Therefore the Hyperflux had a continuous speed increase around up to the fifth week in each case the double of the previous week. The fifth and sixth week placed obviously the top speed, because starting from the seventh week the speed decreased just as continuously as it had before increased. The calculations they made showed that the time had made a perfect curve.
The shuttle approached obviously the end of its journey. The time increased now daily only one year more and that already for six days. Will counted each moment with the fact that they drop back again into the normal area. He only absolutely didn�t know where they then were. ,I will wake up the others, ' he said to himself, ,thereby all, on board present, become a witness of the return.'
Will Tompkins rose, from his bucket seat in the cockpit of the shuttle. He freed himself from the safety net, and floated to the rear. The shuttle was a special design. In the loading space was mainly live and sleep area. Separated by a thick metal bulkhead the Hyperflux was stored remaining in a tank. Will switched on the light and a warm light illuminated the area. The remaining crew lay, buckled on in their bunks. First Jessica woke up. He gave her a tender kiss on the cheek. �Wake up, my dear," he whispered in her ear. "It must be so far each moment."
She opened her eyes looked into his gentle eyes and murmured: "Straight now, where I slept so well?"
"Can�t make anything, my dear. I wake up the others now."
But Pascal and Lion were already awake and waft straight away their bunks. They woke up their wives, during Will prepared the breakfast.
"You noticed something?" asked Catherine during they sat together and drank instant coffee from sealed bill cups drank. "It becomes brighter outside."
All stormed in the cockpit, and looked out of the windows.
"Oh God," said Nathalie, "Slowly I became too curious, where we flew now."
"Much more would interest me, whether now is quite, the computer or we," answered Jessica.
"I�m interested in both," interposed Will, "nevertheless, much more interests me whether the things in the back will fly around our ears fly during we brake."
They all went fast back again into the rear sector of the shuttle. Everything was stowed away, secured and away closed. Then they hurried again into the cockpit, fastened themselves, and still secured themselves with the safety net. Meanwhile the tiles had begun to glow and had yielded the silence an infernal noise. It sounded itself, as if a sustained fire from shells hammered to the hull planking and culminated in an ever louder becoming skirl as if steel scratched over steel.
Just as fast, as the white had come, it yielded also again. Smoothly black universe wrapped them again. Only a small bright point continued to increase in front of them.
A glimmering planet rushed with lunatic speed on target of the shuttle. Like an enormous emerald it hung in the darkness of the universe. If the earth was shimmering blue, the spectral radiant exitance of this planet was a dirty yellow-brown and on the surface raved large storms. Over the inhospitable looking planet, approximately fifty enormous asteroids hung. While they ignited the brake rockets, strangely slim spaceships of one asteroid started.
"Communication on," instructed Will. Leon, which was a co-pilot, surrounded the switch. "Communication is online!"
"Okay, then we tries," meant Will. "You better pray that they don�t attack us." He pressed the button and emitted on all frequencies.
"Here is the spaceship Pioneer 1 from the earth. We are unarmed and come in peace. I repeat. Here is the spaceship Pioneer 1 from the earth. We are unarmed and come in peace!"
Silence spread in the shuttle. It seemed that eternities was leaving until the receipt cracked and a voice accustomed in using command announced themselves: "Spaceship Pioneer 1. We understood. Follow our convoy. Each deviation will be understood as hostile act and we will be forced to open the fire!"
"Seems as if that would be the receipt committee" meant Jessica. "I only ask myself, from where they can speak English."
While the shuttle followed the slim space hunters to a large asteroid station, it remained quiet inside the shuttle. Nobody wanted to talk. All did only look on that always more largely to becoming rock in the universe. Anybody on board the shuttle could not believe that inside the asteroid someone could live. But clearly becoming hatches and windows disproved this impression. It cracked again in the speaker. "Spaceship Pioneer 1, turn off all your drive systems. You are pulled into a hangar."
A short jerk confirmed the catch jet. Will switched off all drives. At the side of the large asteroid an enormous hatch, which wasn't visible before, opened. Slowly and sedate the ship slid into the hangar. Leon drove out the wheels. While the hangar gates closed majestically, the ship touched down on the soil. Alarm tones yelled by resound and grew gradually silent. They became surrounded from dark looking soldiers in solid bodies - combat suits. A ladder was driven near and to the hatch fastened.
