The Heart of the Serpent

{{Short description|1958 short story by Ivan Yefremov}}

{{Infobox book|

|name = The Heart of the Serpent

|title_orig = Cor Serpentis
Сердце Змеи

|translator = Roza Prokofieva

|image = the-heart-of-the-serpent-cover.jpg

|caption = Cover of the 2002 Fredonia Books edition

|author = Ivan Yefremov

|illustrator =

|cover_artist =

|country = Soviet Union

|language = Russian

|series = The Great Circle

|genre = Science fiction

|publisher = Foreign Languages (1st edition)
Collier Books (1st U.S. edition)

|release_date = 1958

|english_release_date = 1961 in USSR
1962 in USA

|media_type = Print (Paperback)

|pages =

|isbn = 1-4101-0041-3

|preceded_by = Andromeda

|followed_by = The Bull's Hour

}}

"The Heart of the Serpent" (originally in {{langx|la|Cor Serpentis}}, {{langx|ru|Сердце Змеи}}) is a 1958 science fiction short story by the Soviet writer and paleontologist Ivan Yefremov.

The crew of a spaceship encounters an alien ship in deep space. Speculation ensues about whether the other crew might be hostile. Comparisons are made to American SF writer Murray Leinster's story "First Contact", in which an elaborate protocol is developed to prevent the aliens from following the Terrans home and destroying them, or vice versa. The premise of Leinster's story is rejected, in part by pointing out that in order for a planet's civilization to become space-faring, they would need to be at peace among themselves and presumably have organized themselves into a planet-wide classless communist society, a point Yefremov had made earlier in his novel Andromeda. Thus the aliens must necessarily be peaceful.

This story takes place within the rubric of Yefremov's Great Circle, a confederation of galactic civilizations that communicate between each other, which also appears in the Andromeda novel.