“Hey there you stupid, fat assed invisible, pulling shit of a black hole, I think that I deserve an apology, I deserve an apology from you, the radiations you suck, these pompous geologists and archaeologists, physicists and mathematicians, technicians and that stupid space shuttle that has brought me in the midst of this gooey quick sand of jeers and taunts.” He continued washing dishes. He knew they were trying to make his job difficult. He was supposed to make himself useful in this expedition as nothing concerning his real profession seemed mandatory on that planet. He had tears in his eyes, never before had any one crumpled his ego so much as that was happening now. He cursed himself. He had a good life on earth earning a livelihood by treating others’ minds; he couldn’t remember what instance of his stupid brain advised him to go for an interview for space adventure. But he did, and here he was. One of the most respected psychologists living amongst the most dominating kind of guys who stopped at nothing to express their contempt for his futility.

He was suddenly shaken out of his reverie by a cool splash of water. He gasped for breath. The pipe was slithering like a snake, trying to rise above. He began to feel giddy. The water pipe flopped down on the ground. The planet must have passed near some stupid black hole.

“WHY, WHY THE HELL I AM HERE?” He cried to the transparent dome from which he was able to see the twinkling stars.

Then the door opened.

“Talking to yourself?” A low, gruff voice spoke.

Viren looked in his direction. There, standing hunched was the deputy director of this mission Daneel Shithole Something. From his countenance, he looked like a person who had once again hit rock, so his mood might be impulsive.

Viren had long ago given up the hope to try to talk to them. He just shrugged and went on leaning the dishes.

“The world government had paid millions of dollars just to have a maid for the convenience of the learned men, am I right?”

“You are the learned man, so you figure that portion out.” Viren replied calmly. He tried to control his surging temper; he reasoned that he could not put his years of experience at stake just by badgering with this guy who was seriously inferior complex-ed.

“Just clean the dishes right shit hole, prove that you are not that shameless as to enjoy the beauty on the basis of the taxpayer’s money.”

Daneel collected one of the instruments lying around, zipped up the light oxygen tank, and moved out into the climate of this planet.

That hurt him, it seriously did.

                                                       **********************

“The charring mark, can you see that?”  Katherine asked.

“Yah, sure what about it.” The physicist asked.

“It is following a zigzag random pattern, going somewhere beneath the edge.”

“Some idiot must have dropped some gasoline.” He joked.

“There are no idiots except us.”

The technicians were looking from one to other. This sort of heated argument was of course routine for the scientist but the technicians were riveted by the encounter. One of them was hunched on the computer screen, scanning the ice beneath. Thanks mostly to some perfect alignment of the huge piece of ice; they have been able to discern the exact location of some of the trinkets of the dead civilization. It was a jumbled collection, no sort of certainty was there in their position, and still they were embedded in the ice, not beneath it.

“Mac, down there I see something. And this one looks purely metallic.” The other guy felt relieved.

“Great, I won’t have to use those stupid remote controlled robotans, they are super clumsy. I am energizing the magneto driller; give me the co- ordinates.”

“Back off you guys.” He ordered the scientists.

The scientists turned back abruptly. The technician was already tinkering with different parts on the console of the drilling machine.

The hum of the machine turned into a roar. Katherine suddenly felt the vibrations as the driller touched ice. The metal had difficulty into prodding the innards of the bulky body of ice. The ground was shaking like 9 point on the Richter scale. Still they had not much to worry about as the ice was 800 meters thick.

Hell, it was a time consuming job. You had to slowly cut through the thick ice through the driller, and scrape out the civilization X booty. It was a gigantic graveyard of alien civilization, not to be found anywhere else.

“I think I have an idea.” Katherine told.

“Yah what?”

“Give me your refill pack, and a lighter.”

“What are you going to do with that?” The physicist asked sharply.

“Just give me.”

“We must show it to others. Then we could reach …”

She pouted her lips, like she always did when she was displeased. This stopped him momentarily. She suddenly swung into action. She unzipped his bag, fished out the lighter and the refill pack, before he could retort her.

“I…I don’t think that it is a very good idea.”

“Just wait and watch.” She pressed the bolt present on the lighter down on the nut provided on the pouch, fastening it, piercing through the seal of the fiber shell of the lighter turned into a blue bullet like aura. The fiber shell was a very good heat conductor, they could not allow the fire to come in contact with the atmosphere, and it would be extinguished due to the dominant CO2 presence. She inserted this in one of the charred hole.

