Only the aliens’ wide, pea-green, round faces remained uncovered by the blinding bright silver uniforms they wore. Shorter than humans by twenty or so centimeters but stockier, they moved with surprising speed and agility in the planet’s strong gravity.
Zhdanov could hardly believe the odds that this species had evolved the same characteristics as human beings, that massive convergence had occurred in two isolated environments. The aliens’ noses, though broad and with only one nostril, occupied the central position; their mouths, bordered by a ring of leathery olive tissue, resembled lips; their eyes, two evenly set ovals with lashless lids, showed white surrounding a silver disk that replaced the separate human iris and pupil; their hair, ranging in tones from olive green to brown, fell in thick millimeter cords but had been drawn into a short ponytail at the nape of the aliens’ necks.
The aliens motioned for the humans to follow them, waving their weapons in the direction of the male that had approached them. Zhdanov took a step towards him slowly, passively, attempting to convey their willingness to follow.
“I hope we can get out of this,” he muttered to the others.
The team formed a line behind him, and the two aliens arrived at either side of the humans. Slowly, they began to march into the denser regions of foliage, away from the position where the first cargo shuttle had landed, away from the team’s fighter planes and only means of escape.
After a few minutes of walking had passed, Zhdanov decided to chance a direct whisper to Knightwood.
“Where do you suppose they’re taking us?” he asked, his even voice careful not to betray emotion. Her silence worried him; they were all afraid, but he thought Knightwood had been unusually silent even so.
Knightwood pulled in her breath sharply as the leader in front of Zhdanov half-cocked his head and came to a halt. Then, raising his arm towards the horizon, he pointed to a small rise in the land just ahead, barely visible through the vegetation, and moved to the side for them so they might see it better. Only now could she and Zhdanov descry a small hole in the side of the hill, secured by a green, organic door.
Knightwood stumbled forward as they headed towards it; she had been temporarily paralyzed by the realization that the alien had understood Zhdanov’s question!
Knightwood’ mouth had dropped open at this realization. She closed it. They continued further.
It looks like we made an error in our calculations of what constitutes remote, Knightwood thought. But then, we were only looking at the visible cities, comparable to our own variety.
The aliens, however, continued without hesitation. When they reached the entrance to the hillside, the leader called out and waited until the door rose.
Zhdanov stooped his head, not sure what to expect. To his surprise, the door opened into a well-lit silver corridor, with gleaming metallic walls. Once the entire group had proceeded, the head alien stopped. A rumbling tremor vibrated beneath their feet, and the floor moved forward, sending them past infinite corridors.
“Wow!” Kusao said out loud, softly.
The team and aliens came to a great city, passed tall dwellings and open fountains and gardens, and traveled at a great speed for twenty minutes when the sky opened up above them. Before them rose breathtaking cylinders, cones, and pyramids of glittering silver, but in a moment they passed into another tunnel and crossed several intersecting corridors.
Without wood, the aliens had built their city entirely out of metal. Zhdanov tried to catch his breath as the floor finally stopped at the edge of a cavernous dome, where a meeting of thousands awaited the arrival of their human guests.
* * * * *
When the aliens first appeared, Erin could not recover from the shock of seeing them, or rather, from the unusual effect seeing them had upon her memory. Her body followed Knightwood blindly, as her mind’s eye conjured the image of a green creature frozen in time, three-dimensional diagrams depicting its life functions. The image soon faded, and Erin’s vision returned, but her mind caught hold of the strange alien words coming from the female guard at her side.
All at once the strange words resolved into ideas and thoughts, temporarily rushing over a mental barrier, a wall she had built up long ago in her own mind to protect her cherished illusion from her real self.
And she understood the aliens’ speech!
* * * * *
One of the creatures was addressing the alien assembly, only now Erin understood him.
“At first when we detected the short burst of gravity waves that vanished under what can only be an Imperial gravitational cloak, we thought the Empire had at last returned, after thousands of years of silence.
“But look at them, brothers.” The short, leathery-skinned male made no gesture to convey the disdain in his tone. “These creatures are not the emissaries we expected, nor can we determine how such a people obtained an Empire vessel. Therefore we must ask them—and if necessary force them to relinquish control of their ship to us. Power cannot be left in such primitive, irresponsible hands. We are the fourth colony of the Tiernan civilization. Remember, our new leader has charged us to safeguard the Collective.”
It must have returned, the great ship Selesta, just like Fistian the ancient said it would, the creature who had spoken thought as the others considered his words. Fools. They haven’t recognized what we are dealing with. If reports from Tiernan are correct, the Empire is dead, and the old territories have been set adrift to survive on their own. If it is the Selesta—
Damn the leader. I will bring order to our galactic system, and if the other systems require assistance to rise, I will establish an order for them. I will take the ship from them.
He suddenly noticed Erin regarding him.
Who is that one? Those eyes—she isn’t one of them.
