> Methane, She Pinkie
>  by Kris Overstreet
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: The Alien
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tinat looked out through the darkened window at instant flaming death.

Well, probably not flaming death, even though the atmosphere outside contained a ludicrously high content of oxygen- twenty-two percent of the total. More likely he'd just melt or even sublimate, considering the temperature outside was over two hundred increments warmer than the surface of his own homeworld. In fact, as he thought this over for the thirtieth time, that was actually worse than burning to death. Death by oxidation was quick. Melting, by all descriptions, ran slow and dreadful by comparison.

Of course, he had no intention of actually going out there, not even in his extravehicular activity pod. Even the spacesuit's advanced polymers couldn't withstand the temperatures outside. It was so hot that the very substance that made up most of his own bones- dihydrogen monoxide- ran in torrents through a natural channel not far from where his spaceship lay hidden.

All in all, this planet was a true hell-world- insanely hot, a bit too heavy (half again the surface gravity of his homeworld), and flooded with gaseous free oxygen. Indeed, that had been why he'd come to this world. Molecular oxygen just did not happen, not naturally. Like hydrogen, it wanted to find something to bond to. If there was a lot of free oxygen somewhere, something had to be making it.

So he'd come down in the ship's shuttle- by himself, since the captain refused to risk more than a single crew member on such a risky mission, even if they were a survey ship. And it hadn't taken him long at all to figure out where the oxygen came from- that had been obvious even before he'd landed.

This hellworld had life. TONS of life. In fact, a collection of sessile life forms had served as a canopy to hide his ship from view from above. That became necessary the moment the signs of intelligent life became obvious, even before he entered the atmosphere. 

The autrenkt of Konsor had encountered intelligent life before- one spacefaring but not yet interstellar species, two planet-bound primitive species. (All three species came from worlds similar to Konsor itself. After all, the autrenkt ships had been surveying suitable planets or moons well away from the primary, where you'd expect to find life. Nobody had even speculated about life below the ice line before, so deep in the star's gravity well.) After those experiences they'd established rules for contacting new sapient life forms- in one word, Don't. Safer for all concerned to just stay hidden.

That said, Tinat had a duty to study the world's life and learn all he could in the short period his shuttle could remain on the surface. Thus, he'd landed on a low hillside covered by the tall sessile life forms, overlooking a native settlement of moderate size- not an isolated family dwelling, but not a major city either. The camouflage screens had been deployed, and small probes had been sent out to collect samples from various life forms in the vicinity. Other probes had flown down into the settlement to observe the natives and get some basic idea of biology, behavior and culture.

What he'd found astounded him. All the life he'd sampled thus far used a variant of DNA, with two of the four nucleobases changed from those used in Konsor life. There were certain structural similarities, particularly in the animal life. There the resemblances ended. The cell membranes were different. The cells themselves were filled with dihydrogen monoxide, not methane. Unlike his own hydrogen metabolism, life here ran on oxygen. The green life also had specialized organelles not present in the other life sampled, which seemed to be the source of all that atmospheric oxygen in the first place. 

Compared to the biology, the sociology was almost familiar. The natives weren't primitives, exactly, but neither were they going to space any time soon. They had some technology- they used engines on rails, they had some primitive electrical systems- but the quadrupeds seemed satisfied with muscle power for most applications. They had markets, public gathering places, and a rich spoken and written language with a broad vocabulary. Most notably, the natives had no sign of any organized military forces- indeed, none of the video Tinat had reviewed even hinted at the presence of weapons.

That suited him fine. He had one hundred eighty-two more hours before he'd need to return to the main survey ship to refuel.  The ship's cooling systems had to work almost as hard as during atmospheric re-entry to maintain a normal temperature inside. It wasn't much time for a complete biology, geology and sociology survey. The idea of having it end prematurely, the same way the autrenkts' first three encounters with natives had ended, horrified him.

But, so long as the natives didn't know he was there, that wasn't going to happen. And even with the blinding light outside (almost a thousand times the sunlight he was used to), the camouflage screens would hold up to anything short of someone actually walking through them and right up to the ship. The natural canopy above the ship made a convenient back-up. Between them, and considering the lack of advanced technology in evidence, it was unthinkable that the natives would spot him before it was time to go.

Tinat glanced down at the readouts on the current biological sample analysis and took a few notes. When he looked up again, one of the natives was staring back at him through the observation window.

It was pink. It had eyes almost as large as his own. 

And, to his horror, it was showing its mouthparts at him.





Even by the standards of the magical ponies of Equestria, Pinkie Pie broke the laws of physics on a daily basis. Gravity had, at best, a fickle grip on her. Her mane could store more than her own body weight in miscellaneous objects. She could sense imminent threats and avoid them before they happened. She even showed signs of being aware of things beyond the realms of equine knowledge, though because they were beyond equine knowledge, most other ponies just put that down to harmless insanity.

But, in this instance, no voice from beyond had guided Pinkie to the alien spaceship. She'd come up to the copse of trees on top of the hill overlooking Ponyville to retrieve a tennis racquet she'd stashed up there for athletic emergencies. Ace's birthday next week wasn't an emergency yet, but she needed to check the brand on the racquet to see if it was the one he liked.

She'd been halfway up the hill when she heard the high-pitched whine. It sounded kind of like a dog whimper, but it never stopped or changed tone, and no dog she'd ever seen had enough lung power to sustain it for so long.

Then she'd noticed the blurry projections that kinda sorta looked like trees and bushes, except that they didn't quite look like they were really there. Of course she walked right through them; on occasion she'd walked through solid walls that quite definitely were there, so of course walking through bushes that didn't actually exist was no trick at all.

That was when all thoughts of Ace's birthday present got stuck on the mental fridge door with a magnet (Pinkie could never actually forget a birthday), because that was when the big, shiny, beautiful spaceship got as much of her full attention as anything ever could.

And even better yet, there was a great big window in the ship, right in front of her, right next to a bit of hull she could stand on. It was tinted, so she could see her own reflection, right down to the enormous excited smile on her muzzle. But the tinting wasn't perfect, or it worked in some funny alien-y spaceshippy way, because she could also clearly see the purple alien in the solid black lab coat on the other side of the window.

Then the alien turned from whatever it had been doing, saw her, and froze.

Pinkie had plenty of time to take in the image. It had six limbs, four legs sort of like a really chubby pony's and two really long arms ending in hands that looked like they had three fingers and three thumbs each- sort of as if someone made hands out of rubber-covered pliers. The part of the body with the arms tilted up a bit, reminding Pinkie vaguely of Tirek, except there wasn't a head- just the front of the body with a long proboscis hanging limply down and two large, jointed eyestalks holding up enormous eyes that were obviously squinting at her.

(That seemed funny to Pinkie. It was a nice spring day in the shade. Was it annoyed at her? Maybe it needed glasses? How could it ever wear glasses, with each eye on its own stalk and absolutely no nose at all?)

All in all, the alien was probably quite a bit smaller than Pinkie, though its eyes were almost perfectly on a level with hers. And, again, the black coat that kind of draped over its body (except that it had sleeves for all six limbs) made it a guessing game as to how much of what she saw was actually the alien.

Again, she had plenty of time to take in the sight. She used only about a second and a half of it, though, because as much as she could stare at an alien all day, there was something totally, vitally, importantly important that needed doing.

"Hi! I'm Pinkie Pie! Welcome to Ponyville!" she said, waving a hoof.

A piece of the alien's body about midway between the hinge of the tilted-up bit and the base of the eyestalks shook visibly. There was a faint sound from inside the ship, something deep and resonant. Then a voice, more normal in pitch, spoke from a grille next to the window: "Nothing here is be. Elsewhere go to."

That confused Pinkie. "Well, I can see you're not a bee!" she said. "You're a sort of crab-like alien except you don't have a shell! And I wasn't looking for bees anyway!"

There was a long pause before the soft reverberation, followed by a single Ponish word: "What??"

"Is this your spaceship?" Pinkie asked. "I've always wanted to ride in a spaceship! There must be so many wonderful stars and planets and things up there in the sky! Can I have a quick ride? I don't need to go home with you, just a quick look around!"

Reverberation, then a different pitch of reverb overlaid with a different Ponish voice- one that sounded a bit like Octavia in a mood. "Unable to change word answer," it said. After more reverberation, it repeated, "Unable to change word answer." A third exchange of reverberations, and again, "Unable to change word answer."

"Excuse me?" Pinkie asked.

Alien body language shouldn't be immediately readable by others, but Pinkie Pie knew exactly what it meant when the whole body slumped and the proboscis let out a long burst of air like a whoopee cushion going off. That was a defeated sigh, no mistake. When the first voice came again from the grille, it sounded partly tired, partly grumpy: "Cannot live in ship you. Is bad for you the air. Much cold inside is it. Not live instantly you."

