There is much chatter between the minds in the crowd. ‘I was frightened’, thought some. ‘It wasn’t how I expected it’, thought others.
Skarl and Frill begin their walk over to the chosen place. It will take them some time as it is a safe distance away and the Molan, as we know, are not fast creatures. This was all planned for though.
Each step is a slowly choreographed engineering exercise. First the middle right foot is moved forward, almost dragging along the ground. The Molan middle legs are slightly further out from the centre of the body than the fronts and rears so that they can take the longest pace possible without having to have legs too far apart. Even with this arrangement however, a pace is less than the length of a Molan foot. Once this first foot is set down again, the whole body is moved imperceptibly forwards to rebalance the load. Next, the middle left foot undertakes the same process and once more the body is adjusted. It is all a matter of economy and minimizing the loads in their joints. Rear right foot next, then rear left. Each time the body would shift forwards slightly. Finally the front right followed by the front left leg, then start again with the middle right. This was all accompanied by huge breaths of air. If a Molan had ears, they would never hear anything else while they walked.
As they approach the silver machine, there is a last task to perform before they get too close. Both stop walking to look up at the machine. They are awestruck by it as no Molan has ever seen a manufactured object before. This is the reason for their stop, all want to see this view. Skarl and Frill both open their minds and the Molan equivalents of oohs and aahs go echoing around their thoughts.
After a short while, it is time to continue. Heads back down, eyes closed, step, step, step.
Once they are within a couple of their body lengths of the machine. A detector on the machine automatically triggers the door to open. It tilts out and down and then slowly lowers to the ground where it becomes a lifting platform with minimum step up height.
Skarl senses that he is close and opens his eyes to see the last few paces. Frill does likewise.
Soon Scarl has his front feet to the edge of the platform and his body in line with it. He lifts one foot onto the platform. This is going to be quite an athletic feat. He has trained for this, as has Frill. The step is only a small fraction of the diameter of a Molan foot high, but it is much more than they have ever had to cope with before. He hopes he isn’t going to let anyone down now.
From here until he lifts his last foot onto the platform he will have a disproportionate amount of weight on his rear legs. He takes three deep breaths and begins. ‘Remember your training’, he keeps reminding himself. ‘Breath regularly, move smoothly, body further forward than usual and most importantly, pace yourself. Rush and you will be exhausted before you are on, too slow and you will run out of stamina.’
He can feel the vibrations of their breathing through the platform. He wants to try and judge if he is doing better than Frill but he dares not break his concentration. Three feet now on the platform. The hardest part is that the pace to get a foot onto the platform is longer than normal. He lifts his fourth foot on. He is having doubts now that he can do it. He has two half paces and two long ones to finish now. His head is swimming, his joints ache. He realizes that he is panicking and this is using up far too much energy. He must slow down to recover. This worries him too. This will mean more time with his front end higher than his rear. He will use the half paces to recover he thinks. Just keep moving steadily. Bring your rear feet as close to the platform as possible. Right foot down, shift weight, lift left foot. He was more confident now. His breathing had almost got out of control a few moments ago but it is controlled and more comfortable now. Left foot down, shift weight. He is ready to bring his fifth leg onto the platform now. Things should get a little easier then. Lift right rear leg. It is a long way to lift it, as were all the steps onto the platform. It feels like he is over balancing but he knows from training that he is far from falling over in reality. Right rear down, shift weight. He is nearly there. Lift left rear. His joints ache like they have never ached before, he feels weak, then - catastrophe. He moves his leg forward too early and instead of moving over the platform, it hits it. The unexpected jar unbalances him. He can’t lift his leg anymore and feels like he is toppling.
