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VULPANOTE:
We believe that Adama is now on our side. He is a willing participant in his restoration. We are now the ones that bid him make haste slowly. He has accepted a regular daily routine which consists of walks under the trees and work in the garden followed by brief meditation periods.
In the evening we talk about anything that might be of interest. Adama wants to know about the monastery. I tell him what I know. Occasionally I visit Cain and learn what little news there is that matters. I do not tell Adama that the entire order is waiting to discover what happened to the Galactica. I let him believe that he is a forgotten man in a quiet backwater human settlement and that the affairs of the Benevolent Order are progressing as usual. Which in a way they are. Despite tragedy, life goes on.
Once a week we have retrieval sessions and I speak the hypnotic words and Adama remembers and I record. Serpentine insists that these occasions take place only once a week and then only when Adama is rested and in good spirits. Adama would like more frequent sessions but Serpentine is not to be challenged. Her word is law. I have not bothered to quote these sections since they mainly filled in details in a picture that we had already seen. They do not advance the story.
I accompany Adama at all times. He likes to chatter about things. He has taken to wandering close to the Pectanile. It seems to fascinate him. He is attracted to it and is responding to it as a symbol of health.
For myself I listen, question and record. Whenever possible I cross-refer, trying to evaluate the truth of his comments. Adama wants the truth but I am suspicious of him. As ever there is something else moving under his still waters. I watch and wait.221Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwexOodFBJ1
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Spring is well advanced in the garden and the short, sharp winter of this planet is in full retreat. Already there are flowers in the Sruce Trees. They smell of crimbers and the smell is everywhere. Flying through the trees I have glanced against the bright blue balls of blossom.
Responding as though I am a bird, the blossoms explode against my hard and pitted side, painting me with fragrance and plastering me with their sticky equineshoe-shaped seeds.
I know that I smelled of crimbers when I recorded the following important segment of Adama's life.
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ADAMA'S NARRATIVE
VULPANOTE:
This interview is one of the most important. Adama began by describing incidents which have already been covered in earlier transcripts. I have edited the interview so that it begins with new and rather shocking information.
ADAMA: Occasionally, you know, the Galactica and I were at odds. I wanted one thing and the bio-crystalline brain wanted another. To me the cleaning of the ship was all-important. But the Galactica became obsessed with its weight! It understood extraordinary calculations linking the gravity of the planet with its own mass, the drag of the atmosphere and the ship's power reserves. Despite all we had suffered, the ship was far from dead. It was recovering and making economies, like any other living creature. The massive symbol transformation generators, for example, were alive but dormant. They could be brought back into the game when the need required. Self-repair circuits kept them under constant check.
The Galactica was bending all its efforts to getting us off the planet. Each day it unavoidably leaked energy and the equations changed. Each night it had to charge my gravity pack and the mule. It tolerated my fussing with the dead and my labored attempts at cleaning, but it demanded that I heave our anything that could be unbolted.
The simple truth was that given the gravity of the planet we did not have enough power to achieve escape velocity. But we had almost enough. The question for the Galactica was how much could we trim from the ship and still leave it viable in space. To the Galactica, a loss of weight was the equivalent of an increase in energy. Much of the ship was now open to the atmosphere of the planet and would be open to the vacuum of space if we escaped. My control area was the only part of the ship that retained breathable air. Hence there was much that could be abandoned. But how much could one small man do?
I moved the various landing craft down to the surface leaving only one stored in the hold. I tore out machinery that the Galactica decided it no longer needed. I threw the entire library of tapes and books out of the door and watched the land crabs chomp and tear at them.
Such activity became my life.221Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgYg8EY1Lz2
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One day I was in the gravmule high on the top of the Galactica. I had my laser torch and was cutting at the space doors which led to the hangars where the landing craft had been stored. These were excess weight that the Galactica had told me to dispose of. I cut one door free and watched it twit around on one of its hinges as the high gravity swung it. The metal tore and the hinge broke. The door slid over the skin of the Galactica and accelerated to the ground where it caused a brief, subdued commotion among the perished rubbish. I paused to rest and looked out toward the sea.
The sea was always interesting. It was gray and rolled like molten lead. It did not have waves but heaved in slow undulations. It ran up the rocky shore like oil in a pan. Where the currents moved (and they changed by the hour) the sea took on a different colors: sinuous eddies of gray-green and slate-blue. Where currents met I was reminded of serpents coiling and sliding past each other. And never a sound. To those of us who know the sea of a planet like Gemon, its different voices are as familiar as our own moods. But this sea was silent as thought, and its silence disturbed me and thrilled me. I remembered the dangerous sea of my boyhood.
