Legend of Earth

The group led the terranauts along the cliff face that turned north of the waterfall. Mygs kept his face forward, expressionless. One of the lessons of contact was to do things as closely like the new creatures as possible, so that they feel less intimidated. Mygs noted that the stellasen’s owl-like faces didn’t wrinkle and stretch like a human face, so he kept his still when they might be looking. Amper, on the other hand, seemed to have forgotten the lessons from the academy, and while he did remember to not look them in the eye for long, he constantly looked around, and didn’t keep from making expressions about their surroundings as they trekked.

The far side of the cliff yielded a low-ceilinged cave, which must have been created by the river at some point in the past, now guarded by long grasses and short shrubs. Trees didn’t seem to want to grow in this area. Everyone ducked as they entered the dark stone crevasse, and as they stood upright again inside, the torches’ lights flashed around them on the rock cavern’s sides. The echo of footsteps and dislodged pebbles accompanied them along their way down a hill with a switch-back trail that had steps carved into it when needed. At each turn of the trail stood a rock that had been carved-into and painted to resemble something with eyes only, and a small white dot in the middle of each eye. Mygs looked back at Amper, nearly imperceptibly, to make sure he saw the figures. Amper widened his eyes at Mygs, not sure what to think of it. Was this a sign of worship? Guardians? A warning system to keep other tribes away?

The stellasen reached the bottom of the cave entrance hill, and dirt path gave-in to wide rock stairs. Something like streets seemed to be leading in a fan-shape where dwellings had been built on either side of each path, made of some sort of grainy mud as well as river stones. The cave was enormous, anywhere from twice as high as a man to five meters up, but opening to their right far enough for the end to not be visible. Three very wide, walled structures had been built from the cave floor all the way to the ceiling, and took-up much of the ample space. Amper thought of arenas or sacred rituals in these closed-off places that, if partitioned inside, could house ten families. Lamps were created to burn every few yards on posts standing over the roads, appearing to be fed with a liquid of some sort to burn. Light also glowed out of windows, some of which were blocked by shutters made of tree bark or woven with sticks.

As they were led to their left, down the biggest lane that appeared to wrap around what turned out to be a vast city underground, common dwellers and stellasen guards with what looked like the quarter-staff from ancient Robin Hood stories, stared at the newcomers, some following. Voices murmured with guttural whispers Amper couldn’t understand, but Mygs managed to fall into step with him and whispered to him,

“They’re wondering how strong we are.”

“Strong?”

Was there going to be a test of strength? Did they have to defeat someone before they could be accepted? Presently, to their right a wide avenue met their path and split-off in two directions. They were led down the leftmost direction that ended in a half-circle courtyard with the wall of the gigantic cave disappearing into jagged shadows behind it.

A drab-robed figure emerged from those shadows, adjusting its garment as though having donned it hurriedly. Wide, dark eyes stared at them with barely-veiled wonder from under its hood, and when a nearby attendant handed the leader its scepter, the eyes never wavered but approached through hovering awe and stood in the middle of what would have been a circle, the rescue party and injured stellasen presenting their group in the half-circle of dusty, cobbled floor. Hallowed lamps were being lit, and a strange green color emitted from them.

Words were spoken. Amper watched, amazed by the sound of their murmured popping, clicking speech. Somewhere from behind the robed creature he could hear dripping in the shadows. When the leader spoke, the voice sounded decidedly feminine.

Mygs covertly muttered to Amper. “They told the…Anchoress… what happened and that I saved… Mushroom, and that I seem to understand.”

“Mushroom?” Amper was too amazed to laugh.

“That’s how it seems. His name,” Mygs glanced at the injured who was trying to not notice them talking. “She said ‘it is good,’ and ‘the current smiles on us all.’”

Amper only nodded, now frozen because the Anchoress’ eyes were on them. She said something else, her attention on Mygs. She gestured toward him as she spoke, and Amper kept his eyes on her. Were there jewels of some sort imbedded in her face and fingers? She was quiet, now, staring at Mygs, waiting for an answer.

“The same way you might understand me,” Said Mygs solidly, having apparently known what she’d said. “I don’t know how, but I do understand some.”

Gently startled, the Anchoress stared in amazement while others around her muttered among each other. She spoke a question to the crowd, indicating the people nearest in the circle. They all nodded, some staring at Mygs, others staring at Amper.

