The reason for its mad tumbling followed at close distance: a hungry manax56 had tracked the “wheel” for some time, moving as fast as it could over the rotten trunks collapsed on the forest floor.
Despite the advantage of the wind, the red pinwheel managed to get stuck between two rotten sponges. For a few seconds, it tried desperately to keep spinning, but the only result was to further entwine its scales with the putrid debris around it. Running out of choices, the wheel extended its body to reveal an aquatic creature loosely resembling an Antyran warhok.57
The creature crawled backward over the fallen trunks, but after a few steps, it stopped again. This time, no matter how hard it scratched, it couldn’t push the obstacle blocking its retreat—because it was a solid wall. The hunter, sensing that its prey was finally cornered, jumped forward.
The pseudo-warhok tried to fight back by clamping its beak menacingly. Unfazed by this little demonstration of aggressiveness, the manax extended its long, transparent tongue and speared the soft abdomen of the creature. It quickly injected a green poison, which paralyzed the poor victim. Breakfast was served.
In the swamps—as a matter of fact, on the whole planet—there were no trees. The grass, however, grew very tall, sometimes reaching three hundred feet in height. All kinds of plants or plantlike creatures took shelter under their broad, fleshy blades. Most of them were huge, spongy spore colonies, mixed with myriads of vines that climbed high on the giant grass trunks. Countless colored fruits hung from the vines—the main staple of the creatures living in the weird forest.
The wall where the unlucky pseudo-warhok found its demise was a bit more than a simple trunk of grass. It wasn’t a sponge, either, nor anything else of biological origin. It was hard to notice this detail when walking through the forest because its base was covered by a green carpet of spores and vines.
As the structure went upward, it passed the tip of the tallest grasses and crawled into the sky to the dizzying height of one and a half miles. From up there, it didn’t look anything like a wall, but a giant tower—a whole city built in a single building. And it wasn’t alone in the jungle, for several others could be seen at the horizon. The towers, even though similar in size, were topped with either urban jungles of needle-sharp skyscrapers or gray, puffing balls joined by a maze of silver piping. One of the farthest towers was topped by huge spheres flanked by thousand-foot-tall chimneys exhaling threads of purplish smoke into the planet’s sky. All the tower settlements were connected by transparent tubes suspended in the air at over six thousand feet above the jungle, without any pillars to sustain their weight.
The meeting room was located at the top of one of the tallest buildings. Eight beings sat around a huge, polished stone, black as the hearts of the night. Six of them, although belonging to the same species, had the wildest height differences imaginable; any Antyran would have recognized them as the weird gods who arrived on Alixxor. One of them, the tallest Rigulian, wore two golden rings on the bony spikes of his shoulders—this being the only piece of “clothing” of the whole group. They seemed to be guests because they had to keep the breathing apparatuses over their “faces.” The Rigulians floated in their individual vats, whose size forced them to cram against one another.
Two other creatures on the opposite side of the table belonged to a different species. They were at home in the tower city, lying comfortably in wicker chairs hanging from the ceiling, carefully tailored to match their body size. Other niches revealed the spots where more chairs could descend if needed. The aliens were thin and extremely flattened, their most notable facial feature being a huge nose that could easily be spotted even from orbit; this rounded tumescence looked more like a hideous tumor than a nose. This protuberance almost fully masked their perfectly round mouth, a suction cup lined with conical white teeth rising behind a thin, purple lip ring. They didn’t wear any clothes, their bodies being completely covered by small, bluish-gray scales. Their two lively little eyes were positioned on the sides, forcing them to turn their heads to look at their guests when they talked to them.
Although the alien world had to be very advanced—only a complex civilization could defy gravity the way they did—the room didn’t betray any of this progress. On the contrary, the building materials of the furniture, namely, the table and the chairs, showed the willingness of the hosts to be a part of nature. Moreover, at the base of the transparent walls, an equally transparent floor belt about three feet wide allowed the eye to rest freely on the surreal green of the wild jungle. The forest stretched to the horizon all around the town like a stormy ocean, disturbed here and there by steep hills.
Eight Corbelian spheres floating in front of the gathering were the only things out of place with the room’s look and feel. A ninth sphere hovered in front of an empty place. Although they seemed to be made of bone, their color constantly pulsed in red hues.
Without warning, a ninth participant materialized in front of the single sphere. He was sitting in a floating metal vat like the other Rigulians. The image shivered for a moment, then stabilized. It was a hologram, but one couldn’t tell that just by looking at it.
All turned their heads to the newcomer. An expert eye would have recognized the Rigulian ambassador to Antyra, sent to make contact with the newly emerged world. And if it was a real-size hologram, the six Rigulians had to be much taller than the Antyrans, as their height was strikingly greater than that of the ambassador.
“How big is the tachyon delay with Antyra?” asked one of the gray creatures.
“Last time I checked, there were still seven hours, We’Nkrak,” grumbled the alien with golden rings, visibly irritated. “Since I activated them last night, they should have been synchronized already.”
“Math isn’t handy to everyone,” the other gray chuckled with a mischievous smile. “Surely you used the good matrix?”
“I see Omal 13’s is already synchronized,” said the Rigulian, seemingly without noticing the irony. “He must have turned it on earlier, so his entanglement has already finished.”
The Corbelian spheres were true wonders of technology, able to link words over the colossal chasms of space by using the tachyon relays available in cities or on the space fleets. After a few hours or days required for the dual synchronization, depending on the distance, they allowed instant communication between the spheres at the ends.58
Unfortunately, one of the “minor” drawbacks of the link was the insane energy sucked by the always-hungry tachyon generators—that was the reason why the connection had to be brief.
“Let’s hear from our ambassador Omal 13,” exclaimed the Rigulian with golden rings.
Omal 13, the Rigulian ambassador to Antyra, had a face devoid of any expression. It was obvious he couldn’t see anyone because he was staring at the empty space in front of him. He sketched a salute, with the palm turned up and down in quick succession, and then he started to spill the message in a monotonous tone, as neutral and empty as his mug.
“Contact date: 17.18.18.43, at 14:20 standard time. World: Antyra, code A2.18.43.” He cleared his throat and continued, with a trace of hesitation, “The distortion, our main purpose, has remained an enigma.”
“What?” We’Nkrak exclaimed, confounded.
The eight in the room looked at one another, visibly shaken. Obviously, that was what they wanted most to find about the Antyrans.
“We don’t have reasons to call for a planetary quarantine. They don’t seem developed enough to pose a threat to us; their technology is smooth and assimilated to the second fusion barrier.”