And as I looked it seemed that the sea was changing. It became spotted. This I had never seen before. The spots were evident from the shore to the horizon and spread as wide as my arena of vision. And even as I watched they changed. The spots became mounds and these quickly expanded into domes of redness. The red was the color of raw meat. I was aware that what I was watching was expanded into domes of redness. The red was the color of raw meat. I was aware that what I was watching the emergence of many spheres from beneath the sea. What could this mean? So far as I could judge, there had been no intelligent life among the creatures that swarmed around our ship, but now something new and unified was emerging.
You can imagine my concentration as hundreds of red spheres rose to the surface and bobbed there for a moment before lifting from the sea. As they lifted they expanded to twice their size in the atmosphere. I could see veins on them, like patterns in marble, and they each dragged a tail which resembled an umbilical cord.
The spheres rose, the cords stretched, a body rose. They were attached to a body which slowly emerged from the sea. It was like a coiling mass of red worms. Its size at this distance awed me. It seemed as if the whole of the sea had become an undulating mass of red. As the body rose at the end of its cords it began to disentangle itself. Tentacles separated from the main body and rose. Each was like a segmented worm. At the worm's ends were blind mouths which opened and closed as though tasting the atmosphere. Last to emerge from the sea were coiling black tendrils which trailed from the underside of the body and dragged over the surface. I realized that what I was watching was the emergence of a single giant creature!
This single creature rose silently until it filled the sky. It came between me and the pale sun and its complex shadow patterned the dun earth. It pulsed once, gathering itself and then releasing, and I noticed that it was able to take in atmosphere through valves on its side and then blow it out through the blind mouths. It pulsed again. With this slow jetting motion it began to turn in the sky and then moved inland. It was moving in my direction. I noticed that the creature was not as disorganized as I had at first thought. The largest balloons, for such they were, supported the middle of the body. Fringed around these were smaller balloons which were able to move autonomously on long thin necks, each like the head of a reared snake. These, I soon realized, were eyes. I had not been able to distinguish them at a distance. The eyes were studying the ground.
With a sudden compression the creature dropped and some of its black tendrils uncoiled and scrabbled on the earth. Then its balloons filled again. Straining, it rose. To my shock and awe it lifted one of the giant starfish. It heaved the starfish high in the air and the blind mouths got to work, burrowing directly into it and sucking its juices. While it ate the creature moved on.
I did not stay around to watch any more. I steered the mule down the sloping sides of the Galactica and into the ship through the hole in the staff canteen wall, close to my chambers. I parked it and climbed out wearing only my survival suit. As I did so the shadow of the creature darkened the entrance way. I could see tendrils dangling down, plucking up the land crabs, and fossicking among the material ejected from the ship. I felt the Galactica lurch slightly and guessed that it had been bumped by the creature. I could imagine it above us and beginning to explore us with its tendrils.
One of the tendrils poked in through the door and began feeling about. That set me running, but then I stopped. Staring in at me through the gaping hole in the ship's side was one of the giant eyes. I saw its pupil contract as it focused on me. The tendril stopped moving abruptly. It did not suddenly strike for me. It held still like a frozen branch.
I moved slowly and as I did so, the eye shifted slightly, to keep me in view. I wanted to get through the safety door and into my quarters. But the scrutiny of the eye was extraordinary. It made my every move seem enormous.
Finally I reached the door, opened it and dived through. The door slide shut behind me and immediately I heard something begin a soft exploratory tapping.221Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPplFDOJE2J
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My control room had, of course, external cameras and I was able to view the creature as it touched the ship and ogled it, its eyes swooping down at the ends of their extendable supple necks.
I observed that it was careful in its interaction with us. There were many small aerials that it could have broken, but it touched them lightly. Where the hydroponics ring had been detached there were safety doors and these explored gently. Mounted on the side of each door was a security panel consisting of twelve independent digits. Each panel had a simple code, a sequence of eight numbers. The cluster of several eyes gathered at one of the doors and a delicate tendril began to tap at the panel. This amazed me. A siminoid tapping a typewriter might accidentally write a sentence given enough time. But this creature was methodically tapping out sequences of numbers which would inevitably lead it to the combination for the door.
