Small furry balls
with glowing green
eyes

Sky was deeply blue shade coloured. There were stars visible above the horizont, but the blood-red sun was still hanging few inches above the lake. Country was a really beautiful place, especially this time of year. Vast green grass areas looked in that orange light like some infinite carpet. The air was filled with that well known summer smell and this was definitely one of most splendid sunsets one could have ever seen. Reyan didn't enjoy that as much, he had been working in his small garden since early morning and still hadn't finished everything he had on the plan. He was supporting himself on some spade-looking tool and wiping the sweat off his face. He looked at the unfinished garden one last time, shaked his head unsatisfied, and turned his head against the sun, which meantime had begun diving into the nearly lake. Apparently he still hadn't noticed the beauty of that natural phenomenon, and his head was full of different thoughts. His face, as well as everything else looked rather unnatural in a light of sun sinking to the water of lake, however it was nice. Hair of his head was dark, falling almost to his shoulders, and even they looked extra beautiful in this kind of light. He wore some work suit, but even that dull piece of cloth looked amazing in this fading light. As a matter of fact - whole HE looked like from the right-lifestyle commercials, and if there wasn't that worried look on his face (because of that unfinished job), one would have say that Reyan is most content being in whole universe.
Reyan wasn't actually happy at all, and as it will show up soon, there was no reason to be happy. He didn't know, but these moments could had been the last few days of his life, but - first things first.
When the sun sets down, it showed up, that the unfinished garden wasn't the reason of his worries at all. On the horizont, near thousands of tiny yellow stars (which were looking so-nice as well, but there's no need to describe them, everyone must understand at this point that EVERYTHING was amazingly nice here) floated one scarlet star, and even the 2-cipher-IQ human would had understand, that it SHOULDN'T be there. IT was hanging above the horizont maybe fifth day and it didn't forecast anything nice at all. Reyan had an IQ of 146, gamma level psionic skills, and before he had left the city, he was studying history for 4 years, and it was obvious to him, that blood star hanging strangely low, could bring only the blood. Lot of blood and pain.
He wasn't the only one who noticed the star and starlabs around the planet were trying to find out what IT really is. What Reyan, and any other mortal couldn't have known was the fact that there wasn't any star at all. Scientists team, led by Teniel was watching the star through the biggest telescope on the planet, at the Cziolkowski observatory, finding out what IT really is. (Teniel was totally usual person and there's no point describing him, as we won't mention him any later in whole this story. More important is exposition of what the weird red entity really was) First thing that surprised everyone looking closely to the unknown object was the fact, that the object wasn't really red as it seemed the first time. It was made of some shiny metal coloured mildly brownviolet. What caused its red color was only reflexion of the sun rays creating glowing effect on that mirror surface. The second, more bewildering thing was fact, that the body wasn't as small and by all means not-so-distant as observer on the ground would think. It was HUGE sphere, over 100 metres in diameter, and what had been worse, it was less than half million kilometers close to the planet surface AND was still closing. Lazy but certainly closing. Whole thing was perfectly smooth and only at the center around the perimeter was a few of tailings, symetrically spaced. There was one thing for sure. IT was created by an intelligent being...
Rather tall woman entered the room. She was actually something inbetween the girl and a woman, she looked older, but her face was nice deeply tanned, symetric with the nose exactly the size as on the Boticceli's paintings. Her hair was perfectly black, sometimes it looks like the color was almost dark blue, but it must have been only an optical illusion. Her body only supplements natural beauty of her face. The most strange thing, however, were her eyes. They were the deepest green eyes ever. Looking few seconds into that eyes makes you feel kind of hypnotized. One would have expected that such a perfect creature will do something PERFECT as well, but she - no matter what perfect you've expected - strode to Reyan and gave him a plate (it was only a metal disk actually) with food consisting mostly of some vegs likely, considering the ammount of vivid green color of food on the plate. They both smiled on each other just like saying "enjoy your meal". Teela sat opposite of him and started to eat exactly the same food as man near her. Sometimes they looked to one another and smiled. Few minutes later both of them got suddenly serious. Whole atmosphere was more sullen in a minute. Had there been playing some kind of music it would sure have turned into that sicilian mafia movies tune. There was no music and except cuttlery clinking there was no sound at all. A beholder watching this scene would feel like on some poor mimes performance. If that beholder had had at least some psi sense he would be able almost exactly feel what is their "conversation" all about. Reader doesn't have to possess any of psi skills to feel with the same confidence that the reason of sudden mood change was the red star.
"It ain't the star, I can feel it thinking. Or something inside" Teela said breaking 9 minutes and 28 seconds of silence.