She spoke again to Mygs.

He shook his head, glancing at Amper. “No, he doesn’t understand you.”

Why do you understand, but he does not? Amper could only guess what she was asking, but Mygs’ answer confirmed the question.

“I don’t know how I know. But while he doesn’t understand you, he does understand others on this planet: the nemectes,” Mygs explained.

Everyone muttered again, shoulders lifting and heads shaking. The Anchoress spoke quietly to her attendant who also shook its head. Mygs and Amper looked at each other. The stellasen didn’t know the nemectes.

This nemectes, it is another lifeform?

“Yes, they are like trees, only with hearts that beat and willpower to communicate.”

And where do they live? On the mountains?

“All around here, in the forest,” said Mygs. “Their leaves are shapes unlike other trees.”

Do you also communicate with these trees?

“I cannot. He interprets so that I know what they say.”

He shares their words.

“Yes. We are… stewards of information, from deep in the sky. We came here in a sky-ship and are trying to learn about this planet. Our people started here long, long ago.”

You have been here before!

“The places our ancestors built are beneath the dirt.”

The structure at the waterfall –

Was built by humans like me and Amper thousands of years ago.

And you came back in a sky-ship. Where have your people been if not here? Why did you leave?

At this, Mygs broke the chain of communication and looked at Amper. “They want to know everything. Where you and I came from in our ship, why the humans left so long ago… they’re going to have a lot more questions, too.”

“And so do we. Are we going to stand here all day like this exchanging answers?”

“I think we should do whatever they want to while they aren’t sure about us. They won’t listen to our opinion about things if they don’t trust us.”

Amper and Mygs shifted attention when the Anchoress suddenly spoke again, first to the men then to the surrounding group of stellasens. Mygs nodded and told Amper, “She says we are to be welcomed into the community and will teach them many things. Also, there would be no… eating of strength. Because greater strength is in our knowledge.”

“No what?” Amper’s eyes were wide, appalled. “They were going to eat our strength! That’s why they were asking?”

Mygs shrugged, then shuddered. “Good thing we both have something to offer intellectually.”

They were led to one of the major mud structures in the cave that had been built from floor to ceiling and appeared more square than the smaller mud huts, which appeared rounded and even had some “roof gardens” of mushrooms and what looked like flowering nettles of some sort and fern. The Anchoress saw them looking around and told Mygs,

We have gardens down here, and even let in light to help them grow. There are chimneys through the ground above us that let air in, and we were fortunate enough to find an ancient, unnatural light-casting wall from, apparently, your ancient people. It is set-up under a chimney that brings light in during the middle of the day, and the light glows our city here. We realize how the light helps to nurture things, but our bodies don’t live well with light, so we don’t welcome it for long down here.

Mygs related all of this to Amper as they stood outside one of the large structures along the wide cave, waiting for the Anchoress to prepare the way in. This structure actually seemed to be built into the wall of the cave, and its door had been constructed into a small tunnel entrance, so no one could just go in without investigation because there wasn’t room for passing someone coming out. Heading in, the darkness and intrigue of the entrance caused a shiver to span Mygs’ spine, and Amper’s stomach dropped and soured with the feeling of being trapped in an unknown cave with unknown creatures. Would Shhah be able to reach him here if he spent the night? Would he ever hear her again?

Mygs stepped out of the tunnel doorway and into the structure behind the Anchoress. Behind him he heard Amper gasp, matching the awe running through Mygs.

Welcome to The Vastus, he heard the Anchoress say.

The ceiling hung twenty feet above Mygs and Amper as they stared, and bright glowing green globs dripped and strung across the void. There were broken holes like windows in the walls where hallways apparently snuck behind and up the structure, more green glows filtering behind the window edges in the tunnel beyond. The echo of drips and footsteps of hidden visitors in the dark walls created a hallowed, magical, and foreboding climate for yet another adventure into which the terranauts had stumbled.

The Anchoress turned to address another stellasensus who approached. Mygs used the pause to keep Amper up to date.

“Vastus,” Mygs muttered as he traced the lacy glow with his gaze.

“What?” Amper asked, turning to him.

“She said Welcome to the Vastus. Vastus means ‘unoccupied,’ or… ‘waste,’ depending on how it’s used.”

