The Cocoon Trilogy

by David Saperstein

  To those who have yet to travel into space and discover the living Universe, it remains a mystery. For them, the origins of life are shrouded in religious beliefs that substitute for fact.

  Many who are advanced enough to probe nearby space and planets, and find no life, remain convinced they are the only intelligent creatures in the cosmos. That kind of parochial, narrow-minded conclusion tends to encourage arrogance and a sense of superiority.

  Those who do travel our galaxy, or have been contacted by explorers, travelers and traders like the Antareans, know they are not alone in the Universe. From that knowledge there emerges a far deeper respect for life and its wondrous gifts. In spite of breaches of harmony that thieves, fools and despots bring to existence, most are at peace and living in harmony.

  So it was on Earth this soft Caribbean night as Melody Messina and Beam Amato strolled hand in hand a few yards back from the tide’s incoming surge. As they made their way down the beach, the fine, cool white sand sifting through their bare toes was a familiar and pleasant sensation. The two girls were the closest of friends. As with all the children of Butterfly House, they had known each other before their births.

  Melody was tanned, tall, and quick to smile. She was the oldest of the children. Yesterday she had turned sixteen. The Erhardt twins, Joshua and Eric, the only others born in space before the Mothership had arrived on Earth, were seven minutes younger. The rest of the children, with the exception of the two youngest of the Martindale clan, would all turn sixteen during the next four months.

  “My parents are there now,” Beam Amato said wistfully, pointing toward three visible pinpoints of light — a grouping that Earth-humans called Andromeda. Two were stars: one a Red Giant, the other a Blue Dwarf. The third pinpoint was a galaxy more than 400 light years beyond. “Near Red-1104-Quad 7 on Klane.” Beam, a highly sensitive young lady who possessed fine artistic talents, was quieter than most of the children. But when they gathered as a group, she served as one of the focal points through which the children channeled their burgeoning powers, especially when thoughts or ideas needed to be visualized.

  “They’re with the Sloor! That’s so cool,” Melody responded.

  “It’s time for the emergence,” Beam continued. All the children knew about the Brigade mission to Klane. Something extraordinary was happening to the Sloor — an evolutionary leap. The children’s ability to possess such knowledge was their secret, one of many they now kept from their guardians and teachers.

  The girls paused and sat down on the sand. They both laid back and scanned the heavens. Melody’s gaze settled on the constellation Scorpio and the star Antares’ system. Like Earth, only Antares cradled humanoid life - an ice planet whose inhabitants live ten miles below the surface, deriving energy and sustenance from their planet’s molten core.

  “My parents are on Antares,” Melody said softly as she pointed toward the familiar constellation. “For the gathering.”

  “They’re so lucky,” Beam said. “Mine will have to wait five more years for the next gathering to see their old friends.”

  “They’re doing very important work.”

  “Yes,” she said wistfully. “Anyway, I’m sure we’ll meet up with them when we...” Her words were interrupted by a high-pitched greeting song from a pod of gray whales passing south of Cuba. Both young women telepathed back a greeting of peace and safe journey. Then, before they could resume their conversation, another message from much farther away captured their attention.

  For most of the night, Melody and Beam sat silently on the cool sand beneath the canopy of stars. The tide crept up to and over their toes, but not beyond. Silvery tarpon chased small schools of anchovies in the surf. But the girls were oblivious to their surroundings as they received a detailed message from Brigade Chief Commander Ruth Charnofsky, also now on Antares for the gathering. The communication stated that most of the Brigade parents of children at Butterfly House were now on Antares. There were also special instructions for their guardians and teachers. As dawn approached, the two girls felt another message directed toward Brigade Commander Bernie Lewis, their guardian on Earth. It was from Joe Finley on Klane.

  Morning announced its arrival with a purple-to-blue-to-pink glow in the East. When the sun appeared on the horizon, Melody and Beam, excited and enthused by the information they now possessed, rose, brushed off the sand from their legs and clothes, and walked quickly toward the steep path that wound its way up the cliff to Butterfly House.

