Marie on her first fifty two little hours.

Days are long on Andala. On Earth, it’s just the time it takes for the planet to revolve. But Andala is a moon, and its day is a complete orbit around Kai. When you are there, looking up at that revolving giant in the sky, it all makes sense. But it takes some getting used to.

“52.21 hours.”
“As long as that!”
“Yes, Marie. Like almost all natural planetary satellites, Andala is tidally locked.”
“Well, I guess there really are enough hours in the day now.”
“For what?” Mina grinned.

I’d already quite lost track with how much time we’d spent. All the while on Proteus we had kept our own parallel to Earth time, with twelve hour days and twelve hour nights, and had not stayed long any one place in particular when out and about in Bee. Until now.

“Say, where do you think she is?” The two of us rested by the river, getting tired compared to Tani.
“Not far.” Shrugged Mina. “But we could tag her. While she’s with us.”
“Mina! That’s a sneaky idea. Aren’t you meant to be protecting her against our technology?”
“I won’t tell her how it works. And this way we can gather useful data.”
“Don’t you think she will notice, though? She seems,” I hesitated.
“Sensitive?”
“Yes. Hyperaware of her surroundings, almost.”
“No. Definitely!” Mina pulled up her sleeve. “And so I shall disguise it.”

She took off her bracelet. Golden, unlike the shades of silver Tani wore, and inscribed with tiny detailed Persian script. She placed it in my hand.

“There is space inside for a biosensor.”
“So there is.”
“And who could turn down such a gift from strangers from so far?”
“Well, if you don’t think this counts as cultural imperialism.” I ran my finger along the words, as unaware of what they said as Tani would be.
“This is the smallest artifact I can think of. Better this than a computer!”
“I do wonder, though.” I held up Mina’s bracelet to the sky, and made a second ring around Kai. “Where she thinks we are from, in fact. It’s not like we have the words yet to tell her.”
“Nor should we.”
“No?”
“Let it be a mystery. Given the absence of technology we have seen, space travel could be unheard of here. It is best not to rush.”

There was just one single problem with Mina’s cunning plan: Tani was nowhere in sight. We looked around for her, finding nothing, and as the hours passed I have to say that I felt bitterly sad when it seemed we might not meet again.

“You two. Over here.” Called the captain from our ship.
“She’s gone, Kingston.”
“Girl like her can’t have travelled far now, could she?”
“I suppose not.” I tried to smile but wasn’t fooling anyone.
“Oh! You’re getting pretty close.”
“Yes! She’s the first new person I’ve met in years, captain, and you too!”
“Hey, I ain’t complaining. You’re doing good work. And once she’s back we’ll tag her.”
“Makes her sound like she’s some sort of pet.” I complained.
“I’m tagged. You’re tagged. We’re all tagged, Chen. It only makes sense when we’re as far out as this. Gotta look out for one another. Mina?”
“It is ready. Whenever she is.”
“We’re getting some good recon now you two oughta see.”
“Reconnaissance?”
“You’ll see what I mean.”

The captain walked us inside and we saw the airlock was opened straight up now, just like when we were on Aria, or Earth. Mina raised an eyebrow but didn’t speak a word. Kingston brought us to the cockpit, where Bee’s few screens were gathered up together.

“This is Andala.” He spun a globe of Sidewinder’s making. “What we got here is three major continents, one on this side and two on the other.”
“Wow!” I perked up at this gorgeous glimpse of Andala as it really was. “There’s as much water here as…”
“Earth? Sure is. This place is different, though. Earth’s got two pole to pole supercontinents set apart by two of three major oceans. Andala’s got one continuous watermass…”
“An equatorial ocean.”
“Yeah, you got it. The landmass on this side, facing planet Kai, is a supercontinent more or less. It just don’t go all the way from ice cap to ice cap. The other two, on the back, are smaller, more like Australia in size.”
“Fixed hemispheres: Kai facing and opposed. That’s tidal locking in action, Marie.” Explained Mina. Needless to say, we were all really into this.
“But you ain’t seen nothing. We got enough detail now to see where the humans are here!”
“Go on.”
“Toward the equator, thirty degrees from where we are now,” Kingston zoomed the globe and brushed aside his opening graphics, “we think we’ve got a city!”
“Really!?”
“That would be impressive.”
“Course it is. See this. These shapes look like buildings, not any natural feature.”
“Signs of an urban culture. Which means they have some degree of technology after all.”
“This is superb, Kingston! How big do you think it is? How many people might live there?”
“Well, here’s the thing. We only got Sidewinder on this, and, as you know, we can’t touch it. No bringing it on down to repackage the kit.”
“And we were not prepared for this kind of sweep.”
“My, are you correct, Khatami. We are in fact stuck with the same gear as you put on Sidewinder just before we discovered Vesper.”
“How was I to predict all this!”
“Chill! Look, I ain’t complaining, Mina. I’m only telling like it is.”
“Unbelievable!”
“So, uh, Marie it’s surprisingly difficult to answer your question. We can map coastlines to a hair but Sidewinder thinks everything is natural, because we told it so.”
“There is one way we can find out.” I grabbed him to make my point. “We can go there!”
“What!?”
“You mean fly right on in? Yeah, that’d be great, Chen. Nice and classy.”
“No, well eventually, but I mean we can go in orbit and use Bee’s sensors and our own eyes instead.”
“In a while, woman, in a while.” Called Robin from his station behind us. He was hunkered over every pad he could lay his hands on. “She’s still recovering from the rough bloody wooing we put her through in getting here.”
“Wooing?” Mina quietly asked me. Not that I knew either.
“We’re staying just where we are, for now.” The captain commanded. “We still got plenty going on with Proteus. And you don’t want to miss your girl when she comes back.”
“My girl?” I wondered. But knew he was right.