“I think this must be about ‘unoccupied,’” Amper nodded.

“I hope so. Otherwise, it’s where they keep the ‘waste,’ and she brought us here.”

“We’re too valuable to be considered waste,” Amper asserted.

“Or they want us to think that.”

“Mygs, why are you saying that?” Amper glared at him incredulously.

“I just don’t want to let my guard down! We are essentially trapped right now!” he whispered harshly.

The Anchoress turned to them, letting the other stellasensus continue its tasks.

We have space for you to stay here. She gestured to the ceiling. There are many sections of compartments higher up in the Vastus. You would be sheltered from the weather and animals.

“We actually have some important… tools… at our camp by the waterfall, and should return there. Our sky ship is monitoring us and will wonder what happened. We need to assure them that we are fine.”

You can talk to your sky ship?

Mygs offered a brief explanation, and the Anchoress seemed to understand. She led the terranauts out of the tunnel doorway and to the dark opening that held the winding path and statues.

My people are usually to sleep by now, but you have distracted us immensely. The Anchoress smiled with her eyes more than she could with her beak. We should all sleep well now at this late hour. She stopped with them at the cave entrance. May you always stay in darkness and keep the watchers content, she said to Mygs, bowing, and then bowed to Amper. The men nodded back, and followed the guide assigned to take them back to their camp. Amper thought it was the cave explorer they had watched from camp who had run to get help. The night was nearing dawn. For Amper, Mygs repeated the blessing the Anchoress had said to them.

“The figures on the path with the white eyes. Watchers,” Amper surmised.

“That’s what I figure.”

“Do they worship these? Fear them? ‘May we keep them content’ suggests the watchers are holding something over them.”

“I know. I’m not sure about that.” Mygs shook his head. “But what I do know is that the cave where the Vastus is – it used to be a human building. Like Persevere’s Lab and Science University, only under eons worth of dirt!”

“There could be one-hundred-seventy-thousand-years-old artifacts behind those walls!”

“Or more according to the Premedianists.”

“What do they say now, it’s three hundred thousand years ago we escaped?”

“The only way to really know is by studying where we are, now that we’re here. Boy, to get our hands on whatever’s in there. If we can bring instruments, we could date the building material”

Mygs meant the general “we” of scientists, and the “now” of “from now on.” At the base of the falls, the men said farewell to their guide and spent the rest of the night recording a vectype update into the system for Command to view and interpret. It took a good hour-and-a-half and some hasty drawings of the cave on Amper’s part that they scanned into the camera.

They fell asleep as dawn crept into their little cove. The roar of the waterfall helped to drown out the waking animals outside, and Amper had no dreams of communication.

CHAPTER 11

They had set an alarm for ten, and when it went off they groggily woke up and packed their things. They noted some signs of wildlife having checked out their spot while they were gone, but nothing was ruined. They got the message from Command to traverse the river for another thirty kilometers and then go on foot from there. They still had a good three days to go.

“No communication with Shhah?” Mygs asked. Amper shook his head.

They secured everything in their raft and shoved-off down E91, the main river that the “psychopath” fed into. Not as winding, the men looked around leisurely. Mygs turned on his iriscope, since they were getting closer to the asteroid and more stellasens could be out there. After having traveled most of the day, they passed out of high cliffs, and saw flatter forest with some clearings, one of which was wide with a single large oak-type tree in the middle, half of which was glistening. Amper pointed it out so that Mygs would get it on vectype. The leaves and bark on the north east side was normal, but the bark and leaves on the southwest were glistening like silver.

“Some type of moss?” Mygs speculated.

Amper shrugged. “Or parasitic remanence. Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe we can explore it later…” his voice drifted off in thought.

“It’s gotta be a nemectis.”

“I think – it must be The Dawning. Whoever it is, we’ll see if I meet it tonight, since we’re so close now.”

The raft moved on.

At their rate, they made 30 km just as they approached more hills and cliffs, and needed to dock anyhow and make camp. As they set up their homebase in twilight, figures emerged from the water and approached them tentatively. They were stellasensus but had a different look about them than the cave-dwellers. Rather than scales, they had a type of smooth fur and their noses were made of slits and whiskers rather than beaks. When Mygs greeted them, their meek demeanor changed to friendly confidence, and the fish they brought as gifts were presented with an air of jollity. They stayed and ate with the terranauts, exchanging information and stories of the area, even showing them how to add a type of nearby root to the fire as a delicious addition to the meal.