  The hotel’s white stucco walls, bathed in morning’s first light, glowed with a bright golden-orange hue. As they climbed upward, both girls sensed the other children were awake and excited. They quickened their pace. Butterfly House was going to have special visitors. There was much for everyone to do. A landing party from Antares would soon be on the way!

  By the time they reached the gatehouse and cleared the alarm system, a tropical Reuben’s sky, baby-blue with puffy white clouds, foretold of another beautiful island day ahead. Melody and Beam joined the rest of Butterfly House’s inhabitants for breakfast on the main mansion’s east terrace. Like the two girls, the other twenty-four Earth-human children, and Laga Martindale, appeared much older than their sixteen Earth-years.

  Laga was a six-foot six-inch giant - a beautiful mixture of his father’s Earth-humanoid processed genes and his mother’s Penditan heritage. The two other Martindale children, a boy, Lucas, and a girl, Rode, were eight and three years old respectively. They, too, were tall for their ages and possessed powerful and sturdy bodies. Like their mother, their skin was Penditan bronze in tone. But they had Peter Martindale’s finer Caucasian features and steel-blue eyes.

  The Penditan are a tall, dark, and muscular tribal humanoid race. Their society is matriarchal. Males and females partake equally in the hunt. Life centers on family and tribe, intertwined with abiding respect for their natural place in the ecology of their planet. Like many humanoids that do not space-travel, the belief in their origin is shrouded in folklore and mystery. But their appearance and genetic makeup, similar to all humanoids, bears out the supposition of a universal common ancestry — a seed scattered throughout the galaxy eons ago.

  There are countless planets, many of them originally lifeless, that have been colonized by various space explorers seeking minerals, gases, exotic liquids, precious stones, chemicals, energy sources and fuels. Many of these barren outposts are low-gravity moons and asteroids whose cratered surfaces are comprised of jagged rocks, ferrite and a host of other minerals and cosmic dust. They have no natural food sources. Most are devoid of moisture, though some of the mineral deposits do contain ice crystals.

  The developers, explorers, miners and wildcatters who work these places prize the animal meat of Turmoline, for its taste and high nutritional content. The furs and skins of Amaracks and Finogels, two of the planet’s animals hunted by the Penditan, are famous for their warmth and durability, a necessity on many of these forbidding outposts.

  Tern and Peter Martindale met at Turmoline’s annual market. It takes place in the dry season, on a delta at the confluence of three great rivers where the forty-six Turmoline tribes bring their wares to trade with space merchants, travelers and each other. Over the millennia, the Penditan tribe developed a particularly lucrative trade of furs, skins, and smoked protein-rich meats with the most successful space merchants, the Antareans.

  Tern had learned to operate the Antarean universal language translator, which now contained English. She was assigned to escort Peter Martindale for the market’s duration. At that same time there were sexual stirrings in Peter Martindale, a direct consequence of the deep-space processing the Brigade had received before they left Earth. Although he did not understand these long-dead emotions upwelling in him, he knew he was strongly attracted to Tern. He followed his romantic instincts. In Earth terms, Tern was more than fifty years younger than Peter. But she responded to his advances and they fell in love. He asked her to marry him.

  Custom among the Pen
ditan is that a marriage request could only be considered after a year of service to the tribe - a time equivalent to nearly two Earth-years. Smitten, Peter Martindale was eager to accept the terms. But he needed permission to stay on Turmoline from Brigade Chief Commander Ruth Charnofsky, and his Antarean Mothership Commander.

  Martindale’s Antarean commander did not like the idea of losing a crew member. On the other hand, Brigade Chief Commander Ruth Charnofsky, married to Panatoy, a Subaxian from the planet Rigel, was sympathetic to mixed-mating. She had a beautiful daughter, Autumn, to prove it.

  “Do you love this girl?” Ruth asked when she met privately with Peter Martindale.

  “I surely do,” he answered immediately and with conviction. “I feel like a schoolboy on his first date, Ruth. My heart races when I see her. I only want to be near her. Is that crazy for a seventy-nine year old man?” Because she was in contact with the other commanders, Ruth was aware that this kind of behavior was now becoming common among Brigade members, and toward many other humanoids the Brigade encountered in their travels and work.

