This planet has life signs, if you like that sort of thing.

The USS Keystone doesn't have the sort of scanner that can detect those from orbit, as those haven't been invented yet. Still, that sure looks like vegetation. Perhaps there's radio chatter or some other form of electronic communication? Those they can detect. Usually.

No radio, but it does look floral down there! Distinct orangey tint to the organisms, overall, sort of a coral-y-salmon-y orange, though many individual spots are heavier on the pink or the yellow or even green.

Well, than a team can be sent down to investigate, starting at a greener looking area. Hopefully it will at least be a place for the crew to stretch their legs.

The voyage was going about as well as Lia could have imagined. Sure, they were stranded, but they were stranded in space, with alien planets and new stars and who knows how many people to meet and unchartered regions to discover. It'd be great to get back home of course, but maybe not right this minute. 

The air is safe to breathe! None of the wildlife is obviously out to kill them right now! Most of the plants are more like mushrooms, but they're big and colorful and alive and smell kind of nice actually.

Lia resists the urge to start running for all of twenty seconds - it is not a very large ship she's been cooped up on.

While her superior officer runs around possibly Petra can detect life signs now that they're actually in range to do that.

The mushrooms are alive! The plants are too except that one which is dead! There are animals! What kinds of fine-grained information can her detection turn up?

The shuttle's short range scanner can distinguish between plants, animals, and humanoids within a radius of half a mile. 

Humanoids! Over there!

Well then, once Lia has returned from sprinting in the opposite direction they can go and introduce themselves to the humanoids.

The humanoids have a humble hamlet built of dried out mushroom slices. They are eating skewered fish whole. They are very surprised to see human(oids).

"Hello!"

They consider this utterance for a while, and then reply:

"[UNGODLY SHRIEK]"

Petra can start going through the basics of gesturing to herself and then the new humanoids and so on until she has enough to construct the basics of the grammar, entering information into her data pad as she goes. The speaker embedded in her badge can pronounce the words for her. She could possibly do that bit herself too but she has no desire to attempt to do so. 

The natives are willing and able to repeat her phonemes! "Peh-ta. Tra. Peh-tra." They seem to find this more interesting than talking to her in their own language, actually.

Petra can teach them some English as she goes but she doesn't expect they'll be as fast at learning English as she is at learning their language.

Is she sure?

Yes.

Well, they talk to each other some, but they want to know the English words for everything and they want it right now please and thank you. They will take instruction in parallel from other crew members too!

Which Lia is happy to provide!

"Hhhyuuumens! Hyuumens and" [horrible squawking that means the natives] same place after different place???"

"We humans traveled here from our place to this place!"

 We'll mostly humans, there are are one or two non-humans, and one mostly human. But that's probably not helpful for people learning the language.

Petra can try at her best translation of what Lia said.

"Hyuumen place?" [horrible squawk] "travel hyumen place?"

"We can't go to the human place right now, we're lost."

Are any of the aliens willing to correct her translations? Or at least talking in their own language about what Lia is saying.

The aliens super do not care about whether Petra learns word one of their language except insofar as there is not presently an English rendering of [horrible squawk]. They do jabber at each other in the background a little bit but they're not being helpful in contextualizing their remarks at all.

"Hyuumens from big place past water place?"

Petra can do her best to learn from the background jabbering but she won't actually be able to learn their language as fast as they can learn English from Lia.

"No! Humans are from space," she says, gesturing upwards. "Are there other people in the big place past the ocean?"

"Before! Not now. Big, uh," there is a brief commotion as the speaker collects supplies with which to produce a sample fire. "And other other other thing. No more people past the ocean."

"Oh no! Do you know when that was?"

They have only pretty rudimentary timekeeping. It was before any of them were born.

So not a very recent disaster in need of addressing.

"Would you like to show me around where you live while we talk?"

They seem confused by the request. There isn't a whole lot of village. She can see most of it from here. "Look see!" says one of them invitingly.

Are there young aliens around? Old ones?

No juveniles. These ones presumably vary in age but it's not obvious by looking.

Neat! Lia can keep teaching them English until they have enough to understand:

"Would it be okay if some humans came and visited your planet for a week or so?"

"And then" [horrible squawk] "go to human place?"

"We can't go back to Earth right now, we don't know how to get there."

"Where humans go after 'week'?"

"Back to our ship, to keep searching for other non-humans. And also a way back to Earth."

"Ship ship ship?"

"Yeah! Our space ship that we traveled on to get here."

[horrible squawk] "go ship see ship, ship ship?"

"Oh, hm. I'd have to ask the captain of our ship?" Clearly the right answer is 'yes, of course' but possibly there are political considerations which Lia can let Lucien figure out. 

[horrible squawk] "go see more things, more more more things!"

Extremely relatable of them.

"Just on the ship, or also other places?"

"Also other places!"

Just how many of these aliens are there?

The village has 43 of them.

She suspects that is a good deal more than they can take, especially given that this is the first planet they've visited and they might run into more interested aliens later.

"I don't think we'll be able to take that many of you - I'm sorry."

If she wanted to make them start arguing amongst themselves in their own language a lot for Petra's benefit she has succeeded! Every single one of them wants to go on the ship and see things.

She did not want that at all! She also... does not have anything helpful to add really.

