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It appears that Zahfear's visit wasn't just a conjugal one. He found something on Titan. Something that shouldn't be there.
Commission for
coolwhiprenegade
Art by
invidiasaunder
Story by me
A ding from the computer strapped to Zvezda’s wrist abruptly dragged him from the pleasant afterglow of sex. His ears flicked with annoyance and released Zahfear’s paws, which were still clutching him to the wolf’s chest, and checked the computer. A new message read: “WE HAVE SOMETHING IN THE LAB I’M SURE YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE. WE COULD USE YOUR HELP. - Dr. Felix Klein”. It seemed like Felix had left caps-lock on, as usual. Zvezda wondered if the head researcher of his department simply forgot, or did it intentionally to match his forceful personality.
The fox sighed and let his paw fall back to Zahfear’s, and the wolf snuffled over his ears. “What’s up, foxy?” he asked.
“They have something in the lab they want me to see,” Zvezda answered, his chocolate brown ears flicking under Zahfear’s nuzzling. He was torn, the message having piqued his curiosity, but he didn’t want to leave Zahfear on one of his visits. “But I’m off, and you’re here.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go see? I can come with you, if they don’t mind me being there,” Zahfear said, picking up on Zvezda’s curiosity. The fox thought it over for a moment and his curiosity won out.
By now the wolf’s knot had shrunk enough for them to separate. They cleaned up in the sponge-bath shower in the corner of Zvezda’s quarters before dressing and leaving for the station’s central corridor. They made their way towards the tip of Huygens Station furthest from where it was anchored to Titan by the enormous space elevator. Using the metal rungs within the cylindrical corridor, their weightlessness sped them along swiftly.
“Zvezda! There you are! Yes, come in and have a look at what the lads down on Titan found for us!” Felix’s booming voice, surprising for a ferret, crashed out of the lab almost the moment the doors began to slide open. Like the other researchers in the lab, Felix wore a white suit, reminiscent of a lab coat albeit adapted for a zero gravity environment, over his brown and white fur.
The ferret waved him in from where he hovered over a table with instruments fastened to it by magnetism, but hesitated when Zahfear moved to join Zvezda as he entered. “Uh, who is that? You know access to the lab is strictly limited to the research team,” Felix said uncertainly, eyeing Zahfear.
“I was on the team that recovered the artifact, doctor,” Zahfear explained with a smile. Zvezda shot the wolf a look of surprise, but Zahfear’s eyes were still on the ferret. The fox knew that behind that polite smile was an iron-willed determination not to let this ferret push him around.
Sure enough, after a moment’s hesitation, Felix folded, “Oh, very well. Come see, then,” he said, waving them over again quickly.
Zvezda smiled to himself despite his slight consternation at the wolf for not telling him what was going on sooner. “What do you have, Felix?” Zvezda asked as he floated into the room.
The lab was circular, and being at the end of the station, enjoyed broad windows that covered the walls and ceiling. The work stations around the room had a wide array of artifacts and equipment secured to their surfaces. Scientists and their assistants worked fastened to these tables by nylon straps to keep them from drifting away from their subject of study.
“Something most extraordinary! A Precursor artifact that just came up on the recent car from Titan, no doubt with your friend here,” Felix explained with a nod to Zahfear. He handed to Zvezda what appeared to be a trapezoidal dark stone tablet with ornate carvings around its edges, framing several lines of mysterious symbols standing in relief in the center of the tablet.
“This was found nearby also, we think they’re related somehow…” Felix said, pressing a small half-sphere of similarly colored stone into Zvezda’s other paw. The fox hummed in thought, peering over the tablet and accompanying stone, eyes trailing over the symbols in relief. “It is Precursor, isn’t it? I didn’t even have a chance to run it through the VI program yet,” Felix went on.
Zvezda nodded and glanced at Zahfear, who was looking between him and the tablet with interest. “Where did you find these?” he asked.
“We found them lying in the dust when we were prospecting for a new line to one of the lakes nearby,” Zahfear explained.
“Near the surface? It can’t be stone, despite what it looks like. It would be weathered,” Zvezda said in thought He passed the half-sphere into his other paw, gripping it and the tablet together so he could pull himself closer to the table in front of him. A sound like smooth river rocks grinding over each other with a wet hiss suddenly came from the tablet. He peered at it curiously, and realized that the symbols framed in the middle of the tablet had changed. They had seemingly rearranged themselves into a new pattern.
“What was that? Did you damage it?” Felix said with concern and both he and Zahfear crowded closer to peer at the tablet.
Zvezda’s ears flicked with annoyance at the ferret’s suggestion he could damage an artifact Titan hadn’t managed to in some 50,000 years, but paid him no mind. Instead he took the half-sphere in one paw and drew it from right to left just a centimeter over the surface of the tablet again. There was the sound of the river rocks again, and when Zvezda drew his paw away, new symbols had appeared on the tablet.
“Extraordinary!” Felix breathed. “Can you read it?”
Zvezda nodded. “I recognize it, but there are words I haven’t seen before…” he said and began swiping through the tablet’s ‘pages’, trying to find a complete passage.
Felix seemed disappointed for a moment but quickly brightened. “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Let me know if you find anything!” the ferret said with a slap to Zvezda’s shoulder before launching himself away to bother some of his other underlings. Where normally the fox would have been annoyed with Felix’s assumption that he would stay and work on the tablet, he quickly grew too engrossed in the thing to put it down.
Zvezda began scanning each page of text with his wrist computer and running it through a virtual intelligence program. There proved to be a surprising amount of data on the tablet. He tried to see if he could switch to other “programs” on the thing by moving the stone over the surface of the tablet in other directions, but nothing seemed to happen other than when it moved it left or right.
After feeding several pages to the virtual intelligence, it gave a couple beeps and a blue holographic image was displayed above the table. Files containing the text from the Precursor beacons found on Mars and Europa were opened, displaying the text in the original Precursor script and their translations. This was provided by way of the ‘Rosette stone’ files originally found within the beacon on Mars. The Precursors had designed it using universal constants, mathematics, the consistent spin rates of the pulsars nearest Earth, and the like, to provide the key to their language.
These scraps from the data-mines stored in the beacons were the only thing the VI program was able to glean from the couple hundred pages on the tablet. So Zvezda turned his attention to these, reading the files for any clues to the tablet’s purpose.
He failed to notice the time passing, thoroughly engrossed in his research until a couple of gray paws appeared in his peripheral vision. The fox looked over to find a thermal drink bag containing hot tea floating beside a boxed pastry near the table. He looked up and found that the other scientists had gone, leaving the lab empty save for himself and the wolf floating by a window and staring out at the stars. The room was dim, light only by the stars and some of the lamps at the tables.
Zvezda’s ears folded back guiltily. “I’m sorry, wolfy,” he said to Zahfear. He turned off the VI program and enclosed the tablet and stone in a clear acrylic box secured to the table. “I should have been spending the time with you.”
Zahfear turned and smiled as Zvezda pushed himself over to the wolf, who wrapped him in a tight hug. “You’re fine, foxy,” he said quietly with a nuzzle. Zvezda returned his nuzzle appreciatively and allowed himself to melt into his mate’s arms, sighing quietly and enjoying his presence as he hugged him back. “Any luck figuring that thing out?” Zahfear asked.
Zvezda shook his head. “Not really. There’s bits and pieces from the beacons on Mars and Europa, but I’m missing something,” he paused then and looked at the wolf, “Why didn’t you say something about finding the thing?”
Zahfear smiled, “I wanted it to be a surprise, I knew you’d be interested in it. And we had something more important to do anyway,” he said and gave the fox a squeeze. “Maybe if you take