The new friends from the river never showed fatigue, and when Amper yawned, they excused themselves. Amper and Mygs felt like celebrities. Dousing the fire, they felt more confident about the sounds in the woods as they went to bed, now that they’d met their latest friends.

They discussed how used to living life at night the stellasens seemed to be. That fish dinner must have been their breakfast. Did they all live in the water or underground? Were any of them adapted to the sunlight? That bridge indicated that some of them might live out of caves and water, or else went hunting or on exploration. Their typical activity being witnessed mostly in or near dark hours suggested that the daytime was their time to sleep.

“This is just the beginning,” Amper assured. “We can’t know all about them in the first instant.”

“That’s true,” Mygs nestled into his pillow. “I’m glad that I will be the first choice for communication with them when research is established.”

“You would have to be the only choice, if your celestial intelligence dictates communication. And the only reason I will be first choice for the nemectes is because I was the first to learn about them. After that, every other human-based creature should be able to communicate with the nemectes. YOU will certainly be unique. You’ve cornered that career.”

“It is a whole new future, now.”

They were both silent for a few minutes, Amper in his thoughts and Mygs dropping into sleep. But before he could, Amper quietly asked,

“Do you think we’ll see Persevere again? I mean, really.”

“Mmhh…” Mygs mumbled out of his pillow. “I just – don’t think of it. We have a lot to think of here. Go to sleep, Amp.”

“Right.” But he wasn’t sleeping. So much had changed on Earth, so many new creatures, intelligences, communications. As tired as he was, he couldn’t make his mind stop.

“You’re breathing,” Mygs mumbled again after hearing Amper sigh a second time.

“Sorry. Should I stop?”

At Amper’s sarcasm, Mygs got up on his elbows. “Look. We are experiencing what no one thought we would ever experience. Amper, we are in history books already and we’re finding amazing things that will build our previous history correctly. We’ve already disproven the Mythads! Half our lives were built toward this, and now we’re here! How can you think of home!”

Amper nodded. “Yeah, I guess. It’s just…” he sighed again, “It’s so different here from there. I guess there’s been enough time away, and enough foreign experiences, that I really notice my memories of Persevere and family and the things I was starting to plan there: a career, wife, family. This is so different from that.”

“Yes. Different.” Mygs exaggerated his reply. “What did you think – we’d find polysteel generators and solar dome panels here on Earth? ‘Different’ is an understatement.”

“That’s not what I – I mean, I guess… that THIS has always been a dream, and somewhere inside me, as much as I believed in Earth, I also believed I’d live my whole life on Persevere in the comforts of what I know. And now I’m not. And I’m just… conflicted maybe a little.” They were silent a moment. “I’ll get over it, though,” he said with decisiveness.

“Well you better,” Mygs murmured softly, not with a smile, and not angrily. He lowered himself back down onto his pillow. “Now go to sleep. How else are you going to tell Shhah about this visit?”

Amper nodded, agreeing silently. He turned around and lied on his belly, how he fell asleep best. He didn’t think he’d see Shhah since he hadn’t the night before. Maybe there was another storm? He was mildly wishing a storm would happen near their camp when he saw the horizon of flickering, colorful tendrils lighting the darkness of communication.

“Amper, goodness you’re so close to The Dawning! You left so quickly last time, and I’ve been worried since!”

“I wasn’t sure I’d see you tonight!” Amper happily glowed yellow and green, with a lining of pink. “I didn’t see you last night, so-“

“I tried looking, but you were nowhere. You must have been very tired, not enough energy for your glow.”

“Actually, I was tired. I woke up suddenly last time because Mygs had seen that the stellasen were across the river from us in a cave! We ended up saving one from being crushed, and going with them to their home underground. Mygs understands them, and they him!”

“So, you understand the nemectes and he understands the stellasen! It makes sense that Mygs would understand, if he also has intelligence from an asteroid.”

“The important thing is that if you and the Anchoress – the leader of the stellasen – wanted to communicate for any reason, you could by way of me and Mygs.”

