Shrouded in procedure and safe from the glare of sensation-seeking publicity, the appropriate personnel were designated and gathered to prepare for the arrival of the representatives of the latest in a series of recently encountered nonhuman species. By now a routine had been developed, rehearsed, and refined. Formal greetings and processing would take place on the island of Bali, a sufficiently isolated yet well-developed site that had been used for such purposes several times previously. In addition to its physical beauty, the island and its man-made shuttle landing strip were situated near the equator, thus allowing for the easiest and most economical lift-offs into orbit. Facilities for the elaboration of contact were already in place, and government operatives who knew how to best facilitate relations would be ready and waiting for the arrival of the incoming visitors.

Those on board the Chagos had yet to transmit pictures of the newly contacted creatures, but no one in the government contact offices on Bali or the reception facility that had been established on the nearby island of Lombok nor anyone else on Earth was in any particular hurry. The media could wait to image tridees in person - provided it was a slow newsday. The physical appearance of intelligent aliens had ceased to be an especially newsworthy event nearly a hundred years ago.

So while interested but far from agitated staff waited on Bali and Lombok for the arrival of the new aliens, the Chagos was directed into a parking orbit that would keep it isolated from other ships, shuttles, and orbiting stations until the ap- propriate authorities informed those on board that it was time for the representatives of the Pitar to be received. Quarantine and related biomedical canvassing had already been performed on the ship while it was traveling through space-plus and prior to orbit insertion. If such procedures had not beer carried out in the safety of deep space, the Chagos would not have been permitted to take up orbit around Earth, much less disembark its esteemed passengers. As a craft equipped with the latest technology for carrying out survey and exploration, the facilities on board were the qualitative if not quantitative equal of anything available at any Earth-based medical agency. Had the tiniest indication of a possibly dangerous bacterium, virus, or other potentially infectious element been detected abiding on or within the Pitar, the Chagos would have been stopped in lunar instead of terran orbit, where additional, more intensive tests could have been performed in perfect safety.