"You go along with me?" asked Will, while it freed itself from the safety net. It was an unnecessary question, because all were curious about what should happen here.
Will stepped out as the first, the hands raised. The others followed him mutely. As they arrived down a more important looking soldier came to them. Will could recognize it immediately by the golden buckle on its shoulders. Except his face nobody could recognize any further details, because his body, exactly the same as those of the other soldiers, was in a solid body-combat suit.
"Please follow me," he said only. Will couldn't throw a view of the name plate. He also was not sure if the officer carried one at all. He brought the group away from the hangar, into a sterile working area. On the wall hung pair of overalls welded into plastic covers.
"Please put your clothes off and to pull on these pair of overalls."
"Why should we...?"
�Because of the bacteria, which lead on yourself," the officer answered. "You will be cleaned here with the standard procedure by bacteria and viruses. These pair of overalls are sterile." Then he disappeared.
After the group had changed the clothes, the officer came back. He had changed his clothes too and was now in a black uniform provided with silver strips. The officer directed them by innumerable passages, which worked all as become extinct. Finally they stopped in front of a important looking door. He pushed it up and meant only: "The commander and the senate expect you. Please enter."
Will and his companion didn't know what they should hold of it, so they entered. An enormous table controlled the scene. At the wall was let in a golden galaxy. The man at the front of the table rose.
"You are thus of the earth," he said only and stared on the group with ice-blue eyes. "Yes,� answered Will. "We started two and a half months ago from the earth and hope to be now on Epsilon Eridiani. However it surprises me that you speak English." "That you are on Epsilon Eridiani, I unfortunately can not confirm. English, like you call our language we don't speak. It is, like we call it, Interstandard. And that you are started two and a half months ago of the earth, is absolutely impossible."
"Why?" Will and the others asked at the same time.
"Because the planet among us here is the earth - or rather was - and there can no more life exist. Continuous environment disasters made it uninhabitable." He made a small break. "In certain way," he drawls, "you had luck. You are clearly humans. From where, we will clarify later. But if you had come one day later, you would have found only the destroyed and abandoned planet here. We here in the asteroids, are the last humans of the earth and we wait only for the grant by the galactic advice then we are departing from here."
It occurred to Will, as if one would pull it the soil under his feet away. ,That cannot be possible, ' he thought. Jessica held herself so strongly to his shoulder that her ankles became white. She trembled so strongly that Will had to hold her. Also the others had similar conditions.
"In which year you left earth?" a high-ranking military officer asked.
"Our takeoff was on 12 August 2023. We started from the ISS. Which date do we have now actually?"
"ISS?" the officer thought. "I believe to remind that I read such a thing in the historical books. I set the central computer on research."
"Yes, general do that. We will wait so long. Which concerns your question about the date: we have the year 2439?" The man at the other end of the table restarted himself in the discussion. He made an inviting hand movement. "However please, sit down. We are all here to find the truth and not to make torture." He put the finger on the, at the right wrist fastened, Intercom.
"Bring it us water, please," he turned again to the group. "Forgive me, you want to eat forgiving it also something?"
"Thanks but with fresh water, you would serve us at most."
"How actually are your names?"
"I am Will Tompkins, Captain of the shuttle," he pointed to Jessica, "my wife, Jessica." Then he introduced with a gesture at the others. "This is Leon King, my co-pilot and his wife Nathalie, Dr. Pascal Lion and his wife Catherine."
"A large group for such a small ship."
"Dr. Lion had the luck to invent a fuel with name Hyperflux. The government has us thereupon as group on this expedition, because we were working cooperating at that time."
"Hyperflux, you said: Hyperflux?"
"Yes, you know about it?"
"The accident on ISS," called the general suddenly. "Now I remember again. When it was?" he scratched himself at the head. "2045 or around that date, the station was straight over Europe as it happened. By this liquid diluted the oxygen in the atmosphere more and more. Nothing could stop it."
Pascal, who had so far preferred to remain, had now also to set himself. He trembled so strongly that the others believed he has a cardiac infarct. "I cannot believe that," he whispered. "Are you completely sure that there is no more life on earth?"