Spring proper has arrived in the burgh at last, and so my writing’s coming from outdoors of late. Yesterday, I visited Dalmeny’s great cairn and the standing stones around the Newbridge mound. Well, you’ve got to make your good of summer while you can get it, and I always need the exercise.

Standing atop Corstorphine Tower, I contemplated the landscape here; the rivers falling from the hills into the estuary, just as Scotland turns from smooth to jagged up around its Stirling turn. I imagined what it must have been like before we made our cities, as sure enough there were people then, just as now. And people seek their meanings.

Ancient peoples are, of course, a thing of mine and form no small part of my intent for Andala. But I don’t want to beat the audience around the head. I’ll try to keep all this in the background, subliminal where I can get it, and let the theme be a richness in the mix rather than conspicuous raison d’être. Did I not already say I’m not motivated by a message? At least not one I know.

Andala is a place with potent sites, be they the scenes for living rituals or that world’s own past left to the present as but a silent enigma. Sites for rites, indeed. What we did, they do. The difference being a little something Marie will soon enough find out.

With that noted, I’m still creating what I hope to be an involving setting for my stories. One with myth and ritual all its own (and yet, of course, at heart familiar), caught face to face with us not as we were then but as I paint the future. Fiction is there to say the things we cannot any other way. And the themes I’m exploring are as wrapped up in our own forgotten past as they could ever be the way tomorrow comes. Whatever we may dream. Just, then, as I like it.

When meeting the neighbours, it helps to have a universal translator. But Marie takes what she can get.

Tani’s language was certainly a mystery. She and I and Mina walked around the landing site pointing at things, and Tani told us their names. This worked well enough for simple stuff like trees and grass and rocks — though she did in fact have several words for each of those — but the problem lay in anything abstract.

“How would you describe a word like ‘and’ or ‘reason’, without using other words besides?” Mina asked me as Tani brushed between the overgrown plants on our riverbank.
“Nouns are easy. You point and repeat. But the rest, well, I haven’t a clue.” I watched Tani as she darted about, sensing something strange. The way she always focussed in on things, it was as if she didn’t need to look around her first.
“She’s wearing slippers.” Mina told me in a hushed voice, as though Tani might have understood.
“Oh yes. So she is!” I hadn’t thought to look, as distracted I was with the way she moved. Her shoes were delicate little things, if not quite slippers. Either way they made all ours look like great big army boots. And her socks were different colours.
“Well, Marie, our friend here can’t have come too far from where she lives!”
“She found us plenty fast enough, didn’t she?”

Robin and the captain had left us a while ago and returned to Bee. Getting to know Tani was turning out the most fun I’d had our whole voyage, but they had our survival to ensure. Proteus was safe enough for now, parked in Trojan orbit between Vesper Prime and here, yet they had to figure out what had gone wrong on arrival and how to fix it if we were to ever see home again.

Even so, Robin still had his eye on Tani.

“Ladies: behold!” Shooting our three glares at him, even he turned nervous. “Em. It’s a tool. Just a wee something I jimmied up.” He handed me a computer.
“Really! Must we expose her to everything?” Mina fussed.
“Tani. This is a pad.” I showed her the square of glass. “Pad.”
“See, I thought youse could need the help. So I hooked up a live voice transcript to a database. It’ll keep track of everything it hears and maybe keep you on the inside track. Ken?”
“Ken?” Tani wondered and grabbed the computer from my fingers.
“No. Pad. It’s a pad.”
“Pad.”
“Yes. Good.” I turned to Robin. “Look, try to keep things straight here you guys.”

Tani spun the glass plane around between her fingertips. She didn’t know what to make of it. I saw the surface of Robin’s makepiece translator, with its shifting lists of words, pirouette in her lightest grasp, failing to catch her eyes.

“Careful lassie. We’re short o those!”
“Pad.” Said Tani as she froze its spin and saw her reflection.
“Pad.” Said the computer’s translation. In her simulated voice.
“Eee!” Tani gasped in amazement. The tablet bleeped to signal no translation. So Tani beeped back, as if talking to yet another visitor to her world.
“Oh aye. It does that an all. Voice synthesis for convenience.” Robin was almost as pleased with his invention as Tani.

The sight of her holding the computer and talking to it, with such care and inquisitiveness as though it was another living person, was just too cute. Mina snatched it back.

“See!” She stomped in anger. “This is exactly as I warned!”
“Pleased to be of service.” Robin winked. “Any subsequent enquiries come to my office. My doors are always open.”
“Here’s one for you!” Mina mocked a stern poke to his eye.
“Actually, Robin, could you map Vesper?”
“Dinnae worry, lass. Sidewinder’s been at it since we bailed out.”
“Can we have a look?”
“Aye. On the tablet.”
“Great!” Naturally, I wanted to find out where Tani lived and how many people there were here. We knew so little yet.
“You found out what this joint’s called?”

He asked a good question. As Tani had so many detailed names for the things around us, I’d put off asking about her world. In case she told us “ground” or “valley” or the like.

“Tani. What is that?”

Mina pointed her to the ringed planet we called Vesper Prime, looming twenty times larger above the horizon than the Moon does from Earth. Tani looked along Mina’s arm, and when she saw that she was pointing at her planet, she closed her eyes and muttered something beneath her breath. Mina shot me a quizzical glance, and I shrugged.

