Gronolf wipes some dust from a side eye. He takes the heavy weapon from the drawer and examines it. The harpoon is powered by compressed air. Its range is short, not more than three or four body lengths, but that would be more than enough inside a shelter. The head of the spike contains an explosive charge programmed to explode after hitting an obstacle, with a delay of three milli-bubbles. The spike is so pointed and impacts with such force that it penetrates practically any target. The detonation delay is calculated in such a way that the spike has enough time to penetrate deep into the enemy’s tissues. One small disadvantage of the harpoon is that Gronolf cannot use it if the target is too close. The explosion meant to kill the prey does not differentiate between friend or foe. Yet he is not worried. If something gets so close to him that the use of the harpoon is no longer advisable, he can easily tear it apart or crush it with his strong load-arms.
Gronolf releases the safety catch of the weapon. An increasing noise tells him that the compressed air chamber is being filled. He aims at the general. It is a strange feeling. The weapon gives him a power he can feel in his veins. It is seductive and causes even his respect for the venerable general to fade. He only has to press the trigger to become the highest-ranked one in the room. Even a physical weakling could do that. Without the harpoon he would have definitely been inferior to the general—when the general was still alive. It is no wonder that in his society the private ownership of weapons is forbidden. Yet now he is glad to have one. If he is lucky the intruder will recognize what this weapon is capable of.
Gronolf hopes the foreign creature will be reasonable. The knowledgeable scientists of his people often discussed whether a species that mastered spaceflight would automatically have to be peace-loving. Now he will have the first chance of testing this theory. However, he has to admit he would not mind firing the harpoon and seeing the creature swimming in a puddle of its own blood. That would be a well-deserved punishment.
He lowers the barrel and slides the safety catch forward. He needs to get a stronger grip on himself. Everything depends on him—he must not kill the intruder before interrogating it thoroughly. This would involve a small problem, though: He does not speak the language of this foreigner. Gronolf returns to the console where he looked at the recorded videos. Indeed, the creature sometimes utters sounds. Its voice sounds very dull. Gronolf analyzes the recording. The sound spectrum is only half as wide as that of his own species. This means the intruder has to communicate without high-pitched sounds. He tries to do that, but he cannot, at least not with his normal voice. However, during his training they learned to sing in harmony as a company. Back then he had to modulate his voice to make it sound deeper, because they had too many high voices. Gronolf imagines a greeting which he would not pronounce but sing in a deeper voice.
“Honor to your plex and you!”
It is working! When he sings the traditional greeting, it sounds much deeper. He repeats the sentence and records it. The analysis shows that the intruder should be able to hear everything Gronolf is saying. Of course this does not mean that the creature will also understand it. He listens again to what this creature was uttering. It seems to be debating with the general, as if it didn’t know that he has been dead for a long time. Now the creature points at a spot on the wall, roughly where the entrance to the moving chamber is located.
“What is located there?” the stranger says. Gronolf tries to repeat the words without understanding them.
“Whattt uss louketed thurr,” does not sound too bad. He repeats the sentence three times in order to memorize it. It might not be a greeting, but he hopes that the creature will recognize his attempted communication as a friendly gesture. And if he also demonstrates that the harpoon is able to snuff out the life of the intruder at any time, nothing should stand in the way of a sensible conversation. He considers it quite impossible that this puny being should get the idea of attacking him first.
It is time, he thinks. Gronolf holds his weapon at the ready and leaves the control center via the main corridor. His four eyes are wide open. He sniffs for alien scents. He stops after four steps because he has detected numerous scent molecules of the foreign creature. The intruder obviously did not try very hard to cover its tracks. This is going to be easy. The stranger might just as well have scratched arrows into the wall.
After a few minutes Gronolf reaches an area that has been devastated by an explosion. Was the intruder responsible for this? He examines the walls and the floor and finds a distorted blade from a turbine. The destruction appears deliberately caused by someone. However, this would have required so much strength that he can almost certainly exclude the foreign creature as a possible culprit.
He continues following the scent. If he can trust the map in his memory, he is approaching the sleeping chambers in a roundabout way. Did the intruder retreat there? Does it want to kill more of his sleeping comrades? He feels anger rising in him. Gronolf has to stop. He takes a deep breath and exhales, repeating until he has calmed down. In addition he activates the safety on his harpoon. That way he has at least a few milli-bubbles to consider things until the weapon is ready to fire. No matter what happens, he must not act impulsively and spoil everything.
He is about to resume his walk when he hears a noise. It is a binary measure, two steps, followed by a scratching sound. A two-legged, relatively lightweight creature is approaching from the left side corridor. Perhaps it is dragging something that explains the scratching noise. Gronolf stops and stays calm. This must be the intruder, approaching him unsuspectingly. He only has to wait for it.
Gronolf lifts the harpoon but leaves the safety on, so that the loading sound of the compressor won’t give him away. The alien must soon come around the corner. Gronolf holds his breath.
May 9, 19, Adam
“Thanks.”