Pinkie's eyes widened. "WOW!" she squeaked. "You're so alien you don't breathe the same air we do? What kind of air do you breathe? Is it space air??"

"Say cannot. Have word do not for air in words your."

"But you just said 'air,'" Pinkie pointed out. "That's the word for air."

"For parts of air do not have words."

"Oooooh." Pinkie tapped her chin. "I read this somewhere... it's something like, um, three-quarters nitrogen, that kinda does nothing... twenty-some percent oxygen, that's what we breathe... um, maybe two percent water vapor, that's what the pegasi make clouds out of... an itty bitty bit of carbon dioxide, and then a teensy eensy sliver of a percent of all the other gases. That sound right to you?"

Pause. "Need word for tiny thing all things of are made," the second grille voice said.

"Oh, that's easy! Atoms!"

"Need word for thing which is all one kind of atom."

"You mean, like in chemistry? That's an element!"

"Nitrogen: seventh element is?" the first grille voice asked. "Oxygen: eighth element is? Water is made of one part eighth element and two parts first element? Carbon dioxide is one part sixth element and two parts eighth element?"

"Yep! You sure do know your sciency stuff!" Pinkie grinned. "Hey, you know who would love to talk all this science to you? Twilight Sparkle! Lemme just go get her and you can talk all about-"

"No no no no no no no no!!" The voice from the speaker didn't sound frantic, but the waving eyestalks and the thrashing arms on the alien behind the window definitely were.

"Huh? What's wrong?" Pinkie asked.

"Not let meet people it is like you. If come more ponies must leave I."

"Oh," Pinkie said, deflating a little. "But it'd only be one more-"

"Am not even supposed talk to you I!" Now the voice from the grille did sound a little frantic. "Did come this place but just today I. If now leave I, will be wasted the trip. If come but more ponies, will have no choice I. Leave must I."

"Don't leave! Don't leave! You just got here!" Pinkie insisted. "I won't tell Twilight! I won't tell anypony!"

"Promise."

Pinkie Pie got up on her hind hooves and solemnly intoned, "Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye."

The alien on the other side of the window had frozen in shock again. There was a long pause before any reverberation. "Was promise that?"

"Only the most solemn and unbreakable promise a pony can give!" Pinkie Pie said. "Any pony who breaks that promise will feel the guilt and shame of it forever!"

Another pause. "Sorry, say could yes or no you?"

Now it was Pinkie's turn to slump and sigh. "Yes," she grumbled.

The alien visibly relaxed. "Thank you," the first grille voice said. "Get trouble into I if not." In a softer tone it added, "Get into trouble probably anyway I."

"You know," Pinkie said, "we really gotta work on your grammar. That whole backwards-sentences thing is really confusing." An idea struck her, and she grinned. "I've got an idea! I'll be back in an hour! Don't go away!"

Pinkie's hooves pounded the ground, leaving the cracking sound of broken physical laws behind her, and leaving a flabbergasted Tinat to stare at the dust settling behind her.
> Chapter 2: The Baker
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tinat spent the period of time that the pink native was gone poking at the computer's translation algorithm, at one point taking direct control of one of the mobile probes to seek some hint as to how the natives measured the passage of time. The words "hour," "minute" and "second" had come up, but their meanings seemed vague and inconsistent to the computer, beyond some idea that the first unit was longer than the other two.

When he finally identified a native timepiece, it turned out to be something he couldn't possibly have imagined. On Konsor the first clock had measured time by the flow of liquid methane, filling up a column full of stacked chambers that corresponded to their units of time. Ever since, every clock made on Konsor showed either a column filling up as the day progressed or a gauge rising from a low marking to a high marking, even after digital displays allowed electronics to replace mechanical devices.

But the natives- the ponies- used neither columns nor limited gauges. Their timepieces displayed two or three arms on a dial, and the arms didn't rise and fall- they cycled, around and around, and surprisingly quickly at that. 

In retrospect, that could have been predicted. Konsor was a moon of a gas giant, far out in its solar system. The dim light of the distant primary, reflections from the giant planet nearby, and an atmosphere that experienced only fleeting moments without thick cloud or haze all added up to the sundance being the longest period of time his primitive ancestors had had. (The period between times when the primary and the gas giant were on opposite sides of Konsor was one sundance.) Each sundance was divided up into twelve works, corresponding roughly to work-sleep cycles of autrenkt such as himself. Logically, each work was divided into twelve hours, which in turn were divided into twelve minutes, and thence to twelve seconds.

This planet (Tinat was toying with either Hotworld or Crazyplanet for names) was a planet, not a moon, and it had a large, apparently lifeless moon of its own. There were clear and roughly equal periods of blinding light and comparative darkness (which was still about a quarter as bright as the most clear day on his homeworld). Most of the natives were active in the day and slept at night, so they called their work a day. They divided up day and night each into twelve hours (which made no sense, they used base 10 numerals and not base 12 as his people did, so where did that come from?). And then, for some reason, each hour got divided into sixty minutes, which in turn were divided into sixty seconds. 

Sixty? That meant it took about sixty-seven pony seconds to make up one autrenkt- one Konsorian- second. Who besides a scientist or engineer needed such tiny measurements of time? Tinat couldn't understand it. Maybe it was part of the equally insane metabolisms of the locals, which had to deal with the hellish temperatures. 

All in all, fascinating and confusing, but the computer got to the important point: what Tinat called an hour was as long as two and two-thirds of the units the pink one called "hours".

And, in fact, only about half of one of the native hours had passed before the pink one returned at full gallop through the camouflage projections, this time wearing some sort of carrying bags on either side of her torso. "Back I!" called the cheerful, shrill voice the translation algorithm chose to give her. "Brought things you for I!"

Tinat winced, resisting the urge to rub his resonator. The native was right; the translation algorithm really needed tweaking when it came to word order. He didn't want to even think about how he sounded to her. (Assuming it was a her; he was mainly taking the computer's word for it, and Acc help him if he caused offense because that was wrong.)

She ducked her head into one of the bags and brought out an object with her teeth. It was clearly a book, but obviously not a book printed on polymon. (Good thing, too; the pages would probably stick together in the heat, if they didn't spontaneously combust in the oxygen.) Whatever it was, the pages were white. "Book of pony-talk this is," she said as she transferred the book from her mouth to one hoof, where she balanced it effortlessly. "Does use this teach to young Cheery."

Ah! A textbook! And if Tinat had interpreted the translator gabble correctly, a primer! The computer had been scanning whatever signs and visible writing the probes could find, but it hadn't a clue as to what symbols lined up with what sounds, if the natives used phonetic alphabets at all. But between that book and the excessively friendly native, that problem could be solved!

The pink one stepped forward and tapped the book on the glass. There was a brief resonance through the glass which the computer declared untranslatable, followed by, "Put inside this you how?"

The last thing Tinat wanted was that book in his ship. The cold temperatures and thick methane atmosphere would probably destroy it. "Open the book to the first page," he said. "I will send a little machine out to look at it for me."

The native complied, and she cooed in wide-eyed wonder as one of his probes buzzed over to begin taking images of the pages. Tinat had to ask several times that she hold her questions for later before the first page got turned, but after that the book was quickly scanned into the computer. (The book had only about a hundred and twenty pages, with large pictures and not all that much actual text, as you'd expect of a book for fairly young students.)

Once the last page was scanned, he entered a few commands to the computer. "Thank you," he said. "Now I need one more favor." The computer pointed out the page with the most complete combination of letter combinations. "Please turn to page thirty-seven and read it aloud, exactly as written."

Apparently the translator scrambled the words pretty badly, because it took three tries before the pink one got the instructions. She turned to the page and read slowly and clearly (and loudly, to the point that Tinat felt her resonance clearly for himself, even through the glass). 

When it was done, Tinat said, "Thank you. This will help us talk better." Not that he was supposed to talk to her at all, but since she wasn't going away and he didn't want to leave early, he might as well get full value for whatever punishment he was going to get. 

"Wait!" Pinkie reached into the other bag on her back and pulled out another book. "Is science all about this book! Chemistry and elements and things!"

This book was significantly thicker, and although there were still illustrations (including a chart of the elements that, rather than separating them by electron orbits, arranged them all in one table except for the very highest orbitals.) Tinat was even more eager for this book than the first, and the pink one cooperated without complaint as the pages got imaged one after the other, and then a couple of pages got read aloud- though not without an apology that she wasn't sure she pronounced a few of the words properly.

"Thank you again," Tinat said. "This will help solve a lot of mysteries about how your world's life even works. It is so different from-"

"Wait! There is more one thing!" The pink one reached into the second bag and pulled out... something covered in blue, with a not-quite-white wrapper. "Is here your 'Welcome to Pony Village' food thing!"

