The crowd waved as we stepped onto the ladder which would allow us to descend to the new world. There were quite a few smaller creatures, probably children, waving tiny colourful flags reproducing the beautiful hues of their feathery hair. Most of them were adults. They stood either around two metres high, much taller than us, or a little shorter than us, presumably the females.
One of the shorter people stepped forward. ‘Mark, it’s Stroya,’ she said and offered the larger of her left hands to me.
Un-gloved, despite the cold, it was quite slender with three long, delicate fingers sandwiched between two opposable thumbs. Each finger had three joints below the main knuckle, one more than us. The fingers sported nails which could easily be described as talons, although the thumbs appeared to have no nails at all.
I took it in my left hand taking care not to allow the talons to damage my gloves. ‘Pleased to meet you, Stroya, and your people. Thank you for this wonderful welcome.’
‘It is we who need to thank you, Mark. You are saving our species from extinction.’ I could feel the warmth of her hand through the glove. ‘This is Gurd,’ she said.
A larger alien stepped forward. My one point seven five metres was dwarfed by him and I had to look upwards into his face. He, too, offered his left hand, which sported short red feathery hair on its back, and I shook it. ‘Lovely to meet you, Gurd,’ I said as Chi was shaking Stroya’s hand.
‘We need to take care that we don’t damage these suits, so please explain to your people that we need to be wary of touching too many of you,’ I said.
‘No, I understand,’ said Gurd and he turned and spoke in their language, presumably telling them about the danger to us. I did manage to make out a few words, but he spoke too quickly for me to be able to follow the whole statement.
Both Stroya and Gurd wore loose trousers and jackets made of a fluffy material, obviously selected for its warmth. The jackets were held tightly closed around their necks. The respirators covered the whole of the snout area of their faces with two circular goggle features covering their eyes.
‘Come with us, visit our home,’ said Stroya.
Chi closed our hatch and we headed towards the location of their complex, surrounded by a gaggling horde of excited aliens of all sizes. I think it was only now that I truly appreciated that our arrival had been the equivalent of a miracle to them. I wondered about the first community we had contacted before our return to Earth. Tosh was right. We must make every effort to find them and rescue them too. Perhaps some of this colony could come with us to make the explanation of what had happened more believable. How must that first group be feeling, thinking we’d abandoned them to their fate.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Firstly, we had to board a six-wheeled, open truck with eight seats plus a central driver at the front. Taking care not to damage our suits, we took the seats behind Gurd who started the electric vehicle and drove us to the entrance of the complex. I noticed that once we reached the prostrate vitamin supply tank, the road became machined flat and level, although we were still driving over sheet ice. Despite some insulation, the cold was penetrating our suits and I was looking forward to getting inside.
We disembarked at the main facility. The building stood about ten metres high and twenty-five wide. At ground level, there was a central pair of doors more than three metres wide and nearly three high. To either side were windows.
One of the males approached a console beside the door and flipped up a protective cover. Inside, there were three buttons – orange, green and yellow. The alien pressed the left, orange, button.
A whirring sound could be heard and one side of the door opened inwards.
‘Please enter,’ said Gurd. ‘It’s an airlock.’
The cavity inside was surprisingly large, wide enough to take in both windows and at least eight metres deep. It was spacious enough to take several vehicles. Of course, they would have had to have brought all of the supplies in from our vitamin supply ship.
A horde of aliens crowded in with us, but most would have to wait for the next cycling. Once inside, Gurd turned and pressed a yellow button which caused the door to close and seal.
‘Sorry,’ said Stroya, ‘we cannot afford to allow too much of our atmosphere to leak, so we need to wait while the air in here is augmented. We add oxygen to it and the noise you can hear is a filter which removes gases which are not welcome.’
I heard the sounds but felt nothing. We’d be on our suit air supplies anyway as we did not want to risk breathing their air and, perhaps, contaminating ourselves with unwelcome microorganisms.
The atmosphere cycling ceased and an equally large door in front of us swung open. The aliens were stripping off their respirators and opening their heavy jackets. Inside there was a welcoming warm glow from the lights and a delegation of Heradians awaited us. Most of the crowd dispersed, but we were guided forward towards the dignitaries. Without their overcoats, the colours of their exposed body feathers were spectacular on shoulders, arms and the males’ lower legs.
