At first I didn’t know what woke
me. I was just jolted awake by some unfamiliar noise. But then the sound
rattled the hull of Ma-rye-a again. There was no mistaking it. It was Kay-o
bellowing at the top of his lungs. His booming howl vibrated my chest as if I
had the bass tuned up way too high on Ma-rye-a’s sound system.
“What the…” I started to swear.
I tumbled out of bed and headed
out of my room and down the hall toward the guest room where Jake, Arr and
Kay-o chose to spend the night rather than pod back over to their ship. We had a
few too many drinks. They considered that room theirs anyway, so had tucked in
for the night.
The fact that I had one too many
before retiring, was not helping my navigation down the hall. Jake came
crashing out of the guest room. We collided head on.
“What the…” Jake said.
“That’s what I said,” I rubbed my
temple as Kay-o let out with yet another ear splitting howl.
“The lounge.”
Jake pointed and hustled off
ahead of me. I followed his half naked frame. He took enough time to slip on
his pants, but he hadn’t grabbed a shirt or shoes. I always sleep in shorts and
a huge t-shirt, makes it easier for emergencies like these, or worse.
When Kay-o let out another wail,
I wondered if he had injured himself. I had never heard him sound so pitiful.
It did sound like he was in pain.
The door to the lounge swished
open.
“I’m sorry…” Arr apologized immediately
on seeing both our sleep deprived faces.
He was sitting on the floor with
his arms around Kay-o’s neck trying to comfort him. The artifact my parents
gave me lay on the floor in front of them.
Kay-o cried out again. Now that
he had an audience he was inconsolable.
“What is going on,” Jake
demanded.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Arr started
to explain.
Yeah,
well, he hadn’t had any of the whiskey Jake brought over with him to celebrate
our meet-up. The youngest of the three of us, he had the most sense when it
came to drink. He stuck to his non-alcohol Muldavian Sunset Spritzers.
“I thought I heard something when
we looked at the stone earlier,” Arr indicated the artifact on the floor. “I
thought it was more than just random sound.”
Kay-o lowered his head and pawed
at an ear. He whimpered pathetically.
Arr rubbed the big lugs head
affectionately.
“I’m sorry, Kay-o,” he
apologized. “I came in to see if I could stand the sound long enough to
determine what it actually was.” He looked up to us. “It has different
frequencies. I am sure it is some sort of communication device, but I didn’t
think about its affect on Kay-o. I didn’t mean to hurt him.” He stroked Kay-o
gently.
The Dar-dolf lifted his head. He
was going to howl again.
“Nixs!” Jake ordered.
Kay-o’s head dropped. He flopped
down on the floor, his head on his paws. Jake went down on one knee to check in
both of the Dar-dolf’s ears.
“It’s not giving off any sound
now?” Jake asked Arr to confirm.
Arr shook his head. “Not unless
someone touches it.”
“He’s okay,” Jake pronounced. He
scruffed up the ruff around Kay-o’s neck. “You’re okay, just milking for extra
attention…huh?”
Kay-o rose up and licked Jake
affectionately on the nose.
I
swear, the beast smiled.
“Alright,” Jake said and pushed
at the Dar-dolf’s head. “Go…”
He pointed toward the door and
flicked his fingers in the Merc sign language we all knew. Kay-o came to his
feet and headed out the door.
Arr rocked forward and started to
pick up the artifact.
“Nope,” Jake said, and Arr obeyed
as well as Kay-o, he left it lying on the floor and took a chair.
I collapsed into a chair myself.
I didn’t have company aboard ship very often - especially such noisy company.
Jake flopped into the last
curvature chair and manipulated the controls on the arm to turn on the heat. He
sunk into the chair and it molded itself over his shoulders and around his
torso with a bit more maneuvering of the buttons. Guess he was cold without a
shirt. He tucked his feet into the pocket on the footpad and looked quite
comfortable now, as well as handsome, with his bare hairy chest peeking out
from beneath the folds of the chair’s coverings.
I left mine cold. If I got too
comfy they would have to carry me back to bed.
“Tell me what you found out,” he
addressed Arr.
“It has multiple tones depending
on how you hold it and apply pressure. It was one of those that set Kay-o off.
The more I listen to it, the more I think the vibration of it is just a side
effect of the high frequencies emitting from it. I really think it is a
communication devise of some sort. I want to try and sort it out before we
reach the planet.”
Jake nodded his approval, than
hit the retracting switch on his chair. He pulled my flat from its pocket on
the arm, picked up the box the artifact had been packed in when it was given to
me and with a flick of the flat, he flipped it back into the box. He handed the
box to Arr.
“Don’t play with it again until I
get Kay-o back on the Calpernia,” he ordered. “I’m going back to bed.”
He leaned over and gave me a peck
on the cheek and ambled out the door.
I smiled at Arr and he smiled
back. He was like a kid with a new toy. He loved anything that had the
slightest appearance of being another way to communicate.
*****
We spent over a week getting to
the Planet Designated 014.666.2460. Arr took up residence on Ma-rye-a with me.
Jake trailed along or led in the Calpernia with Kay-o. Arr stayed with me so he
could study the artifact further. I couldn’t hear the sounds it emitted.