“What’s the idea?”

“Well, I don’t think that this material would be much heat conductive to show us its true nature.”

“What true nature?”

“I think I would have to break the lighter’s shell to give this material complete heat.” Katherine said.

“It is a very precious instrument right now and we have some……”

“…gazillions of those.” Katherine completed.

“But…”

She punched a button on the lighter, then after some time a viscous liquid poured out, which froze instantly on coming in contact with atmosphere, thus providing a vacuum tight seal for the fire.

Katherine smiled. The computer console was showing the data of the recently decoded map of the region. Katherine wanted to be the one who found the fossils. They have come across none, so far.

“We don’t have so many of these pouches, so as to continue this waste worthy fire, let’s us just continue collecting the data.”

“Look there, smart shit.”

“You don’t talk with me like…”

Something was etched on the metal.

“It was not there before.” The physicist remarked. He fished out one more pouch from his bag, and connected in chain to the previous one. “It’s just like Lords of the Rings.”

“No, its nothing like that.” Katherine said.

“It is etched, I mean…”

Suddenly the signals changed.

“What the hell is it?”

“Whatever is it, its trying to communicate with us.” Katherine said.

                                                       *********************

There was a pandemonium in the common hall. “How can it be that a civilization dug deep inside the earth, be contacting with you?”

“Hell it is indeed very possible that they escaped the ice age.”

“You can’t predict an ice age; leave alone the question of escaping it.” The geologist said.

“They must have, and the fact is they are contacting with us just now. The etching keeps on changing continuously and…” Katherine cried heatedly.

“It could possibly their form of computer working on heat instead of electricity.”

“Yah, it is indeed possible. It must be so.”

“What the hell I couldn’t understand is that how we have these things embedded in the ice and not beneath it.”

“Yah that is what I am saying. They were alive during the ice age and then some how escaped it.” Ivan told.

“So it proves your point wrong that they predicted the ice age fore handedly and escaped it.”

“Sir?”

Each of the scientists looked in the direction of the technician.

“Yes, number 5?”

“The machine is no longer responding to fire treatment.”

There was a hole in the talk for few moments.

“This is it; I told you that they were indeed trying to communicate with us.” Katherine beamed. “And it would take time before they communicated with us ever again.”

“And how do you think the machine is working?”

“Well, that’s for you to figure out, not me.”

“Why, a machine with no sort of antenna, working on weak heat electricity, which is much less efficient than the normal electricity we use, communicating with us, how the hell is that possible?”

“Quantum entanglement.”

“What?” The others cried.

“Not possible.” The physicist chaffed.

“What the hell is he taking about??” The deputy coordinator asked.

“He is talking about a quantum knot which would then break into two perfectly identical pieces, if you make a change in one, automatically the same change would appear over other.”

“Well then, that must be the way they must be communicating.” Katherine said that in the manner that the case was closed.

“No, you didn’t listen to my whole explanation. Of course this sounds a very satisfactory answer but the point is Quantum entanglement does not work at large distances, and if you are telling that they escaped over to another planet, there is no way they must have communicated over large distances.”

The debate stopped abruptly.

“Hell, I am hungry, someone go and wake up that stupid slothful psychologist, he has hungry mouths to feed.”

                                                             *****************

“She is dead. No sign of pulse, we would have to postmortem her. There seems to be no apparent reason of her death.” The doctor said. They all were huddled in the girls’ room, where Katherine’s body was flopped across the writing chair. The atmosphere was somber in the room, it was not that no one expected death on this mission, but her death seemed beyond comprehension. Meteor attacks, gaseous fumes, solar radiations, there was nothing like that, what was there was an utterly non communicative expression on her face, it was as if she died a natural death at an age of 30 which seemed quite not possible.

“I would have to contact earth.” The expedition leader left the room.

The others just gaped at the dead body, hard to imagine that such a restless girl can ever be so at peace.

“All of you please leave the room.” The doctor requested the crew. The nurse was literally pushing them out doors. Viren looked at the body, and then he looked at the alien computer lying on the table. Naturally he felt terrified, extremely terrified.

                                                        *****************

The girl was sobbing inconsolably. As her being somewhat pretty, there were many men nearby her and ready to offer her a shoulder to sob on.

“I can’t believe that she is dead. It, it just can’t be so.”

The rest of the crew members who were not interested in offering their shoulders for a very gallant purpose were lost in their own reverie. Most of them were technicians in their free time.