Central, were two tall males, even bigger than Gurd. Both wore colourful capes over simple but dignified tunics of what looked like magnolia linen, contrasting with their vibrant feathers. Stroya stepped forward and spoke to them. ‘Let me introduce you to Earth leader, Mark Noble and his pilot Chi Wang,’ she said in slow, deliberate English.
They both stepped forward and offered their larger left hands. The one on the left said, ‘We the Kuthrad, joint leaders of colony. Sorry – Earth tongue new.’
‘No problem,’ I said in my pidgin Heradian, ‘You speak well. Good to meet you.’
The Kuthrad leader on the right spoke in Heradian, too fast for me to understand. Stroya translated, ‘Both are delighted to meet you as the salvation of our Arctur colony. He says that they thought the end was approaching. The number with skin and organ problems from lack of some vitamins was growing and children were dying before they even reached school age.’
‘We are only too pleased to have helped,’ I said in English which Stroya swiftly translated.
The left Kuthrad spoke in Heradian. Stroya translated again. ‘He tells you that his daughter, me, will show you around some important parts of the complex and then he would like you to meet the governing council.’
‘That sounds fine,’ I said, ‘but we must sit regularly as we’ve been in free fall for a while. It affects our muscles, and your gravity is stronger than Earth’s which makes us feel heavy.’
‘Yes,’ said Stroya who barked a few words to an assistant who ran off in the opposite direction.
The Kuthrad bowed and it was echoed by the rest of the party which stood behind and to each side of them. They turned and followed a corridor away from the entrance area.
‘Come with me,’ said Stroya, but first she stripped off the furry trousers and jacket, hanging them with others on the wall of the entrance lobby. She set off along a passage on the left with us in pursuit. Her assistant caught up with us and showed us that she had two foldup chairs if we needed them.
I suppose, if you were a Heradian, the corridors seemed homely. Certainly, they had adorned them with lovely photographs of their home planet which was, before the coming of the weed, a lovely world. The colours were unearthly, as might be expected in the red sunlight of Trappist-1, but it was still far more beautiful than the grey and brown world we had recently been studying with our probes. Both Chi and I stopped several times, sat in the foldup chairs, and studied the rural scenes of eight-legged animals fulfilling the roles of sheep, cattle and pigs back on Earth.
‘Why do you not use your other pair of limbs?’ asked Chi.
‘Our third pair is almost vestigial and always kept hidden within our clothing,’ she said.
‘You don’t use them at all?’
‘Not in everyday functions.’ She lowered her voice. ‘They have an important function in our reproduction rituals.’
That sounded interesting but the shyness of her reply decided me to leave it until another time.
‘Come in here,’ Stroya said, holding a swing door open for us at the end of the corridor.
The room was cavernous. Considering all of this was constructed inside the hillside, the engineering feat must have been immense.
Large images were set onto the walls with seats before them. ‘These are historical videos from Herade. There are one or two I’d like you to see. Take a seat in front of this image of one of our important cities back home.’
We sat and I noticed Gurd had joined us too. The image showed tall buildings laid out on a grid, very much like many towns in the USA. There were no huge skyscrapers, but many buildings had more than thirty storeys. Suddenly the scene came to life.
Motorised vehicles were whizzing up and down the streets which also thronged with people. The scene cut to street level and we watched crowds of shoppers going about their business, and alien cars and buses stopping and spilling their passengers onto the pavements. It could easily have been Fifth Avenue on a pre-holiday weekend and the people’s natural colours added a sense of festival to what we were seeing.
‘The film lasts about an hour, but we’d like to show you as much as possible in a short time. Let’s leave this one now and go on to the next one. You could easily spend days in the museum,’ said Gurd.
‘Fascinating,’ I said, rising from my seat and following our hosts to the next mini-cinema.
Here we were treated to a film of domesticated animals, the next showed wildlife, another of birds and creatures in the oceans of Heradian. At one point, some of the eight-legged dogs which had destroyed our probe were shown.
‘We saw those, Stroya, when we sent a second probe down,’ said Chi.
