Seeing this, Omis took aim and shot one of them in the leg, because he didn’t want to increase the number of carcasses around the campsite. The wounded beast whistled frantically and ran to the forest, moving on three legs. This time, the other creatures followed their companion without any delay.
As soon as Ro emerged from the ocean on its eastern side, Omis woke his comrades. The young people first got rid of sleep, then stood up and picked up their backpacks. After that, they put into them their plates and the pieces of fabric used to wrap the food from the previous day, which meant that they’d finished their preparation for the journey back to the colony.
The teenager pioneers left the night camp, and after a few minutes approached the passage through the thorny bushes. Here they made a short stop to contact the colony and inform their comrades that they were already on their way home.
Knowing that there was nothing dangerous inside of the corridor, and that it had no branches, the travelers moved through it much more confidently and, therefore, faster—at a marching pace. But further, in the forest, their journey became slower and slower. The usual, easy route turned out to be difficult for teenagers accustomed to eat and sleep on a schedule. Memi was frequently checking their location.
In the middle of the road, he suggested stopping again. This time they didn’t follow the zigzags of the border of thorny shrubs. Instead, the space device had shortened their path, and directed them along a straight line between the settlement and the exit from the passage. As a result, this time they walked through new places, where trees sometimes gave way to ordinary bushes.
The explorers sat down on a piece of land covered with dry leaves, but Daf decided to lean her back against one of the shrub branches. This twig, thick and strong at first glance, appeared unable to support her weight, and the girl almost drowned in the center of the plant. At the last moment, she managed to grab the neighboring branch, although by that time her fall had already stopped by itself. The deeply sagged branch didn’t break in the end, and sustained her weight. Now Daf felt as though she were sitting on a large and soft spring. She liked it. Clinging to the neighboring branch, she first pulled herself to it and then relaxed her hand. Thus, now she could rock on her “spring.”
In the meantime, Memi had contacted the colony again.
“I see you have covered a long distance,” Kam said, answering Memi’s call. As soon as he spoke, his narrow face appeared on the travelers’ screens.
“You can see our position as it’s shown through the satellite, but this device cannot tell you that walking is tiring without getting enough sleep,” Memi answered him.
“In addition, we’ve really gained new experience, and new knowledge,” Omis added. “After all, no one has ever attacked us until last night; we only theoretically knew about such a possibility.”
“Who attacked you? When, after our morning session?”Arfina asked with her usual monotone, although with a voice touched by surprise.
“In the night,” Omis answered shortly.
“Then why did not you tell us about such occurrence during the previous session?” Now Mafkona entered the conversation.
“We did not say so because we wanted to leave that place as soon as possible; there were the corpses of the predators, there. We do not want to talk about it now either; it is a waste of energy. The main fact is that we are all intact. After we have returned to the colony, we will tell you the details,” Omis explained.
“Got it,” Arfina said. “End.”
Chapter 36
Silently striding, the six travelers, through their UD, felt a vibration on their wrists. Having cast glances at the gadgets they discovered that noon had passed almost two hours previously, and that the time neared to nine o’clock. They confirmed their willingness to communicate and immediately heard a girlish voice from their screens: “I see you are approaching the pasture.”
“Yes, Arfina, soon we will be able to speak without the satellite,” Memi confirmed the correctness of her data.
Indeed, after about ten minutes, the conversation between the group and the colony resumed without an energy-intensive space channel.
“Maybe we should come out and meet you?” Cim suggested, and his round face appeared on their screens.
“It is not necessary,” Omis rejected his offer.
“Got it,” came the reply.
In about one and a half hours, all the teenagers had gathered in the settlement. The report about the voyage, as usual, would come later. First the travelers washed themselves with rude soap, and changed their clothes. Meanwhile the kitchen attendants were occupied with their business. After all, their comrades were hungry because their one-day supply of food had run out the previous day.
In addition, the travelers were lucky that day, because the orderlies had baked a honey pie, as they did every ten days. The main accolades for the cooking of this dessert belonged to the bees—the first and in fact the only terrestrial insect created on Neia so far. They, of course, were producing the honey, but actually their main task was the pollination of the cultivated plants. Despite their extremely detailed instructions for beekeeping, the young pathfinders had suffered a lot of stings and pains until they’d mastered this delicate matter.
In the end, all the colonists visited the ocean shore. The knowledge of the passage through the thorny bushes shortened this road appreciably.
Chapter 37
More than three years had passed since the first voyage to the ocean shore, and thirty-three of them had flowed by after the arrival of the expedition on the planet. The time came when the GPC-5 informed the colonists that its energy source would lose its effectiveness after another sixteen thousand hours, with an error of ten percent.
This meant that during the two hundred and ninety one years that had passed after the fifth expedition left near-earth orbit, the plutonium-238 granules had lost most of their radioactivity, due to their half-life period of about eighty-eight years. Or rather, they’d lost most of their energy during their travel between the stars, when they’d radiated the heat into deep space. Nevertheless, their leftovers could easily provide the colony with energy enough to send messages to Earth for a much longer period than the planned thirty years.
