by Geoff Nelder
Gaston used the scope. “Indeed. They are different heights, are they not? Between one and three metres but all less than a metre wide. Are we recording this? They shimmer—a kind of mother-of-pearl with coruscating sparkle. Manifique.”
Penn—from his squatting position, took the glasses. “Are they packing?”
Gaston looked sideways to see his commander gripping his laser pistol. “Put it away, Sir. They might detect such negativity and assume hostile intentions. Remember we need their help to reach our ship. N’est ce pas?”
“I can’t recall,” Delta said, a quiver of excitement in her voice, “what protocol says for us to do. Do we stand, arms out wide and grin? Break out the beads and trinkets?”
Em looked down at her bare legs cleaned of the grey stuff from the tunnel. “Makes sense to smile to us, but it might indicate aggression to another species. Even so I don’t think I can stop grinning!”
Penn rolled sideways to the left of the others, taking cover behind a dense bush with indigo leaves. “The manual says for one of us to cover the rest. You three can greet them if you like.”
Less than a hundred metres to go. The Keps hadn’t slowed nor changed colour. The shimmering continued in a kind of random flow in their skin, apparel, whatever. Gaston recalled the floating one he saw, but you couldn’t see space between the ground and these three even though they appeared to glide. Their faces were a smudge, assuming the more bulbous top quarter was a head. Hard to see their eyes or any orifice. He offered a thought to the others.
“Perhaps they are gel robots?”
“Or not even the local intelligentsia, but pets,” Em said. “Or this region’s wildlife. It might be like Captain Cook in 1771 asking a kangaroo if it’s had a nice day.”
Delta replied, “Suppose it is us who are the kangaroos?”
At fifty metres, the figures could be seen more clearly, although clarity would be an exaggeration. The three were at least distinguishable by height, width and subtle hues, possibly facial protuberances and indentations changing as if talking to each other.
A purple creature, a squirrel-sized centipede scuttled across the intervening rocky ground. Up and over low boulders and straight through thorny bushes. It stopped halfway, appeared to look at the approaching figures then at the humans then accelerated away out of sight.
It added to the eldritch, surreal nature of the moment.
“I’m quite light-headed,” Gaston confessed, “Delta, you have the loudest voice. Call out a hello?”
“Gee, thanks, but okay.” Between Gaston and Em she took a step forward and held out her arms, hands outwards.
She first whispered, “This is going to sound so corny, but they won’t understand English anyway.
“Hi, how’re you doing? We’re from Earth and we come in peace.”
Gaston worked hard to suppress hilarity at the banality of such a speech even though his preferred bonjour and ça va was hardly any different. His suppressed laugh transformed to the smile they’d agreed in spite of interpretation issues. His fidgeting fingers attempted to be still while open to show lack of weaponry. A sop to its ancient provenance with Roman soldiers greeting strangers. His nervousness at this first contact was modified only a little by thinking how in history it would be Delta who’d be noted for her initial speech. Such bravery too. If they were hostile, she could have been killed on the spot. Had she considered that?
Just ten metres and they’d not slowed. They would now see the whites of his eyes even if he could not say the same of them. He was surprised they’d not stopped to greet or shoo off these invading Earthlings. His initial euphoria albeit infected with nerves now disintegrated into an element of fear. His knees threatened to give way again. Perhaps Penn was right to keep out of their way even if not completely hidden.
“I said, hi, folks. We’re friendly,” Delta said stepping back in line.
With a shaky voice, Em gasped, “Do you think they’re blind? Seriously? Maybe they don’t see us at all. I hear clicking, so they must hear.” She took a couple of steps back.
Gaston’s stomach knotted with dismay that he’d not thought of that possibility. Blind and deaf, at least to human frequencies. Non, it didn’t make sense. There’s daylight and air, so unless they’re above the surface by accident or a rare visit, they would have sensory perception in this environment. They must be able to detect our presence just five metres from them.
Another metre. Perhaps he was wrong, it had happened before.