"Absolute surely," answered the general. His Interkom beeped. "one moment, I get the accurate data. ISS, an old space station, built in the years 1999 to 2002 and in the years 2015 to 2020 the first time and 2030 to 2038 the second time extended." He makes a break. "Ah," he proclaimed suddenly. "There it is. 12 August 2023 started a team of six researchers to Epsilon Eridiani. However the contact tore off on the second day, so that the earth government explained the researchers for dead. Dr. Pascal Lion got posthumously lent the Nobel price. The research at the Hyperflux got further for enhancement. For that an accident made 31 august 2049 made an end. The largest part of the station was destroyed, the research had been stopped, meanwhile the people had been invented the drive with hydrogen turbines." The general looked into the group. "That is by the way those, still usual drive system," he explained. Then he continued. "That by the explosion transformed Hyperflux penetrated into the atmosphere, without somebody could prove it first. In the year 2095 people could attribute the environmental pollution the first time to Hyperflux and one tried her in vain to fight. 2215 the environmental pollution was so strong that we couldn't undertake anything more against it. That was the beginning of our exodus." Silence spread in the hall. Pascal, which could not believe all this, asked: "However why they do not �ave more earlier...? I mean, where you want to go now?"
The chairman seized the word again. "As we began to collect asteroids, so that we could use them as spaceships, the Oliveirier became attentively on us. They and the galactic advice discussed the last decades our new homeland. Tomorrow we get overacted the exact flight data into our ship computers. Then, after fifty years in space, we can begin our journey."
"And where does the destination lie?"
"We will experience that tomorrow. I may ask you to draw yourself meanwhile into our guest quarters. We will present you tomorrow to the envoy of the galactic advice. I hope that your appearance doesn't change the safe of our takeoff sequence."
Thus he rose and the young officer, that had brought them here led them away again. They went changing through the sterile looking courses of the station without a further word. When they arrived at an orange coloured door, the officer stopped. He put his palm on a scanner field and looked into an optics.
"I was instructed to bring you here," he said. "For short term you live in the safety area, until we found other quarters for you."
The door rose hissing. A further uniformed waited already on the other side.
"Sergeant Ivanov will show you your accommodations." He turned and went away. Silent they went behind the sergeant further in the oranges range.
"This is the security zone of the ship," he explained. "Here nobody can come in or out without authorization."
"A prison, I would mine," said Pascal quietly. But the sergeant had heard it.
"Quite no prison, here only our most valuable guests are accommodated."
"Valuable for whom?"
"For us humans. Here the best heads are accommodated. Far inside the asteroids in a, in case of an emergency, perfectly self-sufficient section."
A further door opened and released the view of a spacious living room.
"This is your accommodation," the sergeant said. He makes an inviting gesture. "You will have to live provisionally together. Until we know, in which of our ships we can accommodate you. There are enough sleep possibilities available. They can get everything over language control, but please understand that you have still no output possibility. Your data are entered in the ship, with which you will travel further. If you want to go out, you use the Interkom and ask for me. I help you further."
He turned and wanted to go.
"Are you sure that we are not prisoners?" asked Pascal.
"Absolutely," answered Ivanov and walked through the doorway, which closed immediately again.
"Well," Catherine sighed resigning, "first locked up in a shuttle over months, or actually centuries, and now more here."
"At least we 'ave more comfort �ere, which we didn't had in the shuttle. We should not weight."
" If it concerns to me," said Nathalie, "I will enjoy an extensive shower." She looked to Leon from the eye angle. "Do you come along, darling?"
He didn't ask long. "I will immediately search for the bath," he said and disappeared in an adjacent room. "You can deal meanwhile who showers as next. You can take up time." Short time later they heard a joyful: "Found it!" hear.
"Don't use the whole water!" Will call them afterwards. Then he examines with Jessica the other rooms. Pascal, which was still white like the wall, sat with Catherine on the cosy sofa.
They spent the remaining day thereby to shower and fall thereafter exhausted in the bed. Only Pascal couldn't sleep well. When they were waked on the next day by a quiet buzzing signal, he sat already activated on the sofa. His eyes were red occur and dark shade swirled around them. When they were dressed, a gentle gong out at the door rang. A part of the door flickered briefly, and then the face of sergeant Ivanov showed up on it.
