The Children of Planet Earth

by Chicago Ted


Chapter 18 - Breakthrough

Adam didn’t know what time it was, but eventually he jumped from his seat, startled by some sudden knocking on the lander’s window. He turned to look at it – what’s going on? Before he could walk over to check for himself, a familiar shimmer of violet light descended upon the knob and cranked it – revealing Antir H’lsapa outside.

Just the mare I needed to see! he realized – but then it registered to him that she looked rather concerned about something. But what? I’m just fine, how about yourself?

“Edem is? well,” she asked – with a cocked eyebrow and a tilted head.

“Yes, Adam is well! Adam is well, well, well!” Even with such an effort he had exerted, he was still incredibly giddy about all the discoveries he had made – all that he could make, too, and more, all that he will. He couldn’t wait to get back to work –

“No.”

What?

“Edem is not well. Is not not not well.” In her telekinetic grip, she picked Adam up and put him into the cot. Wait. . . why? Adam put his head up, as far as she would allow, to look outside. Crissake, I’ve been up all night! It explained her concern, that he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. Then his stomach growled – nor any dinner the night before, for that matter. But why was she concerned with him? They were friends, yes – but this was all part of the job, and he simply got caught up in his excitement. It wasn’t the first time, either – he often went hungry during his college days.

But she was not taking ‘no’ for an answer. Apparently she also heard his stomach growl – her telekinetic reach went around and grabbed a packet of. . . something. Even when he squinted, he couldn’t make out the label, but saw it was some sort of vegetable stew. She too recognized the contents, and miraculously picked out the red hydration gun – the right one. Can she recognize the numbers? he pondered. She brought the packet up to the window to get a better look at the label, then started adjusting the dial on the gun, squinting to get a better look at the engraving. He heard the dial tick by, slowly and carefully, as she counted it up to. . . eighty? Then she injected water into the packet, twice, and immediately handed it to Adam. I guess she doesn’t realize it needs time to rehydrate all the way.

Adam set the warm packet onto his stomach, intending to eat it later – but Antir wasn’t having it. She seized it in her remote grip, then bumped its nozzle up against his mouth. “No, Antir!” he cried out, loud enough to let her hear. “Wait!” He reflexively signed his intent as well – tapping his wrist, as if he wore a wristwatch, then arranged his arms like a clockface, ticking forward.

“Wait how much?”

Adam picked up the packet – 5-10 minutes. He was too tired to bother converting time between two worlds, so he simply answered “Ten minutes!” He laid his head back down, keeping the packet in his hands in the meantime.

The lander didn’t have a blanket – or rather, it did, but it wasn’t meant for constant use. Still, Antir improvised with the towel Adam used to wash himself, draping it over his reclining body. It was still somewhat damp and oily from its repeated use, but it wasn’t about to grow any mold – there weren’t any spores stowing away aboard.

He was tempted to kick it off, as he didn’t need it to stay warm at night – not between his jumpsuit and the lander’s heating system. But he knew she would force the towel back onto him, so he decided to keep it on. . . for now.

“Edem must eat,” she told him. “Edem must sleep. Edem is not well now, Edem. . . .” She was at a loss for words. What is she thinking about? “Edem later is well.”

Oh, she didn’t pick up on the future tense. “Adam will be well,” he corrected. “Thank you, Antir.”

She rolled her eyes. “Edem will be well,” she echoed, carefully following each tenet of his pronunciation, down to the precise stress timing. Still with a glimmer of concern on her face, she somewhat reluctantly closed the window-shutter – then in an audible pop!, presumably disappeared from the scaffold.

That left Adam alone with a towel, a packet of food, and his own thoughts and regrets. He sighed. Great – just great, Adam, he thought. After making so much progress in the night and into the dawn, now you have to take things easy for a while – Antir wouldn’t have it any other way. Worst of all, you don’t even have the chance to practice reading Ơhqer writings, nor speaking the language. Just perfect. He felt the packet in his fingers – the consistency of the contents said that it wasn’t ready just yet, but it was definitely getting there. His stomach growled all the same in impatience, forcing a frown on his face. Guess that’s what I get for being too eager to complete the mission, he mused. Now, not only can I not do my work –

Wait. He bolted upright. Work! Dammit, I’m late! My boss will have my head on a pike for this!