‘Really? Some animals have survived, then,’ said Stroya.
‘We’d love to see your video, Mark,’ said Gurd. ‘We’ve not seen a live Heradian animal for centuries.’
‘I’ll get a copy sent down,’ I said.
Other films showed manufacturing, and team and individual sports. So much of Heradian life mirrored our own.
A later film was obviously taken here, on Arctur. The camera was taken along a misty or smoky corridor and in through a large door. Inside, we were faced with total destruction. Hundreds of still smouldering frames stretched into the distance. This was one of the hydroponic farms which had been destroyed by fire. The camera showed dozens of aliens running to and fro, picking things up from the floor and placing them in baskets or sacks.
‘What are you all doing?’ I asked.
‘They’re collecting as many seeds and fruits as possible as we hoped we might be able to clone them or get them to germinate,’ said Stroya.
‘And did they?’
‘A small percentage, yes, but too much was lost,’ she said.
From the museum, we were taken into another huge cavern which was packed, floor to ceiling with hydroponics. This was one of the existing farms and showed us what the destroyed farm must have looked like before the fire.
‘We had four of these,’ said Gurd. ‘The fire destroyed two of them and we lost half of our unique species.’
‘It is that which is causing our sicknesses. We had been foolish. Instead of spreading some of the plants throughout all four caverns, each cavern held a quarter of the species. We thought that foolishness signed our death warrants,’ added Stroya. ‘Let me show you the work that’s going on today in one of the other caverns.’
The next area was a hive of industry. New frameworks filled the cavern. We walked almost a quarter of a mile to the end of the cavern, having to sit several times. Here the frames were receiving much stronger sunlight than Trappist-1 provided.
‘These,’ Gurd said proudly, ‘are hydroponics using seeds of Earth plants.’ He touched some of the delicate green shoots which were floating on the water in glass containers. ‘In a few weeks, we’ll be eating these.’
‘What are they?’ asked Chi.
Stroya read a label on the frame, ‘It says, “Pisum sativum”.’
‘Peas,’ I said.
‘They’re small round vegetables which come in pods. Very tasty,’ said Chi.
‘Right,’ said Gurd. ‘No one gave us images of the seeds they sent.’
‘I’ll get some sent down to you from our onboard reference library,’ I said.
Our tour continued with machine shops, chemical laboratories, heating and air conditioning plants and finally the power plant which was supplied by tanks of oil outside the complex. By now we were flagging.
‘You need to stop?’ asked Stroya.
‘Soon,’ I said. ‘Where do you get the oil?’
‘At some time in antiquity, Arctur had plants and swamps, but we believe a passing planetoid knocked it out of its orbit, somewhere between what you call Haven and Broakal, the one you call planet D,’ said Gurd. ‘It settled into a new orbit here and became an ice world. During its hot period, the oil and coal were laid down.’
‘Was it difficult to extract?’ I asked.
‘No. We have capped a well of an oilfield which lies under here and run the oil through a small refinery and on to one of our external tanks along a short pipeline. It is a huge supply. Endless for a colony like ours.’
‘And oxygen?’ I asked.
‘From the water in the lake,’ the alien said. ‘We break it down into its constituent parts and use the waste gas as a secondary energy supply for the residential areas.’
‘We call that gas hydrogen,’ I said.
‘Come,’ said Stroya. ‘Let me show you where I live.’
We walked at least another quarter of a mile along narrower corridors. Chi and I were becoming quite fatigued by now. My calves, in particular, were aching.
Stroya ushered us into a small apartment. She had a kitchen, about four metres by three, what appeared to serve as a bathroom, a cosy bedroom with pictures of Herade on the wall and, finally, a lounge area with flatscreen monitor, comfortable chairs, bookcases, shelves holding ornaments and keepsakes, and family photographs on the walls – several in incredible three dimensions.
‘We meet the council in an hour. Take some time to relax after all the walking. Free fall affects your muscles?’
‘Yes,’ said Chi, ‘but it soon goes off, usually within a week or two.’
‘I can’t offer you anything to drink?’ Stroya asked.
‘No, but we have fluid we can drink within our suits,’ said Chi.