Ah! A processed food sample! Well, that would be worth an hour or two of analysis. And the data would be far superior to any extrapolations from analysis of cellular samples from the life around the ship. "My machine will take a sample," he said.

That seemed to annoy the native. "No, no!" she insisted. "Eat for is not machine! Eat for is you!"

How to explain? It would take hours before the computer had fully collated and refined the data from those books. So long as he and the native were talking, that couldn't even begin, which meant more garbled exchanges. "I can't eat it," he said. "It might be poison. It might be something my body can't use. I might not even be able to get it inside me." He gestured to his proboscis, which had none of the white shiny mouthparts the pink one kept flashing at him.

The pink one let out another resonance the computer refused to translate, stroking below her mouth in obvious thought. "See I," she said. "Come back next work I. Bring else something I can that eat you!"

That sounded like a winner to Tinat- not necessarily the new food (or the possibility that she actually did intend to bring something that could eat him), but her going away for a while. As useful as this had been, he really wanted some research time, to say nothing of rest, without the pink native around. "Let my machine get the sample first," he said. "When you come back I'll know if it has poison or not."

The pink one said something untranslatable, set down the colorful foodstuff on the hull next to the waiting probe, and waved goodbye before skipping down the hill in a manner no autrenkt could even attempt. 

With a sigh of relief, Tinat ordered the probe to collect samples from different parts of the foodstuff. At the end the object was so many crumbs and smears on the hull. Tinat felt a little sad about that, but often destruction was necessary for science.

He stopped feeling sad when the flock of flying creatures began pecking at the leftovers, sending loud sharp reverberations through the ship that made it impossible for him to think clearly until they'd cleaned the last of the leftovers away.





The creatures of the copse had had more than enough.

First there had come the shaking of the ground, which had made the chipmunks, moles and bunnies flee their burrows, only to see them crushed by the great big hard thing. The hard thing made a loud, high-pitched sound all the time, and it hurt their ears. 

Then the big hard thing released the smaller but still frighteningly large flying hard things, which had chased them down, grabbed them, and poked them. They'd been let go afterwards, but the poking had hurt, and some of the creatures had been poked two or three times already. 

When the pony showed up, the animals thought something would finally be done about the intruder. Instead, to their outrage, the pony came back and offered up perfectly good pony food, which the flying hard things had ruined. The songbirds pecked up the crumbs afterwards, bruising their beaks on the big hard thing in the process.

Enough was enough. They wanted all the hard things gone. They wanted their burrows back (once they'd dug them out again). They wanted the poking to stop. 

And if the pink pony (who they knew wasn't particularly reliable as ponies went) couldn't or wouldn't do the right thing, they knew one pony who definitely would do the right thing.

Once she got over being terrified out of her mind, of course, and that always took a lot of doing. 

So, in ones and twos, then in a great group, the inhabitants of the hilltop glade began the trip over the fields to the edge of the Everfree Forest, to the cottage of She Who Listens. 

They'd make her listen.
> Chapter 3: the Flyer
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pinkie Pie skipped up the hill towards the copse of trees that hid the alien ship. She'd filled her saddlebags with various goodies- pies, cakes, cookies, fruit punch, lemonade, cider, and a variety selection box from Bon-Bon's shop. No matter what, she knew, she had something suitable for a little Welcome-To-My-Planet party, just the two of them.

Not that she wanted to keep it to two- Twilight Sparkle would go nuts over the alien, and Fluttershy would be fascinated by its weird body and want to ask all sorts of questions about the animals on its world, and Rainbow Dash would drool over that big cool shiny metal spaceship. But she'd Pinkie Promised, and if she couldn't keep a Pinkie Promise, who could?

Besides, she had two other parties that day, plus the lunch rush at Sugarcube Corner, so it was probably best that this one be kept small and short. Just the two-

"Hey, Pinkie, watcha doin'?"

Uh-oh. Alien plus Pinkie plus Rainbow Dash was more than two. Not good!

"Um, hi, Dashie!" she said, smiling and waving as Rainbow Dash swooped down to hover in front of her. "Nothing much! What about you?"

Rainbow Dash craned her neck to look on either side of Pinkie, giving each overstuffed saddlebag a long stare. "That's a lot of food for nothing much," she said. "And my birthday is next month, so I know it's not that. What's going on?"

Pinkie Pie thought frantically. She didn't want to lie to Dashie, but if she said the wrong thing she might go into those trees, and that would be just the same as if she'd spilled every last bean. It would count as breaking her promise. So she had to lie... but the thing was, she couldn't think of any lie that was either Pinkie-crazy or other-ponies-sane. All the ideas she had kind of fell in between, and Dash would know it, and-

"Is something wrong?" Dash asked. "Are you in some kind of trouble? You're not running away from Ponyville or something, are you?"

Okay, this was getting worse. Whatever Pinkie had, she had to go with it right now... and all she had was nothing. "No, I'm not running away," she said, dropping her smile and giving her friend her most seriously serious look. "And I'm not doing anything wrong, and I'm not in trouble. But I Pinkie Promised I wouldn't talk to anypony, anypony whatever, about a certain thing. So I really can't tell you what I'm doing, and no, before you ask, you can't come with me."

"Oh, really?" That didn't please Rainbow Dash at all. "That sounds like you really are in trouble. Got some suspicious pony threatening you? Just point me at 'em!" She slammed her forehooves together meaningfully. 

"No, Rainbow Dash." Pinkie hated to be this blunt and serious- it was such a downer!- but her only hope was to shut this down at once. "I'm not in trouble or danger. Nopony is threatening me. But I really can't say anything more about it." She pointed to the trees. "Now I'm going in there by myself for the next hour or so."

"So they're hiding in those-"

"RAINBOW DASH!" 

Dash actually flinched at Pinkie's shout, and that made her feel terrible. She absolutely hated to hurt anybody's feelings even a little bit, her friends most of all. But she promised. 

"Dash, I want you to listen to me as a friend and hear what I'm saying," she said. "Nobody's making me do anything. Nobody's threatening me or anypony I know. Nothing bad will happen to anyone in Ponyville no matter what happens, but I Pinkie Promised not to talk about it. And if you go into those trees," she said, pointing at the top of the hill, "after I've said all this, it will be the same as if I broke my promise, because you'll have gone in there because of me. You will have made me break a Pinkie Promise, do you understand?"

To her credit, Rainbow Dash didn't blow her off or blow her top. Nor did she zip straight up into the trees, as she might have done a few years before. But Pinkie could see she still wasn't satisfied. After a long moment of drilling through her with her eyes, Dash said, "What's in those trees, Pinkie?"

Pinkie shook her head. "Nuh-uh. Pinkie Promise."

Rainbow Dash gave her a small nod. "But whatever it is, it's not putting you or anypony else in danger, right?"

Pinkie started answering immediately, because she knew any hesitation would get taken the wrong way. But she spoke slowly, choosing her words as carefully as she could without actually stopping mid-sentence. "Nobody in Ponyville is being threatened, or put in danger, in any way whatever, nor anybody either of us knows who isn't in Ponyville." She took a breath and added, a bit more softly, "Trust me, Dashie."

Dash took a deep breath herself, closed her eyes for a moment, then nodded. "Okay," she said. "I'll be hovering out here waiting for you. If you're not out in an hour and a half, I'm coming in, Pinkie Promise or no Pinkie Promise."

Pinkie Pie relaxed. That probably was as good as she was going to get. "Thanks, Dashie," she said quietly. "I'll see you in about an hour."





Tinat watched the pink one and the flying blue one talking via a probe hidden in the tree closest to them. The probe's microphones couldn't quite pick up their voices, which concerned him greatly, but he didn't dare send it out into the open. The flying natives tended to be quick, and the blue one in particular could outfly his drones with ease. If he didn't want to be outed to the locals at large, he had to keep the probes hidden- which meant this was one conversation that had to remain unrecorded.

He half-hoped that the pink one would lead the blue one away from his ship's hiding place. That would keep both of them away, which was more in line with his orders than allowing the pink one to continue her direct interaction. Not that she hadn't been useful- she certainly had- but the more she came, the more likely she'd bring others with her. Case in point, the blue one, who was now watching the pink one come up the hill, giving the occasional intense stare right at the camouflage projections. 

But more important, he had news for the pink one, and Tinat was pretty sure she wouldn't take it well. 

Sigh. At least he was fairly sure she'd understand it clearly. The combination of the books she'd brought and an additional day of observing the native village had massively improved the computer translation. He could now understand most of the native conversations, and he expected the computer would do an equally good job rendering his own reverberations into her language. 

So the bad news would ring through her with zero loss. Hooray.

