The tragedy of Faena must not happen again.
Ena realised that Tome Polar would only respond to conviction. She sat beside him on a rock near the stalactite with the inscriptions and told him in a sad voice everything she had learned from her mother about the destruction of Faena.
The exasperated Tome Polar refused to listen. To him, the Marian girl’s story was an ignorant fairy tale full of senseless superstitions. What use was the mere assertion that the Faetians who escaped the destruction of their planet had flown from it in a kind of projectile that, it was claimed, moved on its own without pushing itself off from anything? Incidentally, the possible disintegration of matter was quite rightly not in any way connected with such movement.
Convinced that a Marian girl’s fictitious duty, to save the population of Mar from future disasters, was being put higher than her own love for him. Tome Polar decided that she did not truly love him.
Hot-tempered, vain, and, moreover, not one to acknowledge half-measures, he broke it off with the girl he loved and walked out of the stalactite cave on his own.
Behaving like that in the heat of the moment, however, proved much easier than living without Ena afterwards.
Tome Polar began pining away. The population of the underground City of Life (it was so named after the River of Life in the caves) was not so great that Tome and Ena could avoid one another. On the contrary, they kept meeting one another accidentally all the time, and Ena seemed even more beautiful than ever to Tome Polar. He started trying to make a date with her, but Ena was cold and distant. At least she managed to make that impression on him.
He was suffering. “She’s simply oppressed by ignorant superstitions,” he thought, trying to justify her to himself.
He soon became convinced that he couldn’t live without Ena. By this time, his dreams of setting up a laboratory for himself in a distant cave had also faded away. He hadn’t the strength to equip it by himself, and the Marians he approached for help refused, mentioning the hostility of their wives. These, evidently, were prisoners of the same superstitions as the young Ena.
Tome Polar was in despair. The ancient traditions were tightening round him in a ring, as if squeezing the breathing tubes of a space-suit.
Civilisation on Mar had developed in an unusual way. Receiving the heritage of a more ancient culture, the Marians on the whole devoted all their energies not to the struggle with the representatives of the animal world, since the planet’s atmosphere was unfavourable for the development of certain species, but to the struggle with the harsh natural environment. It was only possible to live in shelters supplied with artificial air and go out to the surface in space-suits. Plants could be grown successfully at the oases, but the Marians had to supply artificial irrigation and tend them while wearing space-suits. The struggle of rational beings with one another remained only in the memories of long-past generations that had become embodied in the duty of the Marian women and girls.
Perhaps like no other Marian of her kind, Ena felt the full burden of that duty. She suffered more than Tome Polar, because she could renounce her duty in the name of love. She didn’t do so, however, never doubting for a moment that she was protecting the whole population of Mar from destruction.
Yet she was the first to call Tome Polar into the Cave of Youth.
Tome Polar was overjoyed. He was no longer hoping for mutual vows at the monument to the Great Elder. He simply wanted to see her.
Ena came to her beloved fully armed with the cunning of her great-grandmothers, who had not lived solely on Mar. She knew perfectly well about his unsuccessful attempts to equip a cave and make the instruments he had invented. She brought with her a flower grown at the oasis.
“Isn’t it more important for the Marians to devote all their energies to the struggle for water?” she said, ruffling the petals with her fingers. “I would like my Tome” (she said MY TOME, and his heart missed a beat) “to lay the foundations of an enormous task for the future—to create a river deep underground that will bring the melted waters from the poles to new oases. Isn’t that more important than seeking the conditions for the disintegration of matter, forbidden by the Great Elder? Leaves, flowers, fruits…”
Tome Polar had a lively mind. One hint was enough for him to imagine the vast installations of the future irrigation system, as fabulous as the ice caps at the poles. Moreover, he was game for anything just so long as it would bring Ena back to him.
“I surrender, my incomparable Ena,” he said, taking the flower from her. “Rather let me leave for the poles in search of melted water than lose you.”
So Tome and Ena were joined after overcoming the obstacle that had come between them, and in this way was buried the idea of the disintegration of matter that had arisen so unexpectedly among the Marians. The Great Elder’s behest had been fulfilled.
…The struggle for power on Phobo was fought between Vlasta Sirus and Mrak Luton. It ended in favour of the intractable Faetess when Mrak Luton, skilfully driven by her to a heart attack, suddenly died.
Next, Nega Luton, who did not wish to yield her supremacy, was poisoned by a fruit specially grown by Vlasta in the greenhouse.
Left on Phobo, its native inhabitants, the Siruses, lived for many cycles, sick to death of each other’s company.
When Dovol Sirus, at an advanced age, fell ill, Vlasta, “desirous of relieving his sufferings”, reduced the oxygen supply to his cabin and then, to put an end to them, turned the tap right off.
Vlasta Sirus continued her husband’s memoirs and, reduced to despair, with no one left on the station to order about, took her own life by jumping outside without a space-suit. Her rigid corpse, preserved by the absolute cold of interplanetary space, became an eternal satellite of Station Phobo.
Epilogue
THE TALKING BEAST
Av had not yet reached maturity and still bore his father’s abbreviated name, but his younger brother still went by the child’s name of Avik.
Av was a strong, graceful boy and resembled his father, from whom he had inherited the long, powerful neck, like a tree-trunk, the curly head and the firm, dimpled chin. The slightly uplifted eyebrows and the clear gaze made his face calm and quizzical. He loved wearing the skin of a spotted predator, slinging its fanged head over his shoulder onto his chest.
Av became first helper to his father, who was finding it increasingly difficult to feed his big family by hunting.
Av was a skilful archer, able to pierce any branch on a tree without missing. The boy made himself a sharp stone knife which was in no way worse than his father’s metal one. He taught himself to wield a spear with a sharp stone head that he had fashioned himself. He also had a replaceable metal spear-point with a silvery blade and brown prickles. He didn’t know where his father had obtained such a strange spear-point and he kept it for exceptionally difficult duels when he had to fell his dangerous enemy with a dexterous blow. His mother cautioned him against these fights and could not in any way get used to the idea that her son was in constant danger when hunting in the forest.
The boy merely laughed, which threw Ma, his sister, into raptures.
One day, an enormous reptile with a powerful long body but no legs fell onto him from a tree. It coiled itself round the boy several times, crushing him in a deadly embrace. Av was out hunting alone, a long way from his father. It was no use crying and it was impossible anyway—he couldn’t even gasp for breath. Then he acted as his father had taught him: he tensed all his muscles, not letting the serpent crush his ribs in its coils.