What happened? Adam takes a deep breath and exhales. Gronolf is pointing at the spaceship, which now is fist-sized again. It is still there, so at least it wasn’t destroyed. This should mean Gronolf’s shouts expressed positive emotions.
“Marchenko,” Adam says and points at the Majestic Draght.
“Yes, what has happened to him?” Eve asks from behind.
“Marchenko,” Gronolf says. Gronolf taps the keyboard feverishly. Now the map projects a glowing line in front of the ship, which bends around the planet.
“The ship is entering orbit,” Adam exclaims. He turns around to Eve and wants to pat her on the shoulder, but she embraces him. Of course she knows what this means. Nobody will die.
“Marchenko did it!” Adam says. He can hardly believe it. Tears fall on his throat. It must be Eve’s tears. He does not wipe them off. His heart is beating faster, he sweats, he would like to dive into cold water, but he also does not want to let go of Eve.
“So!” Gronolf says.
Adam looks at Gronolf. The alien is drumming against the wall with his lower legs. It is a catchy rhythm.
Minutes pass. It could be hours, as Adam has lost any sense of time. Gronolf drums against the wall with incredible endurance. He feels sorry the alien has to celebrate on his own and has nobody to hug him.
“Eve? Come on, let’s go over to Gronolf,” he says. His sister understands. Arm in arm they stroll over to the alien. Gronolf’s body stiffens when their hands touch his arms. Adam would like to be able to read his thoughts now.
“His skin is warm,” Eve says. She sounds surprised.
“This is Marchenko, can anybody hear me?”
“Finally!” Adam shouts. Finally we can communicate with the ship again, he means.
“That’s a nice welcome,” Marchenko says.
“We are so glad,” Eve exclaims. “How did you manage it?”
“Oh, that is a long story. I will tell you as soon as you get here.”
“You mean we should get on board the Majestic Draght?”
“Yes. That would be the best solution for all of us, Eve.”
“Right,” Adam says. “There is only one problem: How do we get to you?”
Brightnight 39, 3876
He was the first to see it. Gronolf noticed immediately that the Majestic Draght had changed its course. At that moment, due to the resolution of the map, it should have been impossible to see, but he detected it anyways. The two humans reacted in an incredible way. They wrapped their arms around each other. This is such an odd behavior that it almost seems disgusting to him, yet in its own way he finds it fascinating.
He nearly emptied his stomach when they touched him. It was a very intimate moment, particularly because they are so very different. They are not just members of a different species. If he touches a strangleblossom or a carriontooth he doesn’t feel anything comparable. Adam and Eve come from a different star. They have nothing in common with him, not a single gene, except the fact that they are carbon-based life forms, and that they are intelligent and able to act in a purposeful manner. They crossed the ocean of space and met here, what an incredible coincidence. And then they did not kill each other, but touched in kindness instead. Gronolf’s skin still vibrates when he thinks of it.
Now, though, they have to solve a problem. They have to reach the Majestic Draght, and this time it won’t be anything like beaming Marchenko’s consciousness there.
“Marchenko?” The two humans are already asleep, but Marchenko doesn’t need any sleep.
“I am here.”
“There is definitely no rocket here in the shelter building that could be used to transport us into space. I checked the inventory carefully.”
“Not even parts of one?”
“In no form. Back then anything that could fly was used to bring warriors back home, to Dual Sun. They wanted to leave as few behind as possible.”
“There is also nothing on board the Majestic Draght that could be used as a rocket. But we still have Messenger.”
“You told me the ship could not land on the surface, Marchenko.”
“Yes, you will have to move toward it, at least a bit.”
“How would this work?” Are we supposed to fly, like flying fish?
“With a balloon.”
Gronolf rubs his knee. That Marchenko—he sure comes up with odd ideas.
“The atmosphere of Single Sun is relatively dense. With a flexible balloon and spacesuits, you should be able to reach an altitude of 100 kilometers.”
“Grosnops don’t have spacesuits. Our skin is tough enough to withstand the pressure difference. A breathing mask is enough.”
“You still should wrap yourself in something. Otherwise the cold will hurt you. In the upper atmosphere it will feel much colder than in space.”
“I am working on a plan.”
“And then there is the issue of finding material for a balloon.”
“That’s already solved, Marchenko. In order to save weight, we removed the landing parachutes from all shuttles. Their material should be perfect for this.”
“Excellent. There should still be some of my sensor units crawling around in your building. They are equipped with nano-fabricators. I can program them from here so they will help you assemble the parts. What about gas to fill the balloon?”
“The life-support system can separate helium from air. It requires energy, but we have plenty of that.”
“Gronolf?” Marchenko asked in an odd-sounding way.
“Yes?”
“We can’t take all of them.”
He had thought about this yesterday for many bubble periods. But there is no way. If they wake the sleepers without the help of trained Life Scientists, like Eve tried to, they will lose more of them than if they let them sleep until they return in a few cycles.
“No,” Gronolf says, “I’m well aware of that. We will return in a few cycles, though, with the Majestic Draght, shuttles, and Life Scientists. Then we will wake them safely, and take them home.” Those that are still left, he thinks.
