The First Fifth
novel
This warm-blooded creature is a long way from home. After intercepting a spacecraft barrelling through the void, alien scientists discover a soft-skinned bipedal creature that lacks thermal vision. It bares its short teeth and stares the crew down with warm eyes. Its mouth snaps at them and the ends of its upper limbs branch into five protrusions that constantly move and gesture, no discernible words but a clear attempt at communication. A Ki'Lakael training ship, of all things, found the fifth spacefaring species of the known universe. * A human is found by a deaf insectoid species that perceives the world through thermal vision and talks through hair-like visual patterns on their shell. It is going to be a long, difficult journey to overcome those communication differences and unravel the mystery of why one creature is so far from home. The human must overcome those same differences just to survive.