Baen, 1990, $3.50, ISBN 0-671-72020-1, 250 pages

Oh sure, there's nothing to worry about down on ol' Delta Pavonis. Humans don't taste good to the local flora and fauna. Of course, there's nuthin' much doin' down on the Delta, either. In fact, it's the last place in the Universe any aspiring Survey Department explorer would want to be. But dem's da breaks for Deirdre Jamail, screw-up first class, and away Jamail goes, straight into a jungle.

The prose rolls along through various events, all of which lead to the big meeting with the aliens. There's nothing much happening from page to page other than it seems the authors took a trip to Hawaii or at least saw a documentary and decided to write about the place. Somewhere in there are dinosaurs of all things, and it turns out that Delta Pavonis is one big incubator.

Now, you'd think that any initial survey at a time when intersellar travel was available would have picked up dinosaurs on planetside, not to mention the base camps all over the planet, aerial vehicles, and other modern amenities. But no...it takes Deirdre on a camping trip to find them, not to mention finding instant transport doors. It's like a bad Star Trek episode. You know, the one with the disks that opened a time machine to many worlds.

But you know what? The military makes a token appearance towards the end when the aliens arrive, but no fighting breaks out, and everyone goes home happy.

That was a non-event, just like the book.