“That would only have happened if you had charged the animal, Adam,” I remind him.
“I couldn’t just stand around while it was suffocating Eve!” he replies angrily.
“She was in no danger of suffocating. You would have simply provoked the animal by attacking it.”
“Don’t fight, the two of you,” Eve says. “I am already feeling better. It’s over. Let’s go.”
“Should I carry you for a while?” I ask her.
“No, I am okay. Besides, I need the exercise,” she replies. “Why don’t you look around to detect what else might be waiting for us. I don’t like surprises like the one we just had.”
“I don’t think the creature is coming back,” Adam says.
“Me neither,” says Eve. “But if that was a kind of sheep, how dangerous might the wolves be?”
How true. If an herbivore was so well-armed, the dangers it must be exposed to daily had to be impressive.
As if to confirm our fears, we find some bones on the ground after walking another 400 meters. These are the only remains. The body and the skin of this creature must have either decomposed long ago or been completely devoured by the predator. Adam bends down and picks up a piece of bone about 30 centimeters long.
“This must be part of the wing,” he says. I see at once that he is right, but I still carefully examine the bone. The structure of the material is unlike the bone structure we are familiar with. I break the ‘bone’ in the middle and show the fracture to Adam and Eve.
“Did you have to destroy it? We could have used it as a weapon,” Adam says.
“Knowledge is much more valuable than such a primitive weapon,” I retort. “Look, the material is made up of many air-filled cells. This makes it light and strong. Here at the tip, where the blade is, the cells are especially dense.” I brush against the bone. “And the material sharpens itself. The creature only has to climb for a while to sharpen its knives.”
I look at the pile of bones. Unfortunately, it is no longer possible to tell how the individual pieces were once connected. The joints must have rotted faster, or they were also eaten. On the whole there are 330 bones scattered here, according to the object recognition function of my visual system.
“This sheep-like creature is a very highly-developed animal and has one-third more bones than a sheep on Earth,” I tell them.
“And why are you telling us this?” asks Adam while giving me a nasty look.
“It’s about the mission. The message. We have to understand what happened to the inhabitants here. In order to do that we must study the natural environment.”
Adam opens his mouth but then closes it, turns around, and walks ahead. Eve follows him without saying a word. I want to call them back, but I refrain from doing so, because I discover the second knife-bone. Adam is right, a weapon might come in handy. I pick up the bone and place it inside J’s belly. Finally, I scan the area under UV light. I discover about 20 tracks leading away from the pile of bones into all directions, both upward and to the front and back. These must have been left by the scavengers that were responsible for defleshing and dismembering the corpse.
For half an hour we walk in complete silence. We should have reached the end of the mountain pass by now. I stop because I think I can hear a splashing sound ahead. Could that be rain falling on the land outside the mountain pass? The splashing noise comes closer. No, it is more like a mixture of soft slaps and pattering sounds. I imagine a herd of mice, then realize the noise comes from behind us.
“Wait a moment,” I call out to Adam and Eve. “That sounds somehow menacing.” Might this have something to do with the bones we found earlier?
As if on cue the sound becomes louder. Perhaps the mice are increasing their speed. I aim the UV light at the area behind us and see them, an almost innumerable mob of small animals, slightly bigger than mice, jumping from wall to wall. They must have muscles like frogs and sticky feet like geckos. It is impressive how quickly they can move on only two legs. The animals look like frogs that had their front legs amputated and their mouths sewn shut. At first sight they do not appear dangerous. Who is afraid of frogs?
“Crazy,” Adams marvels, while Eve utters a shriek. Both are now near me.
The animals are phosphorescent like their larger relatives, and therefore clearly visible in the dark as long as I aim the UV light at them. It is a practical invention of nature to render a part of UV radiation harmless by turning it into visible light.
I move the beam up and down. I am starting to think that the animals are not moving randomly, but instead have selected us as their target. This is confirmed half a minute later. The animal closest to me raises its head. There is an organ in its throat that looks like gills, but contains an elastic band, similar to a tongue. This tongue shoots out and moves half a meter in my direction, but because it misses me, it withdraws again. But the second animal hits its target. The pillow-shaped tip of the tongue sticks to the metal of my body. The animal tries to retract its tongue. It is amazingly strong, as measured by my instruments. Because they only weigh a few grams, these alien frogs can only acquire this much force if they are firmly attached to the mountain pass walls.
“Watch out, these guys don’t seem to be nice!” I yell to Adam and Eve. I reach for the animal whose tongue sticks to me and try to remove the creature. It is stuck on the wall too strongly to remove even with my robotic strength. However, the tongue is vulnerable, and I can quickly sever it with my cutting tool. The first animals are reaching Adam, who stands only a meter behind me.
“RUN AWAY!” I yell, but it is too late.
“OUCH—the damned beast!” Adam screams angrily. “The thing tore a piece from my suit!”
I toss the knife to him. “Concentrate just on the tongues. Cut them!” I shout. Now I know why the sheep-creature has two large knives on its wings. However, this had not helped the specimen whose remains had provided us with the knife.