"I hope, I don't disturb you," he said. "I wanted to bring your breakfast. May I enter?" "Of course," Leon confirmed, �Come in, come in!"
The door rose and Ivanov brought in a tray with wonderful smelling delights. "I hope, you slept good," he meant and set down the tray. He saw dark framed eyes of Pascal. "Seems, as if not all well rested." Concern was in its voice. "I would recommend to you to drink this juice here," he pointed to a jug with greenish liquid, "in addition eat at best this fruit. They work perfect together." He turned to the door again. "Let me know, when you are finished. Then I will pas with you the daily plans." Again he was gone.
They sat silent there and regarded the meals. Catherine affectionately cast a glass of the greenish liquid for Pascal, peeled him the pear-shaped fruit and handed it to him. "Here, my dear," she said, �you must which eat. They will not poison us."
Pascal took mutely the glass, drank of it, bit into the fruit and drank again. When he was finished with the fruit, he had again a healthy colour and also there were not more the black rings around its eyes.
"I do not know, what was," he meant after, "however it 'elps."
"You also don't look anymore so out-spat," Will said.
Pascal had to smile. "It was all probably too much for me."
"Seems like. Are you ready for the daily plan?"
"Why not," Nathalie sigh, "we didn't have anything else to do."
"Interkom, sergeant Ivanov please."
Again the face of the sergeant appeared on the door. "Are you ready?"
"So ready, as one be can," answered Will.
"Very good, I�m coming soon." And the face disappeared again.
A few minutes later he stood already before the door.
"We have now half past nine standard time. The delegation arrives at ten o clock standard time. Oliveirier, Massanogen and Raflagen will be present. They are the main races of the league. The senate will advised first with the delegation. I would like to ask you to keep yourself ready. If the delegation liked to speak with you, you must be in the anteroom. For your pronouncing at the delegation I must say to you that you please answer only to the questions, which are placed to you. The consultation is then locked after your pronouncing. Afterwards we should receive the coordinates for our new homeland. Do you have any questions?"
"Only one, what they will ask us?"
"That I also can�t answer you. Do you want to visit the ship, in the mean time?"
"Why not, we still have time and it seems not to be bad, if one is been versed on the ship."
"I will accompany you to the border again,� answered Ivanov. He reached into its bag and fished a few cheque card-large and just as flat parts from his bag. "These are your provisional Interkoms. You must stick it only on the back your hand. With thus you are attainable in the entire ship and in case of an emergency we can also locate you."
Pascal took a Interkom in the hand. "Against the mobile phones like we had known were awful heavy."
"You only need to put it on the back of your hands and press slightly the Interkom. For activation simply run your hand over it and call the name of the desired participant. That's all."
They received all the Interkoms and set off to the outside bulkhead. There another soldier waited again, who led them by the different courses and resounding. Will occurred himself, as if he would visit a factory in a Science Fiction film. But the important sections, like bridge or engine room were not shown. Five minutes before ten they arrived in the anteroom of the meeting room.
"Perfect," welcomed them the same young officer, who had brought them yesterday already there. "They will ask for you in a view minutes. Thank you, Perkins, you can go." He contacted the soldier.
When he had left the area, the door opened to the meeting room. "The group of researchers are pleased to come in." An anonymous speaker announced.
"Well, then, people," Will said. "Into the fray." He breathed deeply and set with Jessica out for enter. Leon and Nathalie followed them immediately. Only Pascal hesitated. But he was simply taken along by Catherine.
The delegation was the next small shock that they expected. In front of the different members stood the respective flags, before the flags were written on a sign the race names in English for the newcomers.
The Massanogians was most similar to the humans. They were from compact shape, and the powerful belly was most remarkable. They lent to them a pear-shaped appearance. It continued in their head form. They had out-standing eyes, a lipless mouth and not visible nose. Their skin shone oilily.
While the Massanogians was still a little similar to humans, the Raflagians could not manufacture a purchase to humans. They were reptilian descent but had no sheds. They looked like enormous fish. The large eyes laterally at the head, at the chin palpation organs and between their fingers still clear swimming fins. Since their body had water necessary, their suit was to a certain extent a portable aquarium that supplied the sensitive skin with all necessary.