The voice wakes Adam. Was it part of his dream, or had Marchenko just spoken to him?
“It’s me.” The voice comes from the reptilian fragment next to him. It is really Marchenko.
“I am so glad,” Adam replies, and touches the metal with his fingers.
“And I most certainly am, too. I did not think I would ever get out of that pit. You saved me—and I had already believed you were gone.”
“You have to thank Marchenko 2 for your rescue.”
“Really?”
“It certainly was not his intention. He did not know I would follow him.”
“What is he up to?”
“That’s obvious—he wants to get Eve back and kill you. If he’d only known how close he was to you!”
“He did not recognize me.”
“I am sorry I was so stupid,” Adam says.
“I was the stupid one. I should not have gone on without making certain you were on the sled.”
“No, I even manipulated the radio module in order to contact Marchenko 2.”
“That explains why we could not reach you. What did you want from him?”
“He... he showed me there were a few secrets concerning my existence. Secrets that you kept from me. He wanted to tell me everything.”
“Did he keep his promise?”
“No, not yet.”
Marchenko remains silent for a minute. “I... I did not want to burden you with it,” he finally says.
“And what is the great secret of our existence?”
“Eve, you, me... we all were created for this expedition. Your genetic material was manipulated so that you could survive even under adverse conditions.”
“Are we siblings?”
“No. Your genes were spliced together from the best sections they could find. You are not related, at least not any more closely than the former owners of those genetic sequences.”
“So we are artificial?”
“No, Adam, you are still human beings. You would not stand out among other humans, except for your resilience. You are not smarter or stronger than others, that was not the goal, but you definitely can withstand more than other people.
”
“So we were created to suffer?”
“If you want to sum it up... you were... engineered to survive.”
“Thanks,” Adam says.
“That is not all. There are many of you. It is no coincidence Marchenko 2 landed here. The Creator sent thousands of Messenger spaceships toward all potentially-habitable worlds known at that time.”
“Potentially?”
“Yes. When we launched, the data from the telescopes could not yet tell for certain whether a planet was really suitable for life.”
“So this means that many other Eve, Adam, and Marchenko trios reached destination worlds where they could not land? They went on that long voyage for nothing?”
“Yes. We were lucky, even though Proxima b is not exactly a paradise. Yet we can live in the open air, with soil under our feet, almost like on Earth.”
“Apart from the fact that we are totally alone.”
“I am not so sure about that. This building proves we are not alone,” Marchenko says.
“We have to find Eve. She is in danger. If you are not with her, and Marchenko 2 finds her before we do—"
“You are absolutely correct, Adam. And we will find her. But first thing, I had better repair the radio module of your universal device so that we can stay in contact. And then I will need legs and more energy.”
“Then get started!”
“You’d better carry me a little bit longer. And we should not stay in this corridor. If Marchenko 2 comes back, he would find us here, still defenseless. We need a better hiding place.”
May 9, 19, Eve
The way to the control room seems longer this time. Is this due to the fact that she has stopped expecting surprises around every corner? Or is it her exhaustion which seems to stretch the distance? The sensor unit obediently walks ahead. When Eve takes a break, it stops as well. Now and then the display of her universal device flickers. The battery seems to be almost empty. She should worry about how to recharge it, but it’s not really worth it. By now she knows the path from the control room to the sleeping chambers, and she can’t contact anyone with the device anyways. So what does she need it for? To tell the time... But why does it matter anymore what time it is on Earth?
Eve notices that she has slowed down. She pulls herself together and consciously takes one step after the other. She has water, and some more food thanks to what she’d left in her backpack, and there is air here anyways, so she is going to last a while longer, even though it is meaningless. Don’t they say the path is the destination? Such aphorisms never helped her before, but now she has nothing else to cling to.
Eve briefly leans against the wall and closes her eyes. She might as well collapse and go to sleep now. She is tired enough for it. Yet after two minutes she feels drawn to the control center. It is as if she still has a task to fulfill. Perhaps there is a deep death wish hidden behind it. It sounded as if something or someone is waiting for her at the destination. If it is a living being and not a machine, it probably won’t be in a good mood, judging from the scream. She opens her eyes again and continues walking. The rustling sound tells her that the sensor unit is also going forward.
Five minutes later the corridor gets wider and curves toward the right. There is a second corridor coming from the left. This must be the spot where she and the ISU parted ways earlier. Is that the reason the ISU stopped? The ISU no longer makes that rustling sound. Eve looks at the floor while she is going around the corner so that she won’t step on her little friend. It stands right beyond the curve. It has turned around and a red light is blinking.
Eve stops in amazement at what she sees. She is so shocked that her whole body starts to tremble. She stares wide-eyed at the alien. It is a frog, and it is alive! It looks huge, even at a distance of five meters. Its body is more than two meters tall and almost as wide. A giant eye with a black pupil is staring at her. Its very stature is terrifying, but the frog also holds an object in strong-looking arms—something that definitely looks like a weapon... aimed directly at her.
