“It looks similar to Antyra some two or three hundred years ago. We’re going forward,” ordered Ugo.
“If they have radio, maybe they can detect us.”
“They’re still primitives. Most likely, they haven’t discovered nuclear power yet. I doubt they’re able to fly.”
He changed the course on the floating table using Gill’s hands.
“We’re going around, though,” Ugo said after a brief moment. “We’ll approach from the dark side.”
They started to move again, more cautiously this time. The crescent of the ocean-planet thinned, obscuring the glare of Mapu’s star.
Each time he touched the navigation table, a series of values appeared in a circle around his finger. By watching Ugo’s movements, he learned that he could adjust the ship’s speed by rubbing another finger on this circle and increasing or decreasing the numbers. The system looked so simple that Gill had no doubt he could use it alone if Ugo would ever give him the opportunity.
At one point, the jure had him touch the surface of the table twice in quick succession, thus grabbing the space continuum and pulling it. When he released it, the ship jumped through the deformed space like the Sigian destroyer, briefly surrounded by a weird fog. In a single jump, they reached the planet’s orbit! That was how the Grammians controlled the space… much more rudimentary than the Sigians’ method. It was hard to believe they had defeated them. The Grammians’ strength lay in numbers and fanaticism. Surely their war losses must have been terrible, but they probably didn’t care much about this small detail.
The dark side of the planet approached quickly, surrounded by a few scattered star rays and a tiny strip from the disk of a gray satellite hidden behind the lit face. Soon, the darkness became bigger than the whole screen, hiding everything. As far as he could tell, they were approaching rapidly. Was Ugo doing it on purpose to avoid the rudimentary sensors of the natives, or were they about to crash and get buried under a mountain of earth like Kirk’an on Antyra II? He had the vision of his skeleton discovered after hundreds of years… someone would pull the bracelet from his arm and try to wear it…
It looked like he wasn’t meant to see the alien world from orbit. Only when they arrived close to the surface could he glimpse a river of lights blinking in the distance—maybe huge pyres lit in the middle of the settlements by savages dressed in skins, he thought. Ugo pressed some buttons on the cockpit and switched the image on the display wall to infrared, the details of the unknown planet finally coming to life.
Gill saw the smooth, greenish surface of an unknown sea or ocean. A shore was visible as a thin line of sand blocking a string of large, shallow lagoons. He would have loved to see their details, but Ugo was running the ship in total disregard of his wishes. Suddenly, he noticed some lights on the sand, maybe the same ones glimpsed from up high.
“Look there,” he exclaimed enthusiastically. “Drive closer!”
“Don’t move!” the monster shouted while he paralyzed his arms.
If Gill had any doubts about the fate Ugo planned for him, now was a good moment to give up on them. The abomination didn’t exert the smallest effort to hide his hostility. He still depended on Gill’s carcass, but he could smell his trophy so close!
The continent was covered in vegetation, no doubt of that. What struck Gill were the squares—patches of forest, patches of crops—all betraying organization. Here and there, he briefly surprised moving dots—agile shadows defying the darkness to hunt for prey or join a wild mating game. Even in the dark, Mapu was pulsing with a life stranger than anything he could imagine…
Undoubtedly, the world had progressed since the Sigians’ visit. Maybe the Grammians had assimilated them, too, like they did with the Antyrans. But they hadn’t been locked inside a firewall, which was an encouraging discovery. With a bit of luck, maybe they’d find that the natives had never been contacted by alien civilizations.
They flew over countless mountain ranges crossed by deep, curved valleys. Sometimes, small settlements glimmered in the night. He reached the conclusion that the regular lights couldn’t be pyres; they were a primitive form of street lighting—apparently electrical! They had discovered electricity, which was not that surprising; they had radio transmissions, after all. Along some of the valleys, he spotted dark trails, which might have been primitive roads. He imagined savages dressed in skins, carrying piles of strange food on platforms hauled by monstrous creatures with three crests and eight feet… He could barely wait to see them up close.
As they flew toward the interior, the areas became more arid. Even though he didn’t get to glimpse all the details, the shrubs became smaller and scarcer on the thirsty ground. Their ship reached a wide river meandering through the hills, dotted by sandbanks along the riverbed. As far as he could see, the area was extremely dry—barely a handful of shrubs grew in the barren wasteland.
After a while, they stumbled upon a plateau bordered by vertical ravines. By now, they had flown a long way from the coast, and there was no trace of natives anymore. Creatures of the sea, they seemed unadapted to a life far from the ocean, in the middle of a desert, where they would have to use irrigation to grow food, perhaps a concept alien to them. Who knew how the Sigians carried so many of them to bury their destroyer…
But just as he was hovering over another small river, he saw a road. It seemed he was wrong—the primitives were able to live far from the coastline!
Gradually, the scenery changed. More and more hills and mountains scrolled under his hungry gaze, their valleys covered by lush forests. Soon, he came across a flat, sandy area flanked by trees of an unidentifiable species—pretty much like all the living things of the strange world. In the middle of the flatland, the plants were obviously seeded by natives. The nearby pentagonal patch was made of carefully sown plots bordered by a pipe. Primitive irrigation, he realized, fascinated. He glimpsed three larger and three smaller dwellings along a sandy road above them, but to his regret, they disappeared before he had time to see them better.
Not far from them, a much larger settlement appeared on the left side of the screen. Hundreds of strange square structures crowded along streets, arranged in a gridlike pattern. Over a great distance around it, parceled fields were growing all kinds of unknown plants.
The spaceship flew over an elongated rectangle of artificial origin, which had white stripes painted on all its length. Another narrow road covered by the equally bizarre material ran parallel to it.
The area was now packed with settlements, crops, and luxuriant forests. He even hovered over a sizable lake. Ugo touched the navigation table without saying a word, and the ship turned to the right. Other towns, roads, forests, and cultivated hills came into view. He saw a small lake and, not far from it, another one. Around them, he could glimpse a scattered settlement stretching over a considerable distance along a main road. As they hovered above six long, identical buildings, Ugo stopped the ship.
“We’ve arrived.”
“What do you mean we’ve arrived? Where are the pyramids?” Gill exclaimed, surprised. He struggled to find a trace of the ancient buildings, but he couldn’t see anything familiar. Have they been destroyed? he asked himself, his spikes wrinkled with anxiety.
“On the hills in front of you,” answered the jure.
Ugo lowered the ship’s altitude over one of the few areas without trees, not far from a road. Good landing spots seemed scarce due to the rich vegetation invading the land up to the horizon.