The main problem lay in the loss of the effectiveness of a thermo-voltaic device that converted the heat generated by plutonium into electricity. Some day its energy output would fall to the level under which the device wouldn’t generate electric power sufficient to send a radio beam of enough strength to be registered by the radio telescopes on Earth. One way or another, the GPC-5 informed them that their energy source was now nearing exactly that lower limit of its power—five kilowatts. Any less power and it couldn’t provide interstellar communication.
Actually, with this message the GPC-5 was ordering them to assemble a new source of energy, and this command contained nothing unexpected. They had long decided that when the necessity came they would build a hydroelectric power station on a stream north of the residential area. The calculations, performed in accordance with the old recommendations, showed that its flow had enough hydraulic head.
The stream flowed down the slope into the River Quiet, and the height difference between the edge of the plateau and the level of the river comprised seventeen meters. This rivulet had a thirty-two meter long channel from its highest point to its foot.
First of all, the settlers planned to build a clay pipe of this length with a radius of twenty centimeters. This would force the rivulet to flow through this aqueduct until it hit the blades of the turbine. Before entering this new canal, the rivulet would have to pre-fill a specially-dug pool with brick walls.
The settlers never had time to idle, but after the creation of hydro power plant began, they worked to the verge of their physical limits. They needed to dig a pool, and make its walls out of bricks, which also needed to be produced. They created the aqueduct and its artificial bed for the stream, and made it more vertical. The work didn’t become easier af
ter that, either. They needed to carry the electric machine itself, which still awaited its turn in the energy compartment next to the nuclear device; to remove the stainless supports from under the former lander, necessary for installing the turbine. They replaced these supports with racks that were also made of clay bricks.
The colonists hadn’t any cranes or trucks. Instead, they had clearly written instructions from the late engineers, which helped the young mounters to do their job without these devices. Only the robots and two bulls were helping them.
It took almost two years, much more than the GPC-5 had allocated for the task. The young people carefully treated each individual piece of equipment; they remembered that, for example, to deliver just a hundred kilograms of power cables to Neia, it had taken forty railway tanks full of thermonuclear fuel! And they’d learned about the appearance of these tanks, and everything else, from the film, which described in detail the history of the creation of their expedition.
Several days before the end of the task, the GPC-5 informed the colonists that, starting from that moment, the energy supply could fall below an acceptable level at any time.
Chapter 38
“Did everyone get it?” Pamo, a broad-shouldered, muscular man of medium height, was the first to respond to any information about electricity. Together with Nim, a tall, unhurried young man, he was cutting up a cow they had slaughtered that morning. He addressed his question not to someone personally, but to everyone, for what he had activated a general call.
“Should we do something special now? Does anyone have a suggestion?”Lif asked. Once a bony teenager, she had now turned into a beautiful girl. Her welcoming face with delicate features now had an interested expression. Today, she, Mafkona, and Fof were sweeping the central part of the living area.
“I have,” Mafkona replied. Even though they stood side by side, she spoke with her comrade through the screen so that the other colonists could hear her. “We do not know when the HPP will begin to work, and how stable it will be. We only have calculations now. I propose to send a report on the current state of the colony to Earth, while we still have such a possibility. We must bear in mind that almost a year has passed since our last report.”
After a short silence, Fom said, “I am also in favor of the translation. If the HPP does not work properly, it may take a long time to set it up. Of course, it is not a problem at all; anyway, they already know that we exist. Still, we are recommended to maintain a gap not bigger than one terrestrial year between reports.”
The upshot was, the colonists decided to send a report immediately. They postponed their current work and prepared to send the message.
As always, Memi had to prepare the space transmitter channel. He climbed the stairs and entered the techno-compartment. Here, he activated the computer and began to check cables, driving gears, the antenna, and the telescope.
Dme, a swarthy boy keen on astronomy, climbed onto the roof of the descent vehicle and removed the protective hoods from the telescope, from the parabolic antenna, and their drive.
The rest took up the report. To the photographs selected earlier, they added the text composed in the form of a diary, supplemented with the information of the last several hundred days.
Night had come when the colonists finished their preparations. After Ro’s setting, Seler remained in the sky for another two hours, but this didn’t prevent the telescope from seeing Sol. The giant planet shone from the west, and the luminary of their ancestors flickered faintly in the northeastern part of the firmament.
The SOC-5’s optical matrix, through an optical fiber, received an image of the night sky. After analyzing it, this device turned the parabola a little to compensate for the mast displacement that had occurred when replacing the supports of the former ship. After that, the antenna again “looked” in the right direction.
The young people could see the process of sending of their file, even while lying in their beds. But today, for the sake of an unplanned session, they preferred to gather under the antenna. They all calmly waited, illuminated by two lamps mounted on the radio mast and on the water tower. The lights flooded the triangle between the lander, the water tower, and the dining area.