It had puzzled out the function of the panel and how to operate it. Perhaps harder, it had worked out what a door was! Yet how could this be? There was nothing about the creature that suggested high technology or even domestication. Given the thumb, it was odds on that we humans would one day invent the door knob. This creature had tentacles and eyes and floated on thousands of red balloons of gas. What would it invent? The speculation daunted me. I knew I was facing intelligence of a raw and yet very pure kind.
I saw the moment when the creature found the correct combination, and the door slid open. Several eyes lowered to watch this. The creature closed the door and then tapped out the code again. The door obediently opened. Whereupon the creature closed it again and then moved over to another of the doors. It tried the same code. No result. At this it set to with a will and within minutes had the new code cracked. Thereafter it set both doors opening like the clatter of castanets. The creature was playing with the ship.
Now, intelligence and compassion are not necessarily linked, but there is a good chance that the intelligent creature which shows restraint in the face of the unknown, may be an entity one can treaty with. I observed the creature closely as it bobbed around us, its red balloons holding it steady and its jets occasionally puffing. There was a lightness about the eyes. One of them floated right in front of one of the cameras and stayed there looking. I could have been forgiven for thinking that the camera's function had been reversed and that the creature was looking at me. The eye was dark and lustrous. It had a black pupil and a lens and an iris which could open and close. It was covered with a film, like plastic, and fluids permeated through this. Can I say the eye was thoughtful? Humorous even? There is a danger in such assumptions, I know, but such were my impressions.221Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZwxxiAEvLW
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Eventually, as the day ended, the creature departed. The eyes, and the large spheres which took most of the weight, expanded and the creature rose. It relinquished contact with the ship with a curiously caressing motion. The tentacles slid over us, tapping. The creature rose so high that it became a pattern in the sky like a deep red stain. It disappeared behind the hills, contracting and expanding, as it jetted.
You have already gathered that here was a creature that I rather revered. After all the death aboard the Galactica and the dumb company of the land crabs and mute starfish, here was intelligence of a high order. It was not like the bio-crystalline of the Galactica. It was other.
But my life returned to the same pattern. The days became indistinguishable. I ferried around the ship at the Galactica's behest and chopped at it to reduce its weight. Then one day I was sitting in the mule, resting on the ground, wondering if I could use the land crabs to help clear the DME section, when a shadow fell over me suddenly.
I looked up and found that I was surrounded. Six or even seven eyes on long red extensions bobbed in the air near me. The body of the beast was hunched and compressed. It reminded me of the untidy bag that wasps make for their nest except that it was blood red, not paper-white. Before I could do more than let out a cry of fear, one of the tough tendrils that were coiled like ferns under its body released and darted at me and wrapped around the mule. It gripped like a steel hawser, but there was no mistaking the life in it. The end of the tendril, much to my surprise, was hairy and I noticed that each of the hairs had a small sucker at its tip which adhered to the clear bubbleresin of the mule. I saw the creature grip and the walls of the mule buckled. I made sure that my survival suit was working as the mule was jerked off the ground throwing me to the floor. I was carried up to the..... (pause)
VULPA: Go on.
ADAMA: I am seeing it all. I faced death. Ask anyone....I thought I was going to be eaten. The blind mouths were open...I had seen them plunge into a creature and suck it dry. One drew close to me. It was ringed with triangular teeth. They were small within the funnel where they were growing but became large at the tip. Beyond, on the outer skin of the lip, they were broken and missing. They could grind and cut. An elephant's trunk with teeth is not a bad image to describe them for there was also something sensitive about the way they nuzzled.
I was carried higher, beyond the blind mouths. I was lifted by the tendril and at the same time the creature was rising so that when I looked down I saw the Galactica far below me. How high I was lifted I do not know but the red balloons which supported the creature reached a tremendous size so that they became translucent and I could see the veins within them and the smoky shape of clouds through them.
I assume that we hovered in the stratosphere of this planet. I was placed on the upper part of the creature's body which was soft but firm like well-toned muscle.
Giant eyes gathered around me.
Several tendrils rose. Carefully the bubbleresin membrane of the mule was gripped, cracked and picked apart. The anti-grav unit which was situated in the lower rear portion of the small craft, tore free. It fell away and rolled down the creature's red belly and disappeared. The roof of the mule was tossed aside and then the door and walls. A tendril touched me.