Shhah’s smoky curl turned orange. “Maybe they know about some of the strange things happening to us lately.”

“Strange things?”

“While the weather was still cold, we lost connection with Wehw, a tree that is actually not far from the river where you crossed at the waterfall. We haven’t felt his gloaming or the rise of the next Cyn-thialu that would be the incipient carrier from him. He’s there somewhere, and sometimes there are bursts of… sickness, I suppose, that feels like him. His communication breaks apart like… like water drips on it and disturbs it, so we can’t see clearly what he’s saying, and when we see his essence, his leaves are missing.” She twirled the hand-shaped leaves on her tendril momentarily.

“I think I might have felt him. While I was awake.” Amper turned white, blue and orange. “It was unsettling, like insects buzzing around me that I couldn’t see, but could hear.”

“That’s – sort of like it.” Shhah turned yellow and Amper could feel a smile, though trees couldn’t actually do that.

He sobered with a thought. “You communicate at night while you sleep. The stellasen are awake at night. It’s no wonder that you know so little about them, you never meet. Even if you did know, you couldn’t communicate.”

“One way we know that they’re out there,” Shhah turned blue with information, but also brown in trepidation. “One of us – Ynguh much further sunrise from you, but still in the area of the stellasen – said she woke up one day and one section of her bark had been stripped off. No animal in nature does that to such an extent, not even the hemoths with those giant cutters. They know to stay away from the nemectes.”

Amper recognized that “hemoth” was his platafant creature that had attacked the Legendbound. “I noted, in the pictures we took of Mrrl,” he reasoned to Shhah, “that his bark layer is extensively thick, and more like separate armor than a layer of what you’re made of. The stellasen must have figured that out and utilized your thick bark for their own purposes. They haven’t known that you’re intelligent creatures, and that what they’re doing is damaging to a living being.”

Shhah turned almost completely white, edged with yellow. “That’s why your being here is so momentous! What are the chances that, less than a generation after sky-intelligence is grown here, someone from our heritage who has been gone for countless lifetimes finally appears and brings someone who can communicate with both of our people!”

“Everything happens for a reason.” Amper also turned white with understanding, and one of his tendrils turned green and reached out to mingle with Shhah’s. “I’m so glad this has happened.” The darkness receded.

“You are near The Dawning,” she said quickly as she noted the light. “He has two different ways, and you don’t know the significance. I will tell you tomorrow!”

Amper turned orange and gray with curiosity and light frustration at not being able to find out now. His and Shhah’s mingling tendrils turned pink as the brightness encompassed them and he woke up feeling uplifted and cheerful.

“You’re certainly in a good mood,” Mygs noted, looking up from the plasmalite screen on the table. Amper was humming while packing-up and eating a breakfast bar. He shrugged, grinning, not explaining. How could he? Mygs wouldn’t understand the bridge-between-nemectes hypothesis that Amper thought he was experiencing. Mygs just turned back to his readings with an unsure half-smile, and wandered out to take pictures of their dinner guests’ webbed footprints in the riverbank.

After recording his conversation with Shhah, Amper joined Mygs and told him that they were near The Dawning, who didn’t trust Mygs, and that he thought it might be that massive tree that was half-silver. Mygs brought up the vectype image on the screen, gauging how far they’d gone past him. Amper nodded that it was him.

“Shhah said we don’t know the significance of his two different ways.” He loosely indicated the direction that the silver faced, and pointed to the non-silver side. “And she’d tell me tomorrow,” he mumbled around his food.

“So, are we not proceeding to the asteroid?” Mygs turned from the controls to put homebase away.

“How far do we have to go?” Amper shrugged.

“Give or take twelve kilometers, I think, over land that way.” Mygs pointed northeast through the trees. “That’s where this river spills into the lake where the asteroid landed and seems to be an island.”

“That should take us, what – a little less than a day through the woods?”

Mygs brought up he dermiscreen and looked at the map with the blinking indicator. They were actually only 12 kilometers away, and there were two easily-traversed clearings in their path. “Yeah. Maybe less,” he said to Amper.

“We can get there and do our thing with the drones today, and then spend the night there and I get information from Shhah, and we come back and trek to The Dawning if need be.” Amper gestured the plan, and tucked his granola bar wrapper into homebase’s modulation pocket next to the doorway.