  “Then stay here and love her,” Ruth told Peter Martindale. “I’ll handle the Antareans.” And she did. Now Tern and Peter Martindale, and their three children, lived on Earth in Butterfly House.

  The adults usually ate breakfast together at a separate table on the patio, meeting to discuss the day’s schedule. This morning they arrived after the children. Alicia Sanchez Margolin, who had earned her MS in Astrophysics at MIT, and her Ph.D. in Quantum Mechanics at Stanford, strolled onto the terrace first. She was tall and slender, with sparkling dark brown eyes and long, thick, black hair that cascaded and curled onto her broad, athletic shoulders. She was gracefully approaching her forty-third birthday. Her voice was always soft and calming, her manner self-assured.

  Most of the communication between the children, Alicia, and her husband Philip, was telepathic. Prior to their birth, these children were aware of the world they were about to enter. They had collectively chosen Alicia and Philip to be their guardians. In fact, the children had miraculously taught telepathy to Alicia and Philip from the womb, a function that only required an expansion of a mere four percent of human brain capability.

  Bernie and Rose Lewis arrived at breakfast shortly after Alicia. They always greeted the children with a resounding, “Good morning, everyone!” They were answered in unison.

  “Good morning, Aunt Rose! Good morning, Uncle Bernie!” The greeting sounded like a troop of summer campers greeting their head counselor at morning roll call.

  “Yes. Yes. It is a good morning, isn’t it?” Commander Bernie Lewis shouted back, waving his arms and smiling. “A beautiful morning.” He glanced over at Melody and Beam who had joined the Erhardt twins for breakfast. “I was up early this morning,” he called to Melody. “I heard the good news myself.”

  “What news?” Alicia Margolin asked.

  “We’re to have visitors!” Melody Messina shouted excitedly. Everyone cheered. At that moment, Philip Margolin stepped onto the patio. Holding up his hands and waving, he played to the cheers like an Academy Award winner.

  “Thank you. Thank you, one and all. I know I’m your favorite teacher and guardian, but in all modesty, I’d like to thank all the little people who...”

  “It’s not for you, Mr. Popular,” Alicia interrupted. “We’re going to have visitors!”

  “What visitors?” Phil queried, as he joined his wife at the table with the Lewis’s. Philip was shorter than Alicia, and two years younger. His stocky, five-foot, nine-inch frame rested on powerful, muscular legs that he kept finely tuned with a five mile run on the beach every day. His areas of expertise were computer science and chemistry - specifically propulsion. He too held MS and Ph.D. degrees.

  Before the children arrived, Alicia and Philip had been working for NASA, and the Department of Defense, on top-secret projects. They had been brought in as consultants by then Secretary of State Gideon Mersky when the Antareans last visited Earth. It was their planning that enabled an Antarean Watership, a huge transport that brought that life sustaining fluid to distant Antarean outposts, to land undetected near the American East Coast to safely deliver the pregnant Brigade members, their husbands and mates. After the children were born, and the decision was made to leave them behind on Earth until it was safe for them to travel in space, Alicia and Philip were formally installed as teachers and guardians. By then, they had fallen in love. They married and had a son, Michael, now six, and Carmella, a daughter not quite six months old.

  “Visitors from where?” Philip asked again, as he sat down.

  “Antares,” Bernie Lewis told him. “They sent a message last night. A Mothership is...”

  “A Mothership! Is it the whole Brigade?” Philip asked excitedly.

  Carmella Margolin chose that moment to squeal a delightful “Daddy!” from her high chair. She offered her father her plastic orange juice bottle. Although Carmella uttered her first word at three months, the children of Butterfly House had begun to communicate with her while she was still in Alicia’s womb. The language they used was one they remembered from their own gestational period. It was, they now knew, a universal telepathed language common to all cerebrally communicative species prior to birth. Even though they were not offspring of Geriatric Brigade parents, Michael and Carmella Margolin were developing mentally at a fantastic rate. Their parents suspected this was due to their contact with the children of Butterfly House. The children knew it was true.