He leapt out of the cot, kicking the towel into a wad on the floor, leaving the packet where he was before. He started unzipping his jumpsuit, eyes darting around the cabin, trying to find where he had left the cooling garment for the EVA suit. There! By the suitport! He started pulling his arms out of the jumpsuit’s sleeves, bending down to pick it up – right when he heard the window’s shutter slither open.

He turned his head to look. Apparently Antir had doubled back – and he had been caught redhanded.

Edem. Need. Rest.” Her tone, at least by human standards, had a measured mixture of anger and disappointment. Already he could feel the familiar tingling of the telekinetic grip along his back and spine.

“Adam has work today!” he tried to reason with her – but she wouldn’t hear it. Once more he was taken up by an unseen force, and floated right back into the cot, as though he were a petulant child. Packet in his lap, towel covering him, but the jumpsuit wasn’t zipped back into place – so its folds and creases started poking his back. Dammit.

“Edem not have work today,” she told him. “Ãtir talk Nowu-Gizũzḷ-to.” She gestured behind herself, towards the town. “Edem stay. Edem eat. Edem rest.”

He sighed – she really did think of everything, didn’t she? “Yes,” he replied, leaning back once again.

She gave him a glare that warned him of unspoken consequences should he try to break out of this hold again – then wordlessly as well shut the window’s shutter. Another pop! sent her away from the lander – hopefully for good this time.

Then he realized something. How did she pronounce her name? Ãtir? he pondered. Could’ve sworn it was Antir, but that might’ve just been an English bias. Is it allophonic? Phonetic? I’d have to check for minimal pairs first. Of course, Ant – er, Ãtir would be my best source for that sort of thing.

Making sure she would never know, he pushed himself up, slithered his arms through the sleeves of his jumpsuit, and zipped it back together. He then grabbed the packet and felt it around. It was nearly ready, though with a few chunks of substance still needing to be broken up. Eh, it’s close enough. He brought the nozzle to his lips and took a sip. The water definitely had cooled, as it intermixed with the freeze-dried block of stew, but it was still palatable. It wasn’t as spicy as the goulash – and he sorely missed that kick.

Oh well, what are you going to do about it, Adam? He continued drinking the warm stew, trying to get it all down before it got too cold to be palatable to him.

·–––

“Tucking in for some shut-eye?”

. . . ja,” Dr. Weiss replied with a yawn, as she unzipped one of the sleeping bags strapped to the wall. “If you are wondering what else I have found so far, my notes are by the machine.”

“I’ll take a look when I get a chance,” Louis promised, as he thrust off the wall and into Altair. “Good night, Dr. Weiss.”

She just chuckled as she watched him leave. “Wänn isch es nümme Nacht?” she asked herself. “Ich gsehn nur d Sterne und d Dunkelheit. . . .” She slipped herself into her sleeping bag, and zipped it shut around her.

After a few moments, she shut her eyes, breathing a sigh of relief. She still had so much data to go over, so many experiments to run from the safety of Rhyslinger orbit – and yet, she had done a lot since she was up. Clearly she had earned her rest now.

Tomorrow was bound to be a big day for her. Meanwhile, Louis was just getting started with his day. After downing a simple egg-and-noodle breakfast in the Cancer module, he exchanged a few words with Dr. Konstantinov – whom, he reported, had found no further issues with the forty-six colonists still in cryostasis, save for having to change out a fuse in the B rack, but otherwise the same news as from yesterday – and went into the Pisces module to wash off the grime he had accumulated over the past day or so.

It wasn’t easy, timing a sleep schedule in a quickly-orbiting location like Zodiac-Altair. He, like the others here, saw the sun rise and set more than a dozen times per day – and nobody could adapt their circadian rhythm to that sort of cycle.

Instead at first, they tried to maintain the Terrestrial twenty-four-hour day, as close as possible to the time at Cape Canaveral. Over time, however, that became impractical to maintain – and coupled with Dr. Somerset’s sleep schedule on the surface of the world, they gradually shifted over to its sixteen-hour day – eight awake, eight asleep. More or less.

First thing he looked for were communications from Earth. Most of the time, any transmissions were from the ship to the planet, not the other way around, but once in a blue moon Louis would spot something having been sent from NASA. Such messages were finicky things – after being transmitted from the most appropriate substation on the planet, it had to travel well over a billion miles out of the atmosphere and through the cosmos, before being received by Einstein, which was still orbiting the Flandro Object, and which in turn relayed the message through the Object to the receiver on Zodiac-Altair. Transmissions took hours in either direction, and the bulk of the data was redundant to minimize data loss.

