When Fine Galaxy was halfway home, its navigation system broke and the cruise ended up somewhere far from Earth. After a few more failed attempts, they encountered a ship from Mullos 17 b and were brought back to the planet by the Rhikings, a name the Earth people later gave to their saviors.
An agreement was reached between the two races that the Earth people would stay there for ten years before they were sent back home. During the first few years, they quickly learned each other’s languages and cultures. Meanwhile, the Rhikings became interested in Leo’s space-growth technique and built a lab on Moon Au Daral’s orbit for him to continue his research.
“So he made it,” Roland said in a low voice. “I suspected it when I first found out about those moving lumps beneath the skin. We once chatted about possible strategies for celestial living beings to perceive the environment. Our skin is packed with fine mechanoreceptors, but it’ll be too much for a moon-sized creature. One solution is to have gross sensations to roughly locate the external signals, and then mobile fine sensors that travel along to complete the job. At that time it was just an idea. I don’t know how he made it.”
The images on the wall stopped changing and left a static picture of a beach in some kind of tropical area. The sky was a gentle blue. The wind must have been balmy. Adults wearing colorful swimsuits were half-buried in the sand, with shells on their sides and kids running frantically in the shallow water.
“She’s missing home,” said Mina. “She wants to find out more about Earth.”
There was a moment of silence before the four of them continued with the diary. Since Leo preferred to work with a creature he was familiar with, they decided on one of the clams that had been found in Fine Galaxy’s kitchen and was subsequently raised as precious Earth creatures. The project went better than expected. When Clam was the size of a football court, they started growing silicon crystals inside one of her valves and turned it into a solar-energy generator. Meanwhile, more and more intelligent programs were implanted in her body so that she gradually took over the responsibilities to grow and develop herself.
“I could tell she’s becoming happier each day,” Leo wrote in purple ink on that page. He must have been happy too. “She enjoys learning new things. It’s true she doesn’t have a brain, but she thinks and senses throughout her body. She’s been studying the inserted programs, duplicating them and playing with the parameters. Meanwhile, she analyzes human emotions through interactions with the tourists. I teach her English. She works hard, especially fond of literature. Unfortunately I could barely come up with a complete poem …”
In the end, Clam could not only sustain herself but also provide electricity to spaceships. Every year, eighty percent of all the high-efficiency batteries in the world were produced on this “live moon”. The Rhikings had also built museums, shopping centers, and hotels inside her. For a while everybody on the planet talked about Clam with pride. “Space is our backyard pond.” had become a popular slogan.
But accidents happen. One day a major circuit board in the coordinating system broke, and Clam got overcharged by the sun. Immense energy began building up inside the generator and eventually forced an outlet. According to one of the witnesses who worked at the nearby space station, an enormous cylinder of light had been instantly formed between Clam and the Comastic Ocean on the planet. Hot steams shot to the sky and sprayed to the shores. Gigantic waves raged on the sea, resulting in the loss of seventeen ships and hundreds of lives. The tragedy evoked global panics and concurrent propositions of “getting rid of that monster moon!”
Leo and those Rhikings who remained rational had tried to assure the majority that, with extra security systems implemented and sufficient caution exerted, similar things shouldn’t happen again. The public would not listen. After everybody on the moon, except Leo, had been evacuated, the assassination began.
* * *
“So Leo decided to die with his pet?” Kenton said in disbelief.
“Which apparently saved his life,” said Mina.
Devin thought he could understand. Leo created Clam. He must have felt that he was largely responsible for the situation. Devin took over the diary from Roland. He knew what had happened next, but he wanted to read it again, to relive the scientist’s last days.
“They had to stay with conservative weapons with high penetrating power and low explosiveness, because if they broke her, it could be catastrophic to the planet. As I said, she’s a nice lady. She loves people …”
The writing stopped, leaving the rest of the page blank. Devin flipped the page, and the date on the new page indicated that several days had passed before Leo wrote again.
“After they began the attack, she quickly closed herself. She could easily fight back but she didn’t. In fact, she could easily destroy major cities in the world, just like what people had been afraid of. But she endured all the mistreatments. I know it sounds silly to talk about a clam’s virtues, but that’s what she had exhibited—tolerance, forgiveness, until one of the missiles penetrated her valve and exploded inside …”
That must be the “wound” he and Roland had discovered, Devin reflected.
“She opened up and fought back. She only fired once, but it was so unfortunate that her energy happened to hit Moon LaQuire. The small moon broke into three pieces, and one piece fell onto our largest continent.”
“So there used to be another moon,” Mina murmured.
Devin put down the diary and sighed. That was the ring-shaped continent he had seen earlier. Although he didn’t know what the Rhikings look like, scenes of them dying in earthquakes and tsunamis stabbed his heart. And he couldn’t bear to imagine the remorse Leo had to live with in the days that followed.
“It’s all my fault.” Roland picked up the diary and continued the reading. “How dare I think I could manipulate life? A whole civilization was extinguished because of my invention. Before I started this project on the Earth, I was doing cancer research. Didn’t accomplish much but at least my work was constructive. I used to think that death is the worst nightmare for a human being. If that were true, I should be the happiest person in the world now. I have enough food stored here. I have TVs to watch, luxury hotel rooms to choose, and trains and roller coasters to ride on …”
Devin’s chest ached so much that he almost asked Roland to stop.
“If one day, any of my human fellows comes here and reads this, all I want to say is: Respect nature, and think carefully before you do things. We rarely make a mistake without paying the price.”
* * *
Devin and Roland sat quietly at the table, both immersed in their own thoughts. Mina picked up the diary from the table and browsed it through. She stared at each page for about a second. There was no way for her to read anything like that, but she had managed to go through all the pages when Kenton came back with a large stack of books held in his arms.
“We aren’t staying for dinner, right?” The books shouldn’t be heavy due to the small gravity, but still it would be hard for him to keep balance when he walked. “I can’t read, but these looked like useful books. With enough time I’m sure our linguists will figure out the language … Can anybody give me a hand?”
The others stood up and headed to the living room.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to take anything with you,” Roland said when he walked past Kenton.
“Lieutenant Cheung!” Kenton called out at their back.
Devin and Roland paused and turned back, perplexed.
“What? Mr. Clifton?” Mina stopped but didn’t look at Kenton.
“I thought you were on my side.”
“When you are staying sane.” Her voice sounded unfamiliarly stiff. “As far as I’m concerned, Clam does not possess the ability of space travel. Anything that fails to pose a threat to our homeland security will lose its priority.”
“You don’t think these books are important?”
“Our soldiers don’t need to be mind-controlled,” Mina said with pride. “They are patriotic.”
She walked for a few steps and stopped again. This time she met Kenton’s gaze and softened her tone. “How can I make you understand? You won’t be able to take anything with you. Haven’t you realized that Clam is highly intellectual? Besides, I don’t think the mind-controlling technique was invented by the Rhikings. Clam created it herself.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because if the Rhikings had owned that technique, they would’ve destroyed themselves long before the war broke.” Having said that, she left the three men and went back to the living room.
Devin was still unable to accept Mina’s true identity, but he liked her theory.
