An alien has crash landed in a sleepy country town, and its ship stands guard over the fallen spaceman. When some unlikely townsfolk happen upon the site of the tragedy, what began as a game turns into a deadly first contact - with consequences for all humankind.

Author James Patrick Kelly is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award and a 2007 Nebula Award winner. His stories appear frequently in Asimov's Science Fiction, and he writes the magazine's "On the Net" column. Publishers Weekly has called him "a meticulous craftsman in the demanding short-story form."