It was a miracle that nothing vital was lost.

This time, Louis found something he hadn’t seen before – apparently, NASA and Roscosmos had finally allowed members of the public to send letters to the colonists – either through them directly, or through their nations’ respective space agencies. He browsed the names of all the letters he saw, but couldn’t recognize most of them. A few of them were for the people who had been pulled from cryo – himself, Dr. Somerset, Dr. Weiss, and Dr. Konstantinov. Somerset had no way of receiving or reading them right now, the second was fast asleep at the moment, but the third could easily read them right now.

For the time being, he sorted out the messages that weren’t for any of the four, and vaulted them on the ship’s server. They’d be able to read them once the colony was up and running. He also vaulted Dr. Somerset’s mail separately – just to keep things organized. Meanwhile, he turned his attention to the mail meant for him – there was a good assortment of messages, from various scientists to former Maritime Command friends to elementary school students, and many more besides, but one name in particular caught his eye: LECLERCQ, CAMILLE – his mother. That was the first one he opened up and started reading it.

Dearest Louis, it opened, she was grateful that the Canadian Space Agency had finally allowed civilian mail to reach Zodiac-Altair, apparently his grandmother had passed away two years before – she was perfectly fine and not in pain; it was just her time – and she had loved him even though he enlisted for Maritime Command. There was a brief musing of him catching a glimpse of her in transit. On the upside, his younger sister gave birth to a new daughter. Though Camille acknowledged that the news might stagger him, she urged him all the same to write back soon.

His mother did not jest with that last bit – all of that news from home hit him like a freight train. He had to step back from the terminal – well, more like thrust back, as he couldn’t step in microgravity – and tried as hard as he could not to cry. After all, tears cannot flow freely in microgravity, due to the surface tension of the fluid.

Mon dieu. . . qu’est-ce que j’ai raté?” he asked himself, between silent sobs. The answer was in the letter, and yet it did not suffice. Some of the most important functions of family life were now far beyond his reach, and even his sight. It took a decision made in a conference building in Florida or California to allow a message to be sent from Australia, across a distance told only in epics of old, just to deliver news both good and bad – but bad mainly because he had missed out on them.

“Commander Darcy, sir.”

He instead decided to distract himself by diverting his attention to the window to the outside, where he saw the little pinpoints of light steadily gleaming in the black. No twinkling here – no atmosphere to make them twinkle. And as well, that large green-and-blue object in the sky – Rhysling, mankind’s new neighbor, and Dr. Somerset was setting up the place. Although the diversion tactic was working, it wasn’t working fast enough – he could feel his tears blurring his sight.

“Sir?”

He shut his eyes, tightly, and wiped his fingers along the lids, in an attempt to at least clean away the tears he had already shed. After a moment, he could see the outside view more clearly. Nothing had changed – for Altair didn’t rotate to generate centrifugal gravity; that was Zodiac’s purpose. Well, one of three: besides providing a gravitationally-bound habitat, the frontmost part of the half also had an aerobrake, which allowed the ship to slow down in Jovian space and enter the Flandro object at a manageable velocity – and, once a site was established, it would form the colony proper.

Louis!

“Eh?” Louis turned back away from the window. “Ah, Anton. How long have you been there?”

“Only a moment,” he answered. “I was about to ask: did anyone outside Roscosmos transmit to the ship?”

He chuckled – even holding back a stray sob. “Funny you should ask.” Even though Roscosmos wasn’t the only space agency sending messages to the ship, he got the gist of what he meant. “They just allowed messages to be sent from the public.” Out of curiosity, he checked just how many Dr. Konstantinov received. Only two – there was one directly from Roscosmos, and one from. . . probably a student also vying to become a cryogenicist, if he had to guess. “Here are yours.”

“Thank you.” Dr. Konstantinov bowed his head and, as Louis thrust off the ceiling, took the commander’s place in front of the terminal. While he read his mail, Louis would busy himself with looking over Dr. Weiss’s notes – and see what she had found so far, and what she has yet to find.

There was one problem. Not only was her handwriting some of the messiest he had seen – and he was blessed with being able to read his commanding officer’s notes – the bits he could see were in German: “. . . ist Fotosynthese möglich?” and “. . . könnte für Glukose sein. . .” were the only parts he could make out. He sighed – there went his plans for the day. He’d have to wait until she got up again – and that wouldn’t be for several more hours at the earliest.

