Tinat looked out through the darkened window at instant flaming death.

Well, probably not flaming death, even though the atmosphere outside contained a ludicrously high content of oxygen- twenty-two percent of the total. More likely he'd just melt or even sublimate, considering the temperature outside was over two hundred increments warmer than the surface of his own homeworld. In fact, as he thought this over for the thirtieth time, that was actually worse than burning to death. Death by oxidation was quick. Melting, by all descriptions, ran slow and dreadful by comparison.

Of course, he had no intention of actually going out there, not even in his extravehicular activity pod. Even the spacesuit's advanced polymers couldn't withstand the temperatures outside. It was so hot that the very substance that made up most of his own bones- dihydrogen monoxide- ran in torrents through a natural channel not far from where his spaceship lay hidden.

All in all, this planet was a true hell-world- insanely hot, a bit too heavy (half again the surface gravity of his homeworld), and flooded with gaseous free oxygen. Indeed, that had been why he'd come to this world. Molecular oxygen just did not happen, not naturally. Like hydrogen, it wanted to find something to bond to. If there was a lot of free oxygen somewhere, something had to be making it.

So he'd come down in the ship's shuttle- by himself, since the captain refused to risk more than a single crew member on such a risky mission, even if they were a survey ship. And it hadn't taken him long at all to figure out where the oxygen came from- that had been obvious even before he'd landed.

This hellworld had life. TONS of life. In fact, a collection of sessile life forms had served as a canopy to hide his ship from view from above. That became necessary the moment the signs of intelligent life became obvious, even before he entered the atmosphere.

The autrenkt of Konsor had encountered intelligent life before- one spacefaring but not yet interstellar species, two planet-bound primitive species. (All three species came from worlds similar to Konsor itself. After all, the autrenkt ships had been surveying suitable planets or moons well away from the primary, where you'd expect to find life. Nobody had even speculated about life below the ice line before, so deep in the star's gravity well.) After those experiences they'd established rules for contacting new sapient life forms- in one word, Don't. Safer for all concerned to just stay hidden.

That said, Tinat had a duty to study the world's life and learn all he could in the short period his shuttle could remain on the surface. Thus, he'd landed on a low hillside covered by the tall sessile life forms, overlooking a native settlement of moderate size- not an isolated family dwelling, but not a major city either. The camouflage screens had been deployed, and small probes had been sent out to collect samples from various life forms in the vicinity. Other probes had flown down into the settlement to observe the natives and get some basic idea of biology, behavior and culture.

What he'd found astounded him. All the life he'd sampled thus far used a variant of DNA, with two of the four nucleobases changed from those used in Konsor life. There were certain structural similarities, particularly in the animal life. There the resemblances ended. The cell membranes were different. The cells themselves were filled with dihydrogen monoxide, not methane. Unlike his own hydrogen metabolism, life here ran on oxygen. The green life also had specialized organelles not present in the other life sampled, which seemed to be the source of all that atmospheric oxygen in the first place.

Compared to the biology, the sociology was almost familiar. The natives weren't primitives, exactly, but neither were they going to space any time soon. They had some technology- they used engines on rails, they had some primitive electrical systems- but the quadrupeds seemed satisfied with muscle power for most applications. They had markets, public gathering places, and a rich spoken and written language with a broad vocabulary. Most notably, the natives had no sign of any organized military forces- indeed, none of the video Tinat had reviewed even hinted at the presence of weapons.

That suited him fine. He had one hundred eighty-two more hours before he'd need to return to the main survey ship to refuel. The ship's cooling systems had to work almost as hard as during atmospheric re-entry to maintain a normal temperature inside. It wasn't much time for a complete biology, geology and sociology survey. The idea of having it end prematurely, the same way the autrenkts' first three encounters with natives had ended, horrified him.

But, so long as the natives didn't know he was there, that wasn't going to happen. And even with the blinding light outside (almost a thousand times the sunlight he was used to), the camouflage screens would hold up to anything short of someone actually walking through them and right up to the ship. The natural canopy above the ship made a convenient back-up. Between them, and considering the lack of advanced technology in evidence, it was unthinkable that the natives would spot him before it was time to go.

