Dawn of Hope- Exodus

by Dobrin Kostadinov

  ‘That was quite a fascinating story,’ Mila said in a heart-felt voice.

  ‘Thank you,’ the professor said and brushed away a teardrop that threatened to spill from the corner of his eye, he did not give it a chance to roll down his wrinkled face, though.

  They had a lot of work piled up, yet their fast return to the planet was of vital importance. The seven brave-hearted humans knew just how severe was the condition in which our modern civilization was and the pace of their work was conditioned by it. The system check-ups went faultlessly. But the work at the lab seemed to have no end. After hours of analyses of the soil, the sand and the microorganisms, the professor could finally focus his attention on what excited him the most–the four samples waiting for thorough examination arranged in front of him seemed to be whispering to him to be processed. Three of them were brought in by Thomas and the last was personally acquired by him. The first one was a transparent liquid, the second a grayish white ash–both of them were the last remains of the beast. The third one contained river water and the forth sea water.

  ‘Well, we have just a little bit more and we’ll have finished, Mila. You go take a break, I’ll deal with the rest alone.

  ‘Are you sure?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ the scientist replied. Lieutenant Nikolaevna took his advice, slipped off her white lab coat and headed for the dormitory. Sheer coincidence had put Tom there at the same time, he was just going to bed. The place contained seven beds that formed together a common dorm room designed for rest during the mission.

  ‘How are you, Colonel? We never got the chance to talk about what happened to you down there,’ Mila said as she entered, showing her concern.

  ‘Let’s, please, drop the formalities, I’ve never been their keen supporter,’ the tough Russian suggested.

  ‘Good. How are you, Tom? Is everything all right with you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. I’m just a little surprised at all the close calls we’ve had over the past few days,‘ the Spetsnaz officer replied. Despite his affirmative answer, he looked worried about the overall situation they were in.

  ‘What exactly happened today? I was following what happened to all six of you at the same time and I couldn’t see quite well all of what happened with you,’ she decided to broach the subject again and sat down on the bed across from him.

  ‘Apparently everything in this place is either trying to eat or kill you. At first I was attacked by a gigantic wood leech which would sooner drink blood than tree sap if we have to be completely objective. I dealt with it, but shortly after that I was assaulted by one of those creatures. It was extremely strong. If it wasn’t for the suit, I’d be dismembered now. The worst part was that two more came looking for me after that. It was as if they knew about me and they looked around without actually having seen me. Somehow they had felt my presence and they wanted to avenge their friend.’

  ‘What matters the most is that you overpowered it without batting an eyelid, but, please, don’t ever make the mistake of going out alone again since it could be so dangerous,’ Mila advised him warmly.

  ‘I have to sometimes,’ the Russian officer spoke words heavy of meaning.

  ‘Indeed, but, please, be careful!’ his compatriot repeated.

  ‘I’m flattered, the only woman on board is so concerned about me. I listen and do accordingly!’ Thomas said with a leering smile. His was joyful probably because somebody was actually thinking about him. But that feeling seemed to be much deeper than ordinary gratefulness. The darkness, the place, the room and the bed sheets could have made for something beautiful, but the time was not right for that. The insurmountable need for intimacy that both of them shared, yet would not show openly was waiting quietly for the moment it would erupt like a volcano. Hopefully, they would find the appropriate preconditions to do so, otherwise they both ran the risk of losing a lot . . .

  Only a few dozen feet away, in the room right next to the dormitory, the Professor was working tirelessly. The analysis of the ash of the strange creature showed it was composed of active metals– predominantly calcium, potassium and sodium. There were also large amounts of iron, lead and nitrogen. They were all strangely bonded with carbon and silicon atoms.

  ‘But where are the other basic chemical compounds that build up organisms? Where is the methane?’ he asked himself a few questions to which no answers. ‘Maybe they have evaporated or they have leaked into the soil,’ he repeated aloud, unable to figure out the complex nature of the creatures on the new planet. He looked at the liquid they had collected from the dead animal. What shocked him was that much as he analyzed it, the transparent substance every single time turned out to be identical to the samples from the river and the ocean. Just water, but not any water, it was water from Menoetius. ‘How’s that possible?’ Roman uttered aloud again, shifting his attention to the other samples.

  The water contained high levels of salt–more than 90 ‰ which was almost three times its amount in the Earth’s World Ocean. There was, however, something more intriguing that explained why the active metals in the body of the creatures did not react with the sea water. Roman found a large amount of petroleum and alcohol molecules in the liquid whose composition favored the deposition of alkali metals, therefore precluding their turbulent reaction. The Professor rarely had the opportunity to analyze something as difficult to comprehend and as it was preternatural. But as a man of science who applied the principle of trial and error, he decided to do the most logical thing that could be done. Zanev took a pinch of the grayish white ash, sprinkled in on the liquid from the samples and mingled them in a big flask . . .