And with Dr. Konstantinov occupying the terminal, thus preventing him from doing his work, he simply resigned himself to using the gym earlier than he had planned. Gotta get those two hours in, after all.

··–·–

On the other hand, Anton had started his wake-cycle the same way he always had on the mission: monitoring the lives of the forty-nine – well, forty-six now – other colonists in cryostasis. None of them so far had come into serious harm, but he noticed that pod B7 had blown a fuse on the refrigeration coils. He knew about possible equipment failure like that was bound to happen at some point during the interplanetary voyage, so not only did he stash away plenty of spare parts to swap out as needed, he even designed the pods with buffer fluid – using the thermal gradient to hold the colder temperatures for longer, buying him time to fix the issue at hand.

He of course reported the incident to his superior, Commander Darcy, but added that B7 had blown that fuse. The fuse had been replaced successfully, he had reässured him, and there were no further issues with that or any other pod. Yes, of course he would check the racks more than once per day, as he had always done so, now please let him eat his cereal in peace.

And so the commander would – giving Anton time to reflect over his life, and more, over what choices he had made in his time on Earth that led him to travel an unimaginable distance across space to this God-forsaken world. At least Drs. Somerset and Weiss had work – and, thus, a tangible purpose – on this mission: Somerset on the surface, communicating with the equine Indigenous – which apparently were capable of vocal speech like a man, and could even speak English of all things, or so Commander Darcy said – and Weiss with decoding Rhyslinger biology, determining if it was possible at such a level for mankind to survive on the new world, side-by-side with the Indigenous.

But he? His primary purpose was to ensure that the colonists would live to carry out their tasks once the colony was established – to revive them once they landed, or one by one revive them now, while still in orbit, to assist further in the mission. Drs. Somerset and Weiss were two such cases, at least at the moment. Anton, meanwhile, had resigned himself as a jack-of-all-trades in the crew manifest, fulfilling roles and purposes where it would be wasteful to revive a person for just a day to perform a single task, like delivering a spare probe part to the surface, which Dr. Somerset would use to fix the probe already on the surface and enable Dr. Weiss to do her work.

What a dreary existence.

Imagine his surprise, then, when Commander Darcy relayed the news about Zodiac-Altair’s very first public mail call. If he had to guess, Darcy must have received some upsetting news, since he had to take a few tries to interrupt some thoughts. Not to mention he thought he could have seen the glistening of tears around his eyes. But it wasn’t his place to ask, not then, not now.

Nor could he glean an answer from the message, as it was written in French. He shrugged and closed it, and brought up the messages meant for him specifically. Compared to the dozens, even scores, of messages meant for the man in charge of the whole operation, he had received two. Even Dr. Weiss received more than him – six. Not even second fiddle in the orchestra, despite making sure the other two were still alive. And he couldn’t imagine just how many Dr. Somerset would have gotten. . . .

Which would at least make this part go by sooner, so he wouldn’t have to take up the commander’s usual workspace. He opened the first one, listed as KOPTEV, YURI (ROSCOSMOS) – that name was familiar to him; he was the director.

Koptev was grateful that Anton was still alive, and promised to keep the letter brief, anticipating his tasks aboard Zodiac-Altair. For his work in cryogenics, applied in the mission, the newly-formed Russian Federation government had awarded him the Order of Honor in absentee – which, if he had not heard of it before, was supposed to replace the older Soviet Badge of Honor. The transition to a Federation government was progressing slowly, yet smoothly, and he was optimistic in a return to full strength in twenty years’ time.

He shrugged, supposing that not all news need to be bad. But he pondered what the use was for the honor, as prestigious as it was – especially since he could not exactly collect it in person. All he was doing was his job, and so far he hadn’t failed a single human subject aboard the ship. . . yet. He was sure that would change at some point. In his darkest dreams, he would find himself with several failing pods scattered across all four racks, and him scrambling in futility to fix them all and get them back in working order. Naturally, at least some of those poor souls would perish from his own ineptitude. . . .

But he wasn’t about to dwell on those nightmares – the broken fuse on B7 was in fact the worst incident that had occurred in the voyage. The other message came from a student from Moscow State University, named MOROZOV, MIKHAIL (MGU). He glossed through the letter, wondering why he of all people wished to hear from him, then he saw it: he wondered how it was that he was able to prevent cellular water from freezing and crystalizing in the cryogenic process, which would otherwise kill a person.