Eve feels dizzy because her heart is beating so fast. She has to steady herself with one hand against the wall. She hopes the creature won’t interpret this as an aggressive action, but she can’t help it—without support from the wall she will fall. The alien’s weapon twitches back and forth, but there is no bang. The muzzle, from which a kind of spear protrudes, is still pointing at her.
Eve is about to panic. She tries to calm down, but the thing is so menacing that she doesn’t run away only because she knows she would inevitably stumble over her own feet due to her fright. And she doesn’t really stand a chance. All she has to do is look at the huge, muscular legs of the alien. The creature would reach her with only two or three steps.
Is it male or female? Or perhaps this species does not have sexes, or has more than two? And where did its head go? There is a gap between the points where the arms join the torso, as if there is something missing. It feels good to distract herself with useless questions. Eve is starting to calm down. The extraterrestrial does not attempt to get any closer. It is obviously not trying to kill her right away, since that would have happened already. It probably wants to dissect her and needs her to be whole, and that weapon does not look as if it would leave its prey in one piece.
How should she react? Does the creature even recognize her as an intelligent being? To the alien, she would appear to be about the size of a German shepherd in comparison to her. If they had encountered dog-sized beings here on Proxima b, would they have believed them to be intelligent? She has to do something that the alien definitely cannot interpret as an attack. Yet even among humans there can be many misunderstandings. What if raising an arm should be seen as a sign to attack, rather than as a greeting?
The extraterrestrial probably will not have a particularly high opinion of her. He saw his dead comrade in the sleeping chamber and most likely noticed already that a gigantic object is racing toward the planet—which is no coincidence. In addition, it should have noticed the destroyed corridor on the way here. How would she react to a being that threatens her friends, her house, and her world? The alien would need the patience of a saint not to be angry at her.
“Kurzukhan-la karlak-ti ha-ti ha!”
The extraterrestrial screams a phrase into the corridor that could mean anything—a threat, a greeting, or something else entirely? Should she fall on her knees and surrender? Or does the creature simply expect an answer? At least it has tried to use words instead of firing the weapon. That’s a good sign! What should she reply? As the creature probably won’t understand her, it does not really matter.
“I don’t understand,” she says as loud as she can.
“Ho-ha!” The alien advances half a step. You’d better not do that, she thinks, the previous distance was just fine. Couldn’t we maintain that distance? She moves backward.
“Please don’t come any closer,” she calls, not quite as loud. The weapon is still pointed at her. Is she mistaken, or did the alien raise it slightly and place one of its three fingers close to a button on the side? She must not get hysterical now. “It would be very nice if you could lower your weapon.”
She raises her open palms and tries to sound convincing. Yet the extraterrestrial does not react. If only Marchenko were here with her! He surely could act as an interpreter. Well, no, how would he be able to do that? He can’t do magic or read minds.
“Ho-ha!” The alien comes closer again. She will have to decide. If she drops to the ground now the alien will either kill her, interpreting this action as an attack, or she would be completely in its power. She cannot even imagine what it would do to her. Should she try to flee?
“Let us talk,” she says, “but please don’t come any closer.” She raises her palms to show she is unarmed. However, the creature either does not care, or interprets this as an invitation. The distance shrinks to two and a half meters. Not more than two steps. If the alien wants to, it could grab her in a second.
“Wha
ttt uss louketed thurr!”
What did it say? Was that supposed to be English? Of course! The central room must have cameras that record everything. The alien used them to try to learn her language. This also means, though, that it knows about everything and considers her the destroyer of its people—justifiably so. No sentient being could simply ignore that. If the alien gets its hands on her, she will be in deep trouble, no matter how progressive and interested it might be. Then she might as well end her own life.
She knows what is going to happen. If she flees, the alien will point its weapon at her and pull the trigger. But a quick, terrible ending would be better. She turns around and runs as fast as she can. She enters the other corridor. Her heart pumps blood through her vessels and she feels alive like never before, even though death is hot on her heels—or maybe because of it. Behind her she hears a loud rumbling sound, followed by a terrifying scream. She runs, she leaps into darkness.
The scream pursues her, but there is no patter of feet, and no spear zooms through the air to pierce her body. She keeps fleeing and fleeing, and the farther she gets, the more she feels she got away with it once again. Her burning lungs tell her she is alive, her aching legs prove it, and so does the fear in her mind. There is no longer a pursuer but she keeps on running, nevertheless. The path leads downward, allowing her to maintain her speed even though she is getting weaker.
Sweat covers her skin, dripping as she runs. She whines loudly but does not stop until the path ends in a large room traversed by a thick pipe. Eve holds on to the pipe. She is wheezing and about to collapse, but she keeps upright with her last remaining strength. She has made it—at least for the time being.
From the corner of her eye she sees something familiar. She shakes her head. Please, no new excitement, she thinks, but life does not respect her request. She realizes what she is looking at. It is a pressure suit, human-sized. The helmet visor has been broken into many small splinters, and next to the suit there is a spreading puddle of dark, almost brown blood.
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