I was held simply. One tendril was around my chest and I held it with my arms. Another was between my legs so that I rode. A third pressed into my back. They were careful, but I was turned around, upside down and once was held only by one leg. The scrutiny was enormous. Once a tendril touched the energy and atmosphere pack on my survival suit and I shouted in alarm and waved my arms at which the probing ceased.
I was set down on my feet and the tendrils released me slowly. I fell down immediately. The creature's skin was hard as the laminate panels inside the Galactica and yet was easily flexible and moved under me. I pulled myself together and I stood up warily with arms outspread until I was really standing on the creature. I could feel the tremble of its life through my feet. I looked at the gently moving hills of the creature and could occasionally see a pulse beat under the surface. I was reminded of the fluttering of birds caught in a net and that is a strange image to be summoned up for a creature so vast. It stretched all about me, acres of red skin. I was standing in a shallow concave depression.
The eyes were very close to me. I took two hard paces and reached out and touched one of them and it didn't flinch or blink but a tendril immediately rose and tapped my helmet. I guessed that the creature thought that my helmet, which has a single face bubbleresin face plate, was a single eye. I stood squarely in front of the eye and thrust my head forward and I blinked and opened and closed my eyes several times trying to make the movement obvious. I wanted the creature to understand that I was an entity who lived within the protective environment of my survival suit. It studied me intently. I pointed at my eyes, making myself stare like a fish, and then pointed at one of its eyes. The eye drew even closer and I saw the lens bulge. The iris contracted. I was hypnotized and motionless before its scrutiny. After several mili-centons it drew back. I had the clear impression that it was thinking, weighing up what it had seen.
The tendril which had tapped my helmet and which had been waiting close with its hairy tip furled, now reached down ant tapped my metallic gloved hands. I thought for a moment and then reached and tapped the tendril.
One of the thick tentacles that I have called blind mouths now reared over the near horizon and hung over me. In diameter it was perhaps one and a half times my own height. It could have eaten me easily. With great deliberation, the tendril tapped the blind mouth with its fringe of sharp teeth, and then waited. I lifted my head, opened my mouth and showed my teeth. The eye looked down on me.
What a breakthrough that was! Tendrils opened and closed, the eyes bobbed, the trembling in the creature increased and I was shocked to see a deeper red suffuse through that segment of the creature's body that was close to me. Of course, I fell down again.
Communication! We had the beginnings of language! A tapping meant, "What do you have that is like this that I have?
The creature tapped my foot and I again tapped one of its tendrils. It paused for thought.
A few moments later the creature tapped my gloved hands seeming to indicate the fingers. In response I was careful to touch only the small hairy suckers at the end of a tendril and that seemed to satisfy it.
We went on this way for a long time until I suddenly realized that I was running out of both power and air. I pointed at myself and then pointed down, pointing through the creature. I cannot say that the creature understood. It merely gathered that all was not well and took action.
Immediately a tendril wrapped around me, supporting me between the legs and beneath the arms. Then it lifted me and I found myself dangling in space.
I was carried down and deposited within the Galactica, in the place that had once been the staff canteen. I scampered to the safety door leading to my rooms and let myself in. With the door closed I yanked off my helmet and breathed deeply. I had cut things fine. I had little more than three minutes of air left to me. But I was alive! I began to shake uncontrollably as I stood, leaning against the door. Reaction I suppose to all the shocks I had received and it was all I could manage to drag myself up the ramp and into my rooms. I made my way into the control room and lay down.
The external cameras were all working and the screens presented an interesting image of the creatuer. It was browsing unconcernedly among the land crebs, gathering them up in clusters and presenting them to the blind mouths.221Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQl6rdAkjx1
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Thereafter we had many meetings. We continued our elementary communication and one discovery was to prove significant later. The mule being now broken, I had taken to using my little domestic anti-grav unit for work outside. It was much slower than the mule but at least gave me mobility. Sometimes the creature joined me. It anchored itself to the hills and spread, like a red silk canopy, over the plateau where the ship rested. It supported me in its tendrils and, with several large eyes bobbing along, carried me wherever I pointed. We were close to the base of the ship where the emergency thrust and guidance turbos were located. I had been trying to show how the Galactica had been damaged and strained by the landing.