Gaston stepped back and to the left a little while calling out, “Bonjour!”
Em waved her arms, took a couple of sideways steps out of the Keps’ apparent path and called, “Hey guys, we’ve come an awful long way to see you.”
The creatures didn’t slow and advanced at walking pace even though their bodies didn’t quite touch the ground. So close now that Gaston caught a mildly pungent zing of ozone, reminding him of electrical sparking at fairgrounds. He was afraid Penn would shoot, so said to all, “Let us step away in case they really cannot detect our presence.”
Now only Delta stood her ground.
One metre to go and Delta had closed her eyes. Penn took a step towards her to yank her sideways, but he was too late.
Delta’s scream shot through Gaston as the tallest creature walked into her. The Kep travelled straight through her as if she wasn’t there, or made of non-solid matter. No lacerations and no blood. Delta stood there screaming, but intact. The three Keps carried on as if nothing unusual had happened.
Gaston held her arm in case she fell but let go when Em hugged her and asked, “Are you hurt?”
After a pause when Delta looked down, wriggled her fingers and then closed her eyes for a moment she said, “No. Not at all. How weird was that? Its body went through my body as if I wasn’t there.”
Penn laughed. “As if that cou—ah that’s it, they must have been holograms. Where are they now?”
They all looked behind them at the cliff. Gaston pointed up at the tunnel exit. “There. How did they get up so quickly? And, Penn, I don’t think they’re holograms. I could smell them. We could see its form intersecting, travelling through Delta. Did you feel anything?”
“I still feel odd. Like a mild electric shock from front to back. I thought I heard clicking noises though it could’ve been my teeth before I started to scream.”
Em hugged her tighter. “I heard dolphin-like clicks too. So all we have to do is learn castanet-speak.”
Penn used the scope to examine the backs of the Keps as they drifted into the tunnel. “Could it be their molecules passed through hers through all that space between atoms? You know, like sitting on a chair that is really mostly empty space?”
“Normally, two atoms can’t occupy the same space. Quantum Mechanics say that two electrons with the same spin state cannot occupy the quantum orbital state. However, who knows what trickery future science can do? Temporal bond displacement. Perhaps they’re mostly non-baryonic matter. No. Si’l vous plait a chance to ask them.”
A membrane appeared over the tunnel exit, but the Earth people looked away and towards the settlement.
Penn laughed. “If they can come through us, then we can walk through them.”
CAPTAIN’S LOG ADDENDUM
I am CAN, a small tin can made from Suppose We Can.
Before me at three hundred metres is the nearest Kepler-20h town to the spaceship’s crash site. I use my mini-rotors to hover at just under tree-canopy height to avoid possible automatic air-defences.
Unlike the Penn group, I am not interested in making friends with the local population, only in making Suppose We safe, or at least its special package. The leaking radiation is dangerous and I’ve only been able to stem the loss. It’s possible the Keps’ solution will be to obliterate it. I have already evacuated non-dangerous, critical components and the mission payload to a safe location.
I reach the woodland boundary, only grassland in front. I venture forth, sending transmissions across al
l available wavelengths although knowing the failure of such attempts to produce a response in the past. This time I can listen, watch and use far more senses than the weak humans.
It works. Possibly my physical presence infringed a security threshold at 266.2 metres from their nearest dome. Most of their settlement consists of rounded shapes, each of a different colour, nor exactly the same shape and size. I now see that what at first appears to be a chimney is actually a tall and thin dome and from its top emerges chattering birds.
Not birds.
Not chattering. At least not in the way humans perceive it. Fortunately, I am able to detect terahertz signals even if currently undecipherable. Working on quantum mech pointers as they approach.
The three of them fly around me in a blur, bombarding my receivers, each with different wavelengths, but the same pattern. They are metallic blue, non-organic, the size of a human fist contrasted to me, the size of Penn’s bearded head.
Making assumptions that their message relates to queries of who and why I am, progress ensues. I respond, informing them of the impending environmental escalation from the crash-landed ship that I ‘encountered’.