But the Oliveirier was strangest. They seemed intangible. Will tried several times to regard them, but he never was sure, which and whether he had seen. Sergeant Ivanov explained him later that they lived at the border to another dimension. Thus they dazzled sometimes in all spectral-colours, but predominantly they were blue.
"I am a chairman of the delegation," said the resplendent nature. The voice resounded, as if a fine bell would have spoken. "I know your names and your customs. But please forgive me if don't say my names. Normally we don't speak in these deep tones. Please tell us your history. We want to examine it."
Will told them from their journey. Jessica and Leon added sometimes something. Those things they had particularly been noticeable. But the Oliveirier wanted to know also the beginning. They asked for the Hyperflux. "You still have the formula?"
Pascal, who couldn't shut up again answered prompt: � Of course we still 'ave it. We 'ave used up only the 'alf."
"We would gladly examine it," the bright bell voice said. "If it is still usefully, perhaps the humans can go back on earth once again. You are only six people, "continued the nature. �I don't think that they endanger mankind. We will advised now."
Thereupon they were led back again into the anteroom. They didn't had to wait long. Approximately twenty minutes later were asked to come in again.
"We came to the decision that you may accompany humans. In response we receive your remaining Hyperflux. Senator, here you have the data medium," a small silvery cylinder appeared in their, hand. "As soon as he is active in your ship, it transfers itself to the other ships."
The consultation seemed to be dissolved, but Pascal still had to say obviously something. "I would like ask something," began he hesitating.
"Yes, Mr. Lion," noticed him the Oliveirier. "What you want to say us?"
"Well. I wanted to only ask to give a hand to you with the study of the remedy. I �ad invented the thing and it �ad destroyed the earth. If you want to see it like me, I am responsible for this dreadful disaster. I would like to make my faults good again."
"If that is your desire, you will come on our ship."
Will stood arm in arm with Jessica on the bridge of the asteroid-ship. Leon and Natalie stood beside him. On the enormous screens they saw, how the ship of the delegation departed. The smaller screen directly before them showed Pascal and Nathalie.
"Are you sure that you want that really?"
"The first time, Will, I am really sure about what I want, Will. I want to thank you. I 'ope we see us again. And wish me much luck, to find a remedy. I must stop now. The Captain 'ad interpreted me to stop. Adieu, and Bonne chance."
The screen expired. In the universe a small thunderstorm flowered up and devoured the ship.
"Here the chairman of the senate is speaking," it sounded from the speakers. "We begin now the start to our new homeland. Thanks to the league we can start living from next week on, on a planet again. Please take your posts. May God assist us."
Will and the others took there assigned places, while the thunderstorm constructed itself. ,Again,' he thought, ,a journey to nowhere�, when they were devoured of lightings. Two minutes later space around the earth was empty. Only the storms raved on it.
Interregnum I
Long time for humans, nothing happened in the former solar sector. Few time later again spaceships came, which were filled with humans. They belonged to Pascal�s researchers. First they came in great quantity, but with the time the quantity of the ships and the frequency of the attendance shrank. Sometime there were no more attendance anymore. It was the time, in which the spaceship, which existed outside of the dimensions, observed and considered what it should begin now with the planet earth.
Still longer time it needed to start probes over to take samples from life from the surface. The last attendances were nearly forgotten by the spaceship. And it needed again so long to transform genetically the strongest life forms. Will Tompkins Will and his descendants was long time ago disintegrate to dust, as again a probe was on the way to the earth to seed new life. Inexorably it came closer to the surface; it sat up thrilled from the planetary storms, on the continent that formerly was called Africa. Innumerable robot-unites climbed out from the opened loading ramp and brought genetically adapted plants on earth. Strong one, wind defying trees and bushes should ensure that the earth became again a planet of the life. Only if this process were final, the earth could produce again enough own oxygen by itself, the spaceship would begin to see the new ways of life too. But that had time. While time ran just as inexorably, the first plants began to germinate to disintegrate to flower and reproduce themselves on earth. First there was tough grasses which tried to defy the storms. They let burst their germinated seed caps and these were carried over the entire globe. Later small shrubs and crippled trees were added, which used the wind in the same way. The hoist calm off the air with the time, and from time to time fell rain again on the meager soil. The first flowers came back and the first cycle had begun again. And during the trees and bushes slowly increased again they filtered again the pollutants from air and put back the protecting oxygen coat around the planet at the same time. They bound it in their sheets, trunks and roots, so that the new life could grow up in a world without human inheritances. But as much as they self also endeavoured to absorb to process and cover all human, then they got equally peppered with human inheritances. The trees died, fell down, and the poison collected in the trunks was again delivered. Thus the poison became the fertile soil for other plants.