“Amp –“ Mygs was still looking at the map that Command relayed live from the ship. “Look.” He proffered his arm with the screen, and poked and swiped to make the image of the nearby river more detailed. “What’s that?” he asked with some concern, zooming-in.

Only a little further down the river, where they hadn’t yet traveled, was what seemed to be the rope-hung beginnings of a rudimentary bridge spanning a high-cliff section of the river. They could make-out two posts on the opposite side of the river, and the real-time image from Command’s cameras showed movement on their side of the bridge. It was still in the works.

“They’re expanding!” Amper’s brows creased with concern. “Mygs, this isn’t good for the nemectes. The stellasen know that there are trees with really thick bark, and they harvest it – nemectes bark. They strip it off and use it.”

Mygs’ eyes went wide, and then he pressed them shut with a moan. “That’s what it was!” Amper looked at him with surprise. “In the stellasens cavern, on the walls of their mud huts,” Mygs gestured with one hand and squeezed the bridge of his nose with the other. “There was texture of some sort along with the mud, and it struck me but I couldn’t place it. It was the bark! Huge chunks of tree bark that covered sometimes a whole side of a house! The nemectes!”

“They found out how thick their covering is, but don’t know they’re intelligent beings, so just take it.” Amper felt his heart rise with alarm. Where was Shhah? Was she near this horror? Which way was she from him? “Oh!” He jabbed a memory at Mygs with a finger. “That tree! When I tried giving you a branch to tie the cord to when my hand was broken – it felt like bare flesh. Mygs, it had probably been a nemectes but its bark was all gone!”

“THAT’S what happens?” He looked distantly in disgust, as though he was trying to look at that tree again. “Was it still alive like that?”

“I don’t –“ He paused as he remembered Shhah’s story of Yugnh who found some of her bark missing. But she was further east, not back by the waterfall. How many nemectes were experiencing this? Could they still communicate that way? Would they go crazy? “That tree that had ADHD – the one before the waterfall...”

“Did it have bark missing?”

“We couldn’t tell. And maybe it’s not just about bark, what if the stellasen learn to tap trees for sap? What if they take branches for structure or making utensils? It’s like the history that humans have with trees, only now the trees are sentient. Whether they’re stripped, or tapped, or chopped, they’ll be affected psychologically and emotionally.”

“And if their ‘bodies’ are actually soft and flesh-like under the bark, will they experience pain?”

Both men sobered at the thought.

Amper sighed. “We told the Anchoress about the nemectes. Maybe they’ll think twice about trees now.”

“That’s only a small step, and just like any other intelligence they’ll want more proof than just our say-so.” Mygs ran a hand through his hair and took a couple of steps toward the river.

“You know, if that silver tree is The Dawning, the stellasen are going to strip him as soon as they see that silver bark.”

“Damn.” Mygs shook his head, then turned around. “But our first priority is the asteroid.”

Amper put his hands on his hips. “By the time we’re done with the Asteroid, the stellasens could have gotten to The Dawning and stripped him. Mygs,” Amper braced himself for the decision he was about to propose. “You’re the only one who can speak with the stellasens. You have to trek to The Dawning and protect him, explain to them. I will go get samples from the asteroid, and will see if I can talk to The Dawning tonight, or have Shhah talk to him, and you and I can keep in contact via your dermiscreen and homebase’s plasmalite-”

“You’re not keeping me from that asteroid,” Mygs interrupted with an insistent murmur. Amper looked at him and realized that the thoughtful look was really a steely glare. “We are not supposed to be apart in this adventure, by protocol. We need to decide together and agree on what is most important.”

“Well, the asteroid will be there for the next few hundreds of thousands of years,” Reasoned Amper. “And The Dawning could turn into a blob of flesh lying on the ground within a day. What do you say?”

They both stood still in front of homebase, facing each other, quietly assessing whose argument was stronger.

Mygs finally shifted his stance. “The point is moot anyhow. We have to write a report to Command, now that we know about how the stellasens treat the nemectes, and have them tell us which is priority.”

“Augh- Command!” Amper turned, throwing a hand up dismissively. “They’ll just say to go get the samples. They don’t know the nemectes or the stellasen. Those are just characters in a story for all they’re concerned!”

“We get in trouble if we make decisions on our own, Amp, and they can see what’s around us through the satellite better than we can.”