One tendril reached out and tapped twice on one of the dark turbo vents. I thought for a moment and then pointed to one of the blind mouths that was sucking along the plateau, fossicking perhaps for one of the giant starfish. The blind mouth paused and then found a large land crab, took it, and then lifted it up to within a few feet of me. With a peristaltic contraction, the triangular teeth ripped into the shell and cracked the land crab and sucked out juices and meat. It turned aside and spat away the empty shell. It was asking me a question. "Is the turbo vent a mouth through which the Galactica can eat?"
I crossed my hands to and fro before my face. (We had established that this signifiect negation. The creature would rub two tendrils in front of one of its eyes to give me the same information.) Then I made motions with my hands to mime blowing and propulsion. I don't think I am a good mime and three eyes floated close to scrutinize what I was trying to communicate. They waited patiently. I pointed up at the main body of the creature and then made the pulsing movements again and tried to show the whole thing lifting and shifting. There was a long pause and then the blind mouth that was close to me vented suddenly. I was caught unprepared and the gust blew me back like a rag doll. Had the creature not been supporting me under the arms and across the back I would have been blown to the ground. And that would have been the end of me for we were some fifty metrons above the ground.
The gust stopped almost immediately but it had blown my right arm back, nearly dislocating it. It hurt but I didn't care. There were suddenly fifteen or twenty eyes hovering around me and with great deliberation, one of the tendrils snaked out and carefully tapped the rocket vent. Then it pointed at a cluster, say fifty or sixty, of the blind mouths which had gathered some distance away and were directing their empty gaze downward. The body of the creature compressed and in unison, the blind mouths vented, stirring the rubbish on the ground into eddies and whirlpools. The entire creature, carrying me with it, rose. I shouted something and made circles with my hands on either side of my helmet which was our sign language for "yes."
The small gust did not carry us very far and the creature let itself drift back downward slowly. Finally it deposited me safely in the canteen area. Then it drifted away from the ship. It made signs with several of its tendrils pointing at its underbelly. I had a feeling that it wanted to demonstrate something and so I stayed close to the opening in the canteen wall and watched as it jetted gently away.
When it was about a mile or so from the Galactica it paused. The eye balloons all rose until they were high above the body. Above them stretched the giant semi-transparent lifting balloons. The tendrils coiled up like springs under the body and at the same time, the blind mouths lowered until they all pointed stiffly downward like fingers, hundreds of fingers. In a strange way the creature was trying to imitate the Galactica.
I saw it draw atmosphere into itself through the vents in its side. It was for a moment distended and then it release through the blind mouths. The sheer power of its drive sent it rocketing up to the sky. Even as it accelerated it drew breath and the cycle continued. It shrunk rapidly to a mote of redness, a spark of sunlight, high in the sky.
The bushes which had been beneath it were flattened. A tornado of dust spiraled into the sky and became a short-lived mushroom cloud. I felt the blast of one of the creature's departure as a wind which struck us and rolled over us. Rarely have I seen any animal so committed to movement as my strange red creature of gas and bladder: the charging bull perhaps, the striking snake, the graceful leap of the kris deer which jumps and points and spears in the same movement.
As I say, it was imitating our ship, or what it thought our ship might be like. In its terms, the bladders and balloons which supported it were like my anti-grav unit. They were stable and solid. But the jets were fierce: the very stuff of raw energy.
I watched it high in the planet's sky for many minutes but then lost it as the day declined. I wondered how high it could climb, how high it could reach, before the thinning atmosphere threatened its balloons and the cold threatened its life.221Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFVlO0geE2x
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After this event I did not see the creature for three days. In retrospect I believe this was a most important time. I believe the creature returned to the sea to mull. The creature was thinking about us. It had great powers of reason and I think it came to understand the Galactica's predicament.
The Galactica was of course interested in this creature. It was programmed to appreciate alien life and asked me if I was hoping to take a sample of this life-form with us if we were lucky enough ever to depart this high-gravity planet. That possibility never occurred to me but it made me realized how attached I was becoming to this----this----what? I realized that I had never even given it a name. Names can be important. But how could I name it? Given this harsh planet of hungry land crabs, creeping starfish and gray shrubs, I might call the creature Friend; I might call it Hope; I might call it Companion. It became a focus for an energy which, for want of a better word, I shall call Love. For that is exactly how I thought of it. It gave me focus and meaning. Among death it was life and so I gave it a most private name, Dae-itz. That is how I will name it from now on.
