* * * * *
"Perhaps you’re right, Gerryls. I shouldn’t have gotten so upset.” Kiel said, at the end of a long silence as the two headed to the bridge to join the others.
Gerryls turned to Kiel expectantly and waited pointedly for the younger man to extrapolate. Of course the others could hear them here, with their sensitive range in hearing; Gerryls could hear them on the bridge going on about various planetary vistas.
“If we hope to return from this section of galaxy group seven, we have to use the centipede holes to take us back into the past we left.”
“Yes, we must go back in time, if it is possible,” said Gerryls, “by using the centipede gates that allow journeys through time as well as space. Otherwise, Seynorynael might no longer exist when we return to her.”
“It worries me, very much.” Said Kiel. “I am always concerned lest something go wrong, but first we have our mission here, so I must try to put it out of my mind.”
At that moment, the two of them reached the Selesta’s bridge; the doors swished open, and they joined the others for a look at the planet they had traveled so far to find. Kiel looked up at the holo-monitor that had captivated his crew and felt an unexpected interest in it growing in him. Meanwhile, several small conversations were going on at once across the bridge.
"The third planet has only one moon." Dazar Kilran commented as the smaller grey, crater-pocked orb rolled into view. His voice brought the others out of their various discussions, and they returned to their analysis of the planet's composition, weather patterns, and ionosphere.
"A beautiful planet, with so much ocean." Kiel stood in the middle of the bridge, still absorbed by the sight of the blue-white globe. I will enjoy a terrestrial landing this time."
"Have a look at the analyzer," Kilran interrupted, pointing; Kiel’s eye strayed to the statistics relayed from the planet below. Kiel nodded judiciously.
"Amazing,” he agreed.
“You see it?” Kilran said.
“Having such large ice caps means that the planet is protected from runaway glaciation or greenhousing.” Kiel noticed.
“I think that’s the case. The weather patterns seem milder, no doubt because the planet is smaller and closer to its cooler yellow star than we are to Valeria.” Kilran added.
“It is so beautiful. I wonder how far along any indigenous populations have developed, what the vegetation and animals are like, if there are any."
"Kiel likes this planet so much, we should name it after him," Lierva laughed. "If there isn't a name for it already, we’ll call it Kiel3.”
“We haven't received any artificial radio transmissions, but the bio-scanner reading is high." Kilran interjected. “Visuals from surface coming through."
The crew looked up at the holo-monitor, where the image of a wide green landscape appeared. They peered in wonder at a rocky escarpment covered in vegetation, unfamiliar but not dissimilar to some of Seynorynael’s native species. A small stream trickled down the rock cliff, tumbling over smooth grey stones into a swift but narrow river in the wooded valley below; at its edge, a Giant Deer stooped to the crystal water to take a drink, stepping lightly, ever alert for a wandering predator. Low-lying, mist-enshrouded mountains rose behind the waterfall, where an agile, sand-colored creature watched from the shadows of a cave, its yellow eyes focused far below, two long tusk-like teeth protruding down from its mouth...
"Unbelievable!" Derstan whistled. "I've never seen any creature like that before. What does it do—rip its prey to shreds with those things?"
"Would you like to join the scout team?" Lierva asked, and Derstan nodded, to her surprise.
"All right–I'll be willing to go this time, if you'll promise to stop and let me take some holo-stills for the visual report collection." Derstan said.
"Now look what you've done," Lierva pointed an accusing finger at Kellar in mock vexation. "You've corrupted him." She and the others laughed. Alessia looked at her with a puzzled expression, but before Lierva could give her a telepathic explanation, Kiel provided one.
"Kellar found one of those ancient things while we were in training in Ariyalsynai,” he laughed.
“No one else but Hinev had much use for them.” Kellar shrugged elaborately, playing it up under all of the pleasant attention.
“Yes, I know,” Alessia agreed, remembering. The others visibly remembered that she had been Hinev’s assistant. “But I don’t find the holo-stills primitive. I prefer them to the moving holo-picture frames. The stills allow you to capture a slice of time and hold it in your hand. The others give me the creeps, replaying short, captive image sequences in a frame. Like a broken musical recording, repeating itself.”
“You see? She understands,” Kellar said with a smile, turning to Kiel.
“Except Kellar kept taking stills all the time, until everyone was ready to strangle him with his holo-stilling unit,” Kiel said, laughing. “It's been a long time since he went crazy with the thing, but Lierva's afraid he may have a disciple now."
"It has a purpose, and I enjoy it.”
“Let him bring it along,” sighed Lierva.
* * * * *
The scout party landed on the surface of the planet, many units south of the northern glaciers in the middle of a peninsular continent. After skimming over mist-shrouded mountains and high upland regions, wide stony rivers and verdant green forests, they came to a particularly beautiful area with many different biomes together: forests, grassy clearings, and river valleys.
From the air they had followed herds of exotic creatures–strange four-legged beasts with long ragged hair and horns, sleek hominoids with long manes and tails, delicate cloven-hoofed creatures with branching structures that grew from their heads. But after they had landed, most of the wildlife disappeared. Only the sound of exotic birdcalls rose above the roaring of a large waterfall near the landing site.