If they argue for more than a few minutes Petra might actually manage to understand what their arguments consist of exactly. 

Some of them think some should stay behind anyway, for the children, and the others are like, well, are YOU volunteering to NOT go on the ship and see the things, huh, and it must be conceded that in fact nobody is volunteering to do that.

Well, at least she knows their language now.

Lia talks to Lucien who determines that they can take three of the locals, chosen at random among any of them that are uninterested in having children in the future, since he'd like to avoid the complication of a growing population. Technically regulations are imply he shouldn't be taking any at all, but there's enough wiggle room that he can justify it as a compromise with Lia's more radical position of taking as many as they can feasibly carry. Hopefully the remainder will enjoy a chance to meet the various crew members who are visiting their planet?

They are all willing to stop having children forever if that means a shot at going on the ship.

Only three of them! The rest can have children and someday hopefully their descendants can figure out how to build a ship and explore themselves.

Or Lucien will figure out how to return home and fix the politics of first contact so that humans are willing to let them immigrate as a species. That's only two seemingly impossible problems he needs to solve.

Why three. Can they have more if they eat less. Can they have more if they ask VERY nicely. Can they come back and get the rest of them later. Can they tell them how to build a ship NOW.

Lucien can meet with the aliens (who would ideally pick a name that's pronounceable by humans?) and patiently explain that there are rules against disrupting the lives of aliens too much, the amount they eat isn't relevant, asking nicely won't work though it will make Lucien look sad, whether or not they will come back and get the rest later isn't up to him, and sadly they can't tell them how to build a ship because it's very complicated and there are rules around teaching people about it.

They don't know how to pick a name good name that humans could pronounce. What do they look like to the humans?

Would some humans stay behind to hang out with the goblins? Will they teach them ANYTHING this week besides English or are they just here to tease? Those rules are stupid. Their lives are boring compared to this! This is the most exciting thing ever and the best possible goblin life involves finding out everything there is to know about it.

One of the crew members comments that they look like goblins, even as Lucien avoids that for fear that they'll dislike the connotations in the future.

They can't stick around but maybe they can visit again, in a year or so.

The crew can teach them other things? At least some of the crew is willing. What sort of things do they want to learn?

"Goblins" is fine. They'll be goblins.

They want to learn everything! It is quickly discoverable that they don't have writing and are very excited about that, so that might be a good place to start.

They can be taught writing! And provided with pens even.

This is sufficiently mollifying that they will stop whining about only having three slots, though they still can't agree on who gets them and it'll have to be by lot.

That's doable.

"You know," says Lia to a goblin she's managed to catch in private, "My data pad has quite a lot of information you might find interesting. And it's a model that can recharge in the sun and is really very durable." 

"Can it be here?"

"I'm not allowed to give it to you, but if it got lost and I couldn't find it I would suppose it would end up staying here."

"Is it heavy?" wonders the goblin.

"No, see it's very light." says Lia, handing it to the goblin to demonstrate.

"Oh, it is! So light!" Toss. Toss. Oh no it is sadly atop a big mushroom now. Alas.

She... could climb that. She won't though.

"Oh no, how careless. Maybe if I remember I'll come back to get it later but if it's not there I'll have no idea where to look."

"It is very tall. The best climber is somewhere else right now," says the goblin, bobbing up and down.

"Yes, and I am too tired to try myself. So long as humans don't see it I guess it might end up lost here. With all the books and movies and information it has."

"Humans are not as tall as that mushroom and cannot see the top of it."

"They might be able to from the shuttle when they take off."

"Oh, that is true. The shuttle goes up."

"Should I retrieve it from the mushroom now? And then perhaps I might lose it somewhere else. Underneath some leaves and dirt maybe."

"Oh, Commander Lia should not have to climb. Probably a goblin can get it later on."

But she wanted to climb. Well-being of a species Lia, prioritize. She can climb later. For now she can wander back to the camp to see what the other goblins are up to learning, making sure to head off anyone liable to find the missing data pad.

If she checks later it is no longer on the mushroom.

How unfortunate!

Tragic equipment loss!

Eventually it is time to go and three goblins are selected at random to come with.

Would the humans help them have names?

They can provide options of names humans might use? Or Vulcans or other aliens if those sound better.

Or just words or whatever, they're not picky, but humans can't say their real names.

Well they have badges that can do translations but that doesn't really solve the name issue. 

If the goblins don't actively want word names that aren't going to get them. They will instead get a list of the most common names on various planets as well as some suggestions of names people think are particularly neat.

They're very suggestible and each goblin adopts the first name suggested to them. Now they have a Darcy and an Ariel and a Marius.

Probably this is the sort of thing people are afraid of when they talk about the cultural assimilation of contacted civilizations, but after taking every meeting with a goblin who wanted to talk to him, to beg to allow more of them to go into space or to leave behind someone to teach them, he finds it difficult to worry about the names.

"They... just wanted to learn from us," he says to Lia as they enter warp. It's not worth risking his career for, not when there are so many others. But it still hurts.

"Yeah..."

"By the way, I'm sorry to report that I lost my data pad. I'll need to reacquisition one of the spare ones."

"We only have a limited suppl- oh."

"Thank you."

"No problem Lucien."