Big Baby

A Space Zoologist named Jerry Norcriss investigates an unaccounted life-pulse on a colonized planet and discovers an immensely large, infantile alien that survives by telepathically mimicking the thoughts it detects. Its selective echoing comforts itself and manipulates human expectations, producing catastrophic misunderstandings that threaten settlers. The narrative traces the scientist's struggle to interpret an intelligence that lacks conventional motives, highlights limits and occasional failures of planetary scanners, and explores loneliness, miscommunication, and the unintended consequences of contact between humans and an utterly alien life-form.