The days of gung-ho space explorers streaking into the unknown in a desperate search of danger and adventure are long over. But their reports remain -- reports of discoveries and inhabited planets that will take the oversight commission years to fully attend to.

One such planet is being explored now, by a party of space marines hoping to make friendly "second contact". Though the natives are incapable of space flight, they possess a civilized culture and are in the midst of their industrial revolution.

What the marines discover is that the natives have made the long dead old explorer a mythical figure of legend, almost a god, and his last words, said with the bitter isolationist attitude of a hermit struggling to escape his own kind, pose a possibly deadly threat to the exploration party.