A MATTER OF PROTOCOL

By JACK SHARKEY

Illustrated by SCHELLING

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine August 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

First Contact was always dangerous—but usually only to the man involved!

From space, the planet Viridian resembled a great green moss-covered tennis ball. When the spaceship had arrowed even closer to the lush jungle that was the surface of the 7000-mile sphere, there was still no visible break in the green cloak of the planet. Even when they dipped almost below their margin of safety—spaceships were poorly built for extended flight within the atmosphere—it took nearly a complete circuit of the planet before a triangle of emptiness was spotted. It was in the midst of the tangled canopy of treetops, themselves interwoven inextricably with coarse-leaved ropy vines that sprawled and coiled about the upthrust branches like underfed anacondas.

Into the center of this triangle the ship was lowered on sputtering blue pillars of crackling energy, to come to rest on the soft loamy earth.

A bare instant after setdown, crewmen exploded from the airlock and dashed into the jungle shadows with high-pressure tanks of gushing spume. Their job was to coat, cool and throttle the hungry fires trickling in bright orange fingers through the heat-blackened grasses. Higher in the trees, a few vines smoldered fitfully where the fires had brushed them, then hissed into smoky wet ash as their own glutinous sap smothered the urgent embers. But the fire was going out.

"Under control, sir," reported a returning crewman.

Lieutenant Jerry Norcriss emerged into the green gloaming that cloaked the base of the ship with a net of harlequin diamonds. Jerry nodded abstractedly as other crewmen laid a lightweight form-fitting couch alongside the tailfins near the airlock. On this couch Jerry reclined. Remaining crew members turned their fire-fighting gear over to companions and stood guard in a rough semi-circle with loaded rifles, their backs to the figure on the couch, facing the jungle and whatever predatory dangers it might hold.

Ensign Bob Ryder, the technician who 

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