“Council of Elphor, I appeal to you to let us go free.” Erin said loudly, interrupting the alien debate, now speaking in the aliens’ language! “We meant no insult to your world in taking from your harvest. But we have traveled a great distance and needed to feed our crew. Please forgive our intrusion and allow us to return to our ship. We will promise to leave your area and your Collective in peace.”
Zhdanov had been wondering what the group of aliens deliberated when Erin Mathieson had suddenly stepped forward. Then she had begun to speak the alien’s tongue!
Zhdanov sucked his breath in so hard that he started coughing. The others just stared in mute shock.
* * * * *
The aliens responded to Erin’s outburst with several moments of silence, as if they were each mulling over what she had said. Some of them appeared unable to surmount their surprise, if their expressions could be read correctly by the Earth observers who had been similarly paralyzed by the same feeling.
Then the head of the council conferred among the others. Finally, the creatures seemed to have reached an agreement, except the aggressive one, and the head of the council turned to regard their prisoners, addressing himself entirely to Erin Mathieson.
“I see that our reports were incorrect. Apparently there is a translator among you. Let me begin by saying that we do not understand nor did we anticipate your presence here. Our Collective has lived free from the Empire for more than twenty thousand Seynor years.” He paused, looked about, then continued.
“Our ancestors came from Tiernan, but our planet here called Elphor was never an Empire world. This much we know, though our people have long anticipated word from the ancient nexus around Seynorynael. Tell us now—what has happened to the Empire? Have you indeed returned to us on Selesta?”
“We know nothing of the Empire you speak of.” Erin insisted, deciding to be honest. “We are travelers from a planet called Earth. As I have explained, our ship, the Discovery, was not equipped with adequate supplies to sustain us. The reasons are not important, except that our departure was accelerated by accident. I do not know anything of a Selesta.”
The council listened and conferred again.
“What you ha
ve said would explain the errors in our initial assumptions concerning your people. Yet we thought—we felt sure—we did not know how you came to possess the ship Selesta, but if she is not—then you cannot be emissaries from the Empire. Yes, it would be unlikely that the Elders would send an envoy of non-Seynor to govern us,” he added and gesticulated a sign of approval, seeing the logic.
“And I doubt that any force could seize the ancient Empire’s greatest vessel from Hinev’s explorers—no, it would be an impossible feat for a species such as yours... Forgive some of us for assuming that you had come to us from the Empire and for contemplating force against you on those grounds. But a ship like yours visited Elphor long ago, soon after the first colony was built here. She had come from our mother world Tiernan, that fell to the Empire soon after, harboring the first Seynorynaelians ever to reach our people.
“This ship was called the Selesta, and it looked the same as yours does.
“But we are curious to know what territory you come from, why we have not heard from the other constituents. And we have not heard of your “Earth”. After eons of independence, we should like to know what became of the other worlds, now only known through myth, for we have lost contact with the old principalities. The transmissions we receive now mean nothing to us, for Seynorynaelian, the Empire language, as a language has died out in our Collective, and knowledge of the other tongues is less.
“I do not— I do not understand.” Said Erin. “We have no knowledge of a place called Seynorynael, this Empire you speak of.”
“But we see that your race has preserved some of the history, that you must still possess interpreters if you can understand our speech,” he disagreed with her. “Now we ask if you can help us to discover what has happened in exchange for the supplies you have taken. We will of course release your comrades and welcome you to our city if you can accept our offer of cooperation.”
The aliens waited for Erin to confer with her team; the Earth crew, sensing that they were expected to respond, gathered around Erin to learn what had transpired. Zhdanov decided he would have to wait to figure out how Erin had been able to communicate with them; for now, the information that she had secured intrigued him.
“It must be a case of mistaken identity,” Knightwood suggested. “But my question is, will they keep us here and leave us alive if we don’t play along?”
The others nodded significantly.
“Are you up to the analysis, Erin?” Kusao asked, and Erin nodded slightly.
“All right then, Erin, tell them we’ll try to help in any way we can,” Zhdanov said, “but we can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to give them what they want.”
As Erin moved to relay the message, Knightwood whispered to Zhdanov.
“You don’t suppose the Discovery was once the ship of these Saynor-i-nay-yel people they mentioned, do you?”
“Who knows?” Zhdanov sighed. “Perhaps it was. But did you hear what she said—they’ve seen others like us, on some other planet. This changes everything—all that we know of evolution and history—I’m not certain of anything anymore, but I do know one thing—we have to figure out how to control Discovery and find that place!”
“If these aliens don’t try to take her from us.” Knightwood observed. “I would love to learn all we can from these people, but—if they figure out that we don’t know anything, they might think we stole the ship after all. In a way—it’s close to the truth.” She admitted. “Even though we found her abandoned, I guess we took her without looking for the owners. They may not respect our claim to her.”
“Then let’s just hope Erin can keep up the charade until we’re out of here.” Zhdanov said and crossed his fingers. “And how in the first place is it she can talk to them?! Hopefully, we’ll get that answer as well.”
