Using the instrument, Vantolos began to draw symbols and words in the air between itself and the contact team. The lines and curlicues, the three-dimensional shapes and geometric images, glowed brightly enough to be seen clearly even in the morning light. The members of the contact team studied them intently.

“These are the essentials we require.” Just as it had declaimed, the alien had not offered so much as a good morning but had instead launched directly into the series of demands. “Finding appropriate translations was time-consuming, even allowing for the primitiveness of your basic chemistry. It is often so where scientific terminology is concerned.”

Dev found himself looking from the suspended words and images to the team’s two biologists, Pavesi and Katou-Zimmer. Although the words hovering in the humid air appeared to be English, he could not be certain of their meaning. His education had included more physics than chemistry.

Of one thing he felt reasonably certain: none of the ethereal expressions referred even obliquely to rare earths or radioactives. Or for that matter, to gold or diamonds or some similar product of the earth. While his knowledge of organic chemistry was limited, he could recognize the diagram of an organic molecule when he saw it.

His confusion was shared by his colleagues. Pavesi in particular had the strangest expression on her face. Sidling over to her, he whispered his interest without taking his eyes off the alien Vantolos and the shimmering imagery the alien continued to scribe in the air.

“What is it? What are they asking for?” When she didn’t reply he raised his voice slightly. “What are they demanding? Do you comprehend any of it?”

She finally woke from her contemplation to look over at him. “That’s just it. I’m pretty sure I recognize all of it. Not most of it: all of it.” Raising her left hand and pointing, she traced over the hovering symbols. “It has outlined and visually defined a pair of glucose polymers.” Her pointing finger moved. “That one there, that’s amylose, a linear molecule. The one beside it is amylopectin, which is branched. Together they form a starch. A particular starch.”

Dev wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “‘Starch’? The alien demand is for—starch?”

“Not just any starch.” She looked over at him, her understanding of what Vantolos was designating leaving her no less bemused than her colleague. “A starch that constitutes about three-quarters of the kernel weight in maize. Apparently they want—excuse me, ‘demand’—several tons of it.”

Not fissile material then, a bewildered Dev realized. Not rare minerals or gemstones. Not cadavers or live human slaves.

The aliens were demanding … corn.

—IV—