Planet Kalgar

By Maurice Vauthier

April 7, 2084. Earth on the eve of nuclear disaster.

Humanity sends its representatives to a distant planet to colonize and preserve the human species.

The previous attempt ended in failure ... are you sure?

The heroes will find out about this after landing on a utopian planet, several hundred years later after a prolonged hibernation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Royal Hawaiian Press
• Release date: Oct 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393812470

Book preview

We all sail to some

non-existent coasts

PINDAR

The miraculous quality of a house built in dreams is that

it is not you that shelter in it,

but you yourself transformed

SAINT-EXUPERY

CHAPTER ONE

DEPARTURE

The day we left for Kalgar I cannot recall without a strange shiver. It was in the early spring of April 7, 2084. Three hundred and ten years have now passed since then.

Three hundred and ten years! Do these numbers make sense? Rather, it happened yesterday? Three hundred years of sleep, spent in a circle of dazzling dreams! The memories are so vivid, the colors are so fresh... It was yesterday.

My name is Peter Glowe. I was twenty-four at the time and I had just married Grinje. We felt we were completely happy.

As soon as I started growing up, the electronic machines at the Vocational Referral Office decided via perforated cards that I would be a space worker. The jealousy that my peers showed on this account made me consider this referral as a unique life chance. I say this without bitterness. I liked my profession and when I started working at Star Minerals after long years of study, I enjoyed it sincerely and fervently.

After a year, this joy was still alive: the elation from the first flights turned into a calm, balanced feeling that gave me unshakable confidence. We were then operating a small molybdenum asteroid in the Therbuley zone. My turn to go to heaven was twice a month. Soon these trips became not so much monotonous for me as they were devoid of surprises. Despite the political tension between the countries of our bloc and the countries of the Blue Union, space agreements allowed us to work in peace. Indeed, I never would have imagined that the trip that began on April 7 was going to be any different.

WENG TI HAS JUST MADE a corrective maneuver. It seems we almost missed the Earth... because here we are back. Kalgar was far behind, and it is only through this story that I can return to it.

I took the maximum acceleration badly. I think others felt the same. We have long been used to the apparent weight that was recreated by the ship, and here we were brutally cornered on all sides by our own leaden body... My heart is raging, I have to stop writing for a while.

I WAS HOPING TO HEAR Him these days. If only he could send us his final message before we return to Earth! Of course it is impossible. But I must dream of a miracle...

Six more days until landing... Ship maneuvering, calculations, rest periods. Deep inside my body, as tormenting as unforgettable anxiety, it comes and goes, the familiar pressure returns again like the weight of deep water. These moments vividly resemble the moments of our departure - sometimes I am surprised that He is not between us.

He! Only this word I found to describe two people so very different from each other. So different, I thought how Good could be different from Evil. But they must have had something in common since they don't need a name and hardly need a face to burn us through their presence. Two elements.

Now, when I think about it, the whole thing seems to me to come from the sentence of destiny: that they met, that they fought each other, that one of them knocked the other down with his own hands, that he defeated him like a malicious beast. And that it all happened in Kalgar.

Geilendorth, Seburst... These names collide in my memory like humming spheres. I shake my head, trying to naively shove them out of there...

WHEN HE SAID, I AM Seburst, I felt as if I was calmer. He was a professor of several engineers from our base - Stones Camp; they spoke of him with such passionate admiration that it always amazed me. I knew from them that Seburst had a keen interest in space navigation, which was the logical corollary of his work in astronomy, work that made him famous. They also told me that he had been coming to base a lot in recent months, where our last Mega-ST had drawn him.

Last Mega! Our Bloc government has worked a miracle to sign a deal with the Blue Union to stop insane attempts at interstellar navigation - high-profile catastrophes have demonstrated its utopian nature over the past 25 years. Since then, the efforts of both camps have focused on building Proxima machines whose utility, limited to our solar system, corresponded to more practical purposes.

This Mega-ST, the last and most refined type of interstellar vehicle, was stuck in its underground hangar at Camp Stones like a symbol of that heroic era when man believed in the possibility of reaching stars. It was carefully kept in good condition, but a bit as if it were a museum exhibit, and if it was mentioned often, with some great admiration and regret. Likewise, the Moorish princes, driven from Granada, passed down the keys of their forever lost palaces from generation to generation.

