The arrival of a new doctor is welcome on a backwater agricultural planet, especially for Amanda, the local translator, who'd enjoy having another professional woman in their quiet settlement. But when Amanda takes Karen to inoculate the local alien population against human-borne bugs, the murder of a young alien mother and Karen's subsequent apprehension of the woman's children releases a cascade of repercussions: moral, legal, and lethal. The consequences force Amanda to face her personal contribution to genocide and planetary destruction.

First published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, this intelligent, thought-provoking, 10,000 word novelette gives no easy answers to the problem of man's heedless expansion across —and destruction of—every landscape he encounters.