They will have to hurry.
May 13, 19, Eve
Eve kneels on the ground and uses a laser to transfer the pattern Gronolf sent to her universal device onto the material in front of her. They have been busy tailoring since the morning. The ISUs Marchenko left behind separate the thin but tough foil at the predetermined lines and then join these pieces to other pieces. On one side of the room there is already a thick, silvery roll. Eve cannot imagine how this will turn into a balloon, but Gronolf must have had something in mind when he created the patterns.
Adam sits with his back to her. He has a special task: He is supposed to construct a kind of thermal suit for Gronolf. He selected the same material used for the balloon, but he employs multiple layers, which are separated by insulating air chambers. The finished suit will be electrically heated. Adam has had to get up several times to measure Gronolf. The archive did not contain any usable plans. This alien civilization simply does not know the idea of clothing. At first Gronolf tried to design something for himself, but that ended in a fit of rage. Adam and Eve still can’t completely interpret Gronolf’s gestures, but just the volume of his incomprehensible sentences made it clear he was very angry.
Eve still cannot quite believe that they will leave the planet soon. She will never again see the forest of walking trees and the fluorescent mushrooms in the shade beneath them. She will never set foot on the hot central plains, nor will she ever again hide in a bunker during a solar flare. She remembers the giant spider they found in a pit. Is its dead body still entombed in the ancient building there? Are the trees still waging war against each other?
Yet her own problems are nothing compared to the misfortune that befell the Grosnops. They wanted to use the giant ship to explore and colonize a foreign planet—but then the AI controlling it failed. Only a part of the crew managed to start the return journey. The others had to wait inside a building in the ice, hoping to be rescue
d. Yet help never arrived, and when the sleep-systems started to fail, an odd fluke in the shape of a desperate human at first seemed to bring death and instead sparked the chance for a return.
ISU 6 bumps against her knee. Eve looks up. Her thighs hurt from the unaccustomed posture. She should concentrate on her work, as the sensor unit seems to have nothing to do right now.
May 15, 19, Adam
Adam feels cold, even though he is inside his heated pressure suit. Above him the balloon flaps in the wind, shining yellow due to four lamps arranged in a square. The balloon seems amazingly floppy, but Gronolf reassured them that it will be able to carry all three. The higher they get and the thinner the atmosphere becomes, the more the balloon will inflate. At some point—according to plan, not below an altitude of 100 kilometers—it will burst. Messenger must arrive before then to pick them up. Marchenko started to explain this complex maneuver yesterday, but Adam did not want to hear about it.
Next to him a cable with the thickness of an arm comes out of a hatch leading into the building. The cable, actually a flexible pipe, moves helium into the balloon. By now it is only adding enough to compensate for the slight losses, because the thin foil cannot keep 100 percent of this noble gas inside. Later this minor leakage will not matter because they will rise so rapidly.
“Eve,” Gronolf shouts.
His sister climbs out of the hatch where she has been hiding from the wind and walks over to the alien. Adam sees how Gronolf connects the harness on her back to the balloon. Gronolf looks funny in the suit Adam designed. The material bulges in unexpected places, so that Gronolf seems to have big bumps everywhere. However, the suit will fulfill its function and keep him warm, as Gronolf has confirmed. The temperature will fall from the current minus 70 degrees to minus 160, but Adam designed the heating unit with sufficient capacity. The entire ascent should not take more than eight to ten hours. Their oxygen and energy will last twelve.
Now it is his turn. He stands with his back facing Gronolf. It feels as if the alien were preparing him for his execution.
Adam looks at Eve rubbing her gloved hands. “Everything okay with you?” he asks her via helmet radio.
“I am a bit nervous,” she says.
“Me, too.” He tugs at the lower part of his suit. Something doesn’t fit right, probably the improvised diaper. As the flight will take at least eight hours, they have to account for those needs, too. They will have to do without food, but they can drink liquids through a straw integrated into their helmets. After shivering earlier, Adam now starts to sweat. He wishes he felt cold again, because the evaporated sweat condenses on the inside of his helmet. Will Gronolf or Marchenko give a farewell speech? He wouldn’t put it past them.
“Adam, Eve,” he hears Gronolf’s voice via helmet radio. “Ready?”
Adam looks around. Gronolf has put the helium pipe back inside the hatch and now stands behind him. The balloon has already started to rise. Due to the cables that the balloon pulled upward, Gronolf and Eve look like a puppeteer’s dolls.
“Ready,” Adam and Eve say almost simultaneously. Now the strings tug at him. His back is pulled up with surprising force. Adam wiggles his arms and legs until he realizes how useless that is.
“Yay!” he hears Eve shout.
“Good start?” It is Marchenko’s voice.
“Yes, it is great,” Eve replies.
“So,” is all Gronolf says.
Adam does not know what to say. His stomach protests against the upward acceleration. He has the feeling his stomach has sunk to his knees. He hopes he won’t have to vomit. The idea of having that yucky stuff inside his helmet for the next eight hours disgusts him. He will have to think of something else, and quickly.