"Hi-hi!" the pink one called up, bouncing up onto the hull next to his observation window. "Toldja I'd be back! And I brought all sorts of stuff!"

Tinat settled his resonator, forcing himself to speak as clearly as he could. "Good brightening," he said. "My computer has learned how to speak your language better. My name is Tinat. I am an autrenkt. I come from the planet Konsor. It orbits another star, a long way from your sun.  Could you please tell me if you understand me clearly?"

"Yeah, that is better!" Pinkie Pie called up. "I'm Pinkie Pie! I'm a pony from Ponyville! That's not a planet, it's just a town! Our country is called Equestria, and our world is called Equus!" She tapped her chin for a moment, then added, "But that's just what we ponies call it! I think the griffons call it Erde, and the dragons call it-"

"Thank you, Pinkie Pie," Tinat interrupted. "That's good enough for now. But I wanted to talk about that foodstuff you brought yesterday."

"Oh, yeah!" Pinkie grinned, shrugging the strange bags off her body. "This time I brought all sorts of stuff with me! So I'm sure that if you found something you can't eat in that cupcake, I've got something that-"

"I can't eat any of it, Pinkie Pie."

Pinkie froze in the act of opening one of the bags. "Come again?" she asked.

Tinat sighed. "I don't know if you know anything about chemistry," he began. "But I'll try to explain. I come from a planet that is very, very cold by your standards. It's actually a moon of a really big planet, a long way from our star. My homeworld is about twice as large in diameter- larger across- than your world, but your world is a lot denser. And your world is so, so much hotter. So much hotter... well, you know the river that runs through your village?"

"Um... yeah, but what does-"

"The substance that flows through it is dihydrogen monoxide. You call it water, yes?" He reproduced the resonance the translator had used, which was close to, but not the same as, his people's word for ice.

"Um, yeah? What else would it be?"

"On my world dihydrogen monoxide is one of our most common rocks. It's what my species' bones are mostly made of. That is how different my body is from yours, how different my world is from yours. I tell you that to prepare you for the rest of it. Do you understand so far?"

Pinkie Pie blinked. "Your bones are ice? Really?"

"Solid water, yes. You have different names for water in different states?"

"Yeah. Water is water when it's water. When it's frozen and hard, it's ice. And when it's in the air it's gas or vaporwater."

"Yes. We don't have that. For us there's a short word for ice, and dihydrogen monoxide for the chemical, because we have a lot of ice which isn't... er... water. For example, carbon dioxide- you know what that is, right?"

"Sure! We breathe it out, and the plants breathe it in to make oxygen so we can breathe that in!"

According to his samples and analysis it was a lot more complicated than that. Tinat felt less confident that this was going to work, but he was already simplifying this as much as he could. He was also dragging it out a lot more than he should, but... well, those big colorful eyes, so unlike his own solid black ones, just... well, he hated doing this, that was all there was to it. "More or less. Anyway, carbon dioxide is also an ice on our world."

"What? You mean dry ice?" Pinkie blinked. "They make that at the ice cream shop in town! They need a really big machine, and it makes lots of fog, and then it's all gone! They use it for when ponies need to keep stuff super-duper cold! Or when they want to make fog, but you have to be careful-"

"Pinkie Pie, please," Tinat said. "There is a substance that my people have three words for, like you do for water. We call it lifeice when it's frozen and rainpool when it's liquid. You probably heard those words as something funny, didn't you?"

"Yeah. Life ice? Rain pool?"

"The translator is doing its best with words your language doesn't have," Tinat said. "But when I say our name for when it's a gas, it should give you the word in your language. Methane."

Pinkie blinked again. "Methane? You mean gas, like in gas foodforges?"

"In oxygen methane is an extremely flammable substance, yes. And the atmosphere inside my ship is about one-third methane. That's what I breathe. A large portion of my body mass is methane. Methane for us on our world is like water on your world."

Pinkie's eyes widened. "Wooooow."

"So you understand that, right?" Tinat said. "My people's metabolism- that's the chemistry that keeps us alive- is all based on methane and other hydrocarbons. Do you know what hydrocarbons are?"

Pinkie nodded. "Sure!" she said. "Sweet sugary snacks are full of 'em! That's why you can't eat too many unless you do a lot of exercising, or else-"

"No, Pinkie Pie," Tinat said firmly. "What your snacks are full of are carbohydrates. They're a lot different. Hydrocarbons are compounds made of hydrogen and carbon. Carbohydrates are compounds made of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. And that oxygen is the problem." After a moment he added, "Well, that and the fact that your snacks have so much ice in them that they'd be almost as hard as the metal of my ship at the temperatures I need to survive."

"Oxygen is the problem?" Pinkie asked. "That can't be right. Everything needs oxygen to survive, right? Even plants, but they get their oxygen from carbon dioxide and water."

"Well, yes and no," Tinat said. "Life on my world does use a little oxygen. We need small amounts to make the proteins in our bodies, and to build our bones. But that's all we can endure, is a little oxygen. We mainly get that from simple alcohols and ketones. But more than a little oxygen is very, very bad for us. It breaks down the chemistry in our bodies, rips our cells apart, boils our blood. 

"That food you gave me yesterday, Pinkie? It had sucrose in it. The blue soft stuff was about half sucrose. There was more in the protein-based part. Sucrose is about half oxygen by mass. And there was enough sucrose in the blue soft stuff to kill dozens of my people."

"Kill?" Tinat realized he could identify what appalled looked on a native face, now. "But sucrose? That's just table sugar! It's perfectly harmless!"

"Not to us," Tinat said. "To us any sugar is deadly, sucrose or anything else. And that was one of the less deadly substances in that food. Those complex carbohydrates I mentioned would cause our blood to congeal- assuming we didn't spontaneously combust first."

The change in expression on Pinkie's face caused Tinat to change his evaluation. What he'd seen before was merely shocked. This was appalled. "Spontaneously combust??" Pinkie shouted. "Are you saying ordinary pony food might make you blow up??"

"To be fair," Tinat said, "under the right conditions merely stepping out of the ship into your air might do that. But yes, my people have been known to die by having flames burst from them after eating something with too much oxygen in it."

"That... that's horrible," Pinkie Pie said. Tinat could see dihydrogen monoxide, or something similar, building up under her eyes. "You mean any sweet treat could-"

"I mean exactly that, Pinkie Pie," Tinat said. "The fact is this. If I took your food into my ship, it would freeze so hard I couldn't eat it." He pointed to his proboscis. "Even if I had mouthparts like yours I couldn't eat it. But if I could, it would kill me in minutes, and it would be a very bad way to die. So far as I could tell, there was almost nothing in that food that I could safely ingest."

The fibrous substance on Pinkie's head and neck and near the rear of her body slumped. Tinat's observations of the natives had only gone on a little while, but he was fairly certain the pink one's fibers were abnormal by any standards. This sudden change, though apparently a reversion towards the species norm, was so quick and abnormal compared to everything he'd seen of Pinkie Pie up to now that he was split between the desire to give her a comforting back-tap or to jump into the pilot cabin and begin emergency pre-flight procedures.

Then, to his mixed shock and relief, the fibers regained a bit of their buoyancy. "Does your food have to be liquid?" she asked quietly.

"By our standards, no," Tinat said. "But you'd find what we call solid food very soft and oozy. We can't eat anything hard or sharp."

"Okay. You can't have sugars, starches or carbohydrates. Proteins okay?"

"In small amounts. Mostly they get passed as waste matter. Our bodies make almost all our proteins from base elements."

"Alcohols?"

"Simple ones, yes, in small quantities. No more than a couple of oxygen atoms. But we mostly consume hydrocarbons. We break down chain hydrocarbons into acetylene, and then our cells use that for our metabolism."

"What's a ketone?"

Tinat sighed. He really didn't want to give a chemistry lesson through a computer translation to someone who had only a very rudimentary grasp on the science. "It's in that book," he said. "Otherwise my computer wouldn't give you the word. But your animals seem to give it off as a waste product. I suspect it's mildly toxic to you."

Pinkie Pie stroked the bottom of her face with one foot. "Huh," she said. "This is gonna be a challenge." She pointed the foot at the window. "But before you leave, I'm going to find something I can forge that you can eat! I'm not giving up!" She paused and then added, "Maybe you could give me a little sample of your food so I can figure it out?"

Tinat's patience reached its ragged edge, and he drummed his grips on his back in agitation. "Pinkie Pie, I shouldn't even be talking to you, remember??" he shrieked. "I don't have anything to put my food in that would keep it from decomposing in your environment! The rules say I'm not supposed to interact with you natives at all! Why would I have something to give you as a sample??" He sighed. "Please let it go and go home. It's impossible. You'll only give yourself more pain."