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Dae-itz returned some three days later. It may have come from the sea: I do not know for I was working in the part of the ship which had dealt with data records. This area had had its own living complex which included a creche where the very young children of those who worked aboard the Galactica could play and be educated. It had suffered the same fate as the rest of the Galactica.
I had become inured to death and decay by this time. The creche was horrible to clear as I had known many of the children and had sat and told them stories....But I did it. I cleared the bodies and then I cleared the furniture and the toys. I tipped them all out of the ship and down to feed the land crabs.
I also threw out the records and the record-keepers. It was while I was engaged on this task that Dae-itz returned. The sky darkened to blood as it anchored. Several eyes bobbed down on the end of their stalks and I walked to them and then made the affirmative gesture. Two tendrils returned the gesture. The positive gesture had also come to serve as a greeting. Dae-itz settled to watch me.
Most of the bodies were in an advanced state of decay but there was one, a woman as it so happened, who had managed to get into her survival suit but who had not managed to activate the atmosphere control. She had remained, more or less preserved, in vacuum. I waved and pointed to Dae-itz before I tipped her from the ship and Dae-itz caught her as she fell.
The giant creature removed the suit with the care and precision of a watchmaker and then examined the body. Many eyes gathered for this, like students at a medical school autopsy. Dae-itz had no way of knowing whether I was a man or a woman. It may have known nothing of gender but it was able to study eyes and fingers and lungs and liver.
Later I found the body of a man well preserved in his survival suit. He had become trapped in the darkness between levels when the transportation system failed. The power packs of his suit were run down. He had obviously kept his lights going as long as possible and had at last committed suicide by opening the valves on his suit to the vacuum of the interdeck. I waved again to Dae-itz as I lugged this body up and pitched it out. So Dae-itz was able to investigate two of us.221Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoK7SqkfDpJ
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One evening Dae-itz and I were together. I was sitting on top of the Galactica and Dae-itz settled on the hills and plateau. The creature looked like a thick carpet. The entire land around the ship looked to be covered with red cloth which billowed slowly, its color accentuated and brightened by the light of the setting sun. Several eyes were around me and on an impulse I had danced one of the slow Callrine dances that Ila had taught me. I don't know what Dae-itz made of it but I at least had taken pleasure in clapping me hands and in making the small steps and turns. I suppose I was exhilarated. That day I had been carried by Dae-itz out over the sea and had seen the strange patterns that covered the surface of the sea.
I had also seen another creature like Dae-itz on the far horizon, calmly jetting. It had suddenly swung around and come toward us. From its abrupt change I guessed that these creatures had some means of communication and that Dae-itz had called to it. It passed over us, higher by some hundreds of feet, and eyes came down. The new creature, darker in tone than Dae-itz, stayed with us for a while and then jetted high and departed.
Later we returned and I found myself feeling a little more "at home" if I can call it that on this grueling planet. It is all a matter of finding things which are familiar, really. I had posed myself such a question. Why had a creature such as Dae-itz evolved such rare intelligence? I had no answer, but the implication was that there was an extraordinary social order on this planet. I wanted to know more. I also wanted to tell the creature more.
Anyway, in the evening, I stationed myself on top of the Galactica. After my little dance I pointed at Dae-itz and then at the sea. Its inflated eyes looked at me and then around at the sea. When its gaze returned to me I pointed at myself and the Galactica and then up to the stars.
It did not look up, but moments later it detached from the ground and began a gentle susurrus as it spread its blind mouths and jetted from the ground. The lifting balloons inflated, the cords tightened and up it went with a steady acceleration. I have no idea why it left or really what idea I had communicated. Perhaps it thought I was asking it to leave?
But later that night it came back and settled on the hills.
I made one bold guess about Dae-itz and that was that it wondered at discovering intelligence in a creature as small as me.221Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6uI8RYNTrC
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Some days later Dae-itz helped me clear out the DME areas.
The vast dim chamber that had been the DME area was my greatest challenge. In scale it was greatly beyond the human. I stood within it, in the thin light that penetraed through the hole that had been torn by the meteorite when we lurched into local time/space.
The moment that the particle screens failed, the five sectors of the DME area which were still viable became as one. Have you ever looked at soap bubbls and seen how their facets intersect and then, when one of them explodes, how the remaining walls adjust? I imagine something like this happening within the DME sector. One skin failed and then another and another until finally all that was left was a brew of atmospheres and the choking organisms.
