Tears of Jet

"She ambled into her cabin just as the landline vidphone chimed an incoming call. Nemara's left hand drew the glove from off her right, the hot, sticky plant sap blending with the sweat of her palm. "Her right hand reached out to tap the answer button on the phone, but never got there. "All sense of controlled motion in her body failed her. She slid into a drifting freefall that terminated sharply on the cold terrazzo floor." Dr. Nemara Mervyn had much to learn about Nineball, a distant planet on the edge of human-colonized space. As the planet's only xenobiologist, it was her job to determine whether crops could be safely grown there before any colonists actually arrived... but the Bushmen had other plans. Humans had not made official contact with the primitive intelligent species native to Nineball, and accidental contact with them had been lethal. That is, until a Bushman befriended Nemara and taught her their ways. Now, compelled to help a government agent locate a missing dignitary following a plane crash, Nemara must rely on her Bushman friends to locate the survivor and return her to safety before an assassin murders them all. If she fails, the resulting war might envelop all of human space, killing billions in the first week alone.