"Impossible?" Pinkie Pie's fibers had returned to their full physics-defying tangle, and she stomped a foot on his hull that sent the reverberations of doom ringing through his ship. "I am Pinkamena Diane Pie! I do the impossible twenty times every morning along with my situps! And whether you believe in me or not, I will throw you a party!" With that she spun, jumped off Tinat's ship, and began trotting away.

Tinat wanted to sigh with relief, but he didn't think it was justified.

The pink one proved him right a moment later as she spun on her feet again, galloped back up to the window, showed her mouthparts again, and chirped, "Have a nice day!" before turning again and trotting off for good this time.

Rocking his torso with chagrin, Tinat put aside worries for future interspecies disaster and turned his focus back to his biological experiments.





Pinkie Pie didn't break stride as Rainbow Dash swooped down to glide beside her. "That was a lot less than an hour," the pegasus said. "Did everything go well?"

"Can't talk now," Pinkie Pie said. "One: Pinkie Promise. Two: gotta think."

"Okay," Dash shrugged. "Anything I can do to help?"

"Nope," Pinkie said. "Not unless you know how to ask questions without explaining why you're asking the questions."

"Well...." Rainbow Dash rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Maybe I do. Depends on who you're asking."

"Twilight."

"Oh." Rainbow Dash dropped her hoof, then shrugged. "Yeah, can't help you there. She's gonna give you the third degree. You know that, right?"

"Sure do. But I gotta try anyway."

"Yeah, if you gotta, you gotta," Dash agreed. She smirked a little and asked, "Mind if I watch?"

"If I said no, would you go away?"

"Hmmm... nah, probably not." The smirk grew a little broader. "I still wanna know what you were doing. And I really wanna see you try to out-think our favorite egghead."

Pinkie sighed. "Yeah," she said. "Me too."

Pinkie Promise, Pinkie Promise, Pinkie Promise...
> Chapter 4: the Genius
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Why yes, I know practically everything about chemistry," Twilight Sparkle said. She gestured to the walls and walls of books in the Castle of Friendship's library. "And anything I might have forgotten is in these books! What do you need to know?"

Pinkie Pie tried not to fidget on her hooves, which meant she fidgeted twice as hard. "Well," she said, "I've got this teensy weensy problem. A hypothetical problem," she added hurriedly, "and in no way related to anything in real life, okay?"

Rainbow Dash's snickering, Pinkie decided, was not helpful.

Twilight Sparkle looked baffled, but not suspicious, not yet. "O... kay?" she finally said. "What kind of problem?"

"Well, it's a food problem," Pinkie said. "Specifically, what to feed somepony with very special allergies."

Twilight looked even more confused at this. "Wouldn't you know this better than I would?" she asked. "I mean, you know how to make cakes and other party snacks for absolutely everyone in Ponyville, even those with allergies."

"Yeah, but these are really weird," Pinkie said. "Like I said, it's hypothetical. Totally."

"Yeah," Rainbow Dash agreed. "Totally." The barely stifled chuckle totally failed to sell it.

Now Twilight did look suspicious, but not at Pinkie. "Rainbow, did you put her up to this?"

"Oh, no no no," Rainbow Dash said, waving her hooves in negation. "This is all Pinkie. I'm just here to watch."

The deep sigh that followed was a familiar one, which Pinkie Pie had labeled Every pony in this town is STILL crazy but for some reason this does not include me even though it totally does. "All right," Twilight said, "what are the allergies?"

"Well," Pinkie drawled, realizing that no matter what she did the next words were going to sound loopy-doopty, "they're hypothetically allergic to oxygen."

Twilight's face took on the familiar Does Not Compute expression. "Oxygen?" she asked. "Allergic to oxygen??"

"Deathly allergic," Pinkie confirmed. "Hypothetically."

"But- but- the air's more than twenty percent oxygen!" Twilight waved her forehooves in consternation. "How does this hypothetical pony even breathe?"

Pinkie's mind jumped the tracks at this question. "Hey, that's right? I never asked! I mean, he did say-" She remembered herself, forced herself to postpone her digression, and finished, "-that it's only a hypothetical question, so it's not a problem, right?"

Now Twilight's face settled into firm suspicion, and this time she wasn't looking at Rainbow Dash. "All right," she said. "Breathing is fine, but nothing else with oxygen. So, no carbohydrates?"

"Nope. Hydrocarbons are fine, they said, but no carbohydrates. Alcohol in small amounts."

"Alcohols are carbohydrates," Twilight said. "By definition!"

"But only a little bit!" Pinkie Pie replied.

"Fine," Twilight said. "What about water, then? Can they have any water?"

"Nope," Pinkie said. "They can't chew it."

Twilight Sparkle's eyes narrowed just a little bit more. "They can't chew it," she repeated.

"Hypothetically," Pinkie Pie clarified.

Twilight didn't say anything for several seconds. Instead she spent them staring... not actually at Pinkie, but at something Pinkie couldn't see. But when those eyes focused on her again, she knew the game was up. "Pinkie," she said, in the tone of voice that made it plain that keeping it even and quiet took serious effort, "when and where did you meet an alien life form?"

Pinkie's forehooves went immediately to her muzzle, covering her mouth.

"Whoa whoa WHOA!" Rainbow Dash shouted, brushing past Pinkie to hover right in front of Twilight. "Aliens?? Is THAT what she was doing in the trees at the top of Harness Hill?"

Pinkie tried to clamp her muzzle even more tightly shut.

"It pretty much has to be," Twilight Sparkle said. "Most life forms on Equus require carbohydrates to live. And all the ones that don't are capable of eating volcanic rocks, so I'm pretty sure eating ice isn't a problem for them." She looked from Dash to Pinkie and added, "And the fact that Pinkie's first reaction to the word water was, 'they can't chew it,' tells me whatever it is is from a really, really cold environment."

Pinkie unclamped her muzzle just enough to mutter, "Hypothetically," without much hope it would help.

"Pinkie," Twilight said in her moderately-exasperated voice, "I've known you for years now, and you've never used the word hypothetically except when you were talking about something real." Pausing a split second for thought, she added, "I think this is the first time you've used it where a party isn't involved, though."

A party very much was involved- that was the whole point!- but Pinkie had to clamp her jaw shut even harder to stop herself from saying it. 

"So now I know where," Twilight said. "Mind telling me when, Pinkie? And how much  you know about this alien?"

"That ain't gonna work," Rainbow Dash said. "She says she Pinkie Promised. And you know how she is about a promise."

"Forever," Pinkie whimpered through her hooves.

"But... but Pinkie, this is the most important thing in the history of Equestria!" Twilight shouted. "This could be a scientific expedition studying our world! Or it could be the first wave of an alien invasion! But whichever it is, it's the first time we've had evidence of life beyond Equus!"

"Yeah, pretty sure it's not the invasion one," Rainbow said. "Pinkie's been up there a couple times now, and they didn't replace her with a pod pony or put a worm in her ear or anything like that."

"How do you know they didn't?"

Rainbow waved a hoof at Pinkie. "Do you really think any alien can make a fake Pinkie as crazy as the real one?" she asked.

Pinkie Pie had never been so happy to have her sanity questioned before.

Twilight nodded. "Okay, good point," she said. "And anyway, Pinkie wouldn't be asking about how to feed an alien if they were mean." Pause. "I don't think she would, anyway."

Pinkie said nothing, but she did shoot Twilight her best what-do-you-take-me-for glare.

"So, let's go with science mission," Twilight continued. "Or maybe diplomatic mission, but that wouldn't make sense, because if it was a diplomatic mission they would have sent Pinkie to fetch Princess Celestia."

"Or you," Rainbow Dash pointed out.

Twilight waved this away. "Anyway, something peaceful. But for some reason they swore Pinkie to silence. Why would they do that? Why don't they want anypony to know they're there?"

"Wait a minute," Rainbow interrupted. "I know this bit. It's some kinda, um, non-interference thingy. You know, like in Star Wagon and the Uneven Balance?"

"I thought you said that book was boring," Twilight interjected.

"Well, I still read it, didn't I?" Rainbow Dash said. "I still say it should have had more Charg'r battles and less talking. Daring Do is so much-"

"Your point, Dash?"

"Oh, yeah," Rainbow said. "The Interstellar Alliance has that rule about not showing themselves to planets that don't have their own spaceships, because they don't want those worlds to panic and maybe destroy themselves because the Alliance said hi."

"Order Number One."

"That's it. And I thought that was kinda stupid, because who'd be afraid of the good guys?" Rainbow Dash tapped her chin thoughtfully. "But I think maybe I was only looking at it from the Star Wagon's point of view. Now that I really think about it, and knowing how most ponies in Ponyville are, I think a lot of them would panic if they knew an alien was here. And if I were an alien and saw some scared ponies running at my ship, I wouldn't stick around."