The team split up into groups on foot, three to each party. Each team was delegated a particular biome in which to collect seeds and the smaller vegetation samples unreachable by the android-controlled cargo shuttle that had followed them to retrieve the larger plant and animal specimens. If any of the explorers encountered difficulties, they were to signal the others telepathically. Provided nothing went wrong, they would meet again in three hours.
Alessia, Lierva, and Celekar headed in the direction of the densest foliage, away from the waterfall and wide, rock-bottomed pools. As Seynorynaelians they appreciated the beauty of this wild, untouched wilderness, though they tried to focus on the necessary collections. Still, as they passed through a clearing and over a field of yellow and pink wildflowers tossing in the chill breeze, they could not help but stop and enjoy the symphony of vivid colors across the field.
Alessia looked back and glanced over the rising mountains; great and lesser waterfalls and streams escaped from the snow-capped peaks, rushing into the wide, flat lake, streams now only a small crescent barely visible through the trees. Suddenly she heard a snarl and wrenched back around to Lierva and Celekar.
Near Alessia, Lierva had swerved around a large grass-covered boulder in their path, unknowingly disturbing a creature that rested in its shade to escape the heat of the noon-day sun. The explorers, accustomed to Valeria's brilliance, had not been affected by either the light or heat of the day and had not considered the habits of the local creatures.
The agile creature leapt from the shadows, two long tusk-like teeth protruding down from its mouth. It bellowed an angry snarl and glared at the intruders.
The explorers showed no fear. Lierva took a step forward fearlessly; her eyes never left the beast. Celekar and Alessia both stepped towards the creature.
Time to throw a wrench in his plans, Celekar said.
I can guess what plans, Lierva said to him quickly. Ripping us to pieces or making a meal of us. All of us, probably.
&nbs
p; The three agreed this wasn’t an acceptable scenario, then together telepathically plunged into the consciousness of the creature to soothe its anger.
The predator stopped in its tracks and blinked at them; at the same time, they imprinted their scents in its sense-memory as friend.
Lierva knelt before the great beast and let go of the creature's mind. Extending a hand to it, the giant carnivore bounded forward as though no more than a cub and sniffed her palm. Its great head lolled to the side as Lierva reached to scratch behind its ears. Then she stood next to the enormous animal and patted its head. She looked sadly at the creature before continuing ahead.
"You know you can't take him with you, Lierva," Celekar said, glancing at the creature that followed them playfully. "I think he's confused. The sense-memory connection we formed was too strong. He remembers us better than his own mother and siblings, but the bond seems to have made him think like a cub again. We'll have to weaken the imprint when we return this way."
"Yes, I suppose so," Lierva said and sent a message to the creature to stay in the meadow. They could not have the mammoth creature following them if they hoped to get any decent samples and animal specimens.
Three hours later, their containers full, the explorer teams rendezvoused at their landing site.
Vala, Filaria, and Onracey were waiting when Lierva’s team arrived; Derstan, Kellar, and Talden's group arrived last, rushing excitedly back from the area just beyond the waterfall.
"Where are your specimens?" Lierva asked, seeing that their containers were empty. Kellar shook his head, as if dismissing the question.
"Just take a look at what we found." Kellar said, gesturing to Derstan, who raised a holo-still for the others to see, a broad smile on his face.
"Humanoids," Lierva said excitedly. In the three-dimensional still a group of small, short bipeds wearing fur and leather sat in a clearing by a cave in the cliff-side, oblivious to their silent observers. These long-haired humanoids, probably type L2ij according to their ruddy coloring and varied brown and flaxen hair, were seated on the plain, busy at their daily tasks of sewing and preparing a brown-skinned animal hide.
"Kiel will want to know about this," Lierva said excitedly, as Kellar shared his memories of how the group had chanced upon them, hearing a strange call echoing in the air, like the cry of a bird but one note, hollow and clear. The sound of a crude instrument fashioned by the natives. A single note, like the creatures’ voices.
"They are strange," Lierva added, peering at the holo-still again. "Look, Celekar. Their skin tone is like sand or dark soil."
“Yes, yes, I can see them clearly, Lierva.” Celekar muttered, seemingly unaffected.
"How primitive they must be—but they have invented tools." Alessia observed, reminding Lierva and Celekar to telepathically show the others their encounter with their long-toothed companion. Lierva nodded, and the others looked to Alessia and Celekar for a memory-explanation.
“You seem intrigued by that useless little holo-still,” Derstan teased a moment later, as Lierva peered closer at the image of the humanoids. She stopped looking at it and bestowed a glare on him instead.
"All right,” she conceded at length. “I guess the holo-still thing does have its merits," she added, then gave a deep laugh.
* * * * *
“I sense it too, Kiel. Some presence is here, something connected to us, to Seynorynael.” Alessia said, interrupting Kiel’s thoughts. He stood at the observation window alone, contemplating the view of the magnificent planet below and the news the scout team had brought concerning the discovery of humanoid life.
“How can you be certain?” he asked, betraying only small signs of doubt. “I thought I was the only one who thought this.”
“They’ve been here.” Alessia said, her voice low and grave.
