"There's rules against reds pretending, for sure. But it's less of a problem with anyone else, if we hadn't dyed my daughter's hair she'd still be green on all her paperwork but people would think she was yellow and that wouldn't be a disaster."

"And everyone else is pretty happy with what they're doing so it wouldn't really come up?"

"You get silly stories about people pretending to be blue or purple children wishing they'd been born grey, that sort of thing, but not in real life."

And he goes back to questions about the language.

Which she is delighted to answer!

That night he goes back to the ships and picks up another language and contacts the enemy. Hello, he says. We are from a distant star. We are curious about you. 

Are you the people who were speaking Tapap on the radio the other day?

Yes! We've landed and met them. They mentioned they are at war with you but said they'd stop if they had enough food so we're bringing the goddess of harvest and then hopefully the war can stop. We disapprove of people dying.

Everything about that sounds very strange.

If you are more specific I can maybe explain.

It seems very unlikely that they'll stop trying to take our land, and also that you're bringing a literal harvest goddess.

Well, if they don't stop, then I guess we could stop them. I don't know for sure if she'll agree to come but I think it's likely.

Why did you go to them instead of us or another country?

Their city was prettiest. 

That doesn't seem like a very responsible way of handling first contact.

Um, I should probably mention that I am not in charge of anything I'm just a kid with a way around their radio jamming.

Most possible ways of picking which country to land on seem pretty arbitrary. Their radio jamming? 

They've got a thing so radio's not reliable in our country because that makes it harder for us to get war news moved around but I have this thing.

They said the war started because you poisoned their food, is that true?

Basically, yeah. We have to eat the same stuff.

Why did someone poison the food?

The reds got really uncontrollable so they're letting them handle some of it now.

And they poisoned it?

Yeah.

I am confused about why this was not handled internally instead of uninvolved parties now shooting each other.

They won't keep the reds away from the food. It's disgusting. There's a few things they're still not allowed to touch but hardly anybody can afford to only eat those things.