He was happy to answer that question – but first he would need the commander’s authorization.

–––·–

Louis was in the middle of his exercise regiment when he noticed a figure descend the ladder. “Did you need something, Anton?” he asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “Authorization from the mission’s commander is needed to transmit a message from the ship back to Earth. I have come to ask for that, sir.”

Louis raised an eyebrow. “What for? Does someone miss you back home?”

Dr. Konstantinov rolled his eyes. “Not quite, sir. A student from MGU wanted to know the answer to a problem about cryogenics. I realize my notes may not be neat, but that is no excuse for a lack of progress in science. Someone else on Earth needs to know – my work should survive.”

“You nailed it right on the head. Permission granted – ” Louis pointed back at the ladder – “go and write home.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And who knows?” Louis added. “Maybe someone might find a better method of freezing people. Could be that student at – what was it, MGU? Never heard of it.”

“Moscow State University,” the cryogenicist answered. “That is the acronym in Russian.” Then he started back up the ladder, back to the bridge.

·–·––

Once he swung himself back into the bridge – quietly, to avoid waking up Dr. Weiss – Anton started on his message to Mihail. To answer his question, he wrote, he got the idea from accidentally thawing out a wood frog in the middle of class when he was a schoolboy. Since then, he was determined to replicate the effect in human beings: after getting his MD – at MGU, to boot – he had spent close to twenty years developing a glucose analogue that could be both produced in mass quantities quickly, and be burned quickly, so a person would not suffer from glucose toxicity. Like a wood frog would, but better – though studying Jakutijan horse biology certainly helped. He also added a reminder that the bloodstream would need twenty to thirty minutes to cycle and distribute the cyroprotectants throughout the entire body, and once that was done, a simple sedative was all it took to trigger the cryosleep – though he was sure he knew that bit. He wished him luck in his studies, signed off on the message – then waited.

Einstein needed to be aligned with Zodiac-Altair, on exactly opposite sides of the Flandro Object. It was a window that lasted maybe two minutes at most – and it wasn’t there yet. But it was coming around, in just a moment. Anton kept a sharp eye squarely on the alignment, waiting, patiently yet eagerly, for the instruments to align.

Closer and closer they grew – until the reticle turned green. He hit the return key, and opened the transmission back to Earth. Even with all the redundancies, it completed in less than fifteen seconds – plenty of time to spare. He breathed a sigh of relief, then sought a way to do something for the rest of the day.

·–·

Adam stirred.

He opened his eyes, to find himself staring directly across the lander’s interior at the galley opposite. As he pushed himself upward by his arms, he looked down at the cot, and noted a slightly darker spot right where his head was. Had I been drooling in my sleep? He waited a moment for his sight to focus, then started shifting himself so his back faced the wall. At some point in his sleep he had kicked the towel-blanket off of himself, since it ended up on the floor, but he didn’t care – it wasn’t like he needed it.

Whatever makes Ãtir happy, I guess.

He sat up straight, and stretched himself out on the cot. He yawned – and he didn’t know why; this was the most refreshed he had felt in a long time, or at least since his days working at MIT. He just wrote it off as finally paying off his sleep debt, from God knows how long ago.

I wonder what time it is. While he couldn’t gauge it by either local or Terrestrial standards, he could get a rough idea by looking outside. But that would mean getting off of the cot, since he didn’t have the same telekinetic technology that the Indigenous had – that Ãtir had – and he didn’t want to do that at the moment. Right now, it was simply too comfortable for him to do anything at the moment.

But he knew he must get out of bed – sooner rather than later, to avoid wasting any more time than he already had. Commander Darcy’s going to have my head. He shuddered at the thought. But still, bed. . . and sleep. . . .

Dammit Adam, get your ass up already!

With that last thought giving him that final push, he swung himself out of bed and planted his feet firmly on the floor. He stood up, with no small amount of effort, and yawned again, deeply this time. He twisted his torso to the left, then the right, feeling and hearing the vertebrae crackle from the released stiffness. He looked to his desk as he was twisting, and saw the Ơhqer textbook still sitting open on the pages about the script and its pronunciation.

He strode over to the desk and took another look at his notes – as he couldn’t recall exactly what he had written down off the top of his head. Yet there it was, plain as day – the functions of the Ơhqer alphasyllabary, the consonants and vowel charts he had sketched up in his sleepless night, along with a question about vowel harmony. Strangely, there was no question about consonant harmony – Adam assumed he had that nailed down while he was studying.

