They visited another twenty systems or so over the next couple of days. Nick lost count somewhere. None of them were "civilized" according to the Goldaskians, which wasn't surprising. Most such systems would be listed in their atlas of the galaxy already. They had only found the one inhabited world, and a total of three that might be habitable for the fuakalas.

Hundreds of nearby stars to check. There could be a perfect world for them just a few hours away and we wouldn't find it without weeks of searching. Nick shook his head.

When they got back to Ooafa, they had another meeting that was one long argument about what to do next. He didn't envy Geh!kin the task of managing the discussion. Their options included:

Staying on Ooafa

Landing on the first or second uninhabited world with breathable air, and see whether fuakalas could survive there

Making contact with their neighbors on the inhabited world

Continuing to search for more near neighbors

Traveling to a "civilized" world and asking for help

Traveling to Earth and trying to negotiate peace with humans

Of course, lots of fuakalas were interested in each of those options and more. Unsurprisingly, the ones aboard the Kalash-Quovo were more interested in the nearby stars, but there was strong disagreement over the risks of contacting yet another alien race and hoping for the best. Every plan had those in favor and those against.

Nick rubbed his forehead as the argument went on for ages. He read a few private messages sent to his tablet, and answered them. Finally, he raised his hand and waited for Geh!kin to give him the nod. It took a couple of minutes, as they were having a heated argument about contacting a "civilized" world, but finally there was a break, and Geh!kin said, "Everyone, our resident hoonan has something to say. Nik!eh, please speak."

Nick nodded and rubbed his jaw. "Okay, plenty of people smarter than me are making good points, but maybe we should focus on right now." Petra beeped at him in warning, so he sighed and tried again.

"Now, we need food. The people near, have ships, have food. They can't come here. We can go there. I say, maybe, we go to them, say hi, ask for help, ask for food. We bring gold. We say hi. They say hi. We give gold, we get food. We say we come back and talk, we bring food to Ooafa. Doctor Vickall see food, maybe fix food. Then we talk about other ideas."

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It wasn't like he thought that up. Someone else had already suggested it. Geh!kin seemed to like it, and had privately asked him to endorse it. Nick thought it was a simple plan that made sense, so he was willing to announce his support, and because he had Petra, people listened.

Geh!kin seemed happy with him. "I agree with Nik!eh. If we get gold from surface of Ooafa, go to neighbor aliens, try to talk for one day, we will get food, or we will know we cannot get food there. This does not tell the Goldaskians. And it is fast. I say yes."

"I agree with Nick," Doctor Vickall said next. "I can look at food, see if food is good. Probably I can fix food if it needs it. This way, we will know, and we can stop arguing about this part. This is faster than testing air and water and germs on the empty worlds. And," she added, "they will have food already in space, in places where they live. We do not need to go to the surface, and maybe fight, and maybe get sickness. We can do it all in space."

The argument finally wound down and the meeting ended. Geh!kin went ahead and ordered Yulliksu to take a shuttle down to get the gold and silver that Petra's bots and printers had dug up from the silver mine. Meanwhile, Geh!aoa asked Nick to find a purifier for radioactive ingots, so that they could reprocess the irradiated stockpile in Petra's dungeon. It turned out to be surprisingly quick and cheap to build, so that went down on the next shuttle flight.

For the next day, they shuttled people back and forth between refuges on the surface while waiting for the ingots to process. Then a couple of flights were dedicated to hauling the materials up to the ship. The Goldaskians talked about using asteroids, and while that made more sense in the long term, at the moment it was faster to grab already refined elements from the surface.

There was a lot of arguing over who would lead the diplomatic mission when they tried to talk to the neighbor aliens. Nick was glad that he could ignore that part. Geh!aoa came to him to get his advice on what questions to ask the neighbors about technology and so forth. The technological levels seemed to be the fuakalas lowest, then humans, then the neighbor aliens, then galactic civilization including the Goldaskians were the most advanced. So Nick had things he could learn from the neighbors.

Too bad I'm not somebody from NASA. At least I've read some science fiction, so I have a few ideas. Geh!aoa already had over a hundred very good questions, and Nick only thought up a dozen or so that weren't on her list already.

There was a little turnover in personnel; apparently a few people had decided that they were okay looking around, but not actually being aboard for first contact with the neighbors. There was a waiting list for people to come on board, so they had no problem filling the slots. They continued to work on training up more of the fuakalas on ship-handling.

Finally, all the people and all the stuff were where they were supposed to be, and the Kalash-Quovo headed out once more. It was barely an hour's travel to the system, but they would have to see how much maneuvering they needed to do, and where they wanted to be. It would probably be a few more hours at least before they could safely approach the locals for trade.

This is my third 'first contact' meeting. No, my fourth, Nick realized, remembering the Nagathi woman who had given him Petra in the first place. He shook his head. My life is nuts.

Here's hoping this first contact goes a lot smoother than the others did.

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