“Well I thought if we got her on the subject.”
“No, you’re right Mina. Maybe it has another meaning for her?”
“Anyu?” Tani asked us, pointing to the great world above, a crescent at this time of day. Her second voice duly echoed from the computer. “And you?”
“Yes?” I asked, half aware of her meaning.
“Kadeski Kai.” She looked over at that ringed giant. “Kai.”
“That is Kai?”
“Mm.”
“‘And you?’ She’s learning our language as well!” Mina slapped her forehead.
“Quite sharp, eh?” Robin grinned. “And the moon here?”
“Anyu?” I said kneeling down and pointing to the ground.
“Andala.” She said. “Kadeski An Da La.”
“Andala! That’s where we are.”
“So long Vesper.”
“Good going, girls. I’ll tell the captain. He’ll want tae update his logs. Joyless tight arsed bloody Bligh that he is.” Robin turned to leave.
“Hey, thanks for your invention.” I smiled. “It’ll really help.”

Robin gave the thumbs up. Yet another Earth oddity to Tani and Andala. She grabbed his thumb, and waggled it like a joystick. That got us laughing. This part she did know, and joined in with the rest of us. Yes, we’d found a good one with Tani. She was to prove a superb guide to her weird and wonderful world. And my dearest friend.

Time to talk. Marie?

“She seems pretty friendly!” Kingston chuckled in my ear.
“Apparently.” I blushed.
“Are you all right? Your pulse is spiking!”
“Relax, Mina. She’s doing fine.”
“Uh, yeah, sorry about that!” I thought she was about to kiss me.
“Khatami, how about you quit worrying and get out there too? We might as well introduce ourselves.”
“Captain?” Mina seemed stunned for a moment. But then she must have imagined someone else taking her place. “No, you are right. But one at a time and no more!”
“What do you think, Chen?”

In all honesty, it felt like we were rushing this. I would have much rather explained to the girl who I was and that I had company than just pull them out on her. But the truth was we couldn’t understand one another and who knew how long it would be until we could? My friends were plenty keen to get out by now. The longer we all pretended I was the only one here, the more awkward it would get.

“Mina comes out. Alone.”
“Okay Chen. Your call.”

While Mina prepared herself, I thought I should try to start talking the girl’s mysterious language. Like any newb, I held my hand against my chest and said my name.

“Marie.”

Staring at her with a cautious smile, I tried again. And again. She recognised I was doing something different. But instead of following, she raised her eyebrows in quizzed concern. I couldn’t help it. I had to laugh.

“I am Ma…”
“Ree. Mah Ree.”
“Yes! You got it!” I jumped for joy. She was a quick learner after all. “Mah Ree. Mah Ree. That’s me! That’s me!”
“It is, huh?”

Mina emerged from Bee. The girl didn’t seem surprised. I went up to her and grabbed her skeptical shoulders.

“Mi Nah. Mi Nah.”
“Mi Nah.” The girl declared, proving she was keeping pace.
“Uh, yes. Mina Khatami. Pleased to meet you.”
“This is going great, captain! You hearing this?”
“Sure am, Chen. Keep up the good work. And tell me when you want us out.”
“Will do. Just not quite yet.”

The girl had her laser focus on Mina now. This was actually the first time I’d seen the side of her, so intense had been her eye contact. Her ears and nose and eyebrows were all pierced, and various strands of metal marked each one. There were tiny shiny dimples on her cheeks, and she wore a thin necklace and a little bracelet on each wrist. They were so narrow too. I hadn’t seen anyone as thin in years. She reminded me of my childhood friend Alexandra, who trained to be a dancer. Indeed, she even had the same alert pose, seemingly lighter than we mere mortals on our clumsy feet. Mina squirmed, faced with her unyielding stare.

“And you?” I held out my hand to the girl, almost touching her.
“Anyu?” She repeated in my tone.
Mina chuckled. “This may be harder than you thought.”

The girl switched back to her. If she couldn’t understand our speech, she surely grasped our body language. She calmly squared up to me, and, mirroring my first gesture quite precisely, told us who she was.

“Ta Nee. Kadeski Tani.”
“Tani!” I jumped at her and gave her a hug. Well, we were friends now.
“Captain? Did you get that? We now know her name.”
“Oh Mina, shut up and show her some emotion now too.”
“Captain?”
“We gotta get off to a good start with the people here.”
“I,” she stammered, “suppose so.” And with that Mina nervously embraced us.

Tani seemed less surprised by Mina’s appearance than mine. The way she had to touch my eyes made me think that perhaps she had not met an East Asian before. I saw that Mina had smartly chosen not to wear her glasses. We couldn’t presume to know what Tani was accustomed to.

Once we were done, Tani raised her hand to her chest and extended her introduction.

“Tani a Talai a Taken.”
“Tani a Tally a Tahken.” I did my best parrot.
“Mm.” She said, in that tight lipped way you just know means: not quite!
“No?”
“Tani a Talai a Taken.” She repeated.
“Tani a Talai a Taken.” Trying hard, I got it right.
“Mm!” This time I knew she was happy.
“a Talai a Taken a…?” Mina had a go.
“Ana!” Declared Tani raising her hands. I didn’t know what that meant. But she was emphatic.
“Now we’re really getting somewhere, ladies. How about I come on out?” You could just hear Robin protesting his order, off in the background.
“All right. You just follow my lead, Kingston.”

By now Tani had figured there were several of us packed together in that little runabout, and we were coming out one by one. When she heard the airlock again, she watched for another to appear.

“This is Kingston.”

When Tani caught sight of him, she very almost leapt into the sky. She was utterly amazed, and not just a little frightened. The captain was practically twice her height. And, of course, what instantly occurred to him.

“What’s up? She ain’t never seen an African American?”

Once Kingston spoke, and looked sorry for her, she soon warmed to him. His appearance really did surprise her, but she was starting to trust us now. Tani strode up to him, and he kneeled by instinct to address her, as if she was a child. Face to face, she clasped his cheeks like she had done mine. Then grabbed his hand and placed hers on top of it. Her fingertips barely reached his knuckles.

