Every Sister of Health has something of the mother in her.
Her desire to help a sick man, her maternal attitude to a suffering person, now helpless as a child and therefore as dear to her as if he were her own, were struggling in Mada with a keen, unjustified, as she considered, homesickness.
Unable to understand this feeling and rejecting it, she looked devotedly after Um Sat, whose life was now fading...
With his large beard, his piercing, yearning (for Faena, of course!) eyes, he was lying motionless on his couch. His illness was delaying the return of Quest and intensifying the homesickness that Mada and her colleagues felt for Faena.
As a Sister of Health, however, she had to rise above her personal sufferings and she looked after the Elder, trying to cure his mysterious illness, since a speedy return might mean his salvation. But there could be no thought of that with Um Sat so seriously ill. Mada looked after him devotedly; she was not only a Sister of Health to him, but a spiritual confidante. She admitted to him her yearning for Faena and received in return the Elder's terrible confession that all the oceans on Faena might blow up as a result of a disintegration war. Mada shuddered, frowned and shook her head in protest.
By shouldering part of the Elder's alarm, she eased his condition, affirming that matters could not go as far as such a catastrophe and they would surely go back to their Faena where they were so eagerly awaited.
On Mada's instructions, Ave and Gor Terr went hunting in the forest. She would not let them touch the provisions intended for the return journey.
Return journey! It was a goal, a dream, a passionate desire, and it was not felt by Mada alone.
She told Toni Fae to stay by the electromagnetic communications apparatus which, for some strange reason, had gone silent. The thread linking Quest and their native planet had snapped. Mada reassured Toni Fae that the atmosphere of Terr was to blame: it was blanketing off the electromagnetic waves from Faena and Mar.
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 civilization.
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...
Toni 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 Um 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 civilization has committed suicide."
"What utter r-rubbish!" yelled Gor Terr. "Leave our civilization 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."
"How can you say all that?" shouted Toni Fae, clenching his fists. "My mother was there, and my little sisters..."
"My mother was there too," replied Ave Mar sadly.
Toni Fae began sobbing. Gor Terr drew him towards himself, patting him on the shoulder.
Ave and Mada exchanged glances and said more by doing so than could ever have been conveyed in words. Then they held hands.
"So that's why there were no electromagnetic communications," said Toni Fae, still sobbing. "War had started up there."
"And on the Mar stations?" boomed Gor Terr.
"Perhaps on them too," confirmed Ave Mar sadly.
"No, no!" protested Toni Fae, looking in terror at Ave with eyes full of tears. "It can't be possible out there too!"
Ave shrugged his shoulders.
"There are Faetians on them as well."
"Ala Veg is there!" shouted Toni Fae. "She's not one of them!"
"Calm yourself, Toni Fae," said Mada gently. "I think we should still tell Um Sat about the end of Faena."
"Wretched carr-rion-eaters! Why couldn't they value what they had? They've destroyed thousands of millions of lives! How much higher and more humane the local Faetoids are!"
As he shouted this, Gor Terr charged round the cabin in a frenzy.
"Calm down, friend Gor Terr," said Ave. "It's hard for us to bear the horror that's come down on all of us when we've not only lost our dear ones, but..."
"Towns, fields, r-rivers, forests, seas, oceans!" wailed Gor Terr.
"Yes. And oceans," confirmed Ave Mar sadly.
Gor Terr glared at him almost with hatred. Then he sighed and said very quietly this time:
"Yes, it's easier for you. There are two of you."
"There are five of us," said Mada.
"If the Elder survives the shock."
"He has been readying himself for it too long," replied Mada. "He saw it all coming."
"I was the one who didn't see anything coming. I was dreaming about new spaceships, about wonderful cities on new planets, about incredible machines that I was inventing in my mind."
"It will all have to be done on Terr," said Mada softly.
Gor Terr burst into a roar of forced laughter.
"Forget about civilization once and for all, forget about technology. Make clubs and stone axes. If you have children, you won't be able to teach them anything that the unhappy Faetians knew. Civilization means workshops and Faetians toiling in them. Civilization means writings that preserve the treasures of thought. All that is gone, gone, gone! And it cannot exist here either!"
Gor Terr was shouting in a frenzy.
Toni Fae was frightened by this fit of fury, but his attention was distracted by a signal from the electromagnetic apparatus. The indicator lamp was winking on and off. The astronomer rushed to the set.
"At last! Now the nightmare is over! You see, they're worried about us, they want to tell us that it was a supernova, not Faena at all. How could we have assumed such a thing?"
The Faetians watched Ton! Fae, each trying to retain at least a glimmer of hope.
Finally the chesty voice of a Faetess was heard in the cabin. Toni recognized it as Ala Veg's.
"Quest! Quest! Quest! Can you hear me? There has been a dreadful catastrophe! We shall never have a homeland again. Faena has blown up for some unaccountable reason, although it was recently intact, in spite of a disintegration war that broke out on it. Quest! Quest! Quest! Hostilities between Deimo and Phobo have ceased. If you too have been fighting amongst yourselves, stop the conflict. There aren't any more Gutturals and there aren't any more Superiors. There are only three small groups of unhappy Faetians who have lost their homeland. Are you alive? If only you are still alive! Can we live on Terr?"
Ave Mar put out the light in the observation cabin. The starry sky was now clearer than ever, and so was the new star blazing in it, the malignant Star of Hatred.
End of Part Two
________________________________________________________
Did an exploded planet actually exist in the Solar System?
In 1596, when he was investigating the laws governing the structure of the Solar System, Kepler suspected there might be a planet missing between Mars and Jupiter. At the end of the 18th century, the scientists Titius and Bode gave a series of numbers: 0.4-0.7-1.0-1.6-2.8-5.2...
It reflected the distance of the planets from the Sun. The distance of the Earth from the Sun was taken as unit. But there was no fifth planet with an Earth-Sun distance of 2.8. The astronomers searched and began discovering, one after another, the "minor planets" and even smaller bodies, or asteroids, which were moving on a common orbit.
They were fragmentary in shape and seemed to have formed during the DISINTEGRATION of a destroyed planet.
The German astronomer Hermann Oberth 150 years ago expressed the hypothesis that such a planet had once existed. In our own times, Professor Sergei Orlov, analysing this hypothesis, gave the planet the romantic name of Phaeton. His work was continued by Academicians Alexander Zavaritsky and Leonid Kvasha. Soviet research, notably that of Yekaterina Gusakova, has shown that the residual magnetism of the meteorites could be explained only by their magnetisation as parts of a big mother planet.
I. Kern (1963) determined its size as approaching that of the Earth. However, neither the advocates nor the opponents of this hypothesis have successfully accounted for the destruction of the planet. If Phaeton blew up like a high-explosive bomb, its fragments would have flown apart in elongated elliptical orbits round the Sun, but they have remained in their old circular orbit... If two cosmic bodies had collided in space, then their fragments would also have flown in elliptical orbits and would not have formed a ring on the former orbit of the planet.
It is suggested that meteorite swarms form in at least ten places on the ring of asteroids. It is possible that they are created by the collision and disintegration of the former planet's fragments. Meteorites are falling on Earth to this day, but they include so-called tektites which, perhaps, fell on Earth only once as a consequence of a colossal nuclear explosion in space. All the more so that the form, composition and dehydration of the tektites are identical with nuclear slag.
Thus, a supposition about the cause of its destruction has been added to the hypothesis of a Phaeton that existed in the past.