“How long to wait,” said Caf, a white-skinned girl with an athletic figure, thick black hair and an oval face. “Ninety-six years before their reply. And the earthlings will wait for our answer one hundred and twelve years. Although both of these intervals are physically equal, the main thing is that they are very large.”
The girl meant that the planet Neia makes one revolution around the star in three hundred and eighty earth days, and the day there lasts twenty-eight hours. As a result, this works out that a year on Neia lasts three hundred twenty-six local days. Because of this, the colonists had two time scales. They used terrestrial time to interact with the solar system and measure the age of all terrestrial beings, and the local time to date other events. Seconds, minutes and hours remained unchanged.
“Why one hundred and twelve years? The answer to the very first broadcast from Neia will arrive here in about seventy-seven years.” Hemu didn’t agree with her. He was a muscular youth, whose round head was covered with bristle, black as a raven’s wing.
“I cannot say anything about the first signal, but people will hear today’s broadcast as soon as it starts,” Ama joined their conversation.
The colonists were practically twenty years old, and Ama’s height almost reached two meters, although adolescent awkwardness still prevailed in his physique. He had an oblong face with slightly arched cheekbones, black eyes and an aquiline nose.
“How may it be?”Nef looked at him, frowning in incomprehension; she was a dark-skinned girl with a narrow face, large blue eyes and a thin nose. Others also turned to Ama with a question in their eyes.
“Out of curiosity, I wanted to hear this message on my UD,” he answered one verbal and several silent questions.
“I did not know that UD can receive the frequency of an interstellar signal.” Hafa, a tall girl with freckles on her face, admitted.
“It can if it is configured. There is a corresponding instruction in the SOC-5,” Ama explained, and then said to his screen, “Memi, when will you start?”
He, unlike the other colonists, was in the techno module, preparing the broadcast using a physical keyboard.
“Fifty seconds,” came the answer. Soon, from all screens, sounded his laconic announcement, "Start."
“Really interesting how that sounds.” Omis said, now a tall young man with yellow skin and huge fists.
No one answered him. The young people raised their heads and looked at the parabolic antenna, as if they really could see the radio waves flying in the night to the distant homeland of their ancestors.
Naturally, nobody saw an electromagnetic impulse, but quite the other thing surprised the Neians: Ama’s screen remained silent.
Chapter 39
“I do not understand—has the broadcast not begun yet?”Ama wondered.
“How it is going, did you catch the signal?” As if answering him, from above, from the entrance to the lander, Memi stuck his head out. Through his screen, he also knew what his comrade had prepared for.
“I do not hear anything, although I should be,” Ama replied.
Hearing this, Memi was also surprised. In the rays of the electric light, his face looked pale, and his head, covered with short red hair, seemed to be engulfed in fire. After a short pause, he said, looking at the screen, “It must be... the SOC-5 indicates that the session passed successfully.”
Saying this, Memi pondered whether Ama’s screen was incorrectly configured.
He wanted to ask about this, but his comrade was ahead of him: “The SOC-5 attuned my device, checked it, and informed me of the readiness of my UD to receive the interstellar transmission.”
The young people, having heard their conversation looked at each other in bewilderment.
“What do we have?”Cim entered their dialogue. He was usu
ally a taciturn, thin youth with straw-colored hair, a round face and almost colorless eyes. “The SOC-5 reports that the broadcast went normally. It also reports that Ama’s screen is correctly configured and should receive this wave, but actually we did not hear anything.”
“The devices contradict each other,” Efe said hesitantly. She was a well-built girl with a dark face, large black eyes and puffy lips.
A truly unthinkable event had happened. The colonists had never encountered such a phenomenon. For a people created by machines, it was the absolute truth that the machines weren’t ever mistaken. Their readouts were always concordant with each other. To doubt the information received from computers and other equipment had never crossed their minds. They’d never had grounds for it.
The settlers silently reflected on the situation, until Memi seemed to wake up and say, “This is an unexpected situation. Let us, as the rule requires, examine the causes of its occurrence one after another. Although this report is not really urgent, I think we need to check what is going on.”
Since no one objected, he proceeded: “Now it has occurred to me that the cosmic ray is very narrow, and its side parts may be too weak here, at a distance of about six meters from the focus of the antenna. If my opinion is correct, then the screen cannot register it due to insufficient sensitivity.”
“Maybe we should ask the computer what is going on,” Hemu suggested.
Lomo disagreed with him. “No, let us just check Memi’s idea. I mean, we should repeat the session and this time we will put the Ama’s screen right in the focus of the parabola. After that our question to both the GPC-5 and the SOC-5 will be more precise.”
“Wait,” Arfina entered the conversation, “the screen did not catch an interstellar wave not intended for it. Should we really have another session because of this?”
Space for Evolution Page 16