“They?” he cocked an eye as though he knew whom “they” were, but he wasn’t certain that she shared that knowledge.
“The first race Hinev speaks of.”
“Yes. I feel it.” He admitted. “I don’t know how I sense it.”
“I do, too.”
“If only there were some evidence here to prove it, aside from the genetic evidence we’ve found.” Kiel sighed, looking back to the view of the planet.
“Yes, I keep wishing for the same thing.” Alessia agreed. “But they’ve been so careful never to leave anything substantial for us to find. Do you think they, the first race, are what Marankeil fears? That they’re keeping the singularity of anti-matter here in secret, the one that is rumored to exist somewhere in the universe, something that could destroy Seynorynael?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Kiel said. “And I don’t like to speculate, but of course we should keep our eyes open. Alessia–”
“Yes?”
“We all believe in Hinev’s first race theory, but what was it in particular that made you think this world belonged to the first race? Feelings, senses, I know, I know. But describe them to me, please.”
“Well, sir,” Alessia replied formally, letting her eyes drift to the viewport, wondering all the while why Kiel, usually so analytical and reasoning, wanted to listen to her instinctive thoughts. “Gerryls was admitting that life could have found its way here through some kind of asteroid, an asteroid that contained amino acid cultures and building blocks. The amino acids match up with those found on other ancient asteroids we’ve found on other inhabited planets.
“Gerryls said that might be why we keep finding so many similar life forms across the galaxies, but of course there is a problem. Again, the odds of so many strands of evolution sharing the same pattern, out of countless possibilities, are by far a long shot.”
“Gerryls was talking about his ‘life cultures’ again? Is that all?”
“No. I was looking at the planet, and it suddenly seemed like a giant greenhouse to me, as though seeds of life had been scattered across the galaxies, and each planet was a greenhouse that grew up from those seeds. I was thinking how Gerryls’ talk of life cultures might make more sense to me if I imagined that someone had created and sent the seeds in the first place.”
“And?”
“And, nothing grows without care, unless it is wild. And even then, even a wild creature must be maintained by forces beyond its control, as everything in this universe touches everything else. Then there is the fact that I can’t believe in wide scale parallel evolution, or write off any evidence my eyes bring to me as monumental coincidence. So, I realized–the first race that brought life here would have come back to tend this planet at some point.”
“Perhaps. That isn’t why, though, is it?”
“Why what?”
“Why both of us feel their presence lingering here. Maybe there is something to intuition, I don’t know, but for some time I’ve believed that for all we think we know, we Seynorynaelians truly know very little. Most of us subsist on the legacy of a few great geniuses, but that’s not really what I mean. I think we keep searching for something we’ll never find because we can’t face what we are, not knowing. It’s only vanity when we talk of searching for our past or our true nature, because we haven’t really advanced that far from our origins. Yet we have to try. The same unanswered questions about the origins and purpose of life keep us searching. They’ve haunted our race since human life began.”
“True enough.”
“Yet somehow the tranquillity we find here and there–the solace that comes through work, love, and living life—well, we remain ignorant of the grand purpose in some ways, but does it matter? How much can we really come to know in the future?”
“Hmmm, I see your point.”
“Sometimes I think that’s why I prefer the wild to civilization. It’s comforting to live every day with a free heart and spirit in these primitive ways, so that you aren’t always wondering what life holds for us as a species, and all of
the species of life in the universe.”
“I never would have guessed you felt this way, Kiel.” Alessia said.
“I feel as though there are times when I wish I had lived another life, but I can’t regret what I have known, and that we are here to do something important for our planet. But there are times when I have longed to give up and remain on one of the worlds we encountered.”
“Cerdko isn’t the only one then,” Alessia said.
Kiel turned to regard her, a spark of recognition and comprehension lighting his eyes.
“I know what you mean. I’ve sensed it, too. There have been times when each one of us has thought about rebellion. Times when we wanted to put aside our wanderings, not just me, but others. I would never relinquish my duty as head of the explorers or let anyone down voluntarily, but I am admitting to you know what temptations I have felt. I’m not sure why, but I am.”
“Kiel–” Alessia said. “We have all been through a lot of years of experience that tears us apart. I have to suppress so many years of memories just to be all right. The pain, the joy that is gone—from years of encounters, I know you understand.”
He looked at her.
“Marankeil’s orders are for us to search for the singularity on this planet.” Kiel said. “But I also want to look for evidence of the ‘first race’ and to see if anything remains of their influence that we can isolate for study. I mean to land Selesta in the middle of the the main continent.”
“Why? Why land?”
“Don’t worry, no one on this world will ever know that we were here.”
* * * * *
"How can we fulfill our mission here?" Kilran asked, once the explorers had reassembled for Kiel’s orders on the bridge. "Marankeil's guideline instructs us to remain on Kiel3 until we find something unusual–an ultra-dense artificial object that emits gravitational waves, or anything similar to his description. But for some reason, he expected us to find an advanced civilization here, then scout around a bit further, and then pretty much cut back home. Shouldn’t we just leave now and continue on to that white star? It’s clear that we haven’t found anything like what he thought was here."