creature you were about to be was unknown. And no comment on what sort of animal it might be could be half so informative as actually being what it was.

Jerry repressed an urge to fidget. This was almost the worst part of Contact: The wait, while the senseless briefing took place. Soon enough he would know more of the species under observation than could be held on ten reams of briefing-sheets. Soon enough he would be sent, for an irreducible forty minutes, into the mind of each of the creatures to be learned.

The irreducible time-extent of Contact was its primary hazard. When the Contact helmet had been developed, it had been found that approximately forty minutes—forty-point-oh-three minutes, to be exact—had to be spent in the creature's mind. No amount of redesigning, fiddling or tinkering could change that time. The Zoologist could spend neither more nor less than that amount in a creature's mind.

Since all creatures have natural enemies, Contact called for more than simply curling up and relaxing inside the alien mind. The zoologist's host-alien might have a metabolism which called for it to drink a pint of water every fifteen minutes or shrivel. In which case the zoologist would shrivel with it, his punishment for not sufficiently Learning his host.

This, then, was the reason those irreducible forty minutes were a hazard. Should the creature being Contacted die, the zoologist died with it. There was no avoiding death if it came to the inhabited creature. A good zoologist Learned fast, or perished. Which is why there is no such thing as a bad Space Zoologist. You're either a good one or a dead one.

Peters' voice came to a halt and he closed the plastic folder over the briefing-sheet.

"That's about the size of it, sir," he said. "We've focused the Contact-beams toward the indicated areas and made a final check of all the wiring, tubes and power-sources."

Jerry sighed contentedly and shut his eyes.

"Whenever you're ready, then, Captain," he whispered, and relaxed his body in preparation for his first Contact. His mind and imagination toyed a moment with brief fancies about his forthcoming existences in swamp, desert and sea, then he pushed the thoughts away and let his mind go empty.

Faintly, he heard Peters calling an order to the technician within the spaceship—

Then 

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