by Nate Johnson
Nick nodded that he understood what she was saying, but Amanda had a feeling that he didn't agree with her sentiment.
“Humans have been searching for intelligent life since before we got into space,” Doctor Simpson continued. “We would not be where we are today without that search. It has been one of the overriding goals of our species. And now, here it is, and the idiots in charge don’t know what to do.”
“So, what are they like?” Nick asked.
“Non-human. Preindustrial,” Doctor Simpson replied in a dry, analytical tone. “Just barely, still at the craftsman stage when it comes to tool making. Both city and rural dwellers. A well-established agriculture. Minimal transportation capabilities. Feudal in their politics and very family oriented. Families attached to bands and tribes.”
“I’ll show you after dinner,” Amanda told him. She wondered for a moment if he even heard her. His eyes were staring off into the distance, and he continued to shake his head in disbelief.
“Wow,” he said at last. “Just plain, wow.”
“Think about it,” Doctor Simpson said, obviously they had touched a passion of hers. “For millennia, humans have hoped to contact other intelligent life. We’ve found plenty of life, but nothing above the animal level. Nothing that thinks long term. Is aware of their eventual death. Beings that can communicate down the generations. Beings like us.”
“Our Imperial government,” she continued. “Like most people, assumed that if we did, they’d be space traveling intellectuals. That they’d be a species at our level. Or worse, above us in intelligence and capability. They had all these plans but when it finally happened. They came to a screeching halt so they could argue about what to do.
“Rebecca,” Professor Robinson said. “There is no rush, remember. It is not like they are going anywhere.”
“But, we are right here. So close.”
The pain in her eyes made Amanda wince. This was a sore subject for Doctor Simpson. A subject that had been argued about for the entire time they were here.
Amanda sighed heavily and turned back to Nick. “That is why we are here. To learn as much as possible so that the government can make a decision.”
Nick slowly nodded then said, “Well, I guess I better get that engine fixed before we end up crashing in some farmer’s field.”
Amanda laughed, he did get it. It made her feel good that he wasn’t upset or even worried. He’d identified the priority and was focused. You couldn’t ask for much more.
Chapter Four
Nick followed Amanda in a daze. He didn’t even look at her hips. Well not much. He was in shock, not dead.
Intelligent life. Who would believe it? Everything made sense now. Captain Jarvis’ desire to get the Endurance away before anyone figured it out. The short staff on the Discovery to limit the number of people who knew the truth.
But still, intelligent life. This had to be one of the biggest discoveries in the galaxy, and he was sitting on the front door. It was enough to make a man wonder what he’d ever done to get stuck here.
“This is my office,” Amanda said as she opened the cabin hatch.
He froze at the entryway and examined the room. Two dozen monitors were spread throughout the cabin. A central desk with a controller sat in the middle.
“I spend most of my day sitting in here, watching.”
Scenes from planet side were displayed on each monitor. A field of green bushes. An empty room with wooden walls. Distant figures fixing a roof.
A movement across a screen drew his attention. The figure stepped back into view, and his insides tightened up at the otherness of the being.
Lizard-like scales and a short snout were his first impression. Long legs and two black eyes. Much like a human’s, only darker, more penetrating. But the scaly skin was just too different. Too strange.
The creature was holding a wooden bowl in a scale covered hand with long claws for fingernails. But they did have an opposable thumb he realized. Toolmakers.
“How ...?” he asked as he waved his hand towards the screens.
Amanda smiled, “We sent down sensors, disguised as these,” she said, holding up a small moth-like bug. White, about an inch in length. “We flew them down and placed them in strategic places, so we can observe. Corners of rooms, trees, roof tops. These see and hear everything. Professor Robinson is working on the language. Doctor Simpson on the biology and chemistry of the Eundai as we call them. I work on the social aspects.”
Nick was unable to look away from the creature on the screen. The strangeness of seeing something so different, performing such a normal function, just wouldn’t fully register.
“That’s Envery,” Amanda said. “The Headman’s cook. It is still early morning, they are just starting to rise. Soon, these monitors will be filled with views of their daily life.”
Nick shook his head. “Wow,” he said with disbelief. “They really are intelligent.”
Amanda nodded her head. “Yes, we think they are as intelligent as we are, they just haven’t developed out technology yet. Give them time and they will, probably in the next five hundred years or so.”
“And you think humans are going to leave them alone for five hundred years?” Nick replied. “I’m surprised we’ve left them alone for nine months.”
Amanda grimaced and nodded. “I know.”
Nick continued to watch as the screens began to fill with more of the aliens. Some were bigger, with a slightly darker color to their scales. Obviously the men, he thought, then quickly checked himself. Be careful, he told himself. Don’t assume that the human dynamics apply here. Hell, he didn’t even know if they were binary sexually. Maybe there were a dozen different genders.
The enormity of how much he didn’t know struck him like a Gavultu Tsunami.
“How about you give me the quick rundown. Enough to get me started. I’ve got to get back to the engine, but I’m not leaving this room until you fill me in.”
