The boy looked very frightened; his jaws were stiffly clenched, his lips bloodless. "Y-yes, sir," he said stammeringly. "Begging your pardon, sir. I seem to have killed an alien."
In the relative privacy of his office, Devall faced them all again—Leonards, sitting very quietly staring at his gleaming boots; Meyer and Rodriguez, who had accompanied him on the ill-starred botanizing journey. The aliens were outside; there would be time to calm them down later.
"Okay," Devall said. "Leonards, I want you to repeat the story, exactly as you just told it to me, and I'll get it down on the autotype. Start talking when I point to you."
He switched on the autotype and said, "Testimony of Second Lieutenant Paul Leonards, Botanist, delivered in presence of commanding officer on 4 April 2705." He jabbed a forefinger at Leonards.
The boy's face looked waxy, beads of sweat dotted his pale vein-traced forehead, and his blond hair was tangled and twisted. He clamped his lips together in an agonized grimace, scratched the back of one hand, and finally said, "Well, we left the enclave about 0900 this morning, bound south and westerly on a tour of the out-lying regions. Our purpose was to collect botanical specimens. I—was in charge of the group, which also included Sergeants Meyer and Rodriguez."
He paused. "We—we accomplished little in the first half-hour; this immediate area had already been thoroughly covered by us anyway. But about 0945 Meyer noticed a heavily wooded area not far to the left of the main road, and called it to my attention. I suggested we stop and investigate. It was impossible to penetrate the wooded area in our jeeps, so we proceeded on foot. I left Rodriguez to keep watch over our gear while we were gone.
"We made our way through a close-packed stand of deciduous angiosperm trees of a species we had already studied, and found ourselves in a secluded area of natural growth, including several species which we could see were previously uncatalogued. We found one in particular—a shrub consisting of a single thick succulent green stalk perhaps four feet high, topped by a huge gold and green composite flower head. We filmed it in detail, took scent samples, pollen prints, and removed several leaves."
Devall broke in suddenly. "You didn't pick the flower itself? Devall speaking."
"Of course not. It was the only specimen in the vicinity, and it's not our practice to destroy single specimens for the sake of collecting. But I did remove several leaves from the stalk. And the moment I did that, a native sprang at me from behind a thick clump of ferns.