Proxima b solves that problem for him. They are slowly rising out of the darkness. In front of him, far away, a light blue oval shines in the blackness. Adam turns around his axis. The oval is the horizon, a circle, he can now see. They started at the North Pole, but they are slowly drifting away, it seems. With every passing minute the horizon brightens a bit. He won’t see the sun from this balloon, because it shines on the other side of Proxima b, forever and ever.
The air is turbulent. Now and then something rips at his back and the straps dig into his flesh. In the helmet radio he hears Eve singing a children’s song. It warms his heart. He would like to say something to her, but he can’t think of anything. His eyes close at some point.
Marchenko’s voice in the helmet radio wakes him. “You are drifting southward very quickly. The jet stream probably gave you a strong push.”
“Is that a problem?” Eve asks.
“No, quite the opposite. It makes it easier for me to pick you up. I cannot reduce the velocity of Messenger at will. The faster you are moving, the better.”
Marchenko is right. What they are attempting is no easy maneuver. Adam is glad he did not think too much about it earlier. It is good that Marchenko controls Messenger, as he has lightning-fast reflexes.
“How much longer?” asks Adam.
“About two hours,” Marchenko says.
Adam feels pressure in his bladder. He won’t be able to hold it for two hours, so he just relaxes and relieves himself. The diaper absorbs the liquid well. He looks around. The horizon is no longer a circle. They must be at least ten degrees of latitude from the North Pole. In one direction he sees only darkness. That’s where they came from. In the other one a blue arc is visible, which is widest in the middle. Somewhere in that direction must be the forest they lived in, and even further south stands the lander module that brought them to this planet.
The day after tomorrow will make it five months ago. Five terrible months full of hardship and most of all full of mistakes. It seemed to him like five years. Of course he would do everything differently now if he had the chance. Yet he would not want to miss this adventure.
“Adam?”
“Yes, Eve?”
“In the end, we managed quite well.”
“True.”
Eve does not say anything else. Adam hears her softly humming another children’s song. He tries to identify the tune, but he can’t.
Marchenko’s voice sounds worried. “Watch out down there.”
“What’s going on?” Adam asks.
“You are approaching the upper reaches of a cyclone.”
“At this altitude?”
“Don’t forget the greater gravity. The atmosphere is structured differently from that of Earth.”
“Can we evade it?”
“Not a chance. Just stay calm, though, as the storm shouldn’t be dangerous.”
Adam quickly notices the air movement. He is spinning around to his left, as if sitting on a swing carousel like he remembers from a video. The harness straps holding him to the balloon would be the chains.
“Are you also rotating?” Eve asks.
“So,” Gronolf says in affirmation.
“I am trying to enjoy it,” Adam says. “I’m pretending I’m riding a swing carousel. I only know about that idea from books and videos.”
“I don’t like to rotate,” Eve replies.
She doesn’t like to lose control, Adam thinks. Typical for her. But then he notices his own motion is getting faster and faster.
“Is the storm increasing?” he asks.
“No,” Marchenko replies.
“So why am I turning faster and faster?”
Nobody answers. Adam looks around, but cannot see anything.
“Oh, your straps have become entangled,” Eve finally says.
Yes, that makes them shorter and he spins faster, like a figure skater pulling his arms against his body. “It is getting rather unpleasant,” Adam observes.
“Just a moment,” Gronolf says.
What is he up to? Adam shines his headlamp at him. The alien is unbuckling one of his own harness straps, and then another and another. “What are you doing? You will fall without the harness!”
“I know,” Gronolf says. He is hanging from t
he balloon by a single strap. Now it becomes clear why he is doing this. He pulls himself up on this strap to reach the spot where Adam’s straps have become entangled. The other straps would have hindered him. He undoes one strap after another on Adam’s harness, untangles them, and then reattaches them.
“So,” he finally says.
The rotation has stopped. “Thank you, Gronolf.” Adam is shivering.
“You are lucky,” Marchenko reports from Messenger. “You have traversed the storm cloud.”
“This is Marchenko. It’s time.”
Adam looks for Eve and Gronolf. The alien will blast off the balloon at the decisive moment. Then they will fly in free fall.
“I am starting the countdown for Gronolf,” Marchenko says. He starts counting down.
“Three, two, one, go.” Adams sees a flash in his field of vision. At the same time something jerks his harness. They are still connected to each other, but the balloon escapes upward. Adam looks after it, but ten seconds later the balloon has disappeared.
“Are we already falling?” Eve asks.
“Free fall,” Marchenko confirms.
So they are falling. If Adam didn’t know it, he would not notice. If Marchenko leaves them in the lurch now they will burn up like meteorites. They have no parachutes to slow them down.
“Intercept maneuver in 15,” Marchenko says calmly. He starts counting down again. When he reaches zero, Adam feels a strong tug on his left side. That must be the net.
“Are we inside?”
“Yes, Adam, it worked. I am now accelerating you.”
“Congratulations!” shouts Eve.
Messenger chose its orbit so it would be as slow as possible during this encounter. Yet that is not nearly slow enough for them to simply step on board. Therefore Marchenko placed an extremely sturdy net of carbon nanotubes behind them, which he now slowly accelerates, together with his catch.
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