“And we know the depth of the local situation better than they can. So who’s right.”

“Geez, Amper –“ Mygs said it on a sigh, more desperately than angrily. There were too many good points clashing. They stood quietly again.

Protocol dictated that the good of what they thought was the native species shouldn’t be altered in new contact on a foreign planet because drifternauts didn’t know how the ecosystem was balanced by the planet’s nature. But in this case, the stellasensus were not native, and in fact were almost like an attacking alien species from another planet. But because of this, their “starship” and manner of intelligence and gauging of skills needed to be discovered. There’s no protecting the nemectes if the scope of stellasensus abilities wasn’t approximated with as much knowledge as possible – but there wasn’t time for that!

Amper leaned against a tree as he tried to think. “What would happen if we split up?” he asked.

“What do you mean, worst case scenario?”

“What would Command do?” Amper nodded.

“Strip our titles,” Mygs began listing as he thought of the consequences they learned in training. “Deny requests for information or emergency food, cut off satellite, remote-return the Legendbound…”

“And what does any of that matter in this situation? We are now terranauts no matter what they say, we can find food in Earth’s nature, we have maps saved on the homebase computer, and do we really ever want to leave this planet?”

“They could deny interpretation of findings at the asteroid,” Mygs gestured desperately. “They could shut down the drone. Amp, they have all of the buttons and switches up there.”

“So we won’t know what the asteroid is made of,” Amper allowed. “What could we learn from it that would change what we’re experiencing with the stellasen and Nemec-?”

“We won’t know if it’s Gideon!” Mygs interrupted, nearly yelling. He ran his hand through his wig of hair that hadn’t been cut since landing, and turned self-consciously toward the river again, his hands going to his hips in frustration.

“You think it’s YOUR asteroid!” Amper nodded slowly in realization.

“I – know it’s the Gideon.” Mygs didn’t turn as he spoke. “I just… I know it.” His shoulders shrugged and his head looked to the sky. “The stellasen, they feel too familiar to me. I understand them. I know them.”

Amper stayed quiet. He walked to a seat by the homebase, and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands laced together as he stared at the ground. This was new, but he should have seen it coming. There was no way to know whether Mygs was right or wrong, but if he had to trust him with this feeling, he would. Mygs was too rational and scientific to go on instinct, so for him to say this...

“So,” Amper said finally, “It doesn’t really matter whether Command can tell us anything. You know already.”

Mygs’ head turned slightly at the comment, surprised that it wasn’t an argument against his irrational sense of the stellasen. Once he processed what Amper had said, he turned to face him.

“You believe me?”

“Tell me why I shouldn’t.”

Mygs’ brow rose in surprise. “Because I have no proof.”

“You’re a Gideonite,” Amper pointed-out. “One of the last of your kind from a planet that is floating in pieces through the universe. I think that if you feel your people are nearby, that your home is lying only twelve kilometers away, I will believe you.”

“What if it’s only wishing?”

“Mygs. What is it that you do – what you have always been able to magically do without explanation?” Amper looked up at him squarely from over his splayed fingers of reasoning.

“I find things.” Mygs’ eyes met Amper’s quizzically at the change in subject.

“So…” Amper stood and grabbed Mygs’ arm, hauling him to his feet. “Shut your eyes.”

“What?”

“Just – do it.” Mygs shrugged, and squeezed his eyes shut. Amper spun him around six or seven times, then let him go and moved to the other side of him. “Now – where’s your home: the Gideon asteroid? Find it.”

Mygs, eyes still shut, turned and centered himself facing the direction he felt his origin was lying. He opened his eyes and looked up through the trees without hesitation, toward the north east. Then he suddenly looked back at Amper, surprised by what his instinctive honing reaction was telling them, and smiled. That’s how Amper could believe him.

Amper smiled, too, and stood. “I can’t keep you from that,” he stated decisively. He clapped a wide hand onto his friend’s shoulder. “But if I go to see The Dawning, how will I communicate with the stellasen when they come?”

Mygs nodded gravely. “I have to find them today,” he stated with a heavy sigh. “I have to tell them, and wait to go to the asteroid until after we’ve protected the nemectes.” Amper looked at him in question: was he sure? “There’s no other way. I just have to be patient.”