Telepats are similar to any other people. When ordinary man is wrought-up, he starts to talk more loudly or even shout. If you make a telepat angry he begin to talk... Teela was obviously unsatisfied, that Reyan is not believing her. They were living together for a nice couple of years, and they themselves were nice couple. They understand each other in everything and their friends find such a perfect relationship even disturbing. Reyan first met her at the academy. He was nearly two years older than she. He was studying history and law, she - because of her psionic skills - was training at Third planetary psionic Academy. It is well known fact, that psionic skills are more powerful at women, than men or children, but Teela was something special. As a teenager she have developed some skills and test have proven, that they were the epsilon level skills. After absolving 6 year training she developed those skills even more. Actually - she was one of ten most psionic powerfull being on the planets, and if not considering the animals, she was the second best humaniod telepat on whole planet. Department offered her excellent lifetime contract at military service, but she chose - who knows why - peaceful life on the country. (It was mostly because of Reyan, exactly the same Reyan that made her so upset right now)
"I would like to believe, it's just a star, but I've got a bad feeling either. What I'm trying to explain to You is that the chance, it is alive is slender. Besides - don't you think, that had it been alive it would sure try to contact us somehow already?" answers Reyan.
"I feel it in my dreams and the feeling is stronger every day - it IS alive, it is trying to contact with us and what is worst, I can feel it's not friendly..." Teela finished the conversation and took the plates to water container.
They have been reading about things like this star long time ago. Especially Reyan. Before the Great War, more than 1800 years ago, similar phenomenons occured on lot of places on the planet. Texts from pre-war era are uncertain, but people called these things UFOs and they appeared on areas called Russia, Nevada and New America. By the way - Great War. It's funny how everyone knows about the war. They know when it was, but that was everything they know about it. Who was fighting who and because, who has won, just any important information seems to be lost somehow... You can find informations since year 12 after the war in the library, maybe you can find some erratic informations from the pre-war era, but you can't find anything at all about the war itself. It was very disturbing, that no one on the planet ever noticed this fact, that such an important part of history is missing...
It was very buzzy at Johnson cosmic centre in Houston. Arrangements for start were finishing. Huge spaceship was standing erected at big ramp, whole metallic grey, with only one decoration - "Titan 8" label on the left wing. Looking at that mass of metal, everyone must have started to wonder how much material they needed to build such a thing, and those wondering even more, surely asked themselves where another 7 Titans are...
Previous 7 Titans weren't lost of course, and they were preparing with the same glory for their mission. They were the biggest spaceship mankind has ever launched in last 100 years. (The "biggest" adjective was nothing much to have, as people launched only a few spacecrafts in last century. Series of Phobos probes heading to Orion Nebula star, a different serie of small mining ships to Mars and two colonization ships which have landed on Moon. Moon colonization was a fiasco, but that is not important at this point.) Space exploring wasn't what it used to be before the Great War. The war destroyed almost all the technical knowledge mankind had, so it was all the way from the start again. Considering the fact that the original man (living before the War) needed about 10000 years to get to the space, they were pretty developed this day. Man just has got kind of lazy, and doesn't want any space missions. But it was something else this time. Titan ships loaded with every possible weaponery were preparing for their journey. Not because they "wanted to", more because they were forced by actual situation.
Whole station was pretty live. Majority of people, probably the ones responsible for spacecrafts start, has Titan ships diagrams on their screens and enormous ammount of data were running up the screen. Another group of people has detailed view of that weird red star, and they were analysing the data, probably coming from the "star". The last group of people were running some unknown applications on their terminals, that weren't related to whole this story. They were just doing "something"...
Data coming from the star was being analysed somewhere else as well. In Norman observatory, less than 15 miles from Czsoilkowski starlab, all analyzers start to beep at once. It seems like computer has just found some order in signal coming from the red star. There was a similar situation three times in last five days, but it was something else now. Computer has finally analysed the incoming signal spectrum and has found out the carrier wave frequency. One would think that Fourier analyse of a signal is a few seconds task, but toady planet habitants were doing everything the psionic way. Signal theory was only a minor science discipline - something like psychotronics before the war... 12.342 Mhz - that was the frequency where signal has it's energy amplitude. It still wasn't certain if there's some information in that signal, or it's just a engine humming from that unknown object. It has taken another three hours, until the computer found out the way that signal was encoded, and after another couple of analyses, eventually, when computer after all that decoding, endless hours of running all that decryption algorithms, discover it is plain radio signal used long time before the war. So the computer was able to decode the message. It was strange that the message was in the language that locals understand, but more strange was the message itself...
THIS IS PHOBOS 17 PROBE, SERIAL NUMBER 3221A-23, MANUFACTURED AT EARTH, EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH 2652.
