"Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever."
-Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
***
Terra stepped out of the ship and took her first breath of the new planet's air. Her landing site was a rocky red desert underneath a hazy orange sky swirling with vapor. It wasn't a welcoming place, but that was all right; it was her job to welcome the world, not the other way around.
It was hot and uncomfortable here, but she'd get used to it in time. Her surgically modified lungs could breathe the harsh, low-oxygen atmosphere, and her specially treated skin reflected most of the heat of this planet's extreme climate. She'd been adapted to this place in advance.
Her ship, a silvery sphere only twice as tall as she was, hummed away on the vacant bluff, in standby mode. This pod had been home for nearly two years, most of that she spent in deep sleep, and before that she'd spent seven years with Novus training for this mission; nine years in total preparing for today, when she'd venture forth as the first Novus representative to this planet and its entire population.
A population of one.
Terra walked naked into the barren landscape. Clothes were an alien concept here, so she didn't bring any. The only thing she wore was a reflective metal band circling her midsection, a special piece of equipment she couldn't do without. "Here goes nothing," she said, patting that metallic strip once, as if to assure herself it was still there.
The hike from the landing site took her over hills and ridges and down culverts and valleys for nearly an hour. It wasn't an easy trip, but nothing else had been so far either. Eventually she crested one particularly steep ridge, and from here she could see her destination, a great acidic lake in a crater at the base of the ridge.
The climb down was taxing; she was strong and agile and her skin didn't scrape or bruise very easily anymore, but it was a long fall if she missed a step. In spite of all the changes Novus had made to help accommodate her to this place, she was still only human.
When she came to the steaming, sulfurous shore of the lake, its surface roiled in agitation; Terra wiggled her bare toes in the wet sand and peered through the film on the water's surface; a yellow cloud hovered over everything here. This was the right spot, but she didn't see anyone.
Cupping her hands around her mouth, she called out. "Hello?" Her own echo was the only reply. "Can you hear me?" She paused. Still nothing.
"If you can hear this, please know that I've come a very long way to see you. I won't be leaving until I do, but take as long as you need. I'll wait until you're ready."
The water bubbled, the sky swirled, and wind pushed red sand around near the waterline, but nothing else happened. That was fine. Terra didn't need to see her contact here to feel confident that he was around, and that he'd heard her.
A flat boulder perched at the water's edge, so she climbed up and sat on it to wait. She collected a handful of some of the largest, flattest stones she could find on the shore and started skipping them across the lake, the way her mother had shown her growing up, and she counted the number of skips each time: five, seven, five, three, eight...
When the rocks ran out she collected more. Patience was easy for her now; you'd go insane during a long space flight without patience. Even deep sleep wasn't entirely sleep; when you woke, you were still stuck with the impression of having waited a long time. Some people were a nervous wreck after it, but not Terra. She just thought about the mission.
As she was squinting to line up a shot for her last stone, the surface of the water began to bubble and boil even more violently. Down there in the depths, something was moving; something huge.
Soon she could see the outline of an enormous, bulky shape rising to the top, creating a wake three feet high that threatened to wash right over Terra's boulder. In a few more seconds the surface broke and water fountained into the air, and Terra covered her eyes and looked away to protect them from the fuming spray, only turning back around when the sound of the conflagration finally died down.
A titanic life form floated in crater now, only half visible, although even that half was an awesome sight. A spherical brown shell covered most of the beast's body, towering easily ten feet to the top of its dome. It looked like some meteor just fallen out of the heavens.
A jointed appendage the size of a construction crane rose up and grabbed the lip of the crater, tethering the beast to land. A rumbling noise disturbed the waters, coalescing into a voice as hard as a thunder peal, and it said:.
"You're here. I've come."
Saying nothing, Terra made sure to stand up straight and show no sign of hesitation. The alien seemed to be scrutinizing her, although no visible part of its anatomy indicated anything like an expression, so this was more of a general impression. "Are you afraid of me?" the alien continued. When it spoke the lake rippled.
Instead of answering right away Terra closed one eye, squinted again, and threw her last stone. It skipped all the way to the others side. Then, brushing her hands off, she turned to the creature and said, "No."
It was a risky reply: If the alien took this as a challenge, it might kill her. Of course, if she'd said yes then it might have killed her for that too. Her cultural training had taught her that there was no such thing as a low-risk encounter on this planet. The alien considered her for a moment.
Eventually it said, "I am A'yl."
"I know," said Terra. "It means--"
"It means nothing," he said, rising up a bit more. "Once it meant something. But now there's no one around for it to mean anything to. Now it's just a name."
Terra got down off the boulder. "But I know what it means," she said. "So that's one person it means something to."
A'yl grumbled. "How do we understand each other's words? You're not from here."
"I spent years learning how to talk to the people on this world."
"Then you wasted many years," said A'yl. "There's no one to talk to. I'm the last."
"You're the one I came for," said Terra. "I know what happened; why you're the last one. It..." She took a deep breath. "It happened on my world too. I'm also the last of my kind."
"The war came to your planet?"
"The war came everywhere. There was war on every planet in the galaxy where anyone lived, war on every planet on every side, and even on the planets who didn't take a side. War that went further and wider than anyone could possibly have imagined."
"So many years ago now, but I still remember it all..." A'yl said.
Terra knew if she didn't head him off he'd be telling war stories all day, so she jumped to interrupt. "Me too," she said. "That's why I joined Novus. We're a group of people from planets that didn't..."
She stopped to swallow the hard feeling in her throat before finishing.
"From planets whose populations didn't survive the great war."
"A useless confederation" said A'yl.
Terra shrugged. "Maybe," she said. "But we fight on as best we can."
"I fought," A'yl said. "I was a great warrior."
"You all were. This was a world of great warriors. The rest of the galaxy still remembers how brave you all were, and how many of you gave your lives to stop the fighting."
It was true: This planet's inhabitants HAD been some of the greatest warriors in history, and survivors told stories about their prowess and tactical brilliance on almost every world.
But this had made them relatively easy to wipe out, because they'd exhausted their population with so many civil conflicts that in the end they had trouble mounting a defense against off-world invasion. But Terra didn't bring that part up now...
She dared to get closer to the waterline, where A'yl still bubbled and brooded. "Being brave didn't matter," he continued. "All of my brothers and sisters died, even the bravest."
"You lived."
"Only because I was lucky. Not because I was strong."
