Tide-lock worlds, William thought, suck. This one especially.
The habitable zone was only a few hundred meters wide: not big enough for even the most condensed subspace curl harvester. So he was headed to the dark side to repair a muonic stabilizer that really shouldn't have broken. For the third time this month.
The Brindi and Swanala had spoken of similar problems, in their attempts to colonize this desolate rock. They thought the humans were crazy for making a third attempt (Or brave? Those two species weren't convinced there was a difference.), but they'd been happy to sell their records.
The ground here was no help: too rough for wheeled vehicles. William climbed up and down the little ridges. Climbed carefully – many of the rock spines were sharp enough to cut through the thin environment suit. Most of it was frozen mud, but at these temperatures that was just another sedimentary rock – and ice crystals held sharp edges better than most.
William passed carefully around a near-vertical slab of rock as tall as himself, edged carefully along a thin ledge, then dropped three feet into a little crater of uncertain origin. In the middle of the crater was an alien slab: a square sheet of rock, as long as his arm, carved with symbols not in the galactic library. It was not the first such that they'd found. Apparently humanity was the fourth species to try colonizing this dump. Not that they wanted to tell the Swanala that.
He photographed it from a few angles and uploaded the photos to a xenolinguistics forum they hoped the Swanala didn't read. As unsolved problems in archeology went, it wasn't a particularly prominent one, but galactic academia was big and even small problems could attract a few hundred people. The linguists were making progress, albeit slowly. Once the uploads completed, William moved on without touching the slab. That was policy. One day they'd invite some xenoarcheologists to see the originals and hope not to get cursed out too loudly for their improper fieldwork.
Up the next wall, short on footholds as it was; sideways around a ridge that was too pointy to climb; and through a forest of rock spires, and William finally had sight of the muonic stabilizer. The outer casing looked melted. Possibly a short circuit?
There was a noise.
It wasn't impossible. There was no atmosphere, but sound could still travel through the rock and up one's legs. Sound didn't travel very far that way, and you couldn't hear at all where it had come from at all.
Something near William was moving. There was nothing nearby that should be moving.
William looked around, but in this jagged landscape he could see less than twenty meters in any direction. He contemplated climbing something, but that looked like a quick way to die. Instead he jumped straight up. At three quarter's earth gravity, he had a pretty decent vertical. It didn't help.
He realized too late that he was going to make a noise when he landed. If something was out there listening...
Noise. Louder noise. Louder still.
And he finally saw something moving: coming toward him. If it were still, he'd have mistaken it for a rock. It was covered in grey scales, textured like the ground. It has six thick legs, and a head with a long dextrous neck. He pulled out his camera and set it to video, livestreaming to the base. The creature stopped walking, pointed its head at him, and unfolded some strange anatomy: shiny and faintly glowing red.
Pain swept across his face.
Instinctively he pulled away, falling to the ground as he did so. He let out a short scream, then panted as he struggled to bring himself under control. Every frantic beat of his heart stretched the damaged skin, bringing with it a new burst of pain.
How bad is it?
Maybe not that bad. He'd been burned before, though never over so much skin. The closest analog was a sunburn he'd gotten many years ago after a solid day's surfing in Hawaii with no protection. That had healed in about a week. This probably would too.
Taking comfort from the memory he looked up, only to see the shiny thing unfurl again and a new blast of heat strike his face. It burned deeper, stabbing into his skin like a million fiery knives. He hadn't known it was possible to burn the underside of one's skin, much less how much more sensitive that was.
He screamed in earnest, bringing his arm up to block and curling into a ball. For a moment the heat hit the arm of his suit, melting it. He could feel little balls of molten plastic adhering to his arm, which was already cooking...
Then the blast stopped. The molten plastic continued to burn his arm in little pinpricks, but the great wave of heat was off his arm. The air in his suit smelled wrong – atmosphere was breached, but the redundancies were enough to keep him alive. There was no sound. He didn't dare to look up, so either the thing could move quietly or it had stopped.
I have to get out of here.
He visualized his surroundings. It took him three tries, as fresh bursts of pain from his face shattered his concentration. Then, without looking at anything, he gathered his feet under himself, leapt forward and ran for cover.
