Appears in The Compact Reader
A multi-world scientific team investigates mysterious alien activity near Zeta Reticuli, just before the founding of the Compact. Adam Hogarth of Jefivah, Rene Fleming of Mars, and Bernard Botaki of Earth encounter the legendary “Grays”—revealed to be biological drones for a collective intelligence known as the Yedevans.
During the mission, Botaki is absorbed and reconstructed as a hybrid entity, no longer fully human but still bearing his old consciousness. Through him, the team learns that the Yedevans once evolved from thousands of separate species into a single distributed mind. Disturbed by the encounter and Earth’s tightening grip on its colonies, Hogarth and Fleming consider joining the independent colony of Etrusca, newly founded by Marcus Dazar and Tol Germanicus.
The story not only explores early human encounters with truly alien life but also foreshadows humanity’s first political and scientific breakaways from Earth’s dominance, setting the stage for the Compact’s creation.