A small section of Jerry Norcriss's mind found itself mildly amused, as always, by this bit of formality. The outlining of the planetary reconnaissance to a Space Zoologist was mere protocol, a holdover from the ancient custom of briefing a man who was about to undergo a mission of importance. Vainly did the zoologists try to convince authority that this briefing was futile. A man in Contact was no longer a man. He _was_ the creature whose mind he inhabited, save for a miniscule remnant of personal identity. His job was to Learn the creature from the inside out. As his mind, off in the alien body, Learned, the information was relayed via the Contact helmet to an electronic brain on the ship, to be later translated into code-cards for the roborockets. Man's expansion throughout the universe was progressing faster than his mind could memorize or categorize. The roborockets obviated his need to learn. For every known kind of alien-species problem, there was a solution. The scannerbeams of the rocket would sense each life-form over which they passed, in the rocket's six-month orbit about the planet. If all species conformed to already known types, then a signal would fly by ultrawave across the void to Earth, declaring the planet fit for immediate colonization. But if new species were encountered, the beam to Earth carried a hurried call to the Naval Space Corps, with a request for the next available zoologist. Zoologists spent their Earthside time at Corps Headquarters, in the Comprehension Chamber. There, with the millions of index-cards at fingertip control, they lay back upon their couches and learned, through dream-like vicarious playbacks, about the species Contacted by their confreres. Any Space Zoologist with even five years' service had more accumulated knowledge in his brain than any dozen ordinary zoologists. And more intimate knowledge, too. A man who has _been_ an animal has infinitely more knowledge of that animal than a man who has merely dissected one. * * * * * So Jerry lay there, letting his ears record the voice of the pilot but closing his conscious mind to the import of the words. It never did any good to know that the creature you were about to be was unknown. And no comment on what sort of animal it _might_ be could be half so informative as actually _being_ what it was. Jerry repressed an urge to fidget. This was almost the worst part of Contact: The wait, while the senseless briefing took place. Soon enough he would know more of the species under observation than could be held on ten reams of briefing-sheets. Soon enough he would be sent, for an irreducible forty minutes, into the mind of each of the creatures to be learned.