Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena

Toni Fae was desperate to go home. He could not sleep. He would doze off at the apparatus, then wake up in a cold sweat, now hearing his mother, Vera Fae, calling him, now imagining that it was Ala Veg laughing at him. But the apparatus remained silent. There were times when Toni Fae couldn’t bear it any more. Then Jvlada’s gentle hand would rest on his trembling shoulder and her calm, soft voice would assure him that the state of Terr’s atmosphere would change; they need only wait, and he would hear the longed-for signal.

Um Sat, however, was not so easily pacified. Mada knew what he thought about a disintegration war and how it had been tormenting him even before they had left Faena.

Ave was gloomy for the same reason.

He was no longer the sensitive youth who had made such an impression on Mada as he rode the ocean waves. He had changed inwardly and outwardly. After growing a moustache and a beard on Terr, he looked much older, calmer, more self-assured and stronger.

Mada knew that by sending her husband out hunting, she was subjecting him to danger. But as she thought about all the crew, she could not act otherwise, for she had faith in his strength, agility and courage.

Consequently, when, apart from a reindeer rescued from a beast of prey, Ave brought back a spotted hide with its jaws fixed in a snarl, Mada was not surprised, seeing it as only natural.

Ave was morose. He said nothing to Mada, but she knew everything! And she feared not so much the something terrible that could happen out there, perhaps somewhere far away, as for her “children” whom she was looking after here, although these children were Ave, Um Sat, Toni Fae and Gor Terr.

The long-armed and stooping Faetian giant was missing his native planet as badly as everyone else. The primitive mode of life which he and Ave, as the main providers, had to lead here was unpleasant and even offensive to a skilled engineer.

As he wandered through the densely packed tree-trunks on the alien planet, Gor Terr never ceased making grandiose plans for technical improvements that there was no one to implement on Terr: there were neither workshops, nor assistants, and so there could not be any progress or civilisation.

Around them lay the alien, primeval forest. From time to time, they would glimpse antlers or the spotted hide of a predator. Who was going to win?

Gor Terr stubbornly shook his head. No! This life was not for him! He didn’t want to be like his ancestors with their clubs and stone axes, however much he might resemble them physically. He was not going to be like the savages of the Stone Age. Let other Faetians colonise other planets, but he was going to return to workshops, steamcars, rockets and skyscrapers!

One starry night, in despair of ever hearing a signal over the electromagnetic communications, Ton! Fae began searching among the stars for the faintly visible Faena, as if hoping to see a light signal.

And then he saw one!

The young astronomer couldn’t believe his eyes and rushed to the star map. Was he looking at the right place? No, he hadn’t made a mistake. Faena should be passing through that particular constellation between Alt and Veg.

The little star had evidently been swamped by the brilliant flare of a supernova. Somewhere immeasurably far away, beyond the fringe of the Galaxy, the latest cosmic disaster had taken place and the light of a once exploding star had finally reached Sol and its planets. And only by chance had the supernova blotted out Faena. He must now wait until the planet, travelling across the sky on a complex path divergent from that of the stars, emerged from the brilliant light of the supernova and began to shine at a distance with its usual faint, but so very dear and appealing light.

The supernova, however, shining more brightly than all the other stars, except for Sol in the daytime, seemed not to want Faena to get away. It was moving across the sky, not like a star, but like a planet…

Ton! Fae caught his breath. He started rousing Gor Terr, who simply wouldn’t wake up and merely bellowed in his sleep.

Ave Mar woke up and applied his eye to the eyepiece.

Yes, an unusually bright star was blazing in the night sky. It was clearly visible to the naked eye; it was like a lantern in the sky. But there was something in its effulgence that made Ton! Fae’s heart beat faster in alarm.

Ave understood everything at once. He had long been keeping to himself the secret that Dm Sat had entrusted to him about the danger hidden in the oceans. And now out there…

Mada came in from the big cabin in which Um Sat slept. She was as white as a sheet. She had only been suspecting it, but when she looked at her husband, she understood everything.

“My dear Toni Fae,” said Mada. “Prepare yourself for the worst. Tell me, is your new star moving across the sky the way Faena should be moving?”

“It doesn’t make sense, but it’s true.”

“Faena doesn’t exist any more,” said Ave Mar gloomily, and he put his arm round Mada’s shoulders.

“To be more precise, the former inhabited Faena doesn’t exist any more,” corrected Mada. “A star has lit up in its place, but not for long.”

Toni Fae looked at Mada and Ave with frightened eyes. He took off his spectacles and methodically wiped the lenses.

“So Faena doesn’t exist? And what about Mother?” The young astronomer looked with childlike eyes at Mada, as if she ought to dispel a terrible dream. “Why hasn’t it lit up for long? No! Isn’t it just that they’ve found a way of signalling to us?”

“My dear Toni Fae, it really is a signal to us…”

“Just as I said!” exclaimed the young Faetian happily.

Ave stood with bowed head.

“It’s a signal that there is nowhere for us to return to,” he said with an effort.

“What’s going on here?” came Gor Terr’s rolling bass voice.

Ave Mar took a deep breath.

“The disintegration war, which we have all been so afraid of, has evidently taken place on our unhappy Faena. And its civilisation has committed suicide.”

“What utter r-rubbish!” yelled Gor Terr. “Leave our civilisation in peace. It gave us all we have here.”

“That’s not enough for us to carry on living here.”

“That’s the last thing I’m aiming to do!”

Toni Fae rushed to his friend as he had done that time in the cave…

“They’re saying that…” he whimpered like a child, “that life has perished on Faena, that the planet has flared up for a time like a star.”

“That’s impossible,” objected the engineer calmly. “There’s been some kind of observation error here. A disintegration war can wipe out a planet’s inhabitants, I’m not disputing that. But it can’t annihilate a planet as a heavenly body. Mass is mass, it can’t just disappear. And what does ‘has flared up for a time’ mean?”

Mada looked inquiringly at Ave.

“We must go down to Um Sat,” he said. “Back on Faena, he told me about one of the secrets of the disintegration of matter. If a superviolent explosion should take place in the depths of the sea and if the heat level should reach the critical limit, then all the water in the oceans would instantly split into oxygen and hydrogen, and the hydrogen would become helium, in this way releasing so much energy that the planet would flare up like a star during the reaction.”

“Damnation!” whispered the engineer.

“Um Sat warned both Dobr Mar and Yar Jupi of this. They wouldn’t listen to him.”

“If all the oceans blow up at the same time, then the planet shouldn’t just flare up,” said the engineer. “Under the impact of shock from all directions, it should be broken up into pieces…”

“To be scattered later,” confirmed Ave Mar. “And countless cycles later, its fragments, colliding and breaking up, would spread out along Faena’s former orbit.”