Recalling his training and with a great deal of discipline and self-control, Skarl lets his leg back down to the ground. He knows he will have to find the energy once more to lift it and that he cannot rest until it is on the platform, but he also knows that he couldn’t have completed that botched step. He must set it down and then re-start the step immediately, if he waits, he will fail. His only thought as he lifts his left rear leg once more is to lift it clear this time. He can’t see it of course, Molan can’t see any part of their own bodies. He will try to lift it as high as possible, but he is tired, his joints ache and Molan legs simply aren’t meant to do this sort of extreme articulation. With his foot as high as he can lift it, he begins to bring it forward and hopes it will clear. His mind begins to wander and he thinks of what will happen if he hits it against the platform again. He will almost certainly collapse and that would be unthinkable. It would be the end of the mission and the end of him. He drags his mind back to the present and is relieved to realise that his foot is fully forward. He can lower it now and rest. Tentatively he increases the weight on it and it is safe. A few moments later he is ready to open his mind and talk with Frill. What if Frill has not made it? Or what if he had finished much more quickly and has been waiting?
As he opens up he is aware of the familiar swirl that means Frill is only just opening up too. They have both just finished. Skarl didn’t know if he should admit to having had a problem, but as Frill informs him that he had just been slower than expected, he simply replies that he had suffered likewise.
They both rest before moving to the middle of the platform, then it begins to lift. This is a new and strange experience. They normally keep their eyes shut if they aren’t doing anything that requires sight, but they both keep them open and strain to articulate their heads to better see to the sides. They can still see the ground disappearing below them and sense the vertical motion. Skarl suddenly thinks to open up and share the experience with the crowd.
When the platform draws level with the floor of the compartment, it stops.
Skarl gazes into it and shares with the others, then he shuts off in preparation to enter. This is much easier. It’s not only perfectly flat but the surface is hard and smooth. They presently come to their correct positions over the two shaped ‘lumps’ in the floor. These then automatically raise and the legs and underbelly of each Molan is perfectly supported. From each side there comes an arm which arcs over their bodies and clips together, thus restraining their huge bulk. As this occurs, the platform come door is closing. Just before it pulls into tight engagement, a blast of air is expelled all around it to clear the sealing edge of any dust.
As it pulls shut, the two Molan within are aware that for the first time in their lives, they can no longer hear the wind. It is uncanny and blissful.
Skarl opens up to the crowd once more and informs them of their safe boarding. He can feel their excitement, and they can certainly feel his.
There is a short wait now which is a built in safety margin in case boarding had taken longer than planned. Skarl can see the screen ahead of them which is counting down. He is well aware that although the Molan have developed the symbols displayed, the screens, the whole vehicle, this is the first time any of them has seen them directly. It is very different seeing all this first hand (or as the crowd outside are doing, by very close distance talking), to how they have seen things before, over huge distances with less than ideal thought connections.
The symbols reach zero and the craft begins to vibrate and then lift. Scarl and Frill are soon weighing twice as much as normal but the form hugging supports they rest on make it comfortably tolerable. The screen now shows the view from outside the vehicle. It is just the thick orange atmosphere at first but soon some other details began to appear through as it thins. Little dots of light – stars! These sights have never been seen from the surface of Mola. The cloud becomes thinner and thinner and the stars clearer and clearer and more plentiful. Soon there are more stars than you can possibly count, and they are set against a pure black background. It is breathtakingly beautiful.
Presently the engines shut off and they are weightless. This is a shock to the system. They had known roughly what to expect but had no way to simulate it beforehand. This is possibly the biggest risk of the whole endeavor, how will they cope?
For a few minutes, Skarl is thrashing about as much as can be done when fully restrained. He is hyperventilating and his headaches. If he had been able to spare a thought for Frill, he would have found that his crewmate was not coping any better. Eventually, partly as their bodies adapt and partly as they remember their training and calm themselves, both begin to settle. It seems that they have only just got themselves reasonably normalized to this alien environment, when the motors fire again to send them out of orbit and out on their journey.
5. Answers
It is two hundred and six days since the rocket left Trello soil. Today it is returning.
Measha is still only half aware of many things to do with the project, even though she has led it for so long. Her project team members are similarly partly closed to the business in a strange, almost waking dream way. No one is even thinking that today might bring answers.