My ruse works. I successfully mask my weaponry and they fail to query my provenance, needing only to be assured of my innocuous existence. I transmitted an indication that I hail from Kepler 20-f in search of alien organic beings that might have travelled in the crashed ship. They’re fugitives and I would be grateful if they were unharmed, but their presence, if detected, merely be relayed to me. It affords me status, but such a hierarchy might not exist here. Probably doesn’t. Expect absence of Terran-like protocols.
‘Problem resolved,’ they tell me.
I check a cam I left – Suppose We isn’t there. Nor is the soil in which it was embedded. Neater than a crater, only a polished depression remained in the bedrock like a silver spoon.
Although I’d removed critical items it would leave the humans bereft of some useful resources if the ship has been destroyed. I review the footage. I see it cocooned and lifted. I should be able to track and locate with the remote sensing marble satellites in time.
Not yet. The birds are telling me to accompany them. I could escape, but it might be useful to learn. Hopefully, they don’t intend to dissect me.
Signed CAN (see my Canvas)
Date: Earth January 18th 3645 Kepler New 9 days
The four of them stood rooted. Gaston stared up at the tunnel entrance, now with a translucent membrane, although it appeared flimsy enough to be easily penetrated. He chided that thought. For all he knew, these Keps were a million years in advance of humans with regards to technology and perhaps evolution.
“Probably just to stop insects getting in,” Em said, batting away some tiny red flies intent on making an acquaintance with her face.
“It would be interesting,” Gaston said, “to know where the tunnels lead that required sealing. If insects had to be repelled—pourquoi? Or perhaps to control the spread of that prokaryote bacteria.”
Penn turned to face the settlement. “Let’s consider the problem this incident has given us.”
Em turned too. “Yep, if the locals don’t see, hear or feel us, how do we ask them for help to reach Suppose We?”
“Perhaps,” Gaston said, while tugging at his black hair, becoming increasingly curly, which it never did on Earth, “they notice us, but choose to ignore us.” A pink caterpillar fell out of his hair. He caught it and smiled a greeting.
“Arrogant bastards,” Penn said, kicking a stone into a scrubby bush ten metres ahead. “I’ll make them notice. Yeah, I know. We’ve got to be friendly. Let’s get closer.”
Three birds zigzagged overhead making Gaston hide the caterpillar with both hands just in case the birds mistook his new friend for a tasty fruit or his non-predator idea was just a doomed theory.
“Do they always fly in threes?” Em asked.
Penn used magnification on his scope. “It doesn’t look like those tweetie-pies are going to be of any help. Shall we go?”
Gaston urged caution in case they fell into more holes or walked into and through the local inhabitants.
Penn waved his pistol, pretending to fire on the birdlike objects playing in the sky but now heading towards the settlement. “Do you think Q-laser bursts would go right through those jelly Keps without them reacting?”
Gaston was pretty sure Penn was winding up his fellow humans and like the others restrained from rising to it.
“Hey guys,” Delta said, frowning at her wrist communicator, “has anyone heard from the ship AI today?”
Everyone stopped and tapped away.
“I have an active link from it,” Em said. “Just to let me know it’s on the move. It must have built a flyer from the wreckage.”
Penn leaned over to see her readout. “Don’t tell me it’s found a way to communicate with the Keps and not told us?”
“It doesn’t say.”
Delta playfully hit Penn. “It’s not a race, well, only in your mind.”
“Hang on,” Em continued, “It suggests we use the remote sensing marble in orbit to check on the ship.”
“Why? The AI should be able to tell us of any change,” Penn said, now using his own communicator. “Assuming the darn artificial idiot is working properly.”
Em shook her head. “Last image we had was twenty minutes ago and it was still in bits, cratered in scrubby desert. It’ll be another seventy for the next image, assuming atmospheric conditions doesn’t mask it.”
Penn strode on, waving his arms for them to follow.
There was no defined path, although the direction from which the Keps glided over sprouted a sparser vegetation of spikey dark purple shrubs with bright red berries.
