Temprare Four

A Sword & Planet Story by CarolinaC

I know you won't believe what I'm going to tell you. The nice young security men in their neat black suits and slicked back hair say it's got to be kept secret, but I can't think why. It's ancient history now, after all. Forty years. So you're going to listen, and listen good.

The landing was hard, but it was a landing, not a crash. I was shaken up; I had wrenched my knee, and my left arm ached, vague but persistent, reminding me that I had broken it once, as a child. My translator gem looked okay, but the necklace had snapped, little blue beads everywhere. I stuffed the gem in my pocket before turning to the screens. A quick check of the computer confirmed that my engines were completely offline. No surprise, given the violence of my landing, but still, a disappointment – and a heart-wrenching one.

You have to understand, this was forty years ago - the Temprare System was poorly-explored and rarely visited. The only Solaris Navy ship that had ever made it out that far, the Cassolimi had disappeared without a trace. Stories said she'd fallen through a portal into a parallel universe, or her crew had been kidnapped by slavers, or the first officer went mad and murdered all three thousand people on the ship. Gone, though, definitely gone. And without so much as sending a map of the system back for the rest of the galaxy to enjoy. So far as I knew, nobody, and I mean nobody, had ever touched down on one of the planets – until that day. I was the first.

I had enough air and water for a month, but only enough food for a week. I was raised on Jelanon Station, so starving to death has always been a particular fear of mine, in a way you won't understand if you didn't grow with endless Redisc-day stories of the Kitarwas Rebellion. Suffice it to say, If I couldn't get the engines going again, I was planning to vent the oxygen and let myself strangle long before I'd starve. Except, of course, that isn't what happened.

After kicking the computer console – something I regretted because of how much more my wrenched knee suddenly hurt – I made my way into the vessel's sole airlock. I wiggled into an environment suit and tucked my ponytail awkwardly up into the helmet. The air evacuation pumps whined into life, and when the little blue light turned red, I opened the door.

Now, I don't want a safety lecture, okay? This was forty years ago, and people are still needling me about it. Yes, I know my vessel exit protocols. And yes, I know that it is important to take these protocols seriously. And furthermore, I do realise that it's wise to look before you leap. Nevertheless, I stepped out of the airlock, and fell down a drop equal to twice my height. Yes. It did hurt. Thanks for asking.

Specifically, the aching in my arm turned up to 11, and my knee hurt like a house on fire - by which I mean like a house probably feels when it burns to the ground. I found myself blinking up at a violet sky and the back end of my vessel. Worse yet, I found myself blinking up at a violet sky and the back end of my vessel with no helpful pane of PMMA between me and straight, unadulterated, native atmosphere. My helmet had broken. For a half second, I panicked - I wasn't ready to asphyxiate quite yet, you see. Then I cottoned on to the fact that I was breathing the native atmosphere just fine. The air even smelled good, like a greenhouse, all soil and water and growing things.

I sat up, pulling the remains of the helmet off from around my neck. My ponytail swung free as I took in my new environment. I was in a clearing in what you'd have to call a forest. There were weird, red-brown fronds, like fern leaves the size of apple trees, all around me. I was sitting on a lawn of little, leathery red-brown heart-shapes, obviously some smaller plant. A little blue thing like a triangular bat soared between the fronds. It took one look at me, and did its best disappearing act. Apparently Temprare Four had life on it. Complex, multicellular life. And I don't just mean plants and birds, because the next thing I saw was a person.

No, no, not a human person. I was the first recorded human lander on Temprare Four, remember? The figure approaching me with furtive, tentative movements was about 2.5 m tall, and had six limbs – one set of legs, one set of hands bearing two long fingers and a human looking thumb, and one set of, well, they looked like hands but he was walking on them at the moment. The creature had turquoise skin, which was covered, in some areas, in soft-looking black hair. The face looked almost human – except that there were no visible ears and instead of a nose and mouth there was a sort of bill. It wasn't like a duck's bill, but more like the bill on a platypus. The creature wore clothing, some sort of thick, rough stuff, and he had a thin, metal rod in his left hand. I stared.

The creature stared back. Then it opened its bill and, well, it sang. That's the only word for what it did. The noises that came out of that odd mouth were musical. It sang something soft and slightly discordant, and it looked at me, beseechingly.

"Um, hello?" I tried.

The stranger tilted its head to one side and sang again. An idea occurred to me, and I scrambled to my feet. The creature reared back onto its lowermost set of limbs, apparently in surprise. I waved my hands in what I hoped was a reassuring motion. Then I pulled my left arm back into the environment suit, turning the glove inside out as I did.

I wiggled my hand down along my side, until a single finger could snake into my pocket, hooking the translator gem. I then wiggled the purple pendant up to the neckline of the suit, and picked it up with my right hand. The stranger watched this all intently.

I shook my left hand back into the sleeve of the suit, then pressed the translator gem against my bare cheek. It was the sort that runs on body heat, one of the two reasons I normally wore it on a necklace (the other being that it was rather pretty). With the necklace broken and my hands encased in space-proof thermal gloves, pressing the thing to my cheek was the best I could come up with. It worked, though – the gem whirred softly.