And yet this Mega was to lift us into the skies, serve us on the distant paths of heaven so flawlessly and faithfully that I cannot think about it without an impulse of gratitude. I feel as closed around me, quivering, alive like an extension of my body, swaying imperceptibly when one of us shifts, and then succumbs to the impulses of the stabilizers that restore her to its proper position. Every now and then a tiny meteor hits her side, making a sound as if it is scratching her with claws. The diffused light of the upper portholes slides along the varnished walls of the cabin, almost unreal in its half-shades and half-glare. With some effort it comes to my mind that it flows from the Earth's Sun through the silicon plates that cover our ship.

How far is the Earth still! That bluish blob that Weng Ti and Magrini show me on the orientation viewfinder screen, triumphantly stating that it burns a brighter glow every day. Why should I remind them that this is not a return, but a discovery of a new world? That the lands ahead are deserted, the cities extinct? That more than three hundred years have elapsed?

A planet full of light? To do so, one would have to forget about Kalgar.

I AM PLEASED THAT WENG Ti has taken command. I no longer have the head for all these numbers, these instruments, this eternal checking. Weng seems to understand this, and only tell me of minor functions. So I can return to my story.

I visited, just like every day, cabin number four, where a child from Kalgar sleeps. I am always struck by the look on his face. I'm looking for a term for it... Well, this face is radiant. How old can the baby be? Six? Behind a convex pane of plexiglass, whose reflections further emphasize his radiant expression, he lies smiling, as if he has just fallen asleep. The automatic movement of the massage mattress lifts his body with a slow rhythm, giving him a kind of life, hiding from me and revealing his face again. I follow these movements anxiously. With each of them, it seems to me that the boy is waking up, I fear the moment when I meet his first gaze.

Will he get scared, cry, or will he be reproached? This baby seems so delicate, so little adapted to the harshness of the Earth! And it is the Earth that we want to offer him!

Before I leave, I check the mechanisms of his hypothermia: heat, pulsation, humidity, everything is fine. I close the steel door silently, smiling inwardly at this unnecessary precaution. I am happy that I saw him still asleep, that he will remain for a few days in his lost paradise - poor angel torn from the world of stars!

THAT SEVENTH OF APRIL was Thursday. The day before I had come to Camp Stones to undergo the usual medical examinations and study the flight instructions. Grinje was with me, overjoyed to be able to use a brand new little seef wagon, moving on the ground, on the water and in the air. It was morning - Helibuses were gathering flocks of students, dropping the entrance cabin at each stop, shining like a giant tear; then they took her to flight as soon as she emerged from among the rooftops. Cities, green fields and village gardens came to life below us. These images of the Earth were so common that I would certainly not have remembered them if they had not turned out to be the last.

At the entrance to Circuit F, where strangers are not admitted, I said goodbye to Grinje, who told me not to forget to bring her piece of asteroid for her. I promised her this with a laugh.

The rest of the day was filled with a routine of ordinary activities. It was a pleasure to meet an old comrade, Magrini, with whom we were to form a working team the next day. In the navigators' hotel, where our rooms were adjacent to each other, we chatted for a while, then went to sleep at the prescribed time.

BY THE TIME I WAS WOKEN up by a violent knock on the door, I had long realized that it was already dawn outside. Yet I did not hear the usual signals of the central control center. Was it time to get up? The door opened, someone turned on a light, and Woodbury, vice president of Camp Stones, entered the room. Several engineers followed, Ullmann, Weng Ti, Borg and others not known to me by name. There were about ten of them, all young, Woodbury's age; they entered silently and stood behind his back.

I was stunned. This bizarre intrusion, these tense faces, this silence filled me with a vague fear. I deliberately refrained from asking questions, believing that my all-too-visible amazement would force the visitors to explain.

Get dressed, Glowe, Woodbury said finally.

I obeyed him automatically. Some of my guests sat down, others raised blinds and looked out the window - a gray dawn was rising, an uncertain morning, lighting as if made to commit acts of despair.

Has the flight plan been changed? I couldn't ask.

Yes, it was changed.

I'm not flying today?

You'll find out soon enough.

Interesting thing! None of these people really paid attention to me. I was for them as if an extra in some theater play and they did not even deign to acquaint me with its content. They seemed to be waiting for something. Or someone. From time to time one of them would open the door, stroll down the corridor for a while, and then return to the room.

I put on my overalls and sat on the bed, trying to collect my thoughts. Was there a spy scandal at stake? In a period of fierce rivalry between the two world powers, the accusation of espionage for the Blue Union would be extremely dangerous, even for an innocent man. Suspicion, false testimony was enough to bring imminent ruin on everyone.