabiss, your security specialist, is hovering his hand over his holstered plasgun. "Lieutenant?" he says. "What are your orders?"
  
  Dansmith seems equally poised for action. "Protocol says we have to stun the local and take him back to the ship for a memory wipe. He can't be allowed to have any knowledge of us."
  
  "Hold on!" Hun-Spruk says, her face illuminated by her WristComp display. "I think he's trying to tell us something. I just need to call up Dr. Munro's translation app."
  
  Chief Dansmith shakes his head. "The orders from Captain Ynthramanni and Commander Diston were quite clear," he says.
  
  > If you attempt to communicate with the Folvan, turn to page 142.
  "Hun-Spruk," you say, "you have two minutes to figure out what this guy wants."
  
  "I can't believe we're doing this," Dansmith says. "Do you know how many years I have in the service? I don't want to throw it all—"
  
  Just then Hun-Spruk's WristComp begins to speak. "You must leave here now," it says, translating the words of the Folvan.
  
  You realize that the Folvan has been repeating its statement over and over since it entered the room, but now seems satisfied that you can understand what it's saying. "We do not want off-worlders on our planet. We have fought them before, and we will not let you have the Anywhere Device."
  
  Dansmith looks at you. "They have been fighting off-worlders? What does he mean by that? They fought with Dr. Munro?"
  
  As Dansmith speaks to you, the translation app repeats his words to the Folvan. "You must leave," the Folvan says again. "These are our protected grazing grounds. Five elders stand outside with plasguns. Call your ship and leave our world. You will not have the Anywhere Device. We will defend it."
  
  That is the second time the Folvan has mentioned this "Anywhere Device." You have no idea what it is. The Folvan seems pretty adamant that it—he? she? how do you tell?—wants you to leave. On the other hand, perhaps he knows where Dr. Munro is—or what happened to her.
  
  > If you obey the Folvan and leave, turn to page 76.
  You've risked the ire of your senior officers enough already by talking to this Folvan, and the being seems pretty adamant that it doesn't want to converse with you. "All right," you say, "we will leave."
  
  Then, turning to your team, "Let's get out of here."
  
  Nervously, you each file past the stern Folvan, who says nothing else as you step out of the research post back into the night air. And the Folvan's warning was accurate: there are five others standing outside, holding what certainly must be standard-issue Naval plasguns. The last thing you expected to find on this mission was modern weaponry in the hands of a primitive culture. Where did they get them, and what other secrets might they be holding?
  
  Instinctively you raise your hands at the sight of the plasguns, but the Folvans do not seem to be interested in you or anything on your person. These individuals—elders as the first Folvan called them—do indeed seem to be older, with traces of white in the mane of short hair running from the tops of their heads halfway down their backs. All are dressed in the same grass-fiber garments.
  
  The five armed Folvans surround the entrance to the research post when you first step out, but the central figure, wearing a flat-topped cap, steps to the side and gestures with his plasgun to the open prairie. Its air sac puffs out and he speaks, "Call your ship. Leave here now. Never come back."
  
  The actual language of the Folvans is indecipherable to your human ears—it would be like trying to hold a conversation with a bat—but the translation app remarkably recreates this individual's words in a distinctive voice. It sounds older, more firm in its resolve than the Folvan who entered the research post, but you are still unable to peg either of them to a specific gender.
  
  > Page 77
  No one on your team says anything as you march out into the open grassland, your hands still raised; you're not sure what the local custom is for signaling surrender with body language, but keeping your hands up satisfies your human intuition. Still, it is humiliating to be banished into the night like this.
  
  You have yet to make your call to Hinju, but your mind has been working as you lead the way out into the stiff grass. You hesitate to speak out loud, lest the Folvans overhear your plans. But you have come up with two options: you can leave the planet just as the local leader has asked you to do, making your report to Commander Diston and Captain Ynthramanni while figuring out what to do next.
  
  Or you can ask Hinju to land and take off as if he were picking you up—while you keep low and circle back through the tall grass toward the Folvan village. You came here to find Dr. Munro, or at least learn what happened to her, and you know there must be more information back in those strange earthen mounds.
  
  > If you return to the Orion, turn to page 160.
  You signal Hinju to come and pick you up, and he responds that he will be there in five minutes, as promised. That leaves the five of you—Lieutenant Hun-Spruk, Dr. Wildon, Chief Dansmith, Starman Quabiss, and yourself—alone and exposed on the Folvan prairie. The dull red moon is beginning to set; and because the nights are short here at these northern latitudes, a glow of light is already beginning to appear on the eastern horizon.
  
  There are no lights back in the Folvan village, and you can see neither the earthen mounds nor the six Folvans. But you have no doubt you are being observed. You feel defeated, and you see similar expressions on the faces of Hun-Spruk and Quabiss.
  
  Dansmith, however, is trying to cheer everyone up. "I think we did as well as we could," he says. "These types of missions are rarely successful. Years ago when I was on the Pegasus I was assigned as a radio tech on a team that was being dispatched to the planet Andochand. The people there are ugly as sin, if you ask me, and they still communicate with electromagnetic waves. Thus the need for a radio tech.
  
  "Anyway, an admiral's son had gotten himself mixed up with some kind of mafia outfit, and our job was to tap into their telecom network and learn his whereabouts. But when we arrived, there was a space shuttle parked in orbit. Turns out the admiral's son was on board, minus his right hand... ."
  
  You're not sure anyone is paying attention to Dansmith's story, which wraps up at about the time Hinju touches down with the shuttle. Right now you're just eager to get off this miserable planet.