  ‘I must be crazy to think that something will come out of this, but I have to try,’ Zanev uttered in despair. Then he decided to leave his work aside for a while and walk over to the dormitory to check up on his colleagues. The long hours spent in the laboratory had begun to grow tedious to him and he needed to get an hour of rest. It was not going to be long–just enough to chat with someone from the crew and to move around a little. In fact it turned to be just enough for something extraordinary to happen, something so unexpected that most people would think it was either a miracle or a work of the divine hand . . .

  Later on, the Professor returned to the lab, put his white coat and gloves on just to witness something sinister. The ash in the water was no longer in the form of particles broken up into chemical elements. A solid substance with a particular shape and size was now occupying the bottom of the flask.

  ‘What the hell . . . How is that even possible? Mila, come to the lab, quickly!’ he said over the loudspeakers so he could get to her faster. A few minutes later she showed up at the doorstep drowsy, yet fully prepared for work.

  ‘What is it, Professor?’

  ‘Come here as fast as you can!’ he summoned her and showed her the incredible phenomenon. Mila stared at the substance unable to fathom what was happening.

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it? I left the mixture of the ash and the liquid which turned out to be simple water for an hour. What does it look like to you?’ her compatriot asked enthusiastically, pointing at the odd phenomenon.

  ‘This composition is no accident. It looks like something of an organ has formed, I’m not sure,’ the young Russian rattled off.

  ‘There must be a grain of truth in that. Look at the way the structure makes the water move in the flask. Diffusion is involved. Maybe that’s part of the structure of those hideous creatures,’ he suggested a bit scared, yet excited at what was coming to life before his eyes. He separated the substances and put the oddly shaped formation in a dry place. It dried off in a minute and turned into ash again. The more experiments he ran with the water, the more he realized that the strange life-giving liquid was the answer to many questions. He examined it under their most powerful microscope and saw something extraordinary. The water molecules vibrated at a high frequency–that was completely incomprehensible to him.

  ‘Mila, come see something,’ Zanev called his
compatriot so she could, too, study the process that was running under the lens. The molecules of the water on Earth also move and vibrate, but it was different here. Something seemed to be driving them to move in that manner.

  ‘Incredible! This kind of molecular vibration must have some kind of an explanation. We need to measure the frequency because if it is within the human hearing range, then the weird sound on this planet might have something to do with that,’ Mila said. That was exactly the reminder the Professor needed as he had completely forgotten to run that test.

  ‘You’re brilliant!’ he stood up and planted a kiss on his comrade’s cheek. ‘I had completely forgotten about that.’ Roman prepared to conduct the test. It had to determine whether the frequency of the vibrations coincided with what human hearing was able to detect. A few minutes later the truth came out. The weird sound on the planet was caused by water, or to be exact, by the vibrations of the water. A small quantity was not enough to produce strong and distinct sound, but the large amount on the entire Menoetius could theoretically deafen the entire planet.

  ‘That source so vital for our existence seems to have been taken to an entirely new level here. The question is what is going on this planet?’ the Professor said thoughtfully. ‘Excuse me for a moment, please, I need to think things through,’ he added and left the room, leaving Lieutenant Nikolaevna just as pensive . . .

  Zanev headed for one of the empty corridors. There was no one there to bother or distract him while he considered the questions he was asking himself. He could now give in to everything that plagued his mind professionally. He was pacing nervously to and fro, bewildered at what was happening. He had never faced such odd and unexplainable phenomena in his whole career. Despite that his strive for perfection was infinite and all-encompassing. There were many who possessed just as much energy and thirst for knowledge, but those who managed to stand out the way Roman did were few. How far could that stubborn scientist get with his inquisitiveness and desire for success? All he needed was a bit of time–a quantity that seems to have been invented by man to gauge his ephemeral existence with the chaos of events which needed to be arranged in sequential order. Yet only time could tell what was to happen next and when the beautiful fairytale of the human civilization would enter into its zenith . . . There was still some hope. Roman Zanev was fairly close to solving the mysteries and the threats that Menoetius posed to them. He was not a man to accept failure, he did not take other people’s ideas for facts, but questioned them instead, just as he questioned his own ideas.

  Withdrawn, he gazed out one of the portholes. The cosmic beauty was striking with its seeming peace and quiet. But there was more to that order than what met the eye as chaos inevitably existed in the Universe. The one who held it under their control was going to turn into a ruler, a master of time and space, a God even. Such thoughts ran through the mind of the Russian scientist as he contemplated the objects in immediate vicinity to the planet. Most interesting were the two suns that generally came into alignment on rather rare occasions, let alone into one that could sustain life. He knew that the answer was out there and he needed time and logical thinking to find it, yet even though he possessed plenty of the latter, he was running out of the former. But at that moment he sank deeper in his thoughts and started talking to himself because he knew that “no problem could withstand the assault of a man’s sustained thinking”. What are the odds the water to be affected more by the two suns than by the moons which are significantly closer? He asked himself the only logical question-inference that he could or, at least, that was the premises he could start with.