Amanda smiled and nodded. It was obvious that she understood his need for knowledge.
“Like Doctor Simpson said,” she began. “They are pre-industrial. No real mass production. Each tool. Each artifact is made by an individual. The population is broken into three classes. The warrior class, craftsman class, and the majority into the agrarian class.”
“Just like humans before the Industrial Revolution.”
“Yes,” Amanda said with a smile, obviously pleased that he had a good solid reference.
“It appears that the Eundai evolved to fill the same niche as humans did back on Earth. Their forward-looking eyes and their long legs allowed them to chase prey over long distances. Their opposable thumbs allowed them to develop, then use weapons. All of which provided them meat that helped grow their brains. Over millennia of course.”
Nick pursed his lips and nodded. Yes, he could see the similarities in body type.
“From there,” Amanda continued, “they evolved socially. Families forming bands, then tribes. It does appear to us that they have not broken into city-states or nations yet. The entire planet seems to be controlled by this central city.”
“Either a very strong leader or a very compliant populace,” Nick said with a frown.
Amanda nodded soberly. “We haven’t seen any sign of war, but we don’t know if they are just going through a peaceful period or if it is foreign to their culture.”
Nick snorted, “You don’t have warriors without war. And predators don’t stop being predators because they move into a city.”
Amanda smiled sadly and nodded. “I know, it was just a hopeful wish of mine. I have to fight to keep my desires out of my science.”
Nick nodded then asked, “What about their language, can you understand them?”
“We are beginning to. Professor Robinson has done an unbelievable job considering we didn’t have anything to work with. He can translate about eighty-five percent accurate. I can do about seventy-five percent. Enough to where we can figure out what is going on
down there.”
Again Nick nodded as he bit his lip, silently watching the creatures on the planet below him.
Most were dressed in simple shorts, a few had cloaks. He remembered an ancient video from school. Native humans in their primitive state. Virtually naked. He remembered the excited buzz that had passed through the room at the sight of women with exposed breasts going about their daily chores.
There was none of that here. No floppy breasts even though every creature’s chest was exposed. Obviously, these were not mammals.
The strangeness washed over him again as he fought to get a grip on this new reality.
He wondered about the temperature and weather conditions of the planet. Those descending ice caps should have made things too cold for lizards.
Again he had to check himself, he was assuming too much. There was no indication that the creatures were cold-blooded. Quit trying to put square pegs into round holes, he told himself.
Turning away from the monitor, he glanced at Amanda and smiled. This was a very intelligent woman, he realized. To have been chosen for this project while still so young. She must have impressed the right people a great deal.
“This is amazing,” he said.
Her face lit up with pure pleasure. “I know,” she said. “And, I get to watch them all day. Do you have any idea how significant this is? What it will tell us about our own development. Our own social structures. How much is environmental, how much genetics, and how much just pure luck.”
Yes, he thought, a very intelligent woman who had found her life’s work.
“They seem human like, I mean in body language, facial expressions. That sort of thing. Or, am I wrong?”
“No, you’re right. I think it is related to the nature of their environment. Their eyesight, their ability to communicate so much verbally. Their higher intelligence opens them up for many more ways to communicate and to interpret subtle differences.”
Nick nodded, he sort of understood what she was saying. He could sit here all day watching this, but, that engine needed to get fixed, he reminded himself. If he didn’t get back to it, they’d lose altitude and start scraping the atmosphere in a few days. But, that meant leaving Amanda and her unbelievable monitors.
Sighing heavily he got up to return to the engine room.
“Thank you for showing me,” he said. “I feel sort of privileged. But I’ve got to get back to work.”
A frown crossed her face before she could stop it. “Oh,” she replied. “Of course.”
Obviously, she could not fathom the idea that someone was not completely entranced by these screens showing a secret look into an alien species.
“Once, I’ve got the replicator started on fashioning new parts. Can I come back? I’d really like to learn more.”
“Yes,” she said as she nodded vigorously. “Of course. Anytime. I am almost always in here.”
Nick smiled his thanks and started for the door. He halted a moment and looked back. He was going to tell her how amazing she was when he stopped himself.
She watched him, obviously waiting for him to say something.
Instead, he simply smiled and stepped out. He was here to fix an engine, he reminded himself.
.o0o.
Over the next few days. Nick rushed to finish the engine rebuild. His hands moving without thought as his mind kept drifting back to the woman studying intelligent aliens.
He wondered which intrigued him more.
While the replicator built the parts he needed, he found himself once again in her office, watching the scenes below.
“That’s Grundal,” Amanda said from the back of the room, indicating one of the monitors. “The Headman. And his son Gryopic. You can always spot Grundal. He’s taller than the rest, almost as tall as you.”
For some reason her comment made him feel good inside. He glanced over at her and could have sworn he saw a quick blush in those gorgeous cheeks of hers.
He turned back to study the scene before him. The Headman was walking across the plaza with his very young son next to him, fighting to match his father’s stride.
