On a balmy June evening, in the Spring of 1973, Dr. Carl Woodward opened his front door on a new era. The man who stood on his doorstep--Woodward never thought of Borsu as anything but a "man"--wore a sleeveless tunic that glistened like snake-skin. He was holding something in his hands, as if proferring it, a foot-square metallic box with rounded corners and a diamond-shaped screen that showed a moving tracery of spidery-thin lines. Woodward was sixty-one. He had been a naval surgeon in two wars, and had lost a leg during the Inchon landing. He had survived the loss, but a treacherous heart condition forced his retirement. He chose a small village in Eastern Pennsylvania. He lived with a dog and a thousand books. Borsu, the alien, could not have chanced on a better host that night. "Yes, what is it?" Woodward said. When no answer came, the doctor realized that his visitor expected him to watch the screen. He did. The lines wavered, shifted, blurred in their excitation, but conveyed nothing. Panacea, Woodward's aging beagle, finally came out of his warm bed near the furnace and set up a furious barking. "Pan!" Woodward snapped. "Shut up, you mutt! Look, mister, perhaps if you came inside--" Then his eyes became adjusted to the diamond-shaped screen; he saw a picture. The scene was a forest; there was the gleam of crumpled metal, and a prostrate figure lying on the leaf-strewn floor. It was the portrait of an accident, and Woodward was intuitive enough to know that the man in the doorway had come for help. "You want me to come with you, is that it?" he said. "Is your friend hurt? How did it happen?" * * * * * The screen refocused. Now Woodward saw the injured "man" more closely, saw the face blue in the moonlight, saw the lacerations on his cheek and forehead. Then the "camera" traveled downwards, towards the ribs, almost as if it were exploring the extent of the injuries for diagnosis (later, he learned this was true). "Well, come on," he said gruffly. He took his coat and instrument bag from the hall closet, and shut the door on Panacea's hysteria. When he was outside with his visitor, he saw his face for the first time. Then he knew that the face he had seen in the tiny screen hadn't merely looked blue in the moonlight. It was blue. A smoky, almost lavender blue. Those who came to hate the aliens described it as purple, but Borsu, his dying companion, and all the aliens who followed were blue-skinned. Woodward was in a fever of excitement by the time he reached the scene of the crash, in the woods some five hundred yards from his home. He understood its significance by now, knew that the fallen vessel had been some kind of space craft, that its dual occupants were visitors from another world. The fact that he had been first on the scene thrilled him; the fact that he was a doctor, and could help, gratified him.