Five massive steps later he opened his eyes. They only made it to slits, so swollen were his eyelids, but it was enough. He took more suit damage in that run than in his past dozen missions, but he didn't care. Only once did he stop: a drop of sweat ran onto one of the deeper burns, and his knees buckled at the pain. But he got up again.
He made it back to his vehicle, punched the emergency auto-return, and mercifully passed out.
Three days later, William walked through the dark side again. His face was covered in blisters, but the local painkillers he'd slathered on were working. His boss had offered him longer to recover, and even reassignment to on-base tasks only. William had insisted on going back. He refused to let fear control his life.
He wore a new design of spacesuit. It was tougher and more reflective. Not milspec armor, but as close as a general-purpose workshop could hack together in three days. The engineers weren't sure if it could withstand the heat ray, since they didn't know exactly what it was, but they thought there was a chance. He carried two weapons, a standard high-energy slug thrower and an infra-red laser.
He knew exactly where the creature was. His camera was still transmitting, and the creature had been poking at it for three days solid.
In short, he had every advantage that could be devised. From the far side of the last stone pillar, he double-checked all of them. He took a deep breath. He admitted to himself that he was stalling and stepped out from behind the pillar.
The creature noticed him immediately. Stony joints ground so harshly he could hear it as the beast's head snapped up. The shiny facial thing unfurled and William didn't stick around to see what happened. He spun back behind the rock.
And a different stone pillar, the one he had been standing directly in front of, turned to bubbling mud and slumped to the ground.
He froze, his heart hammering so hard the creature could probably hear it through the ground. Without thought, he drew his laser. He visualized the next movement in his head. As soon as his hands were steady, he'd swing around and open fire in a smooth motion – faster than it could. Blast that thing back into whatever hell it came from.
Unless the laser can't kill it. That hide looked tough. He visualized the next movement too. If the laser didn't work, swing back to swap weapons from behind cover. So long as he had cover to work from, he should be all right.
For the first time, he took a serious look at the stone he was hiding behind. It was the same ice/silicate mixture as the one that had just been slagged. The creature didn't need him to step out – it could get him right through his inadequate cover.
It could and it hadn't. This didn't add up. He held his breath, and forced himself to think.
And he got it.
Maybe.
If he was right, the writing they'd found was these creatures' writing. If he was wrong, he might be about to die. With trembling fingers, he pulled out his computer and accessed the xenolinguistics forum. At the top was a stickied thread: Current Best-Guess Vocabulary.
He didn't step out from behind the stone, but he did take aim with the laser. He pointed it at a patch of ground the creature could see. He shifted his grip for maximum control, and carefully carved the linguists' best guess for “stop”.
For a moment nothing happened, then the ground next to his target erupted in steam and more symbols appeared. “Stop what?” his computer translated.
He frantically searched the computer for the vocabulary he needed. “Stop very warm at me” he carved.
The response came quickly: “No talk? Only write?” The word talk was linked to a thesis's worth of linguists' arguments. They weren't sure of that word.
Time to find out. This sentence was easy: “Explain 'talk'.”
An ideogram that wasn't in the dictionary appeared. Then there was a pause and the creature began on a new line: “Very warm at you
“Very warm at me only injure.”
There was a pause. Had he shown weakness to a predator? Then more words appeared.
“I beg forgiveness.”
The next day, William was being hailed across the galaxy as a hero. First contacts were rare. First contacts with species this weird were even rarer. And anyone succeeding where both the Brindi and Swalana had failed was a special kind of rare. So William found himself on the nets, being interviewed by a prominent reporter.
“What I don't understand,” the reporter said, “is how you managed to keep your cool. Those burns would have sent the most even-tempered species in the galaxy into a rage, and humans, well...” He seemed reluctant to complete the sentence.
“Are not known as even-tempered,” William completed mercifully, “much the opposite.”
“Well, yes.”
“It's like courage,” William explained, “Another thing I'm not sure anyone who isn't human really understands. Being civilized isn't about not getting angry or afraid. It's about doing the right thing even when you're angry and afraid. Our hot-hearted nature only gives us more practice at being civilized, so we can be good at it when we really need it.”