  “Good morning, Sweetheart,” Philip said lovingly to his daughter.

  “Do you want some juice, Daddy?” the baby offered again. Philip was anxious to hear about the visitors. A quick telepathic message from Bernie told him that they would discuss the details later. Philip accepted the juice from his daughter, who then offered him a wobbly spoonful of her cereal. Rose Lewis laughed with delight.

  “Carmella, my sweet, you’ll be running this place before you’re two,” Rose Lewis said as she bent over and kissed the precocious child on the forehead.

  “Thank you, Aunt Rose,” the baby answered. She then pulled the spoon away from her father and presented it to Rose Lewis. “Want some?”

  “No thank you, Dear. I’ll stick with fruit today.” Rose helped herself to a banana and a ripe mango from a fruit bowl in the center of the table. Bernie, her husband of sixty-seven years, reached over and took the fruit from her.

  “I’ll peel those for you, m’darlin’,” he said, taking care of her the way he had for most of their lives, including the past sixteen years as the children’s protectors. Bernie was a Brigade commander. Rose chose not to take on that responsibility. In fact, when Amos Bright had originally made the offer to bring the 941 Earth-human seniors into space, Rose Lewis had been a holdout. She was not sure that leaving Earth for an uncertain future, even though it promised a much longer and more useful life, was the right thing to do. But she relented when Bernie, who wanted to go very much, told her that he would stay behind.

  “Without you, my love,” Bernie told Rose, “a long and adventurous life would be nothing.” Rose was the last to make the decision to go. That was twenty-one years ago. Five years after that, at the end of the return trip to Earth, staying behind with the children was a decision that Rose and Bernie willingly made together. It was Bernie Lewis who had convinced the other nine Brigade commanders, and Amos Bright, that it was necessary to have one commander stay behind, to guard and help educate the children. He also argued that Rose and he could serve as a study of the effects of being processed and remaining on Earth.

  Bernie was a World War II veteran, a P-51 pilot in the Pacific. He learned to fly the Antarean Probeship that was used to bring the babies, the Martindale’s, and the Lewis’s back to Earth after a faked departure. The Probeship, a sleek spacecraft capable of incredible sub-light speed, was now hidden thirty feet under the sea, beneath the outcropping of a nearby coral reef.

  “If the children are not able to travel until they are old, the
ir parents will want to visit with them,” Bernie suggested. “Will the Antarean deep-space travel processing that reversed their aging remain intact? Or, once on Earth for a period of time, might their rejuvenated bodies and expanded mental capacities revert back to more Earthly aging processes?”

  So far, the news was good. Bernie’s and Rose’s physical condition stabilized equivalently to the age of thirty-five. Their enhanced mental capacities were not diminished. They were energetic, and their altered immune systems kept them disease- free. The Lewis’s had not conceived a child in space, but were well aware of the return to fertility experienced by them and all the other members of the Brigade. Rose ovulated every twenty-eight days. She was capable of 83% brain function. Bernie, because of his enhancement to commander, was capable of 90%. The children’s brain usage and capacity had reached those limits, and perhaps beyond, but how much beyond? Would the children age in the normal definition of human experience? It appeared they had evolved beyond what anyone Earth-human, Brigade or Antarean, had anticipated. Would that make them eligible for deep-space travel now? And if so, would they want to go?

  These were perplexing questions. They remained unanswered because, for the past three years, the children refused medical and intellectual examinations, making their prospect of leaving Earth problematic. How they would respond to the visitors sent to evaluate their ability for deep-space travel was also unknown.

  CHAPTER SIX - THE SLOOR EMERGE

  One moment, the surface of the gray, oily sea was calm and the next, it was alive with Sloor. They had emerged from the depths twenty Klanian days ahead of schedule. And there were twice as many as the last emergence. The adults, who were juveniles then and had presented great evolutionary changes, now appeared to have had an even more radical metamorphosis. They were much larger than their parents had been. Their once dull- brown, scaly outer skin was now a smooth, iridescent green and lavender. Sprouting from it, along their backs and shoulders, were long, shiny black feathers.