Twilight's eyes widened. "I think you're absolutely right," she said. Looking at Pinkie, she asked, "Is that how it is, Pinkie?"

Pinkie unclamped her mouth. "Pinkie Promise," she replied firmly.

"Oh, come on!" Dash "We guessed it, didn't we? We already know everything! And you didn't tell us! Can't you talk about it now??"

"Dash," Twilight said, holding up a hoof to stop her friend, "if we have guessed it, we don't need to press Pinkie about it." She looked at Pinkie. "And since this alien is apparently still willing to talk with Pinkie, we don't need to scare him away by going up to the hill ourselves."

Pinkie dared to relax.

"But I will be writing a list of questions I want answers for," Twilight Sparkle said firmly. "And you can ask your totally hypothetical friend up there for me, all right?"

Pinkie dared to deflate in defeat. "Hypothetically, yes," she sighed. "So long as you don't ask me any questions. And you don't go up there yourself."

"We won't," Twilight said firmly. "But we can't stop other ponies from going up there. And if we tell them not to go up there, they'll ask why, and when we don't tell them, they'll go up there to look, because that's what I would do."

"And me," Rainbow Dash said. "I might not even ask why first."

"So," Twilight said firmly, "you'd better have that party pretty soon. Somepony might stumble over your friend any minute now."

"But I can't!!" Pinkie shrieked in despair. "Everything I know how to make is hypothetically poison to hypothetically him! And you can't have a party without hypothetical treats! And that is not hypothetical, that is a fact!" Pause. "Hypothetically."

Twilight sighed, and it was just a sigh, not one laden with any of the deeper meanings Pinkie Pie had learned how to categorize from long experience. "Okay," she said. "You did say this... hypothetical totally-not-an-alien..."

"Right."

"... they can eat hydrocarbons, but not carbohydrates?" With the barest pause she added, "And since this is all purely hypothetical it means you can stop saying it's hypothetical every other word!"

"Okay!" Pinkie said. "Just so long as it's understood."

"Can you be any more specific about what hydrocarbons they prefer?" Twilight asked. 

"Not exactly," Pinkie admitted. "His body runs on acetylene, I think he said. When they eat hydrocarbons, they get broken down into that. They can have alcohol and ketones, whatever those are, in small amounts- they do need a little oxygen to build their bodies, I think. But too much and BOOM!"

Twilight blinked. "Boom? Is this a hypothetical boom or a real boom?"

"I don't wanna find out," Pinkie said firmly.

"Okay," Twilight nodded. "Did you ask about fatty acids? Cholesterol? That sort of thing?"

Pinkie blinked. "Hypothetically no?" she hazarded. "Why?"

"But sugar and starch are bad?"

"Yeah, table sugar in particular is really bad," Pinkie said. 

"So a little oxygen is all right, just not a lot of it," Twilight said. "Like my chemistry teacher said, the dose makes the poison. Most alcohols and ketones have only one or two oxygen atoms. Fatty acids usually have only two, but a whole lot of carbon and hydrogen. Their cells must be made of them, like ours are."

"Hey," Rainbow Dash said, "if you're both going egghead, let me get a pillow or something so I can take a nap."

"No, actually we're just about done," Twilight said. "Or we will be, once I get Spike to send a letter to Princess Celestia." Smiling, she added, "Pinkie, what do you know about how artificial flavorings are made?"





The animals of the copse were calmer, but still not happy. 

They'd been fed, and they'd had a day in a safe, comfortable place with a caretaker who saw to their every need. But She Who Listens already had quite a few permanent guests, plus other animals that came and went every day, and the hilltop animals knew they were in other animals' territory. They wanted to go back to the place they called home.

Also, they'd been joined by more of their neighbors, who reported that the poking had become less frequent, but hadn't stopped altogether. In fact, the poking had been replaced by watching, which turned out to be even more annoying. Nobody liked a big metal flying thing humming and whining and staring at you all the time with what looked like a big glass eye. It made a critter feel conspicuous.

Most of the first wave of refugees had been begging She Who Listens to do something, but of course she was afraid of the strange thing- so afraid that she spent an hour under her own bed after hearing them describe it. But gradually they were wearing her down, helped by the newcomers whose added tale of woe increased her resolve.

The rabbit who acted as the closest confidant of She Who Listens estimated that, by nightfall, she'd finally overcome her fear and agree to go see the thing for herself. But, in his experience, there was danger of backsliding. He therefore advised getting help from the bear.

She Who Listens would go, one way or another.

And then the animals would get their homes back.
> Chapter 5: the Caretaker
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The ship proximity alarm woke Tinat up.

The natives, as Tinat had observed, tended to be active during the bright periods- much less so in the dark, with a few exceptions. Like autrenkt, they slept, though they spent only one-third of their cycle asleep as opposed to his people's almost even split between wakefulness and rest. They stayed awake for six Konsorian hours, as he did... but then he slept for almost six Konsorian hours, as opposed to their three. Long story short, his wake-sleep cycle didn't line up with the planetary rotation at all, so while the environment outside his ship was hellishly bright as usual, he'd been blissfully unconscious of it for once.

Truth be told, he'd been shorting his sleep as it was, and between that and the pink native, he was beginning to feel a bit boiled. He'd only got to sleep about an hour before, thanks to a prolonged argument with the mission navigator back on the mothership. The navigator was going planetic over the apparently erratic movement of the hell-planet's moon and its irregular rotation in respect to its primary, and he had threatened to have Tinat recalled to take over the astronomical observations. The call had only ended when the planet and moon twitched again, and the world outside his tinted window blazed with light, and the navigator had lost the capacity for coherent resonance.

Recall. As if! Leaving aside his contacts with the pink one (which he'd dutifully reported to the captain, and which the captain had reprimanded him for), his observations of the village below had yielded vast insights into possibly the most alien civilization any autrenkt could have even imagined, much less encountered. In the brief time he'd been here he'd gained material for centuries of research by sociologists back on Konsor. It was incredble how such a different species, in such a different environment, could have so many familiar features to its culture!

And the biologists would be working on what he already had for millennia. Why, just yesterday (as the natives called it) he'd discovered things living in the river of liquid ice! Plants, animals, a vast array of microorganisms- a fully functioning biota. Considering how the land flora and fauna had such a high proportion of water in their cells, it didn't stretch the imagination to suppose that, just as Konsorian life had first arisen in hot spots within its hydrocarbon lakes, so life on this world had arisen somewhere in its liquid-ice depths. How that could happen in an environment composed of the universe's most common solvent, on the other grip? That would fuel speculation long after Tinat's grandspawn returned to the oils.

What with one amazing and terrifying discovery after another, Tinat had stretched his waking time and shortened his cooling-down periods. Later, In his final report, he would cite this as explanation for his state of mind when he clambered out of his bunk, looked at the monitors, and saw the very large creature approaching the ship.

Its mouthparts were enormous, as were the slashing claws at the end of its limbs. Rearing up on its hind limbs, it could stand almost as tall as Tinat's ship. And yet this fearsome creature, which in Tinat's mind must be the apex predator of this entire planet, hesitated after stepping through the short sessile flora. It turned to look behind it, grunting something at another creature pushing through the plant life.

That creature was another native.

It was partly pink- the fibers on its head and tail, at least- but most of it was a yellow scarcely less brilliant than the planet's star. And, also unlike Pinkie Pie, this one was of the flying subspecies, though her wings stayed tightly curled against her sides at all times. Other, smaller creatures followed in her wake, including several of the ones Tinat had taken tissue samples from. A couple of them reared onto their hind legs and pointed at the drone observing all of this, then at the ship.

Tinat watched the newcomer look at the ship, saw the eyes go wide with obvious fear. It tried to scurry back, but the smaller creatures blocked her, and the gigantic predator reached one of its immense paws behind her and gently but firmly shoved her forwards. 

Tinat's perfuser sank. As if, indeed. There was no way this native wouldn't bring trouble. No matter how much remained to be done, it was time to leave.

He rushed to the control room, mounted the flight seat, and began the emergency pre-flight sequence. Immediately the safety interlocks popped up: Lifeforms within danger zone of vessel. Clear area prior to launch.

A faint susurrus barely managed to resonate through the ship. In a somewhat louder tone, the computer's translator said, "H-h-h-hello? Is s-someone there?"

One of the reasons Tinat later pled short sleep and overheated brain in his report was how he answered the new native: "No! Go away!" 

A moment later he realized how stupid that was, and how unlikely it was to make anyone or anything go away. A native second later, the newcomer confirmed this. "Oh, I'm sorry, Maybe I'll just come back later- ow! Please stop pushing!" The other animals were practically carrying the yellow one to the ship at this point. "I really am sorry about this," she added, "but it won't take but a minute. If you don't mind. Please."

