Hacker laughed. "Why, it smells just like our own food, only better." He picked at his vita-concentrate. "Oh, let's forget about the whole thing." We tried to. Several dignitaries rose to their full seven feet and spoke slowly into Semanticizers, flinging their queer hands out for emphasis with their thumbs waving where our pinkies do. Suddenly, though, Hacker got up from his seat and hurried down the long table to the place where the leading spokesman was eating. He leaned over him, speaking into the nearest translator, and I could see the Newtanean smiling broadly, as if trying to refuse something, while Hacker frowned. Finally the smile faded into a friendly scowl. Nothing good could be coming out of this. A minute later a robot arm proffered a loaded plate to Hacker and he started back to us with it. Barnes rose to stop him, but before Hacker reached us he had taken two mouthfuls of the meat. I have never seen such sheer self-satisfied delight on a human face as after those first bites. "You shouldn't be doing that," Barnes said when he sat down next to us again. "You're just old fogies," Hacker grunted through a meat-stuffed mouth. "This is the best food I've ever eaten." He somehow shoveled another load of meat between his lips. Thirty seconds later his face twisted into a caricature of the human physiognomy, all writhing lines, as if every muscle were breaking loose from its neighbors. The last unswallowed portion of food erupted from his mouth and he fell forward into the vile mess. He was dead. * * * * * Pandemonium spread through the hall. Everywhere wildly smiling faces expressed despair at such an end for an honored guest. Barnes sprang into action, pulling the portable medical kit from his belt and immediately starting blood tests while some native doctors joined him with their emergency equipment. "Must start revitalizing immediately," he said, then stopped, ashen-faced, as he studied an analyzer tube. "Fantastic! No, it can't be!" The Newtaneans were equally bewildered. They rushed Hacker to a nearby treatment chamber. All I could do was wait, while the Newtanean leader explained that Hacker had told him we had authorized his trying the food. There was no need to doubt his story. It was just what the kid would have done. I did my best to assure him that we knew his intentions had been honorable. A half-hour later Barnes returned, a robot platform following with Hacker, body covered by a preservative glaze, on it. "Nothing can be done," he said. "I've tried everything. Hacker's too thoroughly dead for anything ever to bring him back. We'll just have to take his body home for further study." "But what killed him?" I demanded. "A dozen or so things out of a thousand possibilities." "You mean you don't have any idea?" "Oh, I have _some_ idea. Too many ideas in fact. Look, Johnson, chemistry's not your specialty but this is fairly elementary. All life contains protein, right?"