Mira Wumbo pressed her blue palms against the vault door and grinned so wide her cheeks ached. On the other side of this door lay the grandest human city on Jumbo, and she meant to walk in as the first alien ambassador its people had ever shaken hands with. Her propeller hat spun in slow, happy circles. She had rehearsed her greeting for three months on the ship. She had picked flowers for the mayor. She bounced once on her heels and the flowers bounced with her. The vault was the border gate. Seams of light ran across its polished metal like veins. Blue gems studded the frame and threw pale beams across the dust. Mira had expected a welcome party at the seal. Instead she heard boots on gravel behind her, moving fast. She turned. Six humans in gray uniforms fanned out across the clearing, rifles up. They had spotted her rubbery blue skin from the ridge and come down hard. The nearest one shouted at her to get on the ground. Another spoke into a radio about a hostile at the vault. "Hello!" Mira called, twice as loud as she needed to. She waved the flowers. "I'm the ambassador! I have a speech!" The patrol did not lower their rifles. The leader stepped forward, jaw tight, eyes on her hat like it might fire something. Mira understood, suddenly, that they did not know the word ambassador applied to a round blue person with a propeller. She dropped the flowers and raised both hands. She kept grinning, because a grin was the only human thing she owned. "I'm going to sit," she announced. "I'm sitting now. Watch me sit." She sat. The gravel crunched under her. The leader closed the distance and clipped a cuff around one of her wrists. The metal was cold and too small. He forced the other cuff on and it pinched. "On your feet," he said. "You're coming with us." "Wonderful," Mira said. "Take me to whoever's in charge. That's exactly where I was going." He did not answer. Two soldiers hauled her up by the elbows. A third kicked her satchel open and dumped it. Her speech cards spilled into the dirt. A small green figure on the top card, drawn in crayon, smiled up at the sky. Cosmo Rumbleton, her partner, waiting somewhere in orbit for her signal. She would not be sending a signal today. Behind her, the vault's blue seams pulsed once and went dark. The gate had registered her presence and refused it. The city on the other side sealed itself off from the strange creature at its door. They marched her toward a truck at the tree line. Mira kept her chin up and her hat spinning. She had not entered the city as an ambassador. She was entering it as a prisoner, and she still had to make them listen.