“So yeah. I’m Kingston. King Stun. King Stun.”
Mina chuckled at the captain crowning himself such a thing. Tani, meanwhile, looked confused.
“Kin sun.”
“It’ll do.”
“Yes!” I intervened, trying not to mislead her. “Kinsun.”
“Well, if we ain’t nuthin’ like she’s used to, she’s doing pretty good. Tell her she’s all right.”
“I don’t know how, captain.”
“Huh.”
“The entire language acquisition process, if it is even possible, could take a matter of years.” Mina warned him.
“Well, we don’t have to learn the whole language. And Tani here is smart.” I waved at her, which caught her bemused attention. “She can really help us. Might even want to learn ours!”
“Chen, you’re on this. Learn what you can. And, uh, teach her whatever she likes.”
“Captain!” Mina objected.
“Why not?”
“Cultural imperialism!”
“Bull!”
“Imagine the damage we could be doing by exposing the local population to Earth culture and technology without regard.”
“There’s only four of us out here. How much harm can we do? We’re the ones who’ll be learning. And if this Tani can be our translator, it’ll help if we drop the barrier.”

Tani watched our squabbling very closely. As my attention drifted, I spotted her subtle mimicry. She copied what she saw, but not so obviously that either Kingston or Mina noticed. It was as if she followed the argument and had similar thoughts to either party in turn, despite of all these unknown words. I was impressed.

“Alright there, doll?” We all sighed at the sound of him. “The name’s Robin Henderson and I’m your host fur the evening.”
“No you’re not!” I got between them.
“My minions here tell me you’re a promising student. Very good. As it takes no less to learn frae a master.”
“Shut it, Robin.”
“Hey, c’mon. We all have tae make friends here. It’s mah turn!”

I shoved firmly against Robin’s chest and introduced him. But there was something confusing to Tani’s ears about his name. She couldn’t quite get it. He offered her his surname. And, oddly enough, it stuck.

“Hendursang.”
“Aye!”
“Jai?” She looked disappointed.
“Yes! Hendursang.” I corrected.
“Mm. Jai? Tutel ahnmen!”
“Whit? You any idea she’s on aboot?” I barely knew what he was saying, let alone her.
“Jai.” Robin said to Tani. “Do you mean ‘aye?’”
“She doesn’t speak English, Robin. Don’t harass her.”
“But see, jai as aye would make a lot o sense.” Robin thought he had it.
“Jai!” She barked at him, sternly.
“If anything, it sounds more like no. But we can’t even tell.”
“Aye is naw? Whit kind ae lingo is that meant tae be?”
“I’m sorry Henderson.” Kingston said. “You’re losing us again. We speak English on this ship.”
“Aye well we’re no on Proteus any more is we? We’re doon here.” Robin grinned.
“But this ain’t Scotland, laddie!”
“Pity.”

Robin felt the fingers brushing through his beard. Tani ruffled that rough ginger hair like his was the first she ever saw.

“Well I guess I can always grin and bear it.”
“Hold still, Henderson. Don’t even think of making a move!”
“Aw.” Robin rolled his eyes. He was, naturally, liking this.
“Just what kind of people do you think she is used to?” Mina wondered aloud.
“Women?” I joked and blushed. They all looked at me.

Robin cackled.

Today’s Proteus gets back to language, as if you couldn’t see that coming. I had Marie pull out quite a gem of real-life back-story when in the thick of it herself. Yes, what she describes did in fact actually happen in Nicaragua in the seventies and eighties. Language makes itself.

Along with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, this is just the kind of heady Jungian intrigue I’m most into. But I will contain myself. You don’t want to see what happens when I don’t.

So, what exactly is going on down on Vesper?

I’m afraid I don’t want to spoil the surprise. If it really is one, or several. What I’m finding now that I’m pushing Proteus ever further, is that it is indeed the best way I can figure how to explore and define Andala. Quite the little invention. Whoever woulda thunk it?

Of course, I’ve still an actual language to muster…

The good of Marie’s writing style and perspective is I can skip over tricky parts and downright rely on her suspect narration. Now that her Ana counterpart has come into the picture, there will be some more of that to doubt. But Marie only does what she thinks is right. Her naïveté is my shortcut.

I find myself raising and addressing most of my concerns inside the writing, for the moment. A handy and welcome predicament. Perhaps I’m on a roll. Though if I am I can’t see it ending well with the stuff that’s due next.

Marie meets her story’s leading lady.

“Well would you just look at her.”

The four of us crammed into the cockpit to see the first stranger we had laid eyes on in several years. And she was a pretty one, too. European looking, petite, prominent bones, a sharp nose, and a pair of big dark eyes that you could fall inside. She looked adolescent, maybe twenty at a stretch, and unquestionably human. There was no way she could see us from out there, as Bee’s canopy was quite reflective and it was already bright outside. And yet her gaze seemed to follow us.

“Ain’t that a sight for sore eyes?”
“Aye. Reckon she’s got a sister?”
“Listen, Henderson, you’re on best behavior here like the rest of us.”
“So, Mina?” I had to brag.
“Yeah.” Chimed the captain. “Safe to say we’ve found a lost colony now.”
“How about that!” I was thrilled. “Like Columbus!”
“Well, I’d a taken truly alien life if I could get it. But a whole New World is cool. Right Mina?”

My best friend was alone among us. Mina couldn’t hide her disappointment. She was so sure we had found a truly alien world, our brothers in space at last, but now this.