In human standards thousands of years passed, until the first probe with the next adapted ways of life floated on earth. Air was noticeably cleaner again, the storms came only rarely and the forests covered the continents nearly completely. Only here and there a lighter steppe strip pulled through the regions. That were the strips, on which most storms and hoist pulled their roads. On each continent landed probes. The robot-units swarm out again built the first camps, which they surrounded with selected plants, so that no parasite plants could penetrate. Then they brought the descendants of humans from the protecting hull, still in the deep sleep. They were still unprotected to the environment, but the robot units remained with them. They taught to live them with nature to respect the animals and plants and be afraid the dangerous, even if the new inhabitants had already experienced all this in their dreams which had taught the ship outside of the dimensions in them by hypnotic effect. As the next day break the new inhabitants woke up and looked a little tired and surprised into their new homeland. The robot units were provisionally still their knower, but also this knowledge had to be passed on and protected, because also the robot units did not live for ever.
The new beginning
K'tanek was the last one of the knowers. The others had gone already a long time before him. Now he waited for Isneyl the son of the chieftain. Isneyl should take his place, if it were at him to go. The village rose on a small hill at the bend of the calm river. It was surrounded by poisonous scorpio-shrubs. Small ducked lookout towers were attached to strategic places, although they were not necessary. The huts were all together made from the hard, heavy-inflammable, wood of the Kygne-tree. Thus the village was safe before lightings and fires.
Isneyl came too late. He was excited as he in K'tanek's hut came. "Knower," it gushed from him. "I saw this morning a Tennok-bird."
"You come late, Isneyl," answered K'tanek. "It is not good to be late."
Isneyl lowered his head. He let from shame his sheet-like feelers hang.
"Forgive me, knower. But when I had seen the Tennok-bird, my thoughts to the lesson had disappeared."
"Which you think, mean the Tennok-bird?"
"The warming period begins. We should begin to go on the mud fields." With this thought at fresh and cool feeding-mud Isneyl's toe roots began crackle to grow. "Isneyl, you know that it is improper to dig his toe roots into the soil of the guest." Again a lesson which he had forgotten.
"Isneyl, you must begin to take responsibility. You are to become my successor, if the time for me is there to go."
"I�m sorry, knower." K'tanek rose from its chair. His servo joints howled quietly. He knew that a service was overdue for him. But still so much was to be obtained. "Come, young Isneyl. Let us go before the barrier, "he said during Isneyl got his cloak from twisted reed grass. They went slowly along the way, down to the entrance of the barrier. There arrived, Isneyl spat into a bloom of the scorpio-shrubs. It pulled together and opened a way big enough for four people to pass. Isneyl and K'tanek passed slowly through the opening, while the shrubs behind them closed again. "Show me, where the Tennok-bird landed, Isneyl." K'tanek's language module was not also more the best. His voice jiggled and he could not keep the tones any longer so good.
"There backside was it," said Isneyl excited. His in suction cups ending finger, whipped excited to the east.
The long dark forest lay in the direction into they went. K'tanek called up the landscape memory from its memory. At the same time he scanned the area for find dangerous animals. But really dangerous nothing could become a Selpat. Selpats in Isneyls age were brackish for animals, because they carried still too much poison of the scorpio-shrub fruits in themselves. Only the children and teenager could eat the otherwise high-poisonous fruits. If a Selpat became sex ripe, they were brackish for them. But the concentration of the poison helped over the following young man age, so that the Selpats could increase well.