I am looking around. More and more frogs are coming out of the mountain pass behind us, and their sheer numbers are frightening. We have to watch that they do not simply overrun us. Adam and Eve are most at risk, as the flexible fabric of their suits cannot hold up against the strength of these animals. My metal armor, on the other hand, is impervious to them.
“RUN TO THE EXIT!” I yell at them. “It can’t be far now. I am going to distract these animals. I can deal with them!”
Adam stops for a moment, and then he nods and tosses the knife back to me. “Come on, Eve, he’s right,” Adam says. “We have to hurry to get out into the open. These things are dangerous.”
They start running. The frogs are focusing on me. To them, I apparently look like the tastiest prey. They do not seem to realize they cannot do anything against my metal armor. I am fighting a lonely battle, but it’s okay—this is what I am here for. Adam and Eve won’t have to traverse this mountain pass again.
Will I really be able to handle these beasts? I do not know. I am working as fast as I can, using the knife to sever all the tongues sticking to me. This causes some confusion, as the specimens with the cut-off tongues are now being attacked by their fellow creatures. And now I witness the upshot. The tips of the tongues rip pieces of skin and flesh from their victims. These pieces disappear into the maws—the gill-like openings—of their attackers and are deposited there. Afterward the attackers’ tongues are again flung at their prey. I can only hope Adam and Eve are safe.
A battle zone gradually forms around me, divided into several sections. The animals are attacking me from all sides. While I can reach each part of my body with my knife, moving my right arm from front to back takes a certain amount of time. If during this period two new tongues stick to me, I will fall behind. These things might not be able to take me apart, but they will tie me to the spot. Soon I will not be able to move at all.
My mind is racing. There must be spots on J’s body that are not as sturdy as the rest, particularly the joints. Once the frogs notice this... Even thou
gh their attacks do not seem very coordinated, they will hit the joints at some time, just by pure chance. Am I doomed? Is this the place where my consciousness will be obliterated? This fear paralyzes me, but it’s utterly illogical. I am only hurting myself, just like the infrared light hurt the other creature.
Infrared? The frogs live in a dark and cold environment. How might they react to a nice, warm bath? I activate my infrared searchlight and beam pure warmth into the mountain pass. Aha! The beasts are reacting! The number of attacks goes down, while I notice a high-frequency squeal. A cry of pain? I am not sorry to inflict pain on them. In fact, it gives me deep satisfaction. You are not going to do that to me, frogs, not to me! I go into a rage and my robot arms whirl around as if they have a will of their own. The rear ranks of the creatures are starting to retreat. I cut off the last tongues still sticking to me. Even the animals at the front begin to withdraw.
Then I am done. A strange euphoria overwhelms me, consisting of fading battle rage and a sense of deep relief. I will still be able to take care of Adam and Eve! I gaze at the battlefield around me. There must be 100 dead frogs, missing different pieces of flesh that their fellow creatures tore off. I carefully pack away the specimen that seems least damaged in order to examine it more carefully later. Then I hurry toward the exit where Adam and Eve are waiting for me. Eve runs to me and hugs J’s body.
“Marchenko, it is good to have you here,” Adam says when we reach him.
December 21, 18
About 600 meters below us is a plain that could be compared to a steppe, but which gives a completely different impression. In particular, the colors do not resemble those on Earth. The greens look all wrong. I know there are simple physical causes for this: Proxima Centauri radiates most of its energy in wavelengths different from those of the sun. Photosynthesis—which most of the plants we see below must be utilizing—would be less efficient using the greens of Earth. I somehow feel cheated, almost disgusted, seeing these strange hues that most closely resemble black with shades of greenish shimmer. This makes everything seem artificial, as if a painter had created and colored his personal vision of hell.
Adam and Eve are utterly amazed. They are not as biased as I am.
“This wide view,” Adam says, “I am in awe of it.”
“That’s nothing compared to looking at infinity from a spaceship.” I am surprised at myself for this response.
“In space you feel lost so easily,” Adam says. “Here I seem small, but not tiny... Not about to dissolve into nothing.”
“Yes, there is a border... the horizon,” Eve says, pointing in a vague direction. “It is like a frame around a painting. I feel I am part of something larger. In space I am only a negligible part of the great nothingness.”
Adam and Eve have never lived on a planet, but they really feel at ease here. Is this based on human genes, and do I myself feel different because I am lacking a body? By now I long for the freedom Messenger offered me.
Adam, who still has a blanket wrapped around his shoulders after a rest period of six hours, is standing near the edge of a cliff. One more step and he would plummet downward. I want to place my hand on his shoulder, just for safety’s sake, but I suppress the urge. Adam is shading his eyes with his hand. The shadow of the mountain reaches far into the plain. The area beyond it glitters brightly, or at least appears to do so. We have quickly become accustomed to the near twilight of Proxima b.
“Are you rested enough for the descent?” I ask.