Tinat glanced down at the readouts on the current biological sample analysis and took a few notes. When he looked up again, one of the natives was staring back at him through the observation window.

It was pink. It had eyes almost as large as his own.

And, to his horror, it was showing its mouthparts at him.

Even by the standards of the magical ponies of Equestria, Pinkie Pie broke the laws of physics on a daily basis. Gravity had, at best, a fickle grip on her. Her mane could store more than her own body weight in miscellaneous objects. She could sense imminent threats and avoid them before they happened. She even showed signs of being aware of things beyond the realms of equine knowledge, though because they were beyond equine knowledge, most other ponies just put that down to harmless insanity.

But, in this instance, no voice from beyond had guided Pinkie to the alien spaceship. She'd come up to the copse of trees on top of the hill overlooking Ponyville to retrieve a tennis racquet she'd stashed up there for athletic emergencies. Ace's birthday next week wasn't an emergency yet, but she needed to check the brand on the racquet to see if it was the one he liked.

She'd been halfway up the hill when she heard the high-pitched whine. It sounded kind of like a dog whimper, but it never stopped or changed tone, and no dog she'd ever seen had enough lung power to sustain it for so long.

Then she'd noticed the blurry projections that kinda sorta looked like trees and bushes, except that they didn't quite look like they were really there. Of course she walked right through them; on occasion she'd walked through solid walls that quite definitely were there, so of course walking through bushes that didn't actually exist was no trick at all.

That was when all thoughts of Ace's birthday present got stuck on the mental fridge door with a magnet (Pinkie could never actually forget a birthday), because that was when the big, shiny, beautiful spaceship got as much of her full attention as anything ever could.

And even better yet, there was a great big window in the ship, right in front of her, right next to a bit of hull she could stand on. It was tinted, so she could see her own reflection, right down to the enormous excited smile on her muzzle. But the tinting wasn't perfect, or it worked in some funny alien-y spaceshippy way, because she could also clearly see the purple alien in the solid black lab coat on the other side of the window.

Then the alien turned from whatever it had been doing, saw her, and froze.

Pinkie had plenty of time to take in the image. It had six limbs, four legs sort of like a really chubby pony's and two really long arms ending in hands that looked like they had three fingers and three thumbs each- sort of as if someone made hands out of rubber-covered pliers. The part of the body with the arms tilted up a bit, reminding Pinkie vaguely of Tirek, except there wasn't a head- just the front of the body with a long proboscis hanging limply down and two large, jointed eyestalks holding up enormous eyes that were obviously squinting at her.

(That seemed funny to Pinkie. It was a nice spring day in the shade. Was it annoyed at her? Maybe it needed glasses? How could it ever wear glasses, with each eye on its own stalk and absolutely no nose at all?)

All in all, the alien was probably quite a bit smaller than Pinkie, though its eyes were almost perfectly on a level with hers. And, again, the black coat that kind of draped over its body (except that it had sleeves for all six limbs) made it a guessing game as to how much of what she saw was actually the alien.

Again, she had plenty of time to take in the sight. She used only about a second and a half of it, though, because as much as she could stare at an alien all day, there was something totally, vitally, importantly important that needed doing.

"Hi! I'm Pinkie Pie! Welcome to Ponyville!" she said, waving a hoof.

A piece of the alien's body about midway between the hinge of the tilted-up bit and the base of the eyestalks shook visibly. There was a faint sound from inside the ship, something deep and resonant. Then a voice, more normal in pitch, spoke from a grille next to the window: "Nothing here is be. Elsewhere go to."

That confused Pinkie. "Well, I can see you're not a bee!" she said. "You're a sort of crab-like alien except you don't have a shell! And I wasn't looking for bees anyway!"

There was a long pause before the soft reverberation, followed by a single Ponish word: "What??"