It was a scene that could have been enacted from the time of William the Conqueror, or Kublai Khan for that matter. Except for the whole lizard aspect of things.
Once Grundal had left the Plaza, Nick pulled up the overhead shot from the Discovery itself. The shot allowed him to study the city from a wide angle.
Stone walls, thirty feet tall, almost a mile long on each of four sides, surrounded the city. Nick chuckled to himself. People didn’t build walls like that unless they were afraid of being attacked. He was pretty positive that Amanda was going to be disappointed when she learned just how warlike these creatures could be.
Inside the city. Most of the buildings were made of rough cut wood. Split timbers that came from the nearby forest. A forest that seemed to cover almost the entire land mass.
A single, gray stone building sat on a raised platform in the very center of the city. Four wooden doors, one on each side, opened to steps that lead to a cobblestone path that passed through the city in a straight line.
Once the paths left through the city gates, they became black roads, each leading to the four cardinal points of the compass. Each as straight as the landscape would allow.
Nick smiled to himself. Talk about being the center of your world. Obviously, every road led to the capital, and he was willing to bet his next shore leave that inside that gray building, all four paths would lead directly to the throne room, and a throne that sat at the center of where the paths met.
Symbolism was important to these creatures, he realized.
The city itself was surrounded by more wooden buildings that had obviously seeped out of the city proper as overflow. The exterior village gave way to cropland.
From what Amanda had told him, the creatures grew crops similar to wheat and a great many root crops. But most of the farm land had been planted with a strange bush.
The creatures harvested the leaves, then stored them in large stone silos. Amanda hadn’t been able to figure out why. They didn’t seem to eat the leaves. She had thought at first they might be some type of tobacco. But she had never seen any of the Eundai using them.
The leaves went into the silos and stayed there.
One of the thousands of mysteries that they would have to figure out.
Nick folded his arms and leaned back in his chair as a small smile crept across his face. It was like being a god, he thought. Sitting up here. Watching over the world below. Addicting almost.
Amanda worked at her console, cataloging events, making observations. She kept the volume from the feeds turned off. She said it became too confusing to hear all the different sounds at once. If something caught her attention, then she would tune in to get the details.
Unbelievable, he thought for the thousandth time.
As he watched, a wagon was pulled by a four-legged lizard-like animal the size of a Valerian bear, he shook his head. What would he do when they sent his replacement out? He couldn’t imagine leaving this behind.
Without warning, an alarm reverberated throughout the entire ship.
A loud claxon that sent a cold fear to his stomach. Fire. The one thing a spacer feared above all other.
Suddenly, aliens, strange new worlds, nothing else mattered.
Chapter Five
Scrambling out of his chair, Nick raced through the door and into the central passageway, his head shifting back and forth as he tried to locate the danger.
Where was the ship’s AI? It should be giving commands, identifying dangers. At the least, telling them where the hell the damn fire was.
Forward, a faint gray smoke seeped from beneath a sliding doorway.
Like all Navy spacers, Nick had been trained from the first day of boot camp, get the fire out. Nothing else mattered. That damn thing was sucking up their oxygen, burning through their walls of protection. Nothing else mattered.
It was get the fire out or die.
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The alarm claxon vibrated through his racing heart as he ran forward. Reaching out, he grabbed a handhold to stop himself from sliding past the doorway.
The heavy smell of smoke and burnt rubber greeted him. His heart thundered in his chest as he quickly brought the back of his hand up against the metal door.
The hairs on the back of his hand curled up from the heat coming off the door. Hot, but not burning, the paint wasn’t blistering. Maybe he still had time.
Gently cracking the doorway, he jumped back as a yellow flame shot through the small opening with a loud whoosh.
“Nick,” Amanda yelled, trying to stop him from making a stupid mistake.
He shook his head and held a hand up to stop her from getting any closer. This needed to be done fast.
“Is this an equipment closet?” he yelled back at her.
Her eyes were as big as frame washers as she nodded yes.
Nick nodded to himself, this couldn’t wait. Folding his sleeve cuff over his hand and taking a deep breath, he pulled the door all the way open.
A solid wall of black smoke waited for him.
Inside the room, between the puffs and tuffs of smoke, sparks, and flames jumped from a square box on the wall. The familiar scent of burnt ozone and charred rubber washed over him as that yellow terror scraped and clawed at the insulation along the far wall.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped in and pulled the kill switch, cutting all power to the room. His hand screamed in pain, reminding him of how much of an idiot he could be at times. He’d dropped his cuff in his rush to get to the switch.
Immediately, the ship's lights flickered, and the alarm stuttered as the power was shifted over to the auxiliary. The box stopped sparking, and the yellow flames pulled back.
Grabbing the fire extinguisher off the wall, he quickly doused the flames. That was the one good thing about an electrical fire. Kill the source, and the fire was easy to control.
Coughing his lungs out, Nick stepped back out of the room. Slamming the door behind him, trapping the smoke inside until it could be purged.