Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena

Tome Polar would put on a space-suit, without which Marians could not breathe their planet’s atmosphere, and would often wander over the desert sands. He was looking among the mountain ridges for a cave that could be used as a laboratory. In it, mentally, he was already carrying out daring experiments on matter.

However, he had neither the instruments nor a cave for his research.

Once upon a time, the first Marians had been lucky. They had found in the mountains an interconnected network of caves with an underground river flowing through them which they named the River of Life.

Most probably of all, his ancestors had come from a remote region of Mar where the conditions had once been different: the air had been breathable and there had been rivers flowing on the surface of the planet (as now in the caves). That was why the legends told of incredibly large areas of water. After all, every drop of the River of Life in the underground city was precious. They even obtained water artificially, extracting it from mines sunk in distant caves. Water, together with the metal found in the depths, was the basis of Marian civilisation. Owing to the small amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, metal was native. This baffled Tome somewhat. After all, his remote ancestors had breathed in the open air.

Tome Polar finally discovered a convenient little cave with a narrow entrance which could easily be converted into an airlock.

Excited and happy, he went down on to the sandy plain from where he would make his way direct to the oasis of cultivated plants and further on down into the underground city.

In his short life. Tome Polar had not known any landscapes other than the dead Marian sands. They were dear to him and he thought them beautiful. As he walked over them, he sometimes tried to imagine himself crossing the bed of one of the fabulous seas of the ancient Marians. But his sceptical reason gained the uppermost over fantasy.

He could not imagine what was absolutely impossible.

Tome Polar was hoping to return to the city not alone, but with Ena Fae, the most wonderful girl on the planet. At least, so she seemed to him.

He knew where to find her and headed for the clumps of nutritive plants irrigated by water from the underground river. Tome knew from the ancient folk tales that there was even supposed to be water on the surface at their planet s poles, and at a low heat level it solidified there in the form of a hard cap. This cap sometimes melted under Sol’s rays. A lovely folk tale! If it could be proved true, the Marians would one day deliver the melted water from the poles to their oases. But, in the meantime, the fabulous accumulations of solid water on Mar, if they existed, were infinitely far away from the underground Marian city.

To the inhabitants of the legendary Faena, the local plants would have looked like sickly bushes. But to Tome Polar, they were an impassable thicket in which it was possible to make out with difficulty several figures in space-suits.

They could all have seemed identical, but not to Tome Polar. He had no difficulty in recognising Ena, who was gathering fruits.

She was the only creature on Mar to whom Tome Polar could confide his secret thoughts. He had decided to do that today. He and Ena would begin experimenting in the new cave together and they would revolutionise Marian civilisation.

The Marian girl, lissom in spite of her garb, was gathering fruits. Tome Polar went up to the bushes.

Ena Fae recognised him, signalled to him with a wave and followed after him.

They did not switch on the intercom in their helmets so that the others wouldn’t hear them talking. They understood one another without words.

The love story of Tome and Ena was touchingly simple. They were brought together by Great Chance, which seemed to be answering a legitimate need. They met during the celebrations for the end of their studies. The young people were singing and dancing in one of the remoter caves.

The stone icicles of stalactites hung from the roof to meet the needles of stalagmites reaching up from the floor. Joined in some places, they formed fantastic columns that seemed to be supporting the roof.

Lit up so that they seemed almost transparent, these colonnades, demolished in other caves to make way for buildings, gave a magical appearance to the place where the young were celebrating.

The young Marians used to enjoy themselves here with all their hearts, donning airtight helmets for a lark to make themselves unrecognisable.

Tome Polar somehow managed to fall for his dancing partner, although he hadn’t yet seen her face. It seemed to him that it ought to be beautiful, so vibrant and tender was her voice, even when muffled by the mask.

When Ena took off her helmet, she turned out to be exactly what he had been expecting.

A straight brow sloping slightly backwards to continue the line of the nose, elongated eyes with a slight slant up towards the temples, russet hair with a heavy bun on the neck so that it did not fit easily into a helmet-such was his new acquaintance, Ena Fae. There was something in her of her great-great-great-grandmother, Ala Veg; but neither Tome nor Ena had the slightest idea of what she had looked like.

It was love at first sight between the two Marians, as if two torches had been brought to the same fire.

The young couple passed through the entrance airlock, which had always been a source of puzzlement to Tome Polar. Why had it been made entirely of metal (and when there was a permanent metal famine!), round in shape and straining upwards, like the ancient skyscrapers of the legendary Faena? Had the first Marians perhaps wanted to set up a monument to the beautiful fairy tale? Tome Polar, of course did not share the superstitions according to which the tower had once voyaged among the stars with no mechanical means of propulsion. This legend had been born of the unusual shape of the installation which served as an entrance airlock to the city.

There was only one real monument in the city, the one to the Great Elder. Sculpted out of a stalagmite, the Elder of ancient times towered to his full enormous stature, with his stone beard falling onto his chest and with mystery in the dark, piercing cavities of his eyes.

New deposits had formed with the years on the stone sculpture, and these smoothed over (as in memory) the features of the great Marian of the past who had called himself a Faetian.

The monument to the Great Elder stood in the cave of the young.

It was towards this that Tome Polar and Ena Fae made their way when they had taken off their space-suits.

Nothing, it seemed, could ever come between them to spoil their radiant love and happy life together. Tome and Ena, however, had a hard trial ahead of them.

According to the ancient Marian tradition, it was by the monument to the Great Elder that vows of love and faithfulness were sworn, and also the work was chosen which, from that moment on, the future married couple would take upon themselves. On Mar, the young people bound themselves with ties of marriage which, as they understood it, concerned no one else.

On this spot, the lovers had to declare to one another which path in life each had chosen.

“Ena!” said Tome. “There can be no greater happiness for me than to be with you always, not only in the family but at work. I want you to be a loyal helpmate to me in the scientific research which I have decided to do.”

“Am I ready for this?” said Ena doubtfully, looking admiringly at her betrothed.

“It will be enough for me if you are by my side in our cave-laboratory.”

“What cave?” asked Ena, brightening up. “Are they going to give us a small hall?”

“No. I’ve found myself a cave in the mountains. We’ll fit it out ourselves. We’ll make airlocks and we’ll take with us the air-recycling equipment from spare space-suits.”