Tinat sighed and left the flight seat, moving to the laboratory and its observation window. "What is it?" he asked. "Did the pink one send you?"

"No," the newcomer said quickly. "I haven't spoken to Pinkie Pie all this week." Tinat felt surprise that this newcomer wasn't surprised that he knew Pinkie Pie. "Should I have? I really am sorry, if I'm intruding, I'll just-" A clang rang through the ship as the creatures more or less tossed the native up onto the hull next to the observation window and its speaker. "Eep! I'm sorry!"

"It doesn't matter," Tinat said. "Please move the creatures out of this clearing. It is dangerous for them to stay here."

"Actually, that's what I need to talk to you- ooooh my!" Tinat flinched as the native looked through the tinted window and saw him. "I've never seen anyone like you before! And such an interesting body plan you have! A wide, flat body, with eyes that rise above everything- is that an air intake between them? You must have been an ambush predator in some sort of liquid-ice environment, like (untranslatable)s and (untranslatable)s!"

"Er... are you a scientist?" Tinat asked. The creature had lost all appearance of fear. actually stepping right up to the tinted glass to stare at him. She'd been close to the mark- the autrenkts' ancestors of some forty million years before had been just the kind of predator she described, grabbing prey and drowning them. 

"Oh, no," the native said. "I'm an animal caretaker." She blinked, then continued, "Actually that's why I'm here. The animals who live in these trees are unhappy because they keep getting poked and bit by strange metal things. Do you know anything about that?"

"I promise," Tinat replied, "that will stop immediately. In fact, I'll leave right away, so your creatures won't be bothered any more."

"Oh, that isn't necessary," the native said. "You're welcome to stay as long as you like, but please don't bother my friends any more."

Tinat sighed. Even with the translation nearly perfect, there was still some sort of communications disconnect. "I have to leave," he said. "I'm supposed to leave if I encounter any natives at all. I told your Pinkie Pie that I would have to leave if any more of you showed up. Now I have to."

"Oh, that's a shame," the native said, her eyes dropping. "I was hoping to learn more about you."

"Believe me, you have no idea how much I feel the same way," Tinat said. "But I just can't. Now please move your friends out of the clearing so my ship can take off."

"Okay," the yellow one sighed, turning to step off the ship's hull.

And for reasons which, again, Tinat would put down to a cooked brain, he added, "And tell the pink one that I'm sorry she never got to have that celebration for me."

The yellow one froze just before dropping to the ground. For the first time her wings spread. "What?" she asked. "You mean Pinkie was going to throw you a party?"

"Yes, well, I told her it was impossible," Tinat mumbled. "She can't come in here, I can't go out there, I can't eat anything you natives eat, nor the other way-"

Tinat never saw the yellow one move. One moment her back was to him, and the next she was right next to the window. Those huge eyes, which had shown him trepidation and curiosity, now slammed into his with righteous fury.

"You're skipping out on a party my friend is planning just for you?" the glaring eyes said.





Rainbow Dash's fidgeting ceased the moment she saw Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie at the bottom of the hill, each with a double set of saddlebags. She'd been torn between going to find them and going into the copse of trees without them. Now she didn't have to choose, and in an instant she dropped out of the skies to hover in front of them. "Where have you been??" she asked the two of them.

"Waiting on the morning train from Canterlot," Twilight replied. "The only way Princess Celestia could get us the ingredients faster would have been for her to fly them herself."

"And that would have super-duper broken my promise," Pinkie added. "I wasn't supposed to tell anypony, and if the tippy-TOP pony-"

"Yeah, yeah, not important," Rainbow Dash snapped. "Fluttershy and a bunch of her animals went into those trees ten minutes ago!!"

Pinkie's pink went pale. "Oh no!!" She broke into a gallop, rushing up the hill at speeds Rainbow Dash could only surpass with difficulty and the risk of property damage. 

Twilight Sparkle shouted, "Pinkie! That's glassware in- oh, never mind." With a flash of magic she went from the bottom of the hill to the top, and with another flash of magic she snared Pinkie Pie's saddlebags and levitated them gently up. 

Being last anyplace was an uncommon experience for Dash, and she didn't like it. "Well," she said grumpily, "if the secret's out, we may as well go in, right?"

Pinkie paused at the edge of the copse. "Dashie," she said solemnly, "maybe the secret is out, but I still promised. Please stay out here, okay?"

"We will," Twilight said. "I hope everything works out all right." 

All four pairs of saddlebags gently came to rest on Pinkie's back, and without another word she stepped into the trees and through the holographic projections of bushes and undergrowth. 

Tinat's ship was still there, and Pinkie's stomach unknotted just a little. 

Then she saw Fluttershy perched on the ship next to that window, and it knotted back up.

And then she got close enough to hear what Fluttershy was saying, and GOODNESS but she sounded angry.

"... you say that filly has been visiting you every day, and you think you're going to just disappear without even the common courtesy of telling her goodbye? Is that good manners in whatever ecosystem you come from, mister? Because let me tell you, it certainly isn't around here! Even the most boorish pony would be ashamed right down to their hooves for using someone so poorly!"

Pinkie's stomach couldn't decide whether to relax or implode. It settled for doing a few somersaults.

The critters waiting at the base of the ship parted to let Pinkie through, and with a little difficulty she got up onto the hull next to Fluttershy, who was still giving Tinat an economy-sized piece of her mind, accompanied by a Stare strong enough that Pinkie, who wasn't the target, found herself flinching. She reached a hoof up to pat Fluttershy's shoulder and said, "Um, thanks, Fluttershy, but I got this now, 'kay?"

Fluttershy blinked, and through the dark glass Pinkie could see the purple alien suddenly slump on its legs, its broad body rocking back and forth as if about to fall over. "Oh, hello, Pinkie," Fluttershy said, her quiet rage vanishing from her tone. "We were just talking about you. I hope you don't mind."

"Pinkie Pie!" The alien's voice through the loudspeaker sounded terribly shaken. "Thank goodness you're here! Could you please ask your friend to get off the ship so I can leave?"

"So you can leave?" Pinkie's jaw waggled for a moment as she tried to think of what to say. Fortunately, she never took long to find her voice. "But I just got here! And anyway, I never told Fluttershy about you! So you've got no reason to go, right?"

"Pinkie Pie," Tinat replied, his eyestalks drooping, "I told you I would have to leave if any more of your kind came here. Whether or not you told them." The speaker gave off a simulated sigh. "I appreciate your not telling anyone, and keeping the blue one and that purple one away. But if I don't leave right now I'm going to be in very big trouble."

"He was going to leave," Fluttershy said, a little anger returning to her voice, "without even saying goodbye."

Through the glass, Pinkie could see Tinat slap his body with his claw-hands. "Do you natives even have the concept of orders?" he wailed. "Laws? Any of that? I have to leave!!"

"Why?" Pinkie asked simply.

"Because," Tinat replied, "we've met natives before. And it has always ended with our scientists being attacked and driven away. Always. So for everyone's safety we have a rule; if the natives find us, we leave."

"But you come back, don't you?"

"Sometimes. Much later, after the natives calm down. But not here." Tinat had calmed down a little, but he still looked a bit wobbly, and one of his eyestalks wouldn't quite rise level with the other. "All the other worlds were normal ones like my home- not burning hot places like this."

"Hot? It's only midway through spring," Fluttershy said.

"He likes it super-duper cold," Pinkie hissed in an aside. "I'll explain later."

"With the other worlds there is a possibility that we can interact with the natives," Tinat said. "Or they may build spaceships someday and find our worlds. We need to study them. But your world and mine are just too different. We can never interact any closer than this." One eyestalk lowered and the other rose. "I was only sent here from scientific curiosity. Once I'm gone, we will have no reason to return."

"Oh," Fluttershy said quietly. "That's so sad."

"You're sad?" Tinat said. "My mission was supposed to be (time reference)." He paused, blinked, and then the other voice, the one that Pinkie Pie had learned wasn't the alien, put in, "Four hundred ninety-one native hours." 

"Four hundred ninety... um, how many days is that?" Fluttershy asked.

Pinkie Pie and the second voice answered at the same time, "Twenty days."

"Anyway, I'd just barely begun cataloguing your world's life," Tinat said. "And now if I want to ever be allowed in space again after this, I need to leave right this (sixty-seven seconds)!"

"No you don't," Pinkie Pie said, having finally thought up the solution.

"I really do!"

"You really don't!" Pinkie insisted. "Look, you can't take off while we're here because the flames from your rockets will burn us to a crisp, right?"

