“...Is it flattering to be the first? I don’t know about you, but I don’t really care. Is it good to grow old searching and retire without having found what you have been looking for all your life? Tatyana, our specialist in structural linguistics and non-humanoid intelligence, once said that she would not mind running into a squadron of heavily armed space cannibals in space, and we objected to her only as a joke. None of us would refuse. It’s all variety. But before the Gemini planet, neither we nor the other crews of the Long-Range Reconnaissance flotilla encountered any signs of intelligent life for five years in a row...”