"Is this your spaceship?" Pinkie asked. "I've always wanted to ride in a spaceship! There must be so many wonderful stars and planets and things up there in the sky! Can I have a quick ride? I don't need to go home with you, just a quick look around!"

Reverberation, then a different pitch of reverb overlaid with a different Ponish voice- one that sounded a bit like Octavia in a mood. "Unable to change word answer," it said. After more reverberation, it repeated, "Unable to change word answer." A third exchange of reverberations, and again, "Unable to change word answer."

"Excuse me?" Pinkie asked.

Alien body language shouldn't be immediately readable by others, but Pinkie Pie knew exactly what it meant when the whole body slumped and the proboscis let out a long burst of air like a whoopee cushion going off. That was a defeated sigh, no mistake. When the first voice came again from the grille, it sounded partly tired, partly grumpy: "Cannot live in ship you. Is bad for you the air. Much cold inside is it. Not live instantly you."

Pinkie's eyes widened. "WOW!" she squeaked. "You're so alien you don't breathe the same air we do? What kind of air do you breathe? Is it space air??"

"Say cannot. Have word do not for air in words your."

"But you just said 'air,'" Pinkie pointed out. "That's the word for air."

"For parts of air do not have words."

"Oooooh." Pinkie tapped her chin. "I read this somewhere... it's something like, um, three-quarters nitrogen, that kinda does nothing... twenty-some percent oxygen, that's what we breathe... um, maybe two percent water vapor, that's what the pegasi make clouds out of... an itty bitty bit of carbon dioxide, and then a teensy eensy sliver of a percent of all the other gases. That sound right to you?"

Pause. "Need word for tiny thing all things of are made," the second grille voice said.

"Oh, that's easy! Atoms!"

"Need word for thing which is all one kind of atom."

"You mean, like in chemistry? That's an element!"

"Nitrogen: seventh element is?" the first grille voice asked. "Oxygen: eighth element is? Water is made of one part eighth element and two parts first element? Carbon dioxide is one part sixth element and two parts eighth element?"

"Yep! You sure do know your sciency stuff!" Pinkie grinned. "Hey, you know who would love to talk all this science to you? Twilight Sparkle! Lemme just go get her and you can talk all about-"

"No no no no no no no no!!" The voice from the speaker didn't sound frantic, but the waving eyestalks and the thrashing arms on the alien behind the window definitely were.

"Huh? What's wrong?" Pinkie asked.

"Not let meet people it is like you. If come more ponies must leave I."

"Oh," Pinkie said, deflating a little. "But it'd only be one more-"

"Am not even supposed talk to you I!" Now the voice from the grille did sound a little frantic. "Did come this place but just today I. If now leave I, will be wasted the trip. If come but more ponies, will have no choice I. Leave must I."

"Don't leave! Don't leave! You just got here!" Pinkie insisted. "I won't tell Twilight! I won't tell anypony!"

"Promise."

Pinkie Pie got up on her hind hooves and solemnly intoned, "Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye."

The alien on the other side of the window had frozen in shock again. There was a long pause before any reverberation. "Was promise that?"

"Only the most solemn and unbreakable promise a pony can give!" Pinkie Pie said. "Any pony who breaks that promise will feel the guilt and shame of it forever!"

Another pause. "Sorry, say could yes or no you?"

Now it was Pinkie's turn to slump and sigh. "Yes," she grumbled.

The alien visibly relaxed. "Thank you," the first grille voice said. "Get trouble into I if not." In a softer tone it added, "Get into trouble probably anyway I."

"You know," Pinkie said, "we really gotta work on your grammar. That whole backwards-sentences thing is really confusing." An idea struck her, and she grinned. "I've got an idea! I'll be back in an hour! Don't go away!"

Pinkie's hooves pounded the ground, leaving the cracking sound of broken physical laws behind her, and leaving a flabbergasted Tinat to stare at the dust settling behind her.

Saving most of the commentary, especially the science facts, for the end of the story. It'll be a huge lump, so might as well let you enjoy the actual story in the meantime!