That's it. Plain and simple message. Only one flaw it has - it was no message at all, and only thing it caused was the ammount of "What the hell...?" questions, asked by everyone reading the message...
Earth looks just amazing. After all that years being used by civilization it has still it's nice face. Sun was just rising above the horizont, and starting to shine to that large green forest areas surrounded by blue ocean fields. There was not one cloud abouve southern hemisphere, and even if it'd be there one couldn't see it from this height. A lot of other dirt was invisible from this point of view, and it was better this way. This nice "morning" was disturbed by first ship flying by. Titan 4 was moving slowly through the dark silent space. Few seconds later another two ships appeared, and then another... They were creating some strange formation and were floating lazily through the darkness like there was nowhere to hurry to. The thruth was they were 20 years late. It was exactly 20 years ago when few people at high places has realized how it's really like with our planet. Population dropped a bit during the war, but man was knacky enough to recover soon. Fights on the planet contamined most of drinking water and turned part of the world to an arid desert. Sea level hasn't rised as much as they predicted, but more than half of the seas was dead anyway. There were 6 billions people living in this nice world and - they were feeling pretty scrimpy.
So the task was simple - people had to find new planet to use (or abuse how they used to). Space is a large place for exploration, and man was not in a position letting him send the colonization ships just somewhere. It needs a plan, planet colonization is not like a game of chess. No - you've got to make a plan. First was the ship series for the Moon. Colonization unsuccessful, because lack of a good plan. Unsuitable atmosphere, gravity, little of minerals and ore, and no water on Moon eliminate Moon from our-next-home candidates. Funny idea rose up. Let's find the planet exactly meeting our meets so we won't need to change anything. Space is full of stars and planets so if one has enough time it shouldn't be difficult. Another serie of probes was launched to unexplored space region, seeming like where such a planet could have exist. Just few months ago Earth recieved a good news from one of these probes. After further analysis probe has found out that the planet is unfortunatelly inhabited. Humanoids less technically advanced than we are. Not a hard task to make a plan under these circumstances. We will conquer and we will prevail - we do the right thing.
Maybe you understand a few things now, but there's still a couple of question needed to be answered. "What the second best telepathist on the planet, has felt coming from the star... Or was she just mistaken?", "How it was that the habitants of the distant planet understand the language, message has come in?", "What was that Great War stuff?", and maybe even more others... Well read on carefully :)
Teela and Reyan had rather restless night. Night itself was splendid, silent with sky full of stars, but there was something else to worry about. They were feeling uneasy whole night, and it was nearly morning when at least Tella succeeds to fall asleep. She had a strange dream. Thousands of small weird animals surrounded their house. They were some small furry balls with green glowing eyes. They were making some funny moaning, it sounds like if they were making a plan how to proceed. They looked just like they're going to attack any second and destory their garden, house and then just find some other fun to have. But they didn't attack. Just whimper and moan - unsettled, like Teela and Reyan were the ones who want to kill every last one of them. After few minutes, without any change, one of creatures strolled closer to the house. Teela pulled the curtain a bit and watched closely what will come next. Little creature hesitated for a while and then finally spoke up...
It was certain, that it will be some important message, bringing some light into this story, but - unfortunatelly - Teela woke up. Or - to be exact. She was woken up.
"Mornin' darlin'... So eventually you managed to catch some sleep?" asked Reyan with a voice of the nicest person on the world. Teela first wanted to tell him something about the dream, and how irritating it was that he woke her up in most important part, maybe she wanted to be rude a bit, but looking at his weary face she rather smiled and kissed him on the cheek and replied: "It's a lovely morning today, let's have big breakfast, agree?" She jumped out of the bed and run somewhere. Reyan couldn't have understanded how she could be so happy in situation like this. He shaked his head, and tried to get some sleep once again.
Teela, making a fruit salad, was thinking about the events that happened in last few days. She was thinking about that weird dream, wondering if that furry creatures are coming from the star, and if the dream was right - anything bad shouldn't have happened. She looked to the sky through the window. There was no star. Well - maybe it was there, but she wasn't able to see it in the sunlight. But still she was able to feel something coming from the star. It was no specific feeling, like fear or desire to destroy, she was just positive about something is alive inside the star, something able to think, what makes her more and more convicted that it is not just an ordinary star...
Phobos 17 crew was really having only some neutral feelings. They didn't care a much about what was happening down there on the planet, and the good feeling of discovering the new home disappeared few months ago - after seeing the planet for the first time. It might seem weird that probe has its own crew, but the engineers constuccting the probe found absolutely natural, that probe should have someone to look after it, in that infinite space. There were exactly 14 members of the crew including 5 women. At this moment it was exactly 9 years, 3 months and 18 days being out of home. Formulation "out of home" wasn't exact, because in fact, they were the group of people closest to the home - the new one.
