Belling the Cat, A Tale of Alika.

Alika, a largely unexplored planet sufficiently Earth like that it is seen as a good prospect for colonisation. Most landmasses are thickly covered with lush vegetation and a good deal of mud due to the near constant rains that sweep across the planet. However Alika is inhabited by a race of small humanoids, -the L’ia, - about which little is known and before plans for colonisation can proceed they will need to fully investigated and documented. This task has fallen to the Terran First Contact Agency, - though to date their investigations have not gone well. In the past year three fieldworkers who were assigned to Alika have been killed under mysterious circumstances by the L’ia tribe they made contact with. Unaware of this past history Margaret O’Neil, - a fieldworker with a checkered past with the agency, - has been sent to Alika in the hope that she might solve the mystery.