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The Color of Neanderthal Eyes
James Tiptree,Jr.
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any
resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
THE COLOR OF NEANDERTHAL EYES Copyright © 1990 by the Estate of Alice B. Sheldon
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A TOR Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
West 24 Street
New York, NY
Cover art by Dave Archer
ISBN: 0-812-55964-9 Can. ISBN: 0-812-50204-
First edition: January
Printed in the United States of America

It's my fault, all of it, and Kamir is dead.
But something must be done.
Now it is afterwards and I am recording this on shipboard so that you will understand. Much
of this belongs in a Second Contact Report. Much more does not. But I am too torn-up and tired
to make a formal report. I am simply talking out what happened so you will see that something
must be done.
???
It started while I was lazily cruising along just outside an island coral reef, on the beautiful sea-world
unimaginatively christened "Wet." I see it now: turquoise sea and creamy small breakers, and across the
green bay the snowy expanse of sand, backed by the feathery plumes of that papyrus-like plant I learned
to call cenya. The sun has started down, so I start my motor and go along the reef, looking for a pass. I
find one, and cautiously zigzag through; my little new-rubber dinghy is too precious to risk hitting that
sharp coral. Once through, I stop and turn, watching. Something has been following me all afternoon. I
don't want to spend the night alone on a strange beach without checking out the creature.
Will it follow me in here?
I am, so far as I know, alone on Wet. And I'm tired. I'd been on a very strenuous year-long tour as
Sensitive on an Extended Contact party six lights away. It's hard work, building up an FW—First Verbal
Vocabulary—and the aliens I was dealing with had complicated, irritable, niggling minds. The niggling
made for an accurate vocabulary, but it was tiring for the lone telepath on the team. And it was a
high-gee planet, which made for more fatigue. I had earned my post-tour leave. When we passed near
Wet, I opted to be put down in a lander for weeks of restful solitude.
Wet has been visited only once before, by a loner named Pforzheimer, who stayed only long enough
to claim a First Contact. His notes in the Ephemeris say that there are humanoid natives, confined to the
one small continent, or large island, on the other side of the planet from me. Besides that, what land there
is consists of zillions of small islands and islets, mostly atolls, long looping chains of them everywhere,
archipelagos forming necklaces around friendly seas.
Wet seems to be in an interglacial period with the ocean at maximal height, and only a tiny ice cap on
the south pole. And its sun is yellow, like Sol but smaller, so that even here near the equator the noon
heat is merely pleasant. A tropical paradise in this season. There is even a magnetic field; my compass
works. I left the lander at my base camp due south, and have come exploring this pretty chain of islets.
 Ah!
In the pass I am watching there bobs up a round head, rather like a seal's, but glinting a fiery pink in
the sunlight. The creature is following me into the bay.
What to do? Is it a predator? If so, it has had plenty of chances to make for me while I was diving,