image [https://imgur.com/PSoMKqV.jpg]

Year – unknown

IT WAS about an hour, Jacqui reckoned, before anything happened. Then there was a ripple in the water, and a Sou appeared from the tunnel. Clearly, this was not one of her ‘friends’: it was darker in colour and much longer: as much as ten feet long. Its Big Bell was clenched into a sort of fist and was clasping what looked like a clear plastic bag. With its Little Bell it gestured towards Jacqui’s face—towards her mouth in particular. Then it signed for her to take the bag. At no time had she heard any ‘voice’ from the creature.

Was this food? Were these creatures trying to feed her? If so, where was she? Could she possibly be on the Sous’ home planet? She suddenly realised how light she felt. If this was another planet, was its gravity less than Earth’s?

She took the bag from the Sou’s Big Bell. As her hand came into contact with it, she felt its skin for a moment: warm and smooth, and only slightly damp. She had never touched one of the Sous before. The Sou backed away, dipped its Bells in some sort of salute, and vanished through the tunnel. The bag was easy to open, and contained some sort of green purée. She tasted it tentatively. Almost like spinach, she thought—not exactly exciting, but she realised how hungry she was. She finished the bagful off. As she was wondering what to do with the empty bag, she noticed that it was disintegrating in her hands: within a minute it had been reduced to fragments that fell into the water and dissolved.

“Well, that’s one way of plastic-recycling,” she thought. “If only our guys on Earth had invented this stuff, then perhaps our oceans wouldn’t be in the mess they are…”

Continuing with the assumption that she was on a different planet, Jacqui supposed that she had been kept unconscious during the voyage. For how long, she wondered. She didn’t feel any ill-effects, apart from the slight nausea, which was probably space-sickness due to the lower gravity—about two-thirds of Earth’s.

She soon discovered that she had correctly guessed that the vertical cylinder was a commode, and she used it. She assumed one of the Sous would come to empty it, and sure enough within minutes a Sou entered: whether it was the same one, she could not tell. It deftly opened a door in the cylinder, removed the bag of waste, and replaced it with a fresh one. It all took less than a minute. Jacqui was impressed.

“Whatever else, caring for every creature comfort, you are! But I can’t stay like this forever, and unlike Popeye, I can’t subsist on nothing but spinach. And I’d really like some clothes. Yes I know it’s warm, but where I come from we wear clothes.”

Jacqui’s monologue made no impression on the Sou, which had in the meantime slipped away through the tunnel. I must not panic, she thought. Whatever the Changelings were, back on Earth, these creatures seem friendly. She must bide her time: surely something would happen!

*

There seemed to be no day and night in this place. And the bright reddish object shining through the dome did not seem to have changed its position. Was this the planet’s sun? If so, the ‘day’ must be a very long one. She wondered if she would ever be able to sleep in this place.

Only now was the realisation sinking in: she was the first human to visit another world, in another star system. What would Grandad have given, to be in her place! And what would she be able to tell other humans, once she got back to Earth? So far she knew very little about the planet she was on.

Another meal was brought, and in addition a bag of water. Jacqui had tried tasting the water surrounding her, but it was too salty to drink—though less salty than sea-water. She was grateful for the offering. The food in the bag was different—a sort of meat pâté it seemed to be. Jacqui, who was a vegetarian, found this repellent at first, but after a moment she shrugged her shoulders and set down to her ‘meal’. On an alien planet all principles had to change, and it was probably not real ‘meat’, anyway. The water was cool, fresh and slightly sweetened, and she found it very refreshing.

The routine continued in this way, without change, for what Jacqui judged was several days. She was now fully recovered from her nausea, and had managed to get some sleep—not without difficulty. She spent much of her awake periods lying or squatting on her bed, to keep her legs out of the water. Her only exercise consisted of wading round and round the dome. Would there ever be any change? Or was she fated to spend the rest of her life like this?

*

Change did come. One day (by Earth’s reckoning) there was a more vigorous commotion in the pool, and a much bigger Sou entered. It appeared to be fully twelve feet long, and could barely squeeze through the tunnel: Jacqui noted with admiration how it had folded its Big Bell in order to get through. But once inside, it coiled itself up like its namesake the Sousaphone, with one huge Big Bell raised in the air facing Jacqui. Stretched out, Jacqui realised, it would not have fitted in the dome.

Then it spoke—

—Yes, it spoke! Not ‘voices in her head’, like the Sous back in Wistbourne. This was genuine sound-waves, speaking perfectly fluent English, evidently produced from some kind of diaphragm in the Big Bell’s bowl. The voice was masculine in pitch and slightly musical.

“Welcome to our planet, Jacqui. Here, maybe, your questions will be answered. And ours, too.”

For a moment Jacqui was struck dumb. Then she replied, excitedly, “You can talk! Thank God! I was beginning to panic. So you can speak English, and I can ask you questions. Am I stuck here forever?”

“Not forever,” said the Sou. “The air outside of this dome is not suitable for you to breathe: it has too much carbon dioxide in it. Our robots are still developing a filter: when it is ready you can wear it to go outside.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Wear it, indeed! What have you done with my clothes? Can I have some, please?”

“Your artificial skin coverings? We are sorry: the fabric fell apart during the voyage, and had to be discarded. None of our kind wear skin covering: it is not needed on our planet. And most creatures on your planet do not wear any covering.”

“We humans do. Nearly all the time. I would feel more comfort­able in clothes. On Earth I would be most embarrassed. Well, most of the time,” Jacqui added, reflecting on the intimate moments she had shared with Adam… Where was Adam? A moment of panic: “Did you bring any more humans to this planet, besides me?”

