It's full of stars pt 3
Well, I successfully managed to draft this without accidentally hitting 'submit.' I'll count that as a win.
One of these days I may even pull out all the stops and proofread something
Edit: added last minute idea to make it worse... or better?
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I am Loroi, Tempo thought,
I will succeed. As the person not holding the spanner, or the telekinesis, she would need to use her words. In fact, she would need to try the horrible trait of non-telepaths: small talk. The human seems to respond well to it. "It is a very striking view," she ventured.
Alex smiled. "You can see it from Earth with a telescope, but there's nothing like seeing it face to face. I could watch it all day."
That was interesting. This planet was in the same system as Earth. And for some reason Alex expected her to know that. And, he hadn't made any reference to her being brown instead of blue.
Exactly what is going on?
There was a silence.
Come on, come on. What else can I say?. This had always been difficult for her in training - the Loroi tradition was to be concise. Give her something of value to say, and she would say it. So she said "Frank would have loved this."
What? Who is Frank?
"Yeah, he would have." Alex sighed. "What a time to break a leg." He tapped the spanner against his right leg, then waved it at the window. "Still, you got the biggest 'told you so' in history."
She remembered now. Frank had always loved his motorbike, and simply refused to slow down. She had told him time and again that he'd crash one day, and a month before launch he'd slipped on some unexpected glass fragments. "At least he was wearing the pants," she said.
Alex smiled. "You know why he wore the pants." They stared out the window a little while longer. "Sam would have loved this too.
"Let's go get some breakfast. I didn't want to eat without you."
Oh, of course. Humans don't segregate their males, so they would eat together.
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Breakfast consisted of unfamiliar, round, foamy objects from a dispensing machine, and equally unfamiliar yellow fruit in a
very suggestive curved tube shape. Tempo had chuckled while Alex scowled.
"Hey now, we've been saving up this meal for monolith day. Don't make me feel weird about the bananas," he said.
"I just remembered why he wore the pants."
No I don't. I don't remember why he wore the pants. And what is monolith day?
Alex looked concerned. "Surely it was to protect his legs in the event that he fell over!"
They ate. The 'pancakes' were largely tasteless until covered with sugary 'maple' syrup, after which point she nearly inhaled them.
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And now they were ready for the day's mission. They had crammed into an observation ... cupboard ... it was tiny, and they bumped shoulders and shins as they squeezed in. There was a viewfinder for an optical telescope sticking out of the wall, basic mechanical controls, and the irritating noise of air fans.
Alex had dived in first, saying, "I was going to say 'ladies first,' but after the pants joke, I claim first viewing."
And so her stood in front of the telescope, head pressed against a retaining strap, and fiddled with the controls. "Jovian shield is in place. It should be coming over the horizon about now." He fumbled around and hit a button marked 'transmit.'
"Alexander Jardin, recording first observations with the optical telescope. Tempo Poole is waiting her turn." More fiddling. "I think I see a corner. Yes. Just visible now. Right on target. Taking photo one." There was a mechanical noise, and then some whirring. "I'm seeing a right angle corner, like a large brick. It's occluding stars and widening. I don't see any thickness yet.
"I've got another corner now. They form two corners on a rectangle. Taking photo two. Edges appear to be parallel.
"The object is getting a little thinner. Taking timed photos three through eight.
"I'm not seeing any reflections. It's all black.
"Oh, the other end has come around the curve. Taking photo nine. It looks about twice as long as it is wide.
"It's getting thinner as it twists. Taking photo 10. Testing the automatic tracking... still on target. I'm setting up the long timed exposure set... done. All right Tempo, you're up."
He slipped away from the telescope and she slid into his place. She may not know how to operate the telescope, but she absolutely wanted to see this object. After a moving her head back and forth a little, she got a clear picture through the eyepiece and saw the largest Soia artefact in history. It was a huge, absolutely black, rectangle. Clearly thousands of mamals long - she didn't know the proper scaling - and had just risen above the planet. She could only see it as a shadow against the stars and faint light of the planet's exosphere.
This is huge! This could be an active
artefact - in a human star system! Why don't they have better technology than this.
The telescope was actually quite good, if primitive. It maintained tracking as the object grew thinner and thinner. She watched, confused and entranced, as it slowly shrank to a thin line. It began to widen, and on the other side, she could see writing. "Alex, there is writing on it."
"Can you make it out?"
"Not yet."
They waited. The object got slowly wider as Tempo stared. The writing was white and stood out very strongly, but was still too slanted to see.
Alex began: "I never expected to see writing on it. That could tell us so much..."
Finally, she could start to see individual letters. "I can start to make out letters now. There are several lines of text. It's nearly turned over."
All ..... E ..... ........
After a few moments, the letters came into focus. Strange, English focus. "It says 'All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there.'" Alex had mentioned that his language, English, was quite young, so that meant
The Soia live! Somewhere, they are alive and watching over us!. Somehow, somewhere, the Soia had chosen her to come to a human system and see their first message in millennia. She had been worthy.
"In English?" Alex interrupted her thoughts.
"Yes"
"
Fuck."