One of the project team looks up from a screen and announces that the vehicles incandescent trail ought to be visible now. Sure enough, the big screen shows a bright shooting star that is the rocket entering their atmosphere.
It isn’t long before the engines can be heard and every-one in the control room gets up and begins filing out through the door. The returning craft is about to land and the personnel who should be monitoring and checking are leaving their stations!
Measha is among them. She follows the crowd but knows where she is going. Or, rather, she is being driven too it by urges she barely knows exist. She sees that the fences around the project base are lined with more Trello than she has ever seen in one place before. They are all transfixed by the source of the thundering rumble, and they all witness the returning rocket make a perfect landing on the pad in the distance.
They begin to make their way to the pad. Trello from outside the compound are inside now and also making their way to the now still and silent, though shimmering craft. Measha sees that the fence has many gates that are now open. She half remembered that there were far more gates in the fence than anyone could explain a need for, but she nor anyone else had questioned this. Even though many thoughts are invading her head that make no sense, she still isn’t feeling the need for answers. She, like the thousands of Trello around her, are only following an instinct that drives them to be at the project rocket.
Inside the rocket compartment, Skarl and Frill are recovering from their battering. They had been weightless for long enough to have become accustomed to it. Their bodies had been subtly reshaped by it as their vital fluids had re-distributed themselves in the absence of gravity pulling it down. They had remained restrained for the whole journey, a practical consideration forced on them because a Molan would not be capable of re-restraining themselves when the time came to prepare for landing.
When they had reached the inner planet and begun atmospheric entry, the deceleration forces had built up to little more than half those they had lived with all their lives on Mola. Because they had had a break from it though, it felt much worse. Then had come the braking rockets and the forces increased a little more. The two pioneers found even breathing difficult, it was most uncomfortable. Finally the craft touched down and for a brief moment they were their normal weight followed by a fraction of a second of almost weightlessness again and then the normal gravity on Trello. They were now one eighteenth of the weight they had been used to at home.
They both try to relax and become accustomed to this new weight. It was anticipated during mission planning that this would become extremely comfortable after a little while. It is also anticipated that neither of them can ever go back to Molan and survive – they are here to stay now!
Soon, the restraints automatically unclip themselves and retract into the floor. As this happens, the shaped supports also lower themselves sufficiently to allow the Molan to walk away. Skarl barely notices the difference when the support removes itself. He feels almost weightless. He lifts a front leg effortlessly and places it down as he has done thousands of times before, then pauses, he lifts it again and moves it even further forward. He begins to recall his training. It has been theorized that, with practice, it will be possible to move three legs at a time and walk at perhaps ten times the speed they have ever managed in Molan gravity.
He then remembers he has not opened up. He does so and is immediately overwhelmed with thoughts. He can hear the Trello so much more vividly than is comfortable and is forced to filter them out severely. He manages to focus on Frill and he is excitedly urging Skarl to look at him. Clumsily but quite quickly, he turns towards him and is greeted with the sight of the stocky Molan standing only on his rear four legs with both his fronts raised more than one foot diameter from the floor. He then puts his fronts down and raises both mids up and out as far as he can articulate them, which isn’t far. It would not have looked nearly so impressive to a non-Molan.
“Did you hear the Trello?” Skarl asks him.
“So loud!” Replied Frill, “I haven’t been able to distinguish a single thought yet.”
“That wasn’t expected. We have to try and control that if we are to complete the mission successfully.”
Frill ponders this for a moment before responding, “Yes. We might also have trouble talking to Mola with all that going on. They will at least get information back from the Trello though.”
“Hmmm! I will attempt to pick out Measha before the door opens. She is key.” Then, with some trepidation, he loosens off his control of the cacophony and tries to resolve some individual thoughts. They really hadn’t anticipated just how loud the Trello thoughts would be close to. Then he realised that if they were struggling with Trello thoughts, what might the two Molan minds sound like to the Trello? He quietly suggested to Frill to keep his volume down until they knew. Then he simply listened and tried to learn how to deal with so much thought at such volume.