“No. It was only by accident that you have come here. You were trespassing aboard our ship, and we did not realise you had stowed away until it was too late. By then you were under the suspended animation field we sometimes deploy for space travel, and the ship had gone too far to turn back.”

“Well, at least I shan’t meet anyone to be embarrassed in front of. But really, I would like something to cover myself. And where is ‘here’? How far am I from Earth? How can I go back?” Remembering what little she knew of astronomy, Jacqui guessed that she might not like the answer.

“Using your planet’s systems of measurement, our planet is about thirty-six light-years away from yours. Our spaceships can attain about two-thirds of the speed of light, so, allowing for acceleration and deceleration time, the voyage took about fifty-eight years, as measured by an observer on your planet, or ours. But because of the relativity time-dilation effect, you actually experienced only around forty-three years on board.”

“Forty-three years!? You mean I was ‘under’ for forty-three years? Good Heavens, that means I must be seventy-seven years old! I don’t feel it,” she continued, looking at her arms, legs, and breasts, which seemed as smooth as always. “Do you have a mirror? Can I see my face?”

“No. But I can tell you, you did not age during the voyage. You still look exactly the same as when you left Earth. The ‘sleep’ field that we employ suspends all bodily functions and metabolism. It was the only way to transport you here. We could not provide you with food or oxygen throughout the voyage. We have never used the field on a sentient being—nor on any subject for so long a period. I am glad that you seem to have suffered no ill-effects.”

“But—but—you are saying that fifty-eight years have passed on Earth? And if it takes another fifty-eight on the return voyage, every­one I know will be dead? Even poor little Nathan—and I don’t even know whether he recovered from the accident: he had only just been taken off life support when you took me away. Why didn’t you turn back once you realised I was aboard? Why?” And Jacqui burst into tears, as the truth slowly crystallised in her mind: whether he had lived on or not, she would never see her darling Nathan again. “This is horrible. Horrible! Don’t you know what it is for a mother to lose her child?” she sobbed.

“We would have done so, if we could,” replied the Sou. “But the ship did not carry enough fuel to return to your planet, land there, and then take off and resume its voyage here. We are truly sorry that this has happened, but you must understand that it was mostly your fault. We do not have a full understanding of human emotions, but we recognise that you are in a state of grief—and were already in that state even before you left Earth.

“But maybe your coming here might be a blessing to us. We still want to know why we failed on your planet. Oh yes, we failed. Our breeding programme is in disarray, and if we do not learn the answers, our race will in time become extinct. It will take many of your years, but without a solution it will be inevitable. We were hoping you could provide some answers. You know far more about your planet than our three kindred whom you met in Wistbourne.”

“Oh yes: Wiggy, Wally, and Weeny,” said Jacqui, composing her­self once again. “Oh, I’m sorry, those were the silly names we gave them: we had to call them something. Did they arrive here safely? And did you have to keep them under during the voyage, like me?”

“Yes and no. Yes, they arrived in fine condition. No, we did not need to use the sleep field, and it would have cost us too much energy. Our kind live far longer than yours, and metabolise much more slowly. But your scientists had already discovered that.”

“Yes, I suppose they had,” said Jacqui, trying to recall everything that Hector, Joyce, and Helen had told her. “At least, in the form you have now: the form we have named Sous. But the other form you took: the Changelings, as we called them—the beings who resem­bled our young almost exactly, apart from the green-blue tinge to their skin—those beings were a lot of trouble. Even as infants, they had caused a lot of damage before most of them were killed.”

“I understand. Please believe me when I say, this was not meant to happen. Something went badly wrong on your planet, and we need to know why. Perhaps I should explain how we reproduce our species, since the process is markedly different from yours.”

“Before you do that, can you answer this? Why did the ‘sleep’ field hit me immediately I boarded your ship—if it is not used on your own kind during the voyage? And if so, how is it that I was not discovered at once and the ship turned about to return me to Earth?”

“The localised sleep field was activated by an automatic system as soon it detected that an alien life-form—alien to us, I mean—was present on board. This is in order to avoid the risk of an intruding animal causing damage to the ship. The system does not have much ‘intelligence’: it can only sense an alien life-form, not determine what species it is. It was only later that the robots, who crew our ships, discovered you on their routine patrols and realised that you were a sentient being. By then it was too late to turn round. I am sorry. We are reviewing our systems even now to ensure that there is no repetition of this situation.

“But I will tell you this, which should offer you some comfort. Our ship received a faint, self-interpreting signal transmitted from your planet—from Earth—a bit over a year into the voyage. Our robots are programmed with highly-developed artificial intelligence and were capable of understanding the message.

“Your ‘abduction’—as your people termed it—aboard our vessel was witnessed by your companions, and they immediately set about trying to transmit a message to our ship requesting that it return to Earth. But they did not yet have the technology to generate a sufficiently powerful signal via one of your radio telescopes. They had to hastily develop new techniques, along with an encoding system which they hoped our ship’s crew would be able to under­stand. So it was several months before they were able to send their signal. All this was explained in the content of the message. Then it was some time before the radio signal could ‘catch up’ with our ship and our robots were able to decrypt it.

“And other information of more personal interest to you was also contained in the message. Your male child named ‘Nathan’ has made a full recovery from his injuries and has left hospital with no life-changing problems. He has resumed his education and is being looked after by your male companion named ‘Adam’ with assistance from a female of your species named ‘Thelma’—”

The Sou stopped speaking, because Jacqui had fainted.