"Um... no..." Tinat's eyestalks wobbled. "My ship doesn't make flames." After a beat, the speaker let out a rapid-fire mutter: "I only hope it doesn't make flames..." Then, in a more normal voice, he said, "But the against-gravity field it uses will crush anything above ground as if the ship were sitting on it. So it's not safe for you to be near the ship when I take off." Another mutter: "Saying nothing about standing on the ship..."

"So, so long as I insist on sitting here," and Pinkie plunked her posterior on the cold metal hull plating to make her point, "you can't take off, right?"

"That's what I've been trying to tell both of you for-"

"Which means it's totally not your fault that you can't leave, right?"

Tinat froze. He eyestalks now came fully upright again. 

"Which means," Pinkie Pie said, "you can stay for my party!"

Tinat's eyestalks drooped again. "But I can't eat any of your-"

Pinkie Pie reached back into the saddlebags and began pulling out large flasks with lids on. Some were large, some were small, but the key thing was, they all held liquids, running from almost clear yellow down to a deep brown.

"This," Pinkie Pie said, holding up one sample flask, "this is refined kerosene. No oxygen in it at all." Another small flask. "This is sunflower oil. Mostly made of triglycerides. A little oxygen, but not as high a percentage as alcohol." Another flask, and another. "This is olive oil, and this is peanut oil." One more flask came up, not with a liquid, but a white solid subtstance. "And this is hydrogenated coconut oil, like what we use for shortening when we bake."

Pinkie felt the deep resonance through the ship. "Triglycerides," Tinat's voice murmured through the speakers.

"Yep! But that's not all!" Setting these aside, Pinkie brought out a small wooden rack with stoppered test tubes already inside. She pointed from one to the next, naming them off: "These are pure flavorings, some natural, some artificial. Vanillin- apparently that has a bit of oxygen in it, so you may have to be careful, but it makes things sweet. Acetoin- it's what makes butter buttery! Also some oxygen, but less than vanillin. "Isoamyl acetate- what my granny called banana oil, 'cause it makes things taste like bananas. And its cousin, octyl acetate, which makes things orangy. And this is limonene, which you get from lemon peel, and it doesn't have any oxygen in it at all! And cinnamaldehyde, my favorite after vanillin!"

"Triglycerides," Tinat repeated. 

"You betcha!" Pinkie said. "Now, these flavorings, well, a little goes a loooooong way, so I only used a tiny bit, but each of these-" she gestured at the larger flasks, which each had its own label- "each of these has one or two of these mixed in with one or another of the oils, right? And all this glassware is chem-lab stuff! You can put liquid nitrogen in and it won't break, or so I'm told! So it should be just fine in your ship!"

"Er... yes," Tinat agreed weakly, "Liquid nitrogen is cold even for me."

"So let's get your samples from these," and Pinkie pointed at the small flasks, "and then once we know what you can and can't eat out of them, you can try your treats while we're eating ours!"

"Er... but what will my leader say?"

"Tell him you're being held hostage until you have a party!"

Tinat slumped. "I'm supposed to tell my leader that some natives are holding me hostage until I get so intoxicated that I fall down?" he asked. "That's what pure triglycerides do to us."

Pinkie looked at Fluttershy. "Do you think Applejack would bring some cider if we asked?" she said. "We should probably ask her for some pies and things anyway. I only brought enough pony snacks for me and one other."

"I'm sure she wouldn't mind," Fluttershy said. "But wouldn't that be imposing on your friend here?"

"Good point." Pinkie turned to Tinat. "Since you're leaving after the party anyway," she said, "is there any reason my friends can't join us?"

"My hostage-taker is asking me permission to bring people in," Tinat replied. The speaker managed a very dry tone of voice for a machine. "How will that sound to my leader?"

"Well, if he gets upset, your leader can ask my leader," Pinkie said. "Twilight, that is. She's a princess, she's my friend, and she's right outside the woods. You can let her talk to him if you like."

The alien paused. "You know," he said at last, "I'm tired, I'm upset, and I very much want to get intoxicated right now. Go ahead. Take your leader to me."
> Chapter 6: the Departure
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vanillin proved to be one oxygen atom too many, but the other flavorings- and all the oils and fats, even the kerosene- turned out to be perfectly acceptable, with limitations. 

The party, with comings and goings, ended up lasting for three days, partly because, after Tinat's second deep slurp of congealed fruit-mix coconut oil, he passed out asleep at the observation window. The dawn woke him the next day, to the sight of Pinkie Pie and a large, deep-blue native who introduced herself as Luna. After a brief conversation, Tinat had rigged a remote communicator to one of his probes and let her talk with the navigator back aboard the ship while Pinkie Pie got her friends back for the day. 

This time going easy on the native food (the cinnamaldehyde was a familiar flavor, but most of the others were exotic bordering on the bizarre), he spent the entire day and well into the night conversing with Pinkie Pie and what were, apparently, her closest friends. The blue one asked questions about his ship until she got bored with what she called prespawn-head stuff. The purple one picked up where the blue one left off, digging into Konsoran science and comparing it to the "magic" the natives used.

The yellow one explained the function and habits of the various animals who lived around where the ship had landed, while Tinat described the motile life of his world. A newcomer, mostly orange, asked about raising foodstock, and Tinat described the thermal vent farms in his homeworld's lakes while asking about the sessile life the natives ate. A white one, with a horn on its head similar to the purple one, asked for a closer look at his laboratory cloak and then sketched out something that, so far as he could tell, would either make him intensely attractive or get him run off his home planet under sumptuary laws.

And before and after each, again and again, Pinkie Pie tried to make Tinat laugh. Her facial contortions had rather the opposite effect- those mouthparts, teeth, still frightened him terribly. The puns, of course, died in translation. And a lot of the other jokes depended on knowledge he just didn't have. But... every once in a while, Pinkie would stumble across something their cultures had in common (mostly embarrassment humor), and Tinat's resonator would thrum uncontrollably. 

For her part, Pinkie laughed at almost all Tinat's jokes, even the puns. He knew she couldn't possibly understand most of them... but there was something about that bubbly sound, that popping resonance Tinat could just hear over the computer translated thrum, which made him feel better about himself.

And, of course, every moment of it was recorded, even while he was asleep.

He awoke again towards sunset of the third day, and Pinkie was still there, though the trees had been draped with banners saying, according to the computer, Thanks for coming- have a safe trip home. Larger containers of Pinkie's mixtures had been brought in "for the road," though the blue one cautioned him to not "eat and fly."

And there was one other newcomer- the largest one yet, almost entirely white, with head-tail fibers that glittered and moved and shifted like a stellar nebula. This, it turned out, was the native ruler, who had come to see the visitor for herself. 

There was some brief diplomatic chat, with the captain joining in on the communicator, and while the captain declined to give the ruler the location of their homeworld- one good experience with natives didn't outweigh three disastrous ones- he did agree to provide a communicator in case Konsori ships visited the system again. In return she gave permission for several long-term robotic probes to land in particular points within her realm, so that science would continue even after Tinat left.

And then it was just him and Pinkie, the others having cleaned away the decorations and the food. 

"Well, told ya I'd throw you a party," she said. 

"Yes, I was wrong," Tinat admitted. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if your foods get outlawed by my people." He bent one leg to rub his belly ruefully. "I'm still a bit warm from it. Very strong."

Pinkie giggled. "Don't tell the older ponies!" she said. "They already think I corrupt their kiddies!"

Tinat sighed. "I won't get a chance to," he said. "I won't ever come back. You know this."

"I know," Pinkie nodded. "But we had fun while you were here, and that's what counts."

"Yes, well..." Tinat shuffled his feet. "You were very helpful. Thank you for everything." His claw-hands flexed unconsciously. "I don't know if my captain thinks you were helpful, though..."

"Eh, just give him some of the cinnamon olive oil," Pinkie grinned. "That'll wash the grumpy right out of him!"

"Excuse me," Tinat said, "I'm keeping that for myself. He can settle for the acetoin-laced kerosene."

The two of them shared one last laugh.

"Well, goodbye, Tinat," Pinkie said. "Hope you make more friends on the next world you visit!"

Tinat raised his forebody up to full elevation. "Only if they're friends like you. Goodbye."

His ship, of course, did not spew fire when it took off, and thus it was barely visible in the light of the hell-world's moon as it left its hilltop hiding place and took to the skies. Part of Tinat wished it made more of a show in flight, so the pink one and her friends on the ground could see him off.

Another part of Tinat wondered whether his final report could be phrased so as to save his career, or if the treasure trove of cultural data would be enough for that.

But the majority of him was trying to figure out how he could conceal the maximum amount of Pinkie Pie's concoctions from potential confiscation by the rest of the crew.

Pinkie Pie had said she would make treats he could digest. 

And, if you set aside the hangovers, she had certainly succeeded.