“I’m guessing that outside air is pretty breathable?” Kingston asked her.
“I suppose so.” Mina pawed her computer, which raised no complaints.
“Hey look, Khatami, this is still a fantastic discovery we’ve landed for ourselves. There’s nothing to be sad about.”
“Mm.” Faked Mina. “Guess not.”
“And we get out of Bee!”
“Thank goodess!” I cheered. “We have got to talk to her.” The girl outside still stared at me.
“That’s the spirit. You saw her first, Chen, so you get the honor.”

We were taking a lot of risks. There was just no way around it. We couldn’t know how we would be welcomed. The missing ships of legend had their reasons to leave for one way journeys into deepest space, after all. If the woman we saw was one of their descendants, what would she think of us coming here to seek them out? We didn’t even know if they carried lost diseases which could harm us, not without meeting first. Then there was the fact we saw no ships out here besides our own. We hadn’t mapped Vesper yet, but the space around it was quite clear. What could have happened to leave them without that technology? My crewmates argued about all of this while I put my worksuit on. I was determined to find out.

“Marie. Here.” Mina held my neck and slotted an earpiece into place. “We will talk you through this.”
“Thanks. Have you sensed anyone else out there I should know about?”
“No. No other large heat-sources nearby at all. She is quite alone.”
“Not much longer she’s not.” I declared with pride and strode into the airlock.
“Uh, Chen. You forgot this.” The captain handed me a helmet.
“She’s not wearing one. I don’t think I should either.”
“Hmm.” Kingston pondered for a moment. “All right. We don’t want to scare her off.”
“Good luck Marie.” Mina looked as worried as I knew I should be.
“With you keeping watch, I’ll be fine. Let’s do this.”

Kingston closed the airlock door. I pressed the master switch and a breeze of whooshing air spiralled around me until I was in Vesper’s atmosphere instead of ours. They watched me through the little window. I waved to show I was still good. Then I pulled the latch to reach outside. Bee’s landing door slid open and, with a gulp, I popped out.

“One small step for woman…”
“Oh cut it out.” The captain’s voice laughed in my ear.
“Now to find her.”

I walked through the olive green grass, which was indeed just like grass, around one side of Bee. The last I’d walked outside her was on a desert, on a globe some lightyears back from here, and that time I was in thick protective gear, the air there being quite lethal. The contrast here was deep. I could move around freely, in just my white worksuit, the sort of thing you wouldn’t catch many stares with if you took out on a jog in Hyde Park. Bee bore the scorch marks of our rushed entry, staunched in place with a hefty dose of cooling. But otherwise she was quite alright, parked neatly on the lumpy riverside.

“Hello?”

The ladder to the roof hadn’t fared so well. All but the top few rungs had melted off when we were coming down. I wondered for a moment quite how she’d climbed up there, not least as quietly.

I heard a voice, close beside me, and leaped right on the spot.

“Chen?” My people panicked in my ear.
“I’m good.” I murmured quietly.

The girl was down here now. We stood face to face and, not knowing what to say, I noticed several things. First she was so small! I’m not big myself, but she was a fair bit shorter than me. And she was lightweight. It looked like she needed a good meal. Her eyes were as dark and piercing as had impressed me before, but now I could see how gaunt her face was around them. I wondered if she needed our help. There was one more thing too, she seemed honestly confused by me. As if I was doing it all wrong. But what? I didn’t know.

“Hello there. I am Marie Chen. I am an explorer.”

I held my hand out to her for a handshake. But she just stared at me instead.

“Is she hostile?” Asked Mina’s voice. I didn’t want to answer.
“I am new here. This is my ship. I have come from far away.”

The girl stared deep into my eyes, looking at once deeply curious and quite worried. Then she said something. Her voice was clear and, despite her appearance, quite confident. But I couldn’t understand a single word.

“Whoah. What the hell language is that?”
“I don’t recognise it.” Said Mina. “Apparently it is not Indo-European.”
“Um,” I stammered, “and nice to meet you too.”
“Get her to say more.” The captain commanded. “We gotta work this out.”
“Who are you?” I asked her. She just stared again. So I repeated my question. I knew she didn’t speak English, I just wanted a response. Eventually she spoke again. And of course I couldn’t understand her.
“Marie? The computer does not recognise that language at all.”

I smiled slightly as if to answer Mina. Looking at our friend here, I felt self conscious of the voices speaking in my ear. Perhaps she’d think I was crazy?

“This is so weird.”
“How do we translate it?”
“We can’t. There is no place to start.”

I kept my eyes on the girl. She wore a jacket which looked to be of felt, and either leggings or some kind of split skirt; she wasn’t moving around enough for me to tell. If she had makeup, it was subtle. Unlike her earrings and a few other pieces of jewellery distinct from any I’d seen before. She didn’t have any obvious signs of advanced technology. No computer, no glasses, not even a zip from what I could see. And no writing either.

“How did they go about losing their language like that? This ain’t right.”
“I have heard of something like this before, captain.” I broke my artificial silence, seeing as she didn’t understand a word I said. I just kept my eyes on her, as if she were Kingston.
“Yeah?”
“In Nicaragua, centuries ago, uneducated deaf children were gathered together and they came up with a sign language of their own from scratch.”
“Uh huh?” Kingston sounded incredulous.
“Without any teaching. Without a starting point. New languages can happen, when given a blank start.”
“That’s, uh, some domain knowledge you got there, Chen.”

I was pleased to impress him. Well, I had to learn something useful in all my studies these last few years. Although, honestly, there wasn’t much more to it yet than I’d just said.

“Marie? Do you think you can learn from her?”
“Maybe.” If I did, it had to work out better than my highschool French. Incompréhensible !

My colleagues squabbled over how a group of humans who had terraformed a world in space could go about forgetting language, just to start again from the ground up. It didn’t make much sense, but facts spoke for themselves in the shape of the young woman who stood right there before me, wondering what all this was I was talking about.

