The four explorers advanced across the soft grass of Destination, helmets under their arms. It was psychological, but "fresh air" was still something. Like washing after a long period of filth.
Destination was green with grasses and short trees. In the streams, cyclopean six-legged amphibians, in the grass, curious cat-headed snakes that reared up to scrutinize the travelers from another world.
The capsule had fallen right there, and the crater of the impact, then the rut, had been reconquered by vegetation. Up close, it was almost invisible, and they relied on the Konrad 2 interface, connected to an orbital probe, to guide them. Pallas detected no sentient species. In the distance, a few unidentified roars froze the team in place. Andreï ordered that two sailors, armed with a blaster and a FAM, join them at the double.
At the end of the rut stood the remains of the exile capsule; almost nothing left: a heavy metal base that had crashed against a tree, which, over the decades, had wrapped it in its roots. Andreï ran his gloved hand over the piece of steel and showed something to Pallas. He opened communications:
- "Expedition One on Destination. We have found the exile capsule used by Garen Antor. Only the metal base remains. The removable parts were carefully taken away with a tool. Two possibilities: a sentient civilization intervened, or, more likely, Garen used these elements to build himself a shelter elsewhere."
The two soldiers arrived, barely out of breath. Pallas recognized Margret, the ship's wrestling champion, short-haired and flat-nosed, and Momoko, the finest trigger finger of theAlecto, in whose mind she had once glimpsed the dream of becoming a planetary guardian on one of those lost worlds beyond Ariel.
Andreï had climbed into the tree and was scanning the horizon with binoculars. He spotted a rocky outcrop and ordered the team to move there.
Apart from small knolls, the ground was flat. The wind, gentle, bent the grasses in a smooth, swaying motion. Small vibrations. Momoko shouldered the FAM and declared:
- "Two targets at four hundred meters. Big game. They're coming."
- "Sentient, Pallas?" asked Andreï.
- "Not at all. Sensitive. Animals. Excited by the hunt. Their main sense is vibration."
- "I have a one-hundred-percent lock on the target, Captain, awaiting your order."
- "Oh, we're not going to kill poor beasts," said Andreï, shaking his head. "How close are they?"
- "Two hundred meters," said Margret, squinting. "Hell of a speed."
- "Pallas, could you calm them?"
- "If they get within ten meters they're dead," affirmed Momoko.
- "Relax, Momoko. Pallas?"
Pallas concentrated. Andreï knew it was an almost painful effort for her, perhaps for an objective not worth it, but he felt it was important not to kill, in these first hours on the planet.
The beasts' run slowed, became a heavy and sluggish walk, until they presented themselves, dazed and vaguely curious, before their would-be prey. They were the size of elephants and stocky. Two great legs capable of crushing anything, and a great walrus-like tail that modulated or sensed vibrations in the ground. The most intriguing thing was their color, which absorbed the visible light spectrum until their outlines blurred.
Geneva was taking photos, videos, even a sample, and Pallas drove them away. Andreï nodded to his psi officer. She didn't look tired. What an exceptional asset.
They reached the rocky outcrop. A brick-colored peak, as tall as a three-story building, itself set into the beginnings of a mountain chain. Konrad pointed to the ground: steps had been cut into the rock, to the measure of a human stride. Margret wanted to go first, but Andreï took her place, smiling.
The steps were irregular. They led to a well-arranged crevice. It was spartan, a few decades old, but not appallingly uncomfortable. In one corner, a thick bed of dried grasses, now home to a family of cat-snakes. A hole in a wall, through which flowed water from an underground spring, falling into a piece of twisted metal serving as sink or bucket. Another offset hole, beneath which had once been a fire. A few small everyday objects: a metal knife, a rudimentary shovel, another bucket…
They stood at the entrance. Their silhouettes, with the sun, stretched deep into the makeshift shelter.
Konrad ran his hand through the dust on the ground.
- "Geneva will tell us more, but no one has been here for fifty years."
- "About eighty-five years, according to my readings," confirmed the young sailor.
Andreï caught Pallas's eye.
- "I think you can feel objects."
- "I don't know what you mean, Captain."
- "Psychometry."
- "It's a legend."
- "Pallas, I don't care about your school's secrets. For all we know, Earth's UniPsi is in the Aleph's hands. And I need to understand."
- "I'm incapable, Captain."
- "Pallas, I don't need to be psi to know you're lying to me, you know that?"
The officer inhaled deeply, then declared:
- "It's experimental, and so unreliable we're not supposed to talk about it."
- "I myself am an experiment…" argued Andreï.
Pallas moved forward into the room. She touched the knife.
- "He's hungry. He's always hungry."
She ran her hand over the water receptacle. Tiny amphibians scuttled out.
- "The emotions are violent. What a character. He is desperate. Time passes and nothing happens. He's losing his mind."
She put her hand on the wall.
- "Lights in the sky, maybe ships. But none answer his calls. I think."
At last she approached the back of the room. She had a shoulder-lamp and switched it on. A fresco appeared. On the red wall, an impressive skull, reworked again and again, where the primitive fought with realism, and beneath it, a single word:
VENGEANCE
"I will return," Pallas felt. "I will return. The Emprise guides me. I will return."
They all stepped forward to look at the grim message.
- "That confirms he was mad," said Konrad, "but not how he managed to come back."
- "Wait. There's something else," said Pallas.
Her hand was on his bed of grasses.
- "He was startled awake. He left abruptly."
- "They came for him," concluded Andreï. "Let's split up around the shelter. Look for any trace whatsoever. Alecto, do you read me? Did you record everything? Can you zoom with the probe around here?"
The probe wasted no time informing the team of a large dark circle some distance from the shelter, in the plain, while Konrad struggled with two curious cat-snakes sniffing about.
The circle was a great signaling fire. As if he had been on a desert island. Oh, after all, if you looked in the right place, a ship in orbit at night could have seen such a fire… but the chances were slim.
And yet Konrad pointed out marks on the ground. The humus and rock had been scored a very long time ago.
- "A ship with a landing gear of twelve meters," declared Momoko. "A Raven?"
- "Awfully small," said Konrad.
- "Maybe a shuttle to a larger ship," concluded Andreï. "A Xeno ship, well… anything's possible, but I'd be surprised if a rescue expedition had taken place after his exile."
- "I don't know everything about Lodovico," said Pallas cautiously, "but I was told his experimental subjects were very competent, and rather fanatical."
- "You have a point, Pallas," said Andreï. "You have a very good point. We may have to review the service records of all of Lodovico's survivors. Let's head back to theAlecto."