Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena

The signal found Lada Lua collecting sweet fruits for the forthcoming banquet.

Holding on to the air-roots, Lada Lua hurried to answer Ala Veg’s call. She had to float quite a distance through the tangled air-roots and then go down the shaft inside a spoke of the giant wheel, in whose rim all the station’s quarters were housed.

The cage in the shaft seemed to fall down into an abyss. The feeling of weight began to appear only at the end of the ride, when the cage slowed down and stopped. The doors opened automatically. Lada Lua, her normal weight restored, walked out into the corridor, which seemed to tilt upwards before and behind her. She did not, however, have to climb any gradients.

Ala Veg was rushing about her cabin, exasperated at the clumsiness of her husband who was on his knees, unsuccessfully trying to pin some kind of frill to her gown.

Lada Lua threw up her hands in delight.

Ala Veg unceremoniously dismissed her husband and he went off to prepare the welcome for the approaching ship, which would have to refuel. He realised that his wife was bored to death with the monotonous days and tedious dinners at the common table, the faces that she was sick of seeing, always the same ones, the same words heard so many times and the mutual friction that grew worse from day to day. Tycho Veg tried to understand his wife, to excuse her failings, to put them down to homesickness and to her pining for her children. He was missing them himself. If only one of them was here, they would be so happy! But the presence of children was not allowed on the space stations. The Superiors, when complementing the staff on Deimo, managed to oppress the roundheads there too. Nega Luton was barren, Ala Veg already had three children and at her age, which she kept secret, she had not decided to have a fourth. As a result, the ban only affected the young Lua couple, who could not have children on the planet, nor on the space station.

After helping Ala Veg to dress, Lada Lua ran to the kitchen with its glittering pans and dials to boil, roast and bake…

But the communications bracelet summoned her again, this time to Nega Luton. That important lady loved comforts and luxury more than anything. Her husband, a Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard, had supplied her with all these in full measure on Faena. Least of all had the Lutons wanted to go into space. However, they had ended up there by order of the Dictator.

Lada Lua switched the automatic kitchen machines to a set program and hurried off to Nega Luton.

When the spaceship Quest went into orbit round Deimo and approached the station for docking, Mada and Ave never left the porthole.

The enormous planet Mar with its convex rim filled over half the window. Sol no longer looked like a brilliant round star, but had become a blinding disc with a magnificent corona. For a short while, the planet blotted out its own star, plunging the ship into a swiftly-passing night.

Hand in hand, Mada and Ave greeted this unusual dawn of their new life, waiting for the brilliant, curly-fringed Sol to begin rising from behind the hump of Mar. The black surface of the deserts turned brown, and gradually, according to height, there followed one after another all the most delicate hues of a gigantic rainbow that did not hang over the rain-washed forests and plains, as on their native Faena, but embraced the desert planet in a crescent that merged with the rim of the gigantic sphere. Mada caught her breath. She could only squeeze Ave’s fingers in silence.

Then the rainbow glittered at one point and the Faetians saw Deimo, their first destination. It was the brightest star in the heavens, rising swiftly over the rim of the rainbow.

As it drew nearer, Deimo became a gigantic, irregularly shaped lump of rock, and soon a small star became visible next to it. This was Space Station Deimo, the Faetians’ destination.

Then they were able to see that this star was a ring inclined at slight angle to the mass of Mar. Comparable to the planet Sat, it was a satellite of Mar’s satellite. Finally, their eyes began to ache with staring at this artificial metal structure, which was reflecting the rays of Sol.

The first pilot of Quest, Smel Ven, the celebrated astronaut of the Superiors, was executing a complicated manoeuvre to approach the axis of the station’s wheel and dock on to the central compartment. The silvery tail of the greenhouse extended from the station, a bright line receding into the darkness.

When Quest moved up to Deimo station, engineer Tycho Veg summoned Brat Lua to the central compartment as the mechanic who did the heavy work. Mrak Luton, the chief of the station, did not consider it necessary to go up to the central compartment in order to “float about on the loose” in null gravity. He preferred to stay in the ring corridor and paced round it, important and pompous, with his hands thrust behind his back.

The name Mrak (Gloom), given to him in his early youth, suited him: a pudgy, rectangular face, sparse grey hair and small, suspicious eyes under the tufted eyebrows.

He did not linger by the lift-cage but continued promenading in the same direction all the time until finally, after he had gone round the whole outer ring, he turned up in the corridor on the other side.

However, all three Faetesses, unable to restrain their curiosity, met at the lift-cage.

The first to come out into the corridor was the exceptionally tall Dm Sat.

The ladies respectfully inclined their heads.

Two Faetians came next.

The giant Gor Terr, up to the eyes in whiskers, was the ship’s flight engineer and one of the men who designed it. He had a pronounced stoop, thanks to which his arms seemed uncommonly long. His friends used to joke that in height, strength and appearance he resembled the ancestors of the Faetians. However, his low, hairy brow hid an exceptional mind.

His new friend, Toni Fae, educated and refined, wrote poetry. He had a round face, a thin nose and wide-open eyes behind big spectacles.

Nega Luton took charge of the gigantic Gor Terr. Ala Veg took the youthful Toni Fae under her wing.

Um Sat went of his own accord to the roundhead Lada Lua.

“Will the gentle Faetess show me to where I can have a rest?”

Lada Lua blushed and, beside herself with happiness, led the great sage to his appointed cabin.

Ala Veg ran down the corridor with a provocative laugh, beckoning Toni Fae to catch up with her. She conducted him into a comfortable cabin and sat down in a light chair.

“And so is it not true, Toni Fae, that we have kindred souls. Is it by chance that we are both astronomers, that we find ourselves amid the stars and are sitting within reach of one another?”

Toni Fae took off his spectacles to see more clearly.

“The stars have made us friends, is it not so?” continued Ala Veg, well aware of the effect she was having on the young visitor.

“For the sake of everything I see here, it was well worth flying to the stars,” he murmured, lowering his eyes.

“I already know that you’re a poet. But you are also an astronomer. I want us to have views in common.”

“I would like that so much!”

They were silent for a moment as they gazed at one another.

“Soon there will be a banquet. We shall sit side by side.”

“Oh, yes!” Toni Fae nodded his head. “But we must also take Gor Terr under our wing. He is as helpless as I am.”

“I love the helpless ones,” laughed Ala Veg, affectionately touching Toni Fae’s hand. “You are a charming boy and I’m so happy that you have arrived. If only you knew how fed up we are with one another here!”

Mrak Luton, who was finishing his stroll along the corridor as if no one had arrived at the station, had in fact been carefully measuring his pace. Of all the new arrivals, he regarded the Dictator’s daughter as most important. For that reason, he went up to the lift-cage at the precise moment when Mada, Ave and Smel Ven, the first pilot, came out of it.