Then I noticed. She was staring at the edge of my eyes. She reached out a finger and brushed ever so gently along my blinking eyelid. I didn’t know what to do, so I just indulged her, stood still and smiled. She cupped her palms on both my cheeks, and looked at me with the most adorable expression of unabashed wonder. Her hands were warm.

So, they made it. And?

“Terraformed?” The captain broke our heavy silence.
“Out here?” Mina scoffed. “Impossible! Where is the evidence?”
“Well, don’t know about you, but I’m seeing one whole hell of a lot of it round here.”
“It does look like Gaia.” I agreed.
“Gaia, Aria, same difference. And yes, Mina, I know. Don’t make a lick of sense. But it is so.”
“It might!” I landed a bright idea. “What about those missing G-Ships?”
“Oh Marie! Please!”
“You mean the old ones before superlight? How’d they meant to get here?”
“I suppose they couldn’t. From what we know. But some of them were never found once they left Earth.”
“And?”
“We invented superlight in the meantime. So, maybe, some of them did too?”
“Oh that’s a good one!” Laughed Kingston. “But at least it’s something. Better ideas, Mina?”
“Alien life. Indigenous. Independent.”
“That’s an awful lot of convergence going on out there.” Kingston pointed in a sweep around the cockpit. There were plants and trees in every direction, you could have been in a spring meadow, as sure enough you were. “What are the chances?”
“Long. Perhaps even as remote as a handful of people devising how to break lightspeed while couped up in a generational ship!”
“They could have!”
“No, Marie. They could not. It took millions of man-years in research and cooperation on Earth. Those people had only themselves. And were cultist kooks besides!”
“Robin, what say you?”
“I’ll let the esteemed and righteous prattling committee reach an answer. Youse are still interested in getting back tae Earth, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Whatever did that to Proteus can do it again. It’s pot luck we’re alive here. There’ll be no second chance.”

Robin’s grave warning sent a chill up all our spines. Just as he intended. While we were arguing, he was sifting through the logs, trying to solve the puzzle of our arrival.

“What’s the situation now on Proteus?”
“Same as we left it. Sigma off the meter. No just the climate but the core. That was one hell of an excursion. By rights we should all be dead.”
“Residual contamination?” Mina grabbed a pad and started up her own calculation.
“Aye, hen. See if you can put a cap on it. All I know’s it’s there.”
“And beyond life-support?”
“Well,” Robin grinned, “it wisnae as bad as all that. She’s still safe and sound, sittin at L5. I’m no getting red flags on power, propulsion or navigation systems. But then I’ll no be convinced till I can check ‘em miself.”
“That will not be too soon.” Mina flipped her figures around to show. “Even with zero further impulse and a full refill of atmospheric consumables, residual sigma remains too high for human contact for at least a hundred days.”
“A hundred days till what now?”
“A hundred days down here. At least.”

Bee seemed very small indeed the moment Mina said that. We looked around at each other, four people trapped in a space not much larger than a bathroom back aboard Proteus. And Bee’s own facilities were best not talked about. A great little lander and runabout does not a home make.

“Oh brother.” Kingston sighed. “We got the supplies for that?”
“I doubt it.”
“Right, we better check.”

Mina and the captain rummaged through Bee’s compartments, taking stock of quite what we did and didn’t have. Four spacesuits, eight work pads, about a weekend’s worth of clothes each, things weren’t sounding good. We could save on water the old fashioned way, and air wouldn’t be a problem where we were, but anything less basic than that was turning problematic. The two of them had only just enough room to squabble so I brushed past Robin and sat up in front, thinking of the world outside.

“Who packed this damn thing?”
“No one! How could we expect to use it as a lifeboat as we did? The space gear is in place. Only the Robinson Crusoe kit is not!”
“I don’t think you read it. The dude was wearing rags and knocking rocks.”
“How is that not my point precisely?”

Kingston’s chair was too big for me. My head didn’t reach past the neckrest. My legs couldn’t make it to the floor. I shuffled about while laying my eyes on the dizzy feast beyond the window. It was then that I got the strangest feeling. Like someone was looking back at me.

“Listen, there just ain’t no room here for arguments. We gotta bring our A-Game.”

Right above us. I looked straight up. Beyond the chair, beyond the glass, but not much further than that. Eyes! I saw two eyes!

“Aaargh!” I screamed. I couldn’t help it.
“Marie?” Mina barged past Robin to reach me.
“There! Out there!”

I pointed her to the peak of the cockpit’s canopy, where the metal of Bee’s body joins the window of its head. Mina held my arm, trying to make me calm. She sensed my claustrophobia.

“There’s branches overhead. Did you see an animal of some kind?”
“Oh I bloody well saw an animal all right! But it was right on the ship. Right there! And it was a she.”
“Right here? And a sh…”

The eyes I’d seen, upside down above me, were looking again and froze Mina in her tracks. We both got a good view this time. Nope, it wasn’t an animal and it wasn’t in the branches. It was a girl and she was on our roof.

Right there. Kneeling on top of Bee, hands on the window’s edge, a human head with two dark and curious eyes peering into our ship, trying to figure what was inside. Mina didn’t scream often. But that time was enough.

Now that they are here, how about a landing? Marie sets it out.

Truth be told, we had no idea what we were getting into. Vesper was a total mystery. Our probe, Sidewinder, rushed to bring us back the revelation of its discovery; without spending several days there to make a map first. We did not know what lay beneath these clouds. We did not know the scope of life down here. We did not know, frankly, much of anything at all. Only that its air could save us.

But I don’t think anything in truth could have quite prepared us for Andala.

“140. 145. 150.” Robin glowered as he shouted his number. One hundred was Bee’s design limit, the maximum heat and pressure load our little ship was meant to take. “Hit 200 and she’ll blow to bits!” He was right.