K'tanek was not enjoyable for the animals in any way, since he was artificial nature. The Glitschen-tree would only dare an attack on a young Selpat. The Glitschen-tree actually was not correct a tree, but descended it from them. It was half-vegetal like the Selpats also, but it did not possess a trained brain. Most time a Glitschen-tree spent thereby to lie in the swamp feeding themselves with poisonous concentrates of the disintegrating and dying trees. But if a sump drained or it began the mating time it occurred that Glitschen-trees left the swamps and brought far distances behind themselves before they, fertilized by another Glitschenbaum, returned again. The new generation needed a complete sun circulation to ripe. Then it was vibrated by the branches, most awkward into the swamp and spent there the childhood, while it pumped itself full with the poison materials. Only one young tree mostly survived the one who assimilated the other. If twenty sun circulations were passed, most of them also try to assimilate their parent-tree. It did not succeed always, but the parent-trees often left the swamp before to search for a new swamp. Many ended with this attempt, returned their poisons again to the country and often destroyed thereby the good feeding-mud.
But K'tanek could not locate a danger and so they continued to slide toward the dark forest. After a while, the light wood had already begun, he could it already hear the shouting of the Tennok-bird. Isneyls feelers vibrated easily, changed around thereby their direction to be able to take up better the noises.
"I think, he sit in that old tree there," he said quietly.
"Then lets go, and regard his nest."
They approached the tree of the slipstream side, so that the bird could not smell them, if it were with the nest. But they had luck. It seems that the Tennok-bird was gone on a trip around to find material for his nest building.
"Lets look, what he gathered," meant K'tanek. It drove out his foot trunks. For Isneyl it looked in such a way, as if K'tanek rose by the strength of its foot roots up, as he did it. The fact that K'tanek's foot roots shone silvery, he attributed as fact to his age.
Arrived at the nest height the two Selpats looked into the gathered tangle. Isneyl didn't know exactly, whether or somewhat they searched, or only checked what was compound at the nest. However K'tanek scanned contents after possible remnants of the old civilization. It was not much remaining any more, from the formerly impressive ruins. Only who saw exact and looked purposefully for it, could see the traces.
But this time the bird had still found nothing, because K'tanek's eyes could not discover anything.
"Obvious it�s a beginner," he said therefore to Isneyl. "We should come back later, perhaps we can discover then something."
Isneyl was sad, but he could not object anything to it.
"I wanted to ask you always, from where the Tennok-birds finds there nest decoration," Isneyl said therefore to K'tanek.
"Well, I had actually thought that as today's lesson. We should set forth, young Selpat. It is a far way perhaps we see also the Tennok-bird."
"And where does our way lead us?"
"By the dark forest. We must go along the old fodder flight corridor. Afterwards we are still some time on the way. We should reach the place against noon."
"Can you tell me, what there we will find?" Isneyl was curious. "You were always alone there. Which expects us?"
"I want to tell you a history," began K'tanek. "A history, which tells about the country and the natures, those were resident once here." ,Was not always Selpats here?' it came into the sense of Isneyl to ask. But he trick himself, so that the knower didn't stop.
"Let me think. It is already a long time ago that I communicated these memories for someone, the river of the time moves slowly however constantly, and the ages come and go. They leave memories, which become legends. These legends become for myths sometime and if the myths are forgotten for a long time, the age of the renascence returns. You points, it gives to our time many legends and still more myths, but which we forgot already for a long time, really once here played. The old civilisation, those lived before us on this planet were perfectly different nature. They were in disagreement, among themselves and with nature. Although they were a still young people, they believed that everything had to turn around them. Thus it came again and again to violence, destruction and suppression. They destroyed, construct and were again destroyed. They invented ever worse means to destroy themselves until they became united themselves short among before their disappearing. But it was already too late there. Nature had begun and took its campaign against the old civilisation already and took them ever more place from life. But the old civilisation wasn't stupid. They went to the stars, where they tried long time to make this planet arable again. But, as said, that is for a long time ago. I cannot say you whether the stars took them up or swallowed them. But they disappeared apparently and none can say something more about them. The only one, which tells us still stories about the old civilisation, are the places in those they once lived. The old fodder flight corridor, which we have among us, was put on by them. Perhaps they had created us too and had given us a source of fodder thereby we don't starve the first time. I don't have notion, but it can be that we are their descendants. Descendants learned to live perhaps with the nature."
Isneyl was quiet before being astonished. Before his internal eye he saw strange natures mutual to up suctions, like a Glitschen-tree. Then again he saw them int torrid flying machines ascending into the sky, where they disappeared and left a hole between the stars.
Loud he said only: "How they was looking like?"
Will be continued ...