“Doctor said that, her body was little tensed, but still her death eludes his mind.”

“Must not be a good doctor then.”

“He has been a practicing surgeon for ten years, plus a Ph d in human conditions in various atmospheres. If he doesn’t know what killed her, no one else can.”

“Could it be murder, strangulation, those tensed muscle could tell something?”

“Stefan does think himself to be better than the doctor, the doctor had considered that but no, that does not seems to be a reason. No marks on neck, no sign of resistance, autopsy revealed nothing that can show how she exactly died.”

“Must have died from the lame flirting of the physicist.”

The technicians laughed. Well, any way they didn’t care much for a death of a scientist, one less to order around and treat them as shit.  

“It must be something related to the alien computer she so loved. Might have fallen down, chatting with the other worldies, what you think, Doctor?”

They all turned to the psychologist, as he sat there listening to their banter. They respected him, he had a degree and at the same time was excellent in physical work, and he happened to be the only one of those superiors who did not boss them.

“I am simply baffled, I don’t know how or why she is dead, only time would tell.”

They all hummed in agreement. Indeed time would answer their questions.

                                                    **********************

“Please sir, help, he seems to be raving madly.”

“Boy, I have three injured scientists there, whole of the research ice section had been wrenched off, I am in no position to deal with these minor ravings, when I have grim situation in hand. Slap him once or twice, and he would come back to normal.”

“Sir, he, he seems to have forgotten to distinguish between left and right, and he seems very weak…..”

“I don’t have time, for your shit.” The scientist pushed him aside.

The psychologist spontaneously stood up. “Take me to him.”

The boy looked quite afraid. He was speeding up the rover, it was exceeding the limit. They stopped by a large glass dome. They entered the technicians’ area.

Here people were bustling around to and fro. As soon as they received their orders they would rush forward to those co-ordinates where they were called for and do their assigned job. Some of them   had returned from a very dangerous assignment of bringing back those scientists and the technicians who were busy in their work. The weather was getting worse, they would soon experience a gigantic gravitational pull from that black hole. Mountains, boulders would be wrenched out of their roots and sucked into the deep nothingness. Though this one was extremely far away, but this sort of things happened regularly. The part of the universe in which this planet was situated had too many black holes to go with. Whole sections of ice would be sucked out of the ground, taking away with them the alien findings. The resulting earth quake would be terrible to bear.

The only way that they along with their gigantic glassdome are not sucked into that hole would be devising an artificial black hole on the opposite direction of the same effective magnitude. Viren could imagine, how just one mistake would result into their suction, and he didn’t want to have that sort of death.

He entered into the bloke’s ward, where he was resting on the upper bunk bed. Surely that guy was raving mad.

“Sphere, sphere.” He was continuously mumbling that to himself. Two or three technicians were hunched around, trying to soothe down that technician.

They looked up expectantly, when they heard the glass frame click, Viren of course was able to trace out their dismal looks when they saw him, but that look was immediately replaced by embarrassed smile. Viren drank up his ego and asked how was the old fella.

“He has been continuously rambling about some sphere.” Viren came closer to that weak person. The old man had deep blue eyes, and he seemed lost in his own reverie. The poor guy seemed really weak.

“Was strong as a horse just about yesterday, but after that female scientist’s death, he seems lost.” One of the technicians said, he had the same blue eyes, probably he must be his son.

Viren felt a chill in his gut. “Was he probably the last person to see her alive?”

The boy nodded.

Viren pursed his mouth. This case was extremely fishy. That alien thing was much more than a metallic computer, of that he was extremely sure.

He checked the old man’s pulse. Oddly enough they seemed regular. What sort of problem had kick started here? He could not have a disease.

Back home, each and every person was checked vigorously for some five years before they could get an approval for the mission. There was no trace of pathogen in the surrounding, and here the main problem was not availability of microorganisms, it was lack of it. Human body contained bacteria in much more amount than it contained its own cells, most of them which are useful in many different functions, many being present in your stomach, where they would digest food. In artificial conditions the culture of bacteria was grown and they were artificially suffused in the air, inside the glass dome, so that they could function properly. Yet Viren could not properly understand what problem this guy faced. Of course he was no doctor, as to understand his disease, all he could wager was some unrecorded inherited disorder. The earth men would not be happy with the goof up.

Then he noticed something peculiar. The veins which carried the deoxygenated blood, were not its usual green, but they looked fresh red of pure blood.

Viren felt certain that if he didn’t hurry, the old bloke may die much sooner.