Kingston cracked a grin as he pulled us up from our meteoric descent. Bee was flying much faster than the autopilot could handle. He had to fly this himself. The slightest twitch on the controls at this point meant incineration. He knew it and we did too. Yet the captain relished his chance, as if he were a test pilot back in the seat for his first shot in years.

“160. 165. Christ, you know how to take your time!” Bee’s lightweight monocoque creaked and groaned as she tried to buckle. That thin hull was all that lay between us and the fireball.

“170.” Robin shouted ever louder. “175.”

The piercing noise and unbearable tension must have been beyond my design limit too, as I almost wasn’t there. I stared wide eyed at the unfolding world outside, like a child in a foreign country. It wasn’t that I was oblivious to our turmoil, so much that I knew I could do nothing to help. And this was still our arrival at the alien world which had been our perfect dream just a week before. Only when my window’s seal turned hot enough to scald me did my mind return. If but just to yell.

“Where we at now?”
“1-7-7. 1-7-8. 1-7-holding. Steady now. That’s it. Hold her there.”
“No sweat.” But Kingston did so profusely, like the rest of us, his eyes only just in their sockets, fixed far upon the horizon.
“Enough to pass your contamination test, Miss. Khatami?” Robin couldn’t see Mina from where he was in front. I looked. She was, quite wisely, braced and silent.
“How soon to bleed this off?” Kingston asked between gritted teeth.
“Pronto.”

Once Bee slowed down, we all began to get our first good look at Vesper. And what a sight it was. The sky was blue. The seas were too. And all about between them was a rich, lush green. It looked like forests from up at this height. We were struck silent.

“Uh, Mina, how about that oxygen?”
“The pressure is too low at this altitude. Bee was not intended to take in outside gases. To fill the entire canopy, we a good flow rate so we must…”
“Go down there?” Kingston’s face lit up. “You don’t have to ask twice!”
“Can we land?” I wished aloud.
“Don’t see why not. The whole exterior got one hell of a boil. Even the struts. So long as we keep the door shut, right?”
“I suppose.” Mina sighed. “We are here now, and safe ventilation may take a while.”
“Better be less than two hours. We’re still running on borrowed time.”

We flew with the too-orange sun at our side, the shadows of the land stretched out ahead. The lower we got, the more enchanting Vesper turned to be. Water worked its wonders here. Rain clouds trailed the coast, and hills rolled instead of jutted like broken glass, as we’d found on other distant worlds. Rivers formed and merged, taking mountain snow through deltas to the sea. And all that green: it stayed green. That was the maniacal thing. Those forests really were made of trees.

“God’s sweet green Earth,” murmured the captain as he turned us down a river winding through some temperate forest covered hills, “just where are we anyway?”
“Good question, isn’t it?”
“It’s so,” I noticed everyone falling silent for me, “um, it’s just so familiar.”
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions.” Mina walked about the cabin to get the best of our parading sights. “First be thankful we are still alive.”

Kingston picked a grassy looking turn in the river for us to land. A “haugh” as Robin called it. We closed in, not too slow as our time was still ticking, but cautious given we were landing out in the wild. I gazed at the trees as we pulled across them to see if I could spot any birds or animals. An absurd thing to do so far out in space, and yet not right here.

Bee swayed above our landing site to get a final visual, doing so a little awkwardly as Kingston had to use the field engines by themselves. Thrusters were out of the question for the same reason as our cabin air. Finally, out came the struts, half stuck in their shells, and, with a reassuring thump, we were down. What a relief.

“The Bee has landed.”
“Come off it, Armstrong. Houston won’t be hearing you for another four hunder years.”
Mina went into the back of the cabin, and brought back a test capsule which she held between a pair of nervous fingers.
“Sidewinder was right. The atmosphere is oxygen rich.”
“That’s our sample?” Kingston offered to take the little tube.
“Yes. It passes the limited subset of tests I can run, given Bee’s equipment.”
“Sigma free?”
“Yes.”
“Breathable?”
“Probably.”
“Any likely surprises?”
“I promise nothing. Care to try it?” She handed him the tube. Kingston lifted it to his nose and grabbed the cap.
“Robin, you try.”
“Guinea pig now am I?”
“In a small enclosed space like this,” Mina assured him, “it scarcely matters which one it reaches first.”

Robin grabbed the cap and took a purposefully deep breath from the vicinity of the open tube. Thankfully, he did not die. That was all we needed to know. But he did also tell us that Vesper smelt like Portobello, whether good or bad he didn’t say.

The reassuring hiss of outside oxygen soon filled our little runabout. You could breathe nice and deep now without fear. We took care not to vent a pip out into the alien landscape which stood around us, as the very least we could do to repay dear Vesper the favour of our lives. What a stroke of luck it was to have such a haven to run to when in our hour of need. The odds were quite fully astronomical. Every single place along the way since Aria, years of time and hundreds so of space ago, our accident would have been quite fatal. In space the golden rule is “be self sufficient”. We had broken that now. Our air supply was spoiled in an instant, and we were sure to be too if not for this supreme coincidence.

The four of us breathed in sweet relief together, and stared out at the conundrum which enveloped us outside.

In medias res is one of my favourite terms of art. So here it is in action with Proteus. A silent flight out in the depths of eternity suddenly turns very real indeed. I promised their arrival at Andala would be chaotic. It needs to be.

Progressive disclosure is another of my watchwords, or indeed the two. Bee’s rush landing on Andala is my way to push through a pair of obstacles at once. The first was getting the crew on the surface in the first place. No small thing, as the only remotely sensible choice was really to observe from afar, if they still had the driving seat. Touching down is an almighty leap. So they got their motive.