When the Galactica was free in space the different zones which served the DMEs clustered within the vast chamber like eggs. Under the crushing forcce of this planet's gravity, the particle screens had been strained and when the screens finally collapsed after the wind storm, all the entities along with the vegetation and furniture that constituted their environment, had tumbled together, pressed to the concave floor.
This was the miserable sight that greeted me. The Galactica with its normal practicality had told me that if I could clear this area then we would be close to achieving esceape potential. Herac confronting the Gean stables faced no more daunting a task, and I was not Herac.
The idea was that I should introduce land crabs into the DME chamber and let them gorge and then eject them. The Galactica assured me that the land crabs could do no harm to anything that was not already damaged. It was the Galactica that suggested that maybe the giant red creature could be pressed to help. Dae-itz would be invited to ferry the crabs and then dispose of them.
I communicated our needs by the simple method of visiting the surface, netting a land crab and lifting it up to the hoel smashed by the meteorite and then releasing it to scrabble down inside. Dae-itz watched. And as I lifted my third land crab, it just scooped up a hundred and stuffed them through the hole.
It seemed to look at me quizzically as if to say, "Why do you want to fill your ship with land crabs?"
Following an impulse I beckoned to it. I re-entered the ship through the meteorite hole and two of the eyes contracted and followed me. They looked around the dark interior where the land crabs were already scurrying and fighting. A tendril also managed to snake through the hole and this tapped the walls and plumbed the floor and slapped the land crabs. The pair of eyes must have watched for half an hour. Then the tendril reached and captured a large land crab that had been particularly voracious. When I saw that, I gave the affirmative gesture before the suspended eyes. Again I was regarded steadily while the land crab squirmed in the tendril's grasp. Then the tendril holding the crab and the pair of eyes withdrew.
I was about to follow when the entire hole was blocked by one of the blind mouths. It came feeling in, thrusting aside and bending the smooth laminate of the inner walls. I lifted to the top of the chamber to avoid it and hung suspended and watched. Inside the chamber the blind mouth felt about until it discovered the mess where the land crabs were feeding and then it lowered its mouth in and began to draw the material into itself.
After a few moments it withdrew from the chamber and I hurried after it. The blind mouth turned away from the ship and fired the material toward the ground. What the giant creature thought of it I had no way of knowing but I gave the affirmative sign to the ogling eyes which watched me constantly.
Then Dae-itz set to it with a will. It widened the meteorite hole and two blind mouths took turns to enter the chamber and evacuate the contents. It worked all day, all night, and when the chamber was empty it lifted silently and jetted its way toward the sluggish moonlit sea.221Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMyxf0OZuZj
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The last things I shall say concerning Dae-itz offer terrifying insights into the alien mind which, in giving us knowledge, emphasize just how little we really understand.
Dae-itz was away for a sectan. During that time the Galactica overstayed its optimum departure time. I will explain. I came to realize how much I had come to depend on the creature that had helped me. I had never known such a pure relationship of giving and taking. It gave, I take, but I must have contributed something. Looking back I doubt that I would have survived on that cruel planet had I not had that creature as my companion.
At the same time the Galactica and I worked on the ship, deciding which systems were needed and which could be thrown out. The Galactica had been pared to a minimum. It had been cleared of life-forms. It had been stripped and gutted. Structurally, the ship was now a skeleton. Its plates were open and the inner parts would be exposed to the vacuum of space. This did not matter and in some ways was an advantage for space does not corrode. Secure were my anachronistic suite of rooms with their flickering fire and antique bedroom. The mind of the Galactica, healthier now, knew its strengths. It had calculated that if we tried to leave now we had a 60:40 chance of achieving escape velocity. These were the best odds we would ever have. With nothing left to jettison from the Galactica, delay could only mean that second by second we lost our energy reserves. We had an "escape window" (as the Galactica called it) of two days. These calculations were completed immediately after the cleaning of the DME area and the departure of the creature.
What could I do? I am not profoundly sentimental, yet I could not face the thought of blasting off from this world withiout a proper farewell. I suppose the idea of leaving was less important to me than continuing to meet with the big red creature. I mean, tell me what gives value to life? What price the skin of Adama if he denies a friend that has helped him? What value can I place on the deaths of all my kinsmen? It is in the quality of our relationships that true value resides. Dae-itz had come to me more to me than the Galactica.