Gaston thought there must be water nearby when a knee-high mist came from the right, swirling white tendrils like tentacles from a hungry beast. He stepped to the left, pulling Em’s elbow to take similar avoidance. To his surprise and worry, she yanked her arm free, which hurt his still recuperating limb.
“Look, they’re butterflies!” Em’s delight was infectious, bringing back Penn and Delta to laugh at the swarm of white flutterings around their legs.
Gaston was the only one not brimming with exuberance because he suspected they weren’t like the innocuous butterflies of home. Not that he thought they’d bite, after all real butterflies cannot because they only drink, but this wasn’t Earth.
Em screamed. The creatures swarmed up her legs, arms and engulfed her head. Before her first breath of noise finished, so had the insects. They flitted away to the left and swept away. Although they hadn’t touched him, Gaston’s skin crawled as if they had. He didn’t realise Em’s neural reactions could affect him so much.
They all looked, both aghast and with curiosity at the flying crooked crowd vanishing after their dance of murmuration. Gaston swore they were laughing. As in Robert Graves butterfly poem, they’d been flying crooked. Such random movements were thought to minimise the effectiveness of attacking birds, but why when there were no predators? Perhaps random movement was more effective for other reasons. Avoiding collisions, maybe or they actually considered these strange aliens as possible predators.
He wondered if information they’d picked up from their encounter with Em was going back to their nest, hive or roosting bush.
“I’m okay… I think.”
“Ah, mon amie, I was about to ask.”
She waved a don’t-worry, dismissive hand gesture and walked on, not noticing a returning single butterfly. More lilac than white and no larger than an espresso saucer, the creature ignored Em and settled on Gaston’s backpack he was carrying in his left hand.
“Bonjour, Papillon, take a firm grip if you wish to hitchhike. Well, look at you with only four legs, though perhaps your front two are so diminished I cannot see them.”
Eventually the four humans and one lepidopteran arrived within a hundred metres of a more organised landscape. As if a line was drawn on the ground. A wav
y line. Trees and shrubs, or whatever they really were, on this side, none on the side nearest the town. No grass… a moment while Gaston kneeled to examine the blue and purple blades to ensure he could classify them as grasses. These resembled the rye grass that made up most lawns on Earth, and sheep’s fescue for a more fine and spongy surface for lying on and gazing at the stars.
“Here it is!” called Penn. “Their runway, except, well come and see.”
He was pointing to a lighter patch of grass that stretched for a long way to the left and about ten metres wide. Gaston and the women joined him. He could see that the vegetation became more lush in the direction of a cliff and continued towards the town until it blended in with the pale surface. He stepped out in that direction.
“Hey,” Penn called. “Take it easy, there might be hostiles. At least get your pistol out.”
Gaston ignored him because he had a theory about the runway. Sure enough, he had to stop in fifty metres. He turned to the others, grinned and pointed down.
Before Em reached Gaston, she mouthed to him, “No shouting you imbecile, and yeah, I also think the runway is over a tunnel.”
He looked crestfallen at both the admonition and her knowing the answer.
They walked around the side and descended a slope before looking back at what appeared to be a membrane sealing the elliptical entrance.
Gaston placed his hand flat on the translucent covering, wondering again over its use. Not strong enough, he supposed, to prevent access by any wilful animal, so perhaps to keep the atmosphere out or in. He glanced at Em, who also held her hand there.
“Hypothesis, Em?”
“Do you feel its vibrations? Yeah, too elaborate for a musical or communication instrument, it’s just another mystery on my long list of puzzles.”
A head high white wall hid them from the town. Gaston assumed it was a wall. Undulating in all directions, straight and flat wasn’t in their architects’ vocabulary. Same with the road. Random turnings like you’d find in a semi-desert Terran settlement. No tarmac, just a beige clay, or possibly a kind of crushed and rolled stone. No wheeled tracks, but indentations at random places as if a large ball bounced its way around.