I tried not to invent any more magic science than I needed to. Marie’s technical naïveté works in my favour, that way, as she’s no need to delve into excessive detail. “Be free: be vague”, a wise man once said. Or at least don’t ape the more turgid turns of explanatory phrase in Star Trek. The real science I had in mind was a risk that’s killed a few people in nuclear facilities over the years: criticality. I’ve likely used the wrong term, “prompt critical”, in Mina’s dialogue, as it is a compelling phrase. But not as much as “tickling the dragon’s tail”. Where there’s invisible death rays and disastrous instants of failed incantation, you can bet there’s magic. And that’s honest to goodness physics!

But the next thing is to walk right out there. Whatever could make this cautious crew, who have already saved themselves, take such a further risk? I have an inkling. Now to see if it works out.

Andala wouldn’t be Andala without the Andalans.

The rough way to arrive at Andala, as told by Marie.

“Into the lander! Everyone. Move move move!”

It wasn’t meant to be like this.

“Drop it. We’re running out of time!”
“Just this…”
“No, Marie! We ain’t dying here.”

Sirens blared, voices shouted, and I found myself bundled up and shoved straight inside our lifeboat.

“Come on. Get the door closed!”

That was how we arrived at Andala.

“What the hell’s going on?”
“Are we good to go here?”
“Good as we’ll ever be.”
“Mina?”
“Yes! Move!”
“All right. We’re outta here.”

Kingston slammed the door behind us, leapt into the pilot’s seat, and launched Bee free from Proteus. We were really flooring it. I couldn’t reach my safety belt he throttled the ship so fast. Everyone held on, trying to contain our panic.

“All right. Flood the O₂.”
“Yes captain.” Mina punched in the command. Cold air started whistling in from the dozens of vents around Bee’s cramped cockpit.
“How much time does this buy us?”
“Not long.” She ran the numbers. “Our halflife is, maybe, two hours in this environment.”
“Halflife!?” I yelped.
“Two hours?”
“Perhaps not even that.”
“Chen?”
“Yes, Kingston?”
“We’re in a bad way here.”
“I gathered that!”
“Something happened at arrival. We don’t know what.”
“A sigma burst.”
“Mina! We don’t know that for sure.”
“Come on, captain.” Said Robin. “It wiz. And it shouldnae have been. I cocked up.”
“Sigma?” I could only barely remember what that was supposed to mean.
“A prompt criticality incident triggered when we dropped out of superlight.”
“A suspected sigma,” Kingston insisted, “to be investigated.”
“Aye, sure. If we live!”
“What!?”

Bee was a good distance from Proteus now. The captain turned his chair around and held my shoulder.

“The oxygen supply is contaminated. That’s what sigma means.”
“Diatomic oxygen is affected very keenly…”
“Mina. Please. I’m on this. You make me a plan, okay?”
“So. The oxygen on Proteus was contaminated the moment we arrived. Bee has its own reserve, but it was tainted too. Just not as much.”
“Bee was further from the superlight drive during criticality. And its oxygen is stored compressed, rather than re-circulated, yielding a smaller cross section.”
“Mina!”
“But we still have just two hours to live!?”
“No. Look, we’ll be all right. We just gotta fix this.”
“In a real hurry!”
“Yeah.” Kingston sighed. “Looks like it.”
“Our halflife aboard Proteus was more like two minutes than hours. So we did the right thing.”

Halflife: the time each one of us had a fifty-fifty chance at still being alive. There’s nothing colder than numbers. Two of us would be gone in that time. And two halflives out, only one of we four should survive. No wonder the very word chilled me. It was the uncaring stare of death.

“So, can we generate clean air in time or can’t we?”
“No, captain. Bee can only synthesise from bases which are also contaminated.”
“Right. We absolutely gotta take in fresh supplies. So how toxic are we?”
“Us?”
“You heard me. Are we carriers of this thing or not?”
“Well, not exactly. The air in our lungs and the oxygen in our bloodstream are low volume and…”
“We’re clear?” Kingston stared ahead at the living, breathing moon in the distance. “Cause I just got a plan.”
“Oh no! Not that!”
“We got this far, didn’t we?”
“You mean we…” I stood up and gazed out the canopy at that gorgeous little world.
“No! We can’t. Not just to save ourselves.”
“Look, Khatami, either we die right here like fish out of water or we give this place a shot.”
“Vesper. All of Vesper. That’s what we could destroy!”
“Not if we’re careful.” Kingston nudged Robin from his instruments. “Reckon Bee is up to it?”
“Whit? If she’s clean?” Robin had hardly been listening. He was deep in diagnostics, figuring out what had happened to Proteus.
“How can we be clean! Madness! The very presence of us would…”
“Be our lifeline. It’s either that or we’re dead. You know it.”

Mina feared we could pollute the world beneath us with something far more toxic than the limited air aboard our little ship. Something self-replicating, all-consuming, and beyond our ability to stop. Namely Earth life itself.

“The hull isnae scrubbed. But you could try a good strong heat. Make it quick, mind, or we’ll melt.” Robin really had a way with worrying words.
“Quick’s good.” Kingston smiled and fired up the engines.

The captain took us down in a harrowingly fast descent through Vesper’s upper atmosphere. Once we were coming in, he cut the power and set us on a glide. This was the way they used to do it centuries ago: dropping like a rock, literally ballistic. A corona of white hot light crept around the hull, as the outer surface burned up, per Robin’s prescription. We were a meteor now, streaking across Vesper’s sky somewhere in early morning. Bee shook violently, throwing us around, making communication impossible. Holding on as best I could, I stared out the window, entranced by the world I could see between the lashes of heatshield fire.

I saw the dawn.