But another question was still on his mind: what time is it? He then walked over to the window, and slid the shudder open – revealing the first glimmers of light in the morning. It couldn’t have been evening – this light was coming from the east, and the last time he had checked, Rhysling wasn’t upside-down, not like Venus. That left only a single conclusion in his mind: that he had been asleep for sixteen hours.

Talk about making up for lost time.

And yet, here he was, all the better for that time spent sleeping. At least I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night. . . . He turned around to find a packet of something suitable for breakfast. As he laid his eyes on some noodles, he heard a pop! outside the lander, and something heavy landing on the scaffold.

If that’s who I think it is. . . . He turned to look outside – indeed, there was Ãtir, looking a lot more relieved than the morning before. “Today, Edem is? well,” she asked. “Yes?”

“Yes!” He nodded firmly. “I am well today.” That should help her with the word order. . . .

“Edem will eat?” she asked as well.

“Yes, I will eat soon.” He knelt down and grabbed the packet he spotted earlier. Her English is coming along remarkably, he mused to himself. I wonder if they can listen in to radio frequencies. . . . Then he remembered the Faraday cage at the hospital, where he was examined. Perhaps he was on to something. Let’s hope she doesn’t confuse the commander’s French with English. Or Dr. Weiss’s German, though that’s more closely related. And if she could listen to radio signals, who was to say his own unspoken thoughts were safe? –

Let’s not dwell on that.

Though if that last hypothesis were true, Ãtir was smart enough not to say anything on the matter. She instead sat down outside the lander, but still peering through the window, apparently waiting for Adam to eat up.

He, meanwhile, injected 100 milliliters into the packet of noodles, then set it on the galley counter to rehydrate for the next five-to-ten minutes. For the time being, he sat down by the desk and looked over his notes a little more. At some point in the night – lost to his memory in his sleep, regrettably – he had also started to jot down some basic Ơhqer vocabulary. He might know how to pronounce them correctly – well, within reasonable accuracy – but he didn’t know exactly how those words connected with each other, nor could he get very far within their civilization. He may as well be reading from a phrasebook.

But it was the best he had for the time being. He turned back to the window, where Ãtir was still waiting patiently, and tried speaking his first complete Ơhqer words: “Ṛsley Edem Zơmṛzed alru.

These four words, as simple as they were, shocked Ãtir deeply – as though he had just accomplished some Herculean task. “Ơhqer azarơhvu?” she asked – she simply couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

Em,” he answered plainly. “Holo sita ơhseye.” Hopefully it meant he knew only a few words so far, and that she would be convinced.

She nodded, calmly yet curtly. “Edem look.” She lit her horn, and out of a pair of saddlebags he hadn’t seen before, she pulled out a series of books. Some of them he recognized from the town library, the ones she’d shown him – and others were entirely new.

“I see the books,” he confirmed.

“Edem, Ãtir, make yes-thing,” she said. An agreement, she means. “Edem speak Ơhqer more well – Ãtir speak Edemner more well.”

Well, that’s. . . one way to say ‘better,’ he thought. So putting that together, if I help Ãtir with her English, she would help me with my Ơhqer. Except. . . hold on. Does she seriously think English is – Crissake. They’ve named it after me!English,” he corrected. “I speak English.” He pointed at himself, to emphasize the pronoun. That’s one suggestion for you.

“Edem speak English,” she followed. “I speak Ơhqer.” Hey, she’s getting it! She nodded to herself. “Edem, I, make? yes-thing.”

Adam was conflicted by the proposal. On the one hand, having the assistance of a native speaker would undoubtedly propel his mission progress to the stars – no pun intended. At the same time, she would be learning English, to assist further communication between the two civilizations, between the two worlds. But on the other hand, therein lay the catch for him – as much as he wanted to avoid influencing Ơhqer, he knew that it was inevitable. Already, he had introduced his own name – borrowed as Edem – both as a given name, and as a descriptor for his entire species. This was an impasse – there was no way he could avoid loaning English words into Ơhqer, and indeed he had facilitated that for some time.

This was it. This was the moment that would decide whether or not two civilizations would fully exchange their languages. And all it took was a single word out of his mouth, yes or no. His answer, one way or the other, would make history.

Dr. Adam Somerset drew his breath.

Yes.