From the author This is the second time I've used ideas that appear in the background in my other stories. The story “Non-Interference” (Del Rey, 1983) grew out of a piece of the surroundings of an unpublished story. So in “Herbig-Haro,” the first story I sold to Stan Schmidt at Analogue, a small detail seemed worthy of growing into a separate story. The result is The Roads We Don't Take, a classic first contact story, albeit from an unusual perspective.