  Roman’s frantic behavior–a result of the inexplicable phenomena that had been plaguing him over the past few days–seemed to have been inspired and invigorated by the sight. Shortly after, left in peace, he managed to come up with a theory. It included the two shining bodies and something quite curious that had to do with them. That was the electromagnetic spectrum and, more precisely, the microwave radiation. According to his calculations the high frequency of the electromagnetic waves that the planet was subjected to, stimulated the water molecules to vibrate just like a microwave oven does. Those vibrations generated some heat and noise which were dispersed by the planet’s field. The ocean had a tone of its own which could be heard on the surface level.

  Menoetius was moaning. The organisms were subjected to comparatively strong and constant radiation verging on levels dangerous to the human health unless protection was provided. The planet was a real martyr. Possible solar flares of the red giant would bring about radiation that would be lethal not only to the human kind but also to Menoetius’s native inhabitants. The white dwarf had a relatively small role to play in that astounding phenomenon, yet it helped create a unique effect. The perfect synchronicity with the two made that cosmic body even more extraordinary than our home planet. The noise question was answered, but there was one more puzzle to solve. That was the chemical reaction that took place in the laboratory. How did it happen? Was it some sort of an inexplicable miracle or the explanation was going to reveal itself once he and the Lieutenant delved deeper into the subject?

  ‘What are you doing, Mila?’ he asked as he slipped through the door into the laboratory. She was standing in her white coat bent over the electronic microscope, examining something.

  ‘I’m taking another look at the solution,’ his compatriot said ready to lend him her help, but Roman was the one to determine the right way.

  ‘I think that the vibration of the molecules comes as a result of the radiation, but they play an important part in the phenomena we’re observing,’ the Professor said.

  ‘I see you have formed an opinion on the matter. I want to hear it,’ Nikolaevna said, curious about his conclusions. He explained to her that most probably the Menoetian water had acquired an array of odd qualities they were yet to discover and his assistant was stunned at the news.

  ‘Is it that awful really?’

  ‘I don’t know, but that’s the most plausible theory I could think of. The water in the flask has managed to somehow rearrange its particles under the influence of the microwaves.’

  ‘But something like this can come to live only in the presence of genetic information passed down on a cellular level–it needs to transmit to the subject a series of impulses that would participate in its make-up and would then make it function. Is that information contained in the liquid itself or does the radiation trigger the whole process?’ the beautiful lady asked puzzled.

  ‘That remains to be seen, we may be missing something, but I think we’re on the right track,’ Zanev said pensively and continued. ‘Here, right under our feet, it exists not just to sustain life, but also to navigate it directly somehow . . .’

  ‘I doubt that the direct solar radiation is the cause, it most probably does not have the structural model encoded in it. The two samples behaved in quite a complex and well organized manner. I think there must be some kind of a pattern that dictates the way the matter is built, that specific part of the animal,’ Mila concluded.

  ‘You’re right about that, there has to be a source for all of that.’

  ‘But that means it’s somewhere on the planet. What would that source be?’

  ‘It could be the ocean! I think it operates as a source, but it is also something much more sinister that we’re yet to find out about. It is possible that the molecules retain information about the physiological structural features of some of the species through the vibrations,’ Roman answered with a smile, pointing at the planet around.

  ‘Isn’t it too far away to have such an impact?’ Mila asked.

  ‘It depends. We’re like a satellite which is within a range that receives signals coming from beneath as long as there is something to conduct these signals.’

  ‘What could be that thing that conducts signals so far away? The nature here is really rather odd,’ Mila said, diving deeper into the subject. That question posed a bit of a difficulty to the Professor.


  ‘I don’t know yet. It could be the radiation from the sun refracted and reflected by the surface of the planet. If the water pool stores the information, then it follows that its reflection should contain some of it, too. If there is something that functions like an antennae, distance should be no issue,’ Zanev stated with a smile which faded an instant later and the look on his face changed completely. ‘Damn it . . .,’ the Russian said in a low voice, not finishing his sentence. He got out of his chair slowly, then looked at his compatriot and walked out of the room. There was nothing Mila could do except to wait again. Something big was coming. Something much more important than the Professor or the crew of explorers. Much more titanic than the human kind itself. But how was it going to change their stay there . . .

  ‘I want you to map the entire planet and its magnetic field lines–from one pole to the other. I want you to describe all magnetic anomalies you stumble upon. It’s urgent!,’ Roman rushed into the bridge with apparent excitement and gave his orders to the five men who had clustered together, talking.

  ‘You heard the Professor, guys, let’s get down to work,’ Ivanov said.

  ‘Attention! My research shows that the weird sound on this planet comes from the water. It vibrates on a molecular level and I think that is the way in which it accumulates information.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Thomas asked. The others were stunned at the things they heard and listened to the Professor with keen interest.

  ‘What happens is that something like a quantum process occurs through which information and signals are sent to the living organisms and all that can bring about fairly odd things. In my opinion, the prime cause is the electromagnetic radiation from the two suns which is refracted by the surface and reflected in different directions. I can’t be hundred per cent positive about it, but the fact that we came upon something like this at all and that we’re close to finding an explanation about it is in itself incredible,’ the Professor said, desperate that the world they staked their hopes on could turn out to be unfit for human inhabitation and development. ‘Colonel, come with me, we need to talk,’ Zanev said politely.