The dark surface of another planet was advancing from the distance, growing in size with every second. It belonged to an extraordinarily rare system of binary stars in which two suns so balanced each other that their planet had a regular orbit and life was able to emerge on it. The two suns, orange and crimson, were smaller than ours, and they lit up the ice of a frozen sea that appeared crimson in colour. A huge, squat building standing on the edge of a chain of flat-topped black hills, was visible through a mysterious violet haze. The centre of vision was focussed on a platform on the roof and then seemed to penetrate the building until the watchers saw a grey-skinned man with round eyes like those of an owl surrounded by a fringe of silvery down. He was very tall and exceedingly thin with tentacle-like limbs. The man jerked his head ridiculously as though he were making a hurried bow; turned listless, lens-like eyes to the screen and opened a lipless mouth that was covered, by a flap of soft flesh that looked like a nose.
“Zaph Phthet, Director of External Relations of 61 Cygni. Today we are transmitting for yellow star STL 3388 + 04 JF…. We are transmitting for…”-’ came the gentle, melodious voice of the translation machine.
Darr Veter and Junius Antus exchanged glances and Mven Mass squeezed Darr Veter’s wrist for a second. That was the galactic call sign of Earth, or rather, of the entire solar system, that observers in other worlds had formerly regarded as one big planet rotating round the Sun once in 59 terrestrial years. Once in that period Jupiter and Saturn are in opposition which displaces the Sun in the visible sky of other systems sufficiently for astronomers on the nearer stars to observe. Our astronomers made the same mistake in respect of many planetary systems that a number of stars had long been known to possess.
Junius Antus checked up on the tuning of his memory machine with greater celerity than he had shown at the beginning of the transmission and also checked the watchful accuracy indicators.
The unchanging voice of the electron translator continued:
“We have received a transmission from star…” again a long string of figures and staccato sounds, “by chance and not during the Great Circle transmission times. They have not deciphered the language of the Circle and are wasting energy transmitting during the hours of silence. We answered them during their transmission period and the result will be known in three-tenths of a second….” The voice broke off. The signal lamps continued to burn with the exception of the green electric eye that had gone out.
“We get these unexplained interruptions in transmission, perhaps due to the passage of the astronauts’ legendary neutral fields between us,” Junius Antus explained to Veda.
“Three-tenths of a galactic second — that means waiting six hundred years,” muttered Darr Veter, morosely. “A lot of good that will do us!”
“As far as I can understand they are in communication with Epsilon Tucanae in the southern sky that is ninety parsecs away from us and close to the limit of our regular communications. So far we haven’t established contact. with anything farther away than Deneb,” Mven Mass remarked.
“But we receive the Galactic Centre and the globular clusters, don’t we?” asked Veda Kong.
“Irregularly, quite by chance, or through the memory machines of other members of the Great Circle that form a circuit stretching through the Galaxy,” answered Mven Mass.
“Communications sent out thousands and even tens of thousands of years ago do not get lost in space but eventually reach us,” said Junius Antus.
“So that means we get a picture of the life and knowledge of the peoples of other, distant worlds, with great delay, for the Central Zone of the Galaxy, for example, a delay of about twenty thousand years?”
“Yes, it doesn’t matter whether they are the records of the memory machines of other, nearer worlds, or whether they are received by our stations, we see the distant worlds as they were a very long time ago. We see people that have long been dead and forgotten in their own worlds.”
“How is it that we are helpless in this field when we have achieved such great power over nature?” Veda Kong asked, petulantly. “Why can’t we find some other means of contacting distant worlds, something not connected with waves or photon ray equipment?”
“How well I understand you, Veda!” exclaimed Mven Mass.
“The Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge is engaged on projects to overcome space, time and gravity,” Darr Veter put in. “They are working on the fundamentals of the Cosmos, but they have not yet got even as far as the experimental stage and cannot….”
The green eye suddenly flashed on again and Veda once more felt giddy as the screen opened out into endless space.
The sharply outlined edges of the image showed that it was the record of a memory machine and not a transmission received directly.
At first the onlookers saw the surface of a planet, obviously as seen from an outer station, a satellite. The huge, pale violet sun, spectral in the terrific heat it generated, deluged the cloud envelope of the planet’s atmosphere with its penetrating rays.
“Yes, that’s it, the luminary of the planet is Epsilon Tucanae, a high temperature star, class B”, 78 times as bright as our Sun,” whispered Mven Mass. Darr Veter and Junius Antus nodded in agreement.
The spectacle changed, the scene grew narrower and seemed to be descending to the very soil of the unknown world.
The rounded domes of hills that looked as though they had been cast from bronze rose high above the surrounding country. An unknown stone or metal glowed like fire in the amazingly white light of the blue sun. Even in the imperfect apparatus used for transmission the unknown world gleamed triumphantly, with a sort of victorious magnificence.
The reflected rays produced a silver pink corona around the contours of the copper-coloured hills and lay in a wide path on the slowly moving waves of a violet sea. The water, of a deep amethyst colour, seemed heavy and glowed from within with red lights that looked like an accumulation of living eyes. The waves washed the massive pedestal of a gigantic statue that stood in splendid isolation far from the coast. It was a female figure carved from dark-red stone, the head thrown back and the arms extended in ecstasy towards the naming depths of the sky. She could easily have been a daughter of Earth, the resemblance she bore to our people was no less astounding than the amazing beauty of the carving. Her body was the fulfilment of an earthly sculptor’s dream; it combined great strength with inspiration in every line. The polished red stone of the statue emitted the flames of an unknown and, consequently, mysterious and attractive life.
The five people of Earth gazed in silence at that astounding new world. The only sound was a prolonged sigh that escaped the lips of Mven Mass whose every nerve had been strained in joyful anticipation from his first glance at the statue.
On the sea-coast opposite the statue, carved silver towers marked the beginning of a wide, white staircase that swept boldly over a thicket of stately trees with turquoise leaves.
“They ought to ring!” Darr Veter whispered in Veda’s ear, pointing to the towers and she nodded her head in agreement.
The camera of the new planet continued its consistent and soundless journey into the country.
For a second the five people saw white walls with wide cornices through which led a portal of blue stone; the screen carried them into a high room filled with strong light. The dull, pearl-coloured, grooved walls lent unusual clarity to everything in the hall. The attention of the Earth-dwellers was attracted to a group of people standing before a polished emerald panel.
The flame-red colour of their skin was similar to that of the statue in the sea. It was not an unusual colour for Earth — coloured photographs that had been preserved from ancient days recorded some tribes of Indians in Central America whose skin was almost the same colour, perhaps just a little lighter.