Soon he began picking out some general feelings. Unfortunately it is mainly fear. This isn’t good, they have to get the situation under control. He was mainly thinking of completing the mission successfully, but he also remembers that he can’t go home. He has to make this work!
With practice he starts to pick out individual thoughts and is getting a feeling for the levels required for both listening and, hopefully, for talking. He knows that this is the time for the next step, and tries to communicate, “We are your friends from Mola. Hello.”
This simple phrase had been thought about, changed, scrapped, re-instated, changed some more and finally accepted as the best way to first communicate properly with the Trello. No proper verbal conversation has been possible over the distances between Mola and the inner planet, just the influence to cause trances in some. Skarl waited to see what the response was.
To his surprise, the Trello thoughts quieted considerably.
“We are your friends from Mola. Hello.” He thought again.
Outside were thousands of bewildered Trello. Shortly after the rocket had landed, their minds had been battered by invading thoughts that pummeled their senses. The sheer volume of it made it both painful and unintelligible. Fear had gripped the crowd. What was happening inside their heads? They knew instinctively that it had come from the rocket and this fed deep feelings of suspicion and dread.
Then had come the lull, followed by thoughts from the same source that were benevolent and investigative. Then had come the message, gently and kindly, “We are your friends from Mola. Hello.” They were no longer frightened, they were intrigued.
Skarl and Frill stood by the door, it was about to open. Motors began to whirr and take up their load, then the door was pulled from its seal and air began to rush out as the pressures equalized. This was again going to shock their bodies. They were sure they could cope with Trello air pressure, but no-one could be absolutely certain. For a few moments it felt like they couldn’t fill their lungs. Again they had to rely on their training to remain calm. The higher percentage of oxygen here should make the thinner air survivable. By the time the door had tilted out, they were just about back in control. Very slowly, so as not to require much more oxygen, they walked out onto the platform.
Measha stood in the crowd. She had listened to the message and now she watched as the rocket door opened. She felt the thoughts and fears of its occupants. She now understood a million generations of co-operation over the distance between two planets. Without full communication being possible, beings from Mola had been able to guide the Trello so that both had learned and developed.
She could see the strange, squat, powerful, six legged creatures now. She recalled the data from the probe that went to study their world. Eighteen times the gravity, a thick atmosphere through which nothing of the rest of the universe could be seen. It was all so clear to her now.
The Trello were dexterous and nimble but could not develop their intelligence far enough to become civilized. The Molan were highly intelligent beings but lacked even the most basic ability to manipulate their world or even to see beyond a few metres of it. Neither could become more advanced by themselves. One ability gave them both a chance. The Molan were telepathic. They were vaguely aware at first of other thoughts, dreams perhaps, but of things that made no sense. Eventually they began to realise that they were privy to alien minds with alien thoughts. Once they understood enough of these thoughts to make sense of them, they could learn about a world they couldn’t even see with their eyes. Over time they tried and failed to communicate, but then someone discovered that they could influence one of the minds. The trances began.
Measha pushed her way to the front of the crowd. A launch tower that had sat idle near the pad since the rocket had first left, moved back towards it again. She leaped onto the lowest braces and began to climb up it as it neared the rocket. As she got to the level of the platform upon which Skarl and Frill stood, the gap was small enough to jump and she did so, rolling to the feet of Skarl. The Molan was taller than Measha by half her height again and was much longer and wider. The mesmerized Trello reached out to touch the nearest leg. She would not have been able to put her arms fully around it.
“Hello friend.” She thought, and was aware that every Trello in the crowd heard what she thought too. This must be because the Molan were hearing it and the Trello were, in turn, hearing them.
She stood and walked around in Front of Skarl. She gazed into his eyes as she passed and smiled. Then, as Frill came into view, she greeted him warmly too. She came to a stop between them both and turned to the crowd. She raised her arms and rested them lovingly on the sides of the Molan’s heads and thought to the massed Trello below, “We welcome our friends from Mola.”
The crowd cheered.
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