Sometimes I could ‘feel’ a certain note. Yes, we had started thinking of the
piece as an instrument. During rest periods along the way, we would once again
tether the ships together in a safe location out of trade-route lanes. During
these rests Arr would put the artifact away and Jake and Kay-o would come over
for the evening and a meal where we would always, eventually, end up discussing
the device. Arr learned he could ‘play’ it by exerting different amounts of
pressure with his fingers. He was actually creating music, ethereal as it were,
since none, but he could hear it, but he said it was quite pleasing once he was
able to learn to manipulate it properly.
All
of Arr’s people are musically inclined. The Henu all have perfect pitch and
many play instruments. A gathering of his colony often ends up including an impromptu
sing-a-long.
Arr’s
people also purr, which seems to fit well in our humanoid conception of cats
since all his people have the bright blue eyes with the cat shaped pupils.
As Arr would sit or walk around
the ship playing with the artifact I could hear his soft purr. The Henu purr
for a variety of reasons. They do it to comfort themselves, when they feel
pleasure, and also to raise their body temperature. Arr said playing with the
artifact was both pleasurable and jarring at times when he hit something off
the scale that made his teeth grind.
The Henu also growl, though the
adults mostly grow out of it. I would on occasion see Arr’s eyes narrow to
slits and a growl would slip out. I knew then he had gone even beyond his
ability to an ear splitting level on the artifact’s scale.
Today we arrived at our
destination – Planet 014.666.2460. Arr was standing on the bridge with the
artifact in his hand. His fingers drummed on it like a pianist fingers across
keys. From up here in orbit the planet looked almost a uniform red in color
with what looked like spotty dust storms or some other form of wind activity.
Some of the landmass was shrouded in clouds which I thought might be extensions
of the heavy fog we saw on the vid my Father had on his flat.
Arr and my attention were on the
viewport looking down at the planet when a dragon materialized on the bridge
beside us. A dragon was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw it,
even though I knew that was impossible. Dragons were the stuff of fairytales
and children’s imagination. Theories of the origin and possible links to real
creatures had existed for millennia, but no evidence was ever found. They were
the creatures of myth and legend only.
The dragon was the size of a very
large horse. It had tucked it wings, curled its tail around its feet, and
lowered its head in order to fit into the empty space on my bridge. The first
thing I noticed was its eyes. They looked like bloodstones. The full eye was
deep red with speckles of black splashed in it as if someone had flicked a wet
paint brush over its eyes. It had great curled horns which curved back over its
head. They looked useless for stabbing, but heavy enough for butting. This
black flecked pattern in the eyes seemed to bleed from them. It went across its
muzzle to run down its cheeks, the sides of its neck and over its shoulders to
spread out ‘spottily’ over the wings. The same pattern of irregular black
specks started at the base of its skull and ran down its back when the black
seemed to coagulate into a solid on its triple forked tail. A tail, which
unlike the horns, looked as though it were for stabbing.
The second thing I couldn’t help
but notice was the dragon was not alone. The beast extended a wing and a lizard
like creature, which had also lowered its body down close to the dragon’s neck
to get into the allotted head space, slid from the dragon’s back.
It was easily as tall as Targus,
the Walhmite captain I knew who topped out at well over seven and a half feet
tall. The creature stood on two legs with a tail extending behind it that
exceeded the length of its legs. It had a dragon type snoot, with large canine
teeth that protruded top and bottom from its jaws. Its feet and hands were
similar in shape three fingers with opposable thumb. Long wickedly sharp claws
extended from its fingers. It was also red in color, though more crimson then
blood red. It had a pale cream colored belly and short cream colored nubs of
horns growing on its head. I say ‘it’ because it had no clothes on, yet no
genitalia was present. Some alien species have convenient sex glands that
retract, so perhaps this one did too. The creature did not carry any weapon,
but it did not look as though it would need any to deal with us. Not only did
it have the formidable looking claws, but it was extremely muscular and looked
as though it was built for speed.
It pointed toward the artifact in
Arr’s hand.
“What’s going on over there?”
Jake’s voice boomed from the console on the bridge. “I’m reading two more life
forms on the bridge.”
The lizard’s head swiveled toward
Jake’s voice.
“Hold tight,” I said to Jake. “A
couple of visitors have dropped in.”
“Dropped in…”Jake started to say
before I gave Ma-rye-a the high-sign to cut him off mid-sentence.
The lizard brought his attention
back to Arr and the device in his hand. I saw Arr’s fingers play lightly across
the artifact. Both the lizard and the dragon’s eyes squinted almost closed as
though they were in ecstasy. Arr finished and let the instrument sit in his
open palm. The lizard’s eyes came open and it took a step toward Arr. Arr
growled and his fingers curled up around the device again. He punched his thumb
hard into the end of the artifact and both the lizard and the dragon shook
their heads in unison as though they were choreographed to do so. Arr growled
again. The dragon responded with an answering rumble in its throat, than
extended its wing to allow the lizard to mount. As soon as the lizard was in
place astride the dragon’s shoulders the two disappeared from the bridge.
Arr and I both seemed to exhale
at the same time in one collective sigh of relief.
“Was that a dragon?” I asked for
confirmation.
“It appears so, and this,” Arr
held out the artifact in his hand, “appears to be a Dragoncall.”
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