Both of them nod, and just like during the climb we secure ourselves with ropes. The way down will not be as stressful as the ascent, because it is not so hot, and gravity will assist us. On the other hand, we will be climbing in the dark. In the shade it is about as bright as the night during a full moon on Earth. I am about to explain this to Adam and Eve when I realize they will not understand the comparison. If they ever reach Earth—which should be impossible—they would compare the moonlit nights there with the shade areas of Proxima b. It is details like these that demonstrate again and again how different the two are from me.
The lower we get during our descent, the faster we move. Now and then I have to tell Adam and Eve to slow down. We must not grow careless. A fall from 120 meters is still dangerous, even if you are caught by a rope. Yet I understand they are in a hurry. Down there lies the part of the planet that might become their home for the next 100 years. It is very different from the parched plains we landed on.
Adam is the first one down, and I am watching him. First he looks for a free spot, but when he obviously does not find one, he carefully places his foot on the dense vegetation below him. He waves at us while standing there. “Everything is fine, it doesn’t look dangerous!” he calls.
I hope he is right, but we really have no choice. Eve and I reach the ground simultaneously. My electronic sensors tell me that I sink in by precisely 3.5 centimeters, but otherwise the ground appears to be stable. I turn around and start examining the plants. Meanwhile, Adam is already moving away from the cliff. I would prefer him to wait for my results, but it makes no sense to call him back.
At least Eve is coming back to me. She is holding something in her right hand. “Look, a flower!” she says, offering me a stalk with a bell-shaped object at its end. On the outside it is black, like everything here, but the inside displays colorful stripes—pink, a somewhat dirty yellow, purple, and brown. At the bottom of the bell there is a small hole which seems to lead inside the stalk.
“That’s not a real blossom,” I say.
“What then?” Eve asks.
“I suspect the plant uses it to catch small animals.” I carefully touch the inside of the blossom. The colored stripes detach themselves and flip inward. “You see, if something crawls in here, it will get scared by the motion and hide inside the hole. Then it is most likely digested there.”
I look around. There are only a few of these theoretically carnivorous plants. The area below the steep cliff is permanently in shadow, and is dominated by plants with hard, leathery leaves that appear almost black. They are no taller than five centimeters and they cover every square millimeter. But between them stand many of the wind-energy-based hair plants we saw earlier. The two species do not seem to be competitors. Perhaps they profit from each other. The leafy plants still get 99 percent of the remaining light, while the hairs gather energy and moisture at a height that the leafy plants could not easily reach.
I try to count their exact distribution, but then I notice that a few of those flowers seem to be growing near us.
“Were these here earlier?” I ask, pointing at the plants forming a semicircle around us.
“I didn’t see them,” Eve replies as she is pointing farther out from the cliff. “I picked that one from over there.”
I look at the recording made automatically by J’s visual system. “No. They really weren’t here before,” I explain.
“This means they are moving,” she says. “So perhaps they are not plants, but animals.”
“But they also have leaves, and certainly use photosynthesis. So, we probably have to forget about the lifeform categories used on Earth.”
“Did they somehow sense us?”
“It looks like it,” I say. “Maybe they react to movement. We are going to find out.”
“Could they become dangerous to us?” Eve asks.
I take another look at the pseudo-blossom she gave me. “No. We are definitely too large for these digestive holes,” I reply. “They seem to be passive hunters. They offer themselves to their prey, but they rely on their deception going undiscovered until it is too late.”
“In that case there must be real blossoms somewhere,” Eve says. “That’s great news. I was so looking forward to picking flowers.”
Even though we have not found the original specimen that these hunting plants imitate, there is some reason to believe in Eve’s theory.
“Now, let us get out of the shadow of the mountain range,” I say.
Adam i
s already 500 meters ahead of us. He walks at a good pace and does not turn around.
The closer we get to the light, the larger the percentage of leafy plants becomes. I stop and try very carefully to dig a specimen out of the ground. The root does not reach down very far into the crumbly soil—which smells like swamp—but it branches out considerably. I follow several strands until they merge again with others. So these do not appear to be individual plants at all! Here we have an entire colony that is connected through the soil and shares a root system.
“It’s just as you suspected with the hair plants,” I say to Eve.
“That’s a clever strategy,” she concludes. “If nutrients are lacking in one area, they can get them from elsewhere.”
I look at one of the hair plants for the sake of comparison. Here, similar to the specimens in the desert, each hair seems to end in a single tuber. Could all leafy plants on the planet be part of a single individual?
After walking another 300 meters we reach a strip approximately three meters wide, where only the hair plants grow. They are especially tall here, or one might assume this to be a deliberately constructed path. I examine the ground to find evidence for it. However, the soil here is not harder than elsewhere. The uppermost layer is visibly gray, but that could be caused by the stronger evaporation. I measure the mineral content of the strip and am surprised. The level of sodium, potassium, and magnesium salts is so high that certainly no terrestrial plant could grow here. Did someone poison the soil to keep it free of leafy plants?
I want to know how straight this path is, so I decide to follow it. Its trajectory does not aim directly at the edge of the shadow but approaches it at an angle. I contact Adam via radio. He grumbles a bit but then changes his direction and now walks parallel to the path.
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