"Hi," I said again. The translator did nothing, but that was what I had expected. It couldn't translate until it had a chance to hear the stranger's language.

The creature stared at me for a long time, long enough that I started to get concerned that he was going to jump me or something. Then he sang again, the slightly discordant harmonies floating in the air.

The translator gem whirred. It whirred again. I mentally counted to forty-six before it stopped whirring and, in its little mechanical voice, spoke.

"What are you?" it asked.

"I'm human. From a planet called 'Earth'. Well, my ancestors were, anyhow."

I listened as the translator gem sang my answer, a violin playing a folk song. Except for the word 'planet', which it repeated, in English, in my own, dry accent.

"A magical device!" The stranger exclaimed. Then he asked, "What is that word the device knows not?"

"Planet?" I offered. "It's another world, out in – up in the sky. It looks like a star, a little light in the night, only it -" I struggled for a moment, but then remembered something my father had told me, about where the word 'planet' came from, in an ancient earth language. "only it wanders."

"You come from a wandering star?" the stranger sang. The song dissolved into a low rumble, which the gem translated as laughter.

"I'm obviously not from around here," I pointed out.

"No," he agreed. "You are very strange-looking. You should not be here."

"Exactly! So if you can just let me try to repair my ship, I'llI fly on out of here as soon as I can."

"No," He sang. "I mean that you should come with me to be presented to our queen. You are not a flier, but you are strange like one; you will make a fine offering that will increase my status and her affection towards my clan. Follow me."

Now it was my turn to stare. "Why would I want to do that?"

"Because," my interlocutor said, "I order you to do so." He brandished the metal rod, and continued, "In the name of the queen!"

I ignored him and, holding the translator gem in the palm of my hand, began to climb the slope back up to the ship. I tried to avoid putting weight on my injured knee.

"That was an order!" The stranger bellowed, quite harmoniously.

"I don't know you, I don't know your queen, and I don't care!" I retorted. I admit that this was rude. I admit that it was no way to behave when making first contact with an alien species. I admit that I didn't care. I continued towards the ship.

That is when the annoying clobbed the metal rod at me. It struck my cheek, a glancing blow, but enough that I dropped the translator gem. The stranger picked up his rod as I scrabbled on the ground for my gem.

Luckily, the gem was still warm enough to keep working, because it translated the stranger's panicked, "What is on your face?."

When I touched my face with my hand, my glove came away bloody.

I was incandescent with anger. "That's blood! I'm bleeding, you creep."

I dug around in the red, leathery groundcover, my fingers closing on the gem just as it sang out the translation of my words.

The stranger was apparently concerned; he approached me. "I have injured you."

"Darn right!" I replied. To punctuate my point, I smeared my bloody glove across his cheek.

The stranger recoiled. "It's – that's warm"

"Of course it is! It's blood."

"Were you sitting in the sun?" He probed. His song this time was a low, staccato rumble. "Or are you a flier? Surely you have too much decorative fluff on your head to be a flier."

I tugged self-consciously on my ponytail. "I am not - well, my ship flies."

"I should have known! All this talk of a wandering star! Lies, as all fliers provide." He pointed the metal rod at me again. "You are not welcome here. You are a beast and no suitable gift. You must leave, or die."

"Fine! Just let me fix my ship and I'll go!"

I turned again, and struggled up the slope. He didn't move to help me. He didn't move to stop me. He just watched.

He watched as I opened the engine cover. He watched as I switched out the magnetic wave disperser for the spare. He watched as I realigned the quantum gearbox.

When I pressed the gem to my cheek again and called out, "I think I got it working, you're going to want to stand clear."

He replied, "Are you threatening me, ignominious flier?"

I shook my head. I flipped the airlock control. I said, "You should go home, shouldn't you?"

He sang, "Get out of here."

I let myself into the ship and out of the damaged environment suit. The gem went back into my pocket. I took my sweet time running the diagnostics – there was no way he was getting in through the airlock, and I wanted to make him sweat a little. Like I said, I know that being a jerk isn't in the first contact protocols, but he deserved it. He cut my cheek and then insulted me, after all.

The diagnostics came back clean, and I breathed a sigh of relief. No need to starve to death on an alien planet, even if it was a heck of a planet. Too bad it was inhabited; discoverer's rights could net quite a bit of cash. I punched the engine, making sure to throw some nice, warm exhaust down towards my erstwhile friend. I swear, I laughed all the way up.

Just before I broke atmosphere, though, I noticed something. The red-brown forest ended not at a river or an ocean, but on the edge of a blasted plain. In the centre of the devastation was a metal object – a ship. A great, vast, huge ship, but a human ship. The Cassolimi. I suppose I was a flier after all.

Given all that's happened sense, I also suppose that the stranger was right to be cautious of me, of where I came from. What happened to his people wasn't pretty, not when the Cassolimi crashed, and not when I got back to civilization and my report got out. But that part of the history, well, you know it already. Someday the nice young men might declare it secret, but all of you know better, having lived through it. Just like I know what things were like, once, when there was life on Temprare Four.