Breaking Down, Page 2

ship to at least make it limp to his destination. Once at the destination, which was now so close he could practically walk there (but of course, he’d be unable to drag the refining equipment with him, so that was out of the question), he’d be able to lazo-weld the ship back into a brand-new state.

  The ship took off after a little while, then flew a bit, and then landed again without any fanfare at all, this time landing almost perfectly on a mountain-top. The astronaut set to work to extract the carbon, hydrogen and sulphur that was needed. He worked patiently, his extraction and refining equipment set to auto-mode, and diligently used the lazo-weld to recreate the atoms needed to repair the hull. His peace was very often disturbed by the bipedal creature who had been a spectator to his fire-fighting skills. This individual creature returned very often, and soon the astronaut grew accustomed to having him watch the lazo-weld at work.

  It was not long, a few earth weeks, before the the work was almost completed and the astronaut prepared to leave. The bipedal was, as usual, there. Galactic Federation Laws forbid any traveller from mining resources on a planet hosting intelligent species without giving something in return. Payment was needed, but the astronaut was, to put things bluntly, finding himself a little bit short. He could not hand over Galaxy credits, as this creature had no use for it (nor any way to get off of this rock to use it). Likewise, payments in anything that might be used as a weapon was against the rules, as primitive species would often simply annihilate themselves even with something as useful to construction as a lazo-weld. Food was out of the question; the astronaut had nothing that the bipedal creature or his species could digest.

  Perhaps some information then, as he could communicate on a very basic level with the bipedal? But what information? Scwheler’s equations of time dilation is very useful to building faster-than-light spacecraft, but this poor creature had no way to use it. The finite theory of infinity was a remarkable tool that enabled the rapid mining of red giants, but how would these creatures use that?

  Finally, the astronaut beckoned to the bipedal and handed him a miniature computer with a static screen filled with useful pieces of advice on basic sanitation and hygiene. The advice was translated by the computer into, as close as possible, the bipedals’ native language. The bipedal looked at the contents, considered it and then shook its head and handed it back. The astronaut tried again, this time with advice on rules and laws and government. The bipedal rejected this advice as well.

  After several more rejections it occurred to the now-very-fed-up astronaut that the bipedal was rejecting the computer, not the information. In exasperation he turned to the nearest rocks, which happened to be the waste of the lazo-weld machine and, wielding a portable pointing-laser, he quickly etched a poem he had last heard as a child onto two of the flatter slabs. “This will have to do,” he told himself glumly, “Nothing else is taking root in that under-developed brain, and no one can say that I didn’t try!”

  The ship took off, leaving the bipedal slightly confused about what just happened. He regarded the information scored into the two lead slabs thoughtfully. He couldn’t imagine how this could be useful in any way, but he grabbed them both just in case and went back down the mountain. At the very least, he would have stories to tell about the thing with the flying machine, and that would be worth a few carafe’s of wine in the town. If he was really good at the embellishments, he might even make the story last over a week, because Moses was the best storyteller that the town had seen in ages.

  Exodus 31

  18And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.

  Up, above the atmosphere, the astronaut prepared for suspended animation. He quickly tapped out an entry in the ships journal with one tentacle while he cleaned his gills with another. Then he went to sleep, cursing maintenance crews under his breath and hoping that he had not overly influenced the inhabitants of the developing planet. His final thought before losing consciousness was, “It’s only a child’s poem anyway. They’ll forget it in a week …”

  If you have reached this page, then you have read the story to the end. I thank you for this opportunity to entertain you and I hope I did a good job of entertaining you. I write often, usually humour or science-fiction, or sometimes both. My stories are all original, and I do try to produce an original narrative twist.

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  Lelanthran Krishna Manickum