Astronomicon: Behemoth

Chapter 54 - Meeting the Neighbours

Megan waited impatiently for the laboratory's inner airlock door to slide open. Even though she had seen some video of their two new acquaintances, when the door finally opened, she found herself unprepared for meeting them in real life.

Her first impression was that they seemed human but then the differences began to unnerve her. The feeling that hit her was the same as the uncanny-valley effect of a top-end animatronic human; realistic but not real. All the details in isolation were right but, somehow, they did not fit together correctly.

Both of the humanoids shared straight, dark hair, uncomfortably high eyebrows, eyes that had to be at least a quarter larger than anyone she had ever seen before, strong cheekbones and long but small noses.

Their body-shape and hands looked perfectly human, although their fingers seemed a little on the long side. They both stared back at her, so she raised one hand in greeting and smiled. To her relief, the male humanoid matched her gesture and both of them smiled. At least they had that in common.

Both humanoids were sitting on the laboratory's folding chairs. With no other seating available, Aron was sitting against the long table along the sidewall. The male humanoid spoke, but the words, if that was what they were, sounded like no language with which she was familiar. For a moment, she contemplated German or Mandarin, the only other languages that she could speak, but she knew that their strange features were more exotic than just another culture on Earth.

They seemed to realise that talking was not going to work and the female humanoid made the unmistakable gesture of writing with her left hand against her other flattened palm. Knowing at once what she meant, Megan unclipped a tablet computer from the wall, started the whiteboard app and handed it to her.

She enthusiastically took the tablet and tentatively touched the screen. She smiled when her fingertip left a digital black mark. She hurriedly sketched a line of small circles across the top half of the screen, the first one by far the largest, with the next three huddled away from the first. Below the first circle, she drew a similarly large circle then eight smaller circles again grouped away from the first.

Next, she held up the tablet for Megan and Aron to see, then drew an extra line from the first of the top row of small circles diagonally to the largest circle on the line below. After adding a dot above the first small circle on the top row, she looked expectantly at Megan.

Megan studied the odd layout and varying sizes of circles but it was like no language she had ever experienced. Presumably, there was information encoded into the different sizes but she had nothing to base any interpretation upon.

"It's where they are from and where they were going," said Aron, breaking the strained silence which was developing.

"How...?" asked Megan, completely mystified.

"They're star systems," he chuckled. "Each row looks like a star with its major planets. The bottom one just must be the Sol system. Just look at the pattern of sizes."

"So, what's the top one?"

"No idea," he replied.

"But I know who might," Megan smiled. "Foxy, which of the star systems nearest to ours has three planets orbiting it?"

"Epsilon Eridani has three known planetary bodies and is approximately 10.5 light-years from the Sol system," came the computers immediate reply.

"So, this...woman knows where we are from?" Megan asked quietly.

"Maybe," replied Aron. "But that looks to me more like she's telling us where they were going."

"They were going to Earth?"