I delayed. I waited for the creature to return. At the same time, my reasonable mind told me that the creature might be dead, that it might have become bored, that it might have emigrated to a distant ocean, that in thinking that it had any deep interest in me or the Galactica I was falling into the greatest fallacy of all, that of ascribing human motives to the alien mind. I had fears and the Galactica, the damned Galactica, played descants on my doubts whispering that it had gone and would never return.
So the minutes ticked by and became centons and the centons stretched into days and the Galactica became frantic.
I stayed outside the ship with my intercom switched off to still its voice. I sat atop the Galactica, stone-faced like a Lord of Kobol, waiting.
The time for our optimum departure passed. When I entered the Galactica to sleep, that machine screamed at me. Logic without love is a damned conjunction. I recharged the batteries of my little anti-grav unit while the Galactica demanded that I settle in my couch and prepare for acceleration. I overrode with an act of will for I was still Commander of the Galactica and I was still a full living entity and the Galactica had no choice but to obey me.
But though my authority was absolute, the Galactica's obedience was only temporary and it started again, telling the minutes as they slipped past and the changes in the probability of our escape.
I placed a limit on my waiting. I told the Galactica that I would not contemplate attempting to depart until our odds of success had declined to 50:50.
On the 6th day we reached the moment of 51:49 and I heard the Galactica begin to warm the engines. We had planned our departure as follows. We would lift as far as we could using the anti-gravity system. This system, not being designed to throw a spaceship into space, and in any case being damaged, would burn out at a certain point. We could not know just when. But when it did, we would feed all power to our emergency turbos and trust to luck. Our aim was to achieve just enough velocity to get us into a safe orbit from which we could begin to negotiate a space/time shift with the STGs.
And still I delayed. The Galactica became wild.
I sat outside the ship looking toward the sea while the night gathered. I felt the grief of the abandoned.
And in the evening it seemed to me that I saw a stipple on the ocean. The moon sprang up and I saw, unmistakably, the vast creature rise from the sea and begin to drift toward us. I stood on top of the Galactica waving.
It arrived swiftly, silently, and blood-red. Several eyes bobbed around me. Dramatically I pointed to myself and then up to the sky where the first stars were already twinkling. A tendril lifted and offered to support me. The creature thought I wanted a ride. I made the negative sign quickly and then indicated both myself and the Galactica and again pointed up to the stars.
It understood. The eyes withdrew and looked at me steadily. Slowly the entire widespread creature gathered and then anchored on the hills. The tendrils gripped the shrubs and rocks. In the dying light of the sunset Dae-itz was gathered like a wave, frozen at the point of breaking. It filled half the sky. All its hundreds of eyes came to the front and stared at us.
I waved, a gesture which could have no meaning, and I felt my throat hurt when I saw one tendril rise and imitate my gesture. Then I lowered to the entrance hole which led to my rooms.
The Galactica was intoning the odds as I stripped off my survival suit in the control room.
"All right," I called. "We're leaving. Let's give it our best shot. Maybe we'll crash. Who cares? We do the best we can. OK?"
For an answer the Galactica began a countdown. The anti-grav units were coming alive, the turbos were primed. Within the bio-crystalline system, light was flowing. The countdown was as old as space travel itself, perhaps as old as human anticipation. It entered its last phase.
10, 9, 8.....
I made myself as comfortable as I could. In the viewscreen I could see the dark shape of Dae-itz and the bank of eyes staring at us.
7, 6, 5......
The Galactica began to shake. I imagined the anti-grav units flexing their power and asserting their lift, sensing the different structures within the ship and points of pressure. Already the Galactica would be experiencing torque and compression. Would it hold?
4, 3, 2....
There was a shouting in my ears. The dead companions and Ila whom I had killed, were there outside the ship chanting their farewell and I shouted my goodbye.
1.....!
I felt sick. As the anti-grav units gripped deep, the entire ship became a force-field. I felt us lurch and lift. The acceleration pulled at my hair and beard and I felt the sides of my mouth tear. We were climbing. I saw the nearby hills slide down the screen. I saw Dae-itz detach and rise with us. We were ahead of calculation and the anti-grav units were straining to incandescence. The vibration grew. I heard a bumping. We were straining...
....and suddenly all motion ceased.
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VULPANOTE:
At this moment Adama became awake. The hypnotic hold had broken. He stared at me blankly and then began to howl.
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