* * * * *
The Elphorans invited the crew to dine with them in a large banquet room; Knightwood wondered if they could eat the Elphoran fare, but as it turned out, the Elphorans served them food consisting largely of the dthúl vegetable Kusao had discovered, prepared in various ways and one of the main ingredients of their dishes; the Elphorans also gave them water and a fermented drink made from the sap of the dthúl trees called ftur-ómb.
Meanwhile, Erin was taken to an archives building of some sort, where hundreds of important looking dignitaries watched her efforts at translating the ancient recordings they had preserved. She tried without success for more than thirty Earth hours with little rest, listening to various scraps in untold languages, until at last one of them had made sense.
The aliens, having grown restless, rushed to surround her when she at last began to speak. The short, faint signal had been one of the oldest in their collection, dating back thirty thousand years or so.
“... we urge all colonies to send representatives to Tulor to hold—no,” Erin paused, “—to determine the outcome of the cluster in light of the cataclysm—” The signal degenerated into unintelligible words, partially distorted by the cosmic radiation that it had traveled through before it arrived on Elphor, partially distorted no doubt by the imperfection of the medium that had picked it up and the deterioration over time of the grid upon which it had been recorded.
The simple breakthrough was enough to satisfy the observers; the message, though ambiguous, sent them into a frenzy. They asked her to teach them the ancient language, but she had to reply that she didn’t understand how she had been able to interpret it.
“I don’t know how I can understand the language.” She said with a shudder. “I can’t help you if I can’t remember what I know and what I don’t until I hear it.”
The disappointment in this reply only marginally abated their enthusiasm. Apparently, the translator had been programmed to understand certain languages without conscious comprehension, but it did not matter. From the message and the other two trivial scraps she translated next, their specialists would begin to decipher the meaning of the individual words and begin to reconstruct the language.
“We will use your translations,” they said. “It may take a while to decipher the rest, but we’ll get on it right away.”
Erin decided to broach a few questions of her own.
“What do you Ephorans know of Seynorynael and the ship Selesta? I am curious what these things are about.”
“Hmmm,” the scientist talking with her appeared disturbed by her question, and somewhat confused.
“Never mind,” said Erin, but the damage was done.
Perhaps they are from the Empire—she heard his thoughts all of a sudden—but why would they wish to visit us? The scientist wondered. If the Empire has not been destroyed, if it has only gone into decline since the cataclysm, why would they invest such an effort to come to our world? Unless the Empire has arisen again... Perhaps I should speak with Dumumveh—the Empire and its colonies cannot refuse protecting another colonial envoy to the center of the Great Cluster. Then we will know.
Shortly afterward, Erin rejoined the others at another banquet on the evening of the next day. Knightwood and Zhdanov asked her to translate much of the information to the crew, answering questions they had formed while observing their hosts. Then, moments after Erin finished telling them her story, Knightwood tapped the side of her glass thoughtfully.
“We can’t do anything now, but if you’re right, we have to find a way out of here soon—like you said, before they can propose any venture with us. We have our own problems to worry about.”
Erin shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I know.”
“Have you tasted this?” Lieutenant Kusao pointed to a green concoction that had been placed before Erin, who sat on his right. “It’s terrific,” he enthused, taking another helping without worrying if Elphoran custom held anything against gluttony.
“You are such a clown,” she laughed with him, and they drank some more together.
“I’d like to ask them if we can leave tomorrow,” Erin whispered to Zhdanov two seats away, making a mental calculation. The sci
entist’s request was not likely to reach the Head of the Council until the next morning after the ceremonial feast, after which all thoughts were bent towards the rite of harmony. The Head of the Council would be bound to fulfill his promise to let the team leave since they had cooperated. If not—
“If we have already finished our end of the bargain, there should be no reason we have to stay,” Zhdanov agreed. “They should understand we have our own imperatives and cannot tarry. Discovery may not wait for us to return from our vacation. We could be stranded here forever if we tarry here.”
Erin nodded and got up from the Earth side of the banquet dais. Halting before the Head of the Council, she spread her arms wide in the Elphoran fashion of seeking an audience and delivered their appeal.
The Elphorans conversed moments longer, and though reluctant to grant such a request in the middle of the banquet, gave them permission to return to their ship as soon as word could be sent for a shuttle to take them home.
* * * * *
The shuttle team picked a fortunate moment to return; only a few hours after the returning crew had reboarded the ship, Discovery headed into the mouth of another wormhole and left the system.
Recomputing their new location proved difficult without a star chart, and the scientists on the bridge had no idea where to begin looking for familiar cosmic and stellar features. Yet since they could not recognize any of the local stars, they could determine that they had at least passed beyond the range of the local star groups nearest the Elphoran civilization.
At first, Colonel Kansier refused to believe the ground team’s report about lieutenant Mathieson and called a meeting for Knightwood and Zhdanov to explain it to him, Dr. Cheung, Dr. Koslov, and a few of the other shipboard scientists.
“I don’t know how she did it,” Knightwood said, shrugging. “Perhaps...” Knightwood suddenly turned pale as the thought occurred to her, and the others listened patiently. “Dr. Cameron—that has to be it. It’s the only reasonable explanation.”