John and Kate were playing cards in living room, and having no fun at all. Someone, who lived whole his life somewhere down at Mexico City, or any other ordinary town could think that space is an amazing thing. Infinite exploring options, all that stars, planets, phenomenons - places where no one else has ever been before... Well - space is pretty boring. It is cold, empty and dark most of it. Maybe Phobos 17 was someting special, but during whole journey, there were no problems on the probe, no new lifeform tried to contact them, none of the members was seriously attacked by alien virus. Nothing at all. Well, except that little episode, when discovering a planet that was about to be a new home for 3 billions of people.
Tom, alien civilization expert, has just give up his last attempt trying to contact the alien planet, and let the computer transmit only the standard identification message. Recently he was transmitting message on all frequencies, modulations in every language he knows, or at least he thought it could exist, tried to communicate with universal language - the math, but everything unsuccessful. He was worried a bit about that, but eventually he logically decided, that the planet civilization just hasn't the proper technology to understand the broadcasting. He turned off the monitor, get his light shirt on, and walked away to the canteen, because what he wanted at this moment at most was glass of hot cocoa.
It was a nice sunny day, only a couple of clouds on dark blue sky and nature was preparing for another beautiful night. Titan 1 transport shuttle has landed. Planet representatives were already standing around the landsite, to welcome the vistors. Red star eventually vanished as quietly as it has appeared, and there was a new centre of attention now - fleet of spaceships near the planet. Today is the great day - day of first contact. Group of 20 (including the second most skilled planet telepathist) was impatiently waiting what kind of creatures will get off the ship. It lasted 40 seconds exactly until the ship door opened and three shapes in bodysuit appeared. They were checking data on their sensors for a while and then removed their helmets. They took a deep breath and took a look around. They seemed just like they didn't notice whole this welcome party and just smiled on each other. They walked around for a while, looking at surrounding country. Crowd standing near was just wondering, as no one of them know what is appropriate to do in situation like this. Eventually one old man - aparently somebody important on the planet - decided that he should contact the visitors. So he strolled to the nearest one of the aliens and he was just about to tell them the speech he has prepared 2 days ago. Stranger noticed this, and decided to stop survey for a while. It looked like that he is going to pay attention to the old man, but instead of listening he spoke up first.
"Good day to You all. Your planet has been just acknowledged as suitable for colonization by planet Earth population. It took us long until we've found the right planet and yours seems to be just the one we are looking for. Congratulations!"
Just when he finished, he took a closer look to the old man looking amazed listening with the open mouth. They were looking to one another for a while, and finally man in the bodysuit yelled to his mates. "They are humans! Wow..." At this moment the old man, with futile effort to welcome strangers, realized that strangers are looking really similar to the locals, and another thing he realized was that they were speaking perfect english, and he understand them good. Putting all this together makes him even more confused than few minutes ago and so - instead of welcome speech he said just "Welcome..." and went back to the crowd.
Three months later planet looked a bit different. It was more lively, lot of people walking everywhere, something was being built somewhere, and everyone was talking with somebody. New Earth original population wasn't devoted to another strangers coming, especially strangers, that were acting like this planet belongs to them, but everyone thinking rational, looking at all this stranger's weapons decided that this will be "better for everyone".
Reyan and Teela have found new friends as well. Andy and Jane were the same age, and all four have always something to tell. Andy was studying history on Earth, just like Reyan, so they understand each other prefectly.
"...and near the end of 20th century we developed the computers" Andy finished the sentence.
"Amazing, you must be 1000 times more advanced than we are." said Reyan excited, and a bit sad at once.
"No, we're not so pefect", smiled Andy, "Everything was harder after the Great War..." Reyan suddenly sit up as he heared "Great War". He started to realize all that things. Themselves - original planet inhabitants and new strangers were really both humans. Great war has been fought on both planets together. Or - and then he remembered, that whole life on the planet, whole history of mankind is dated exactly after the Great War. They are not the original planet population.
Few moths before Great War has started, few thousands of New Day religion followers, decided to build an Ark and find a new home. Judgement day was coming, and it was certain that no one could survive the great war. On the ship called Hope, 3 generations have changed before they discovered planet suitable for living. As everyone thought, that their original home is dead by now, they called it Earth. Now - more than 2000 years later both Earths have met...
"Well - Great War at 2006..." finished Andy and took the sip from the cup of tea.










note. Well this was a hard one. The first :) When I am reading it I see how bad it is written. It's nothing much in Slovak and translation makes it even worse. I am sorry, I really need to improve my english. The end is - weird - I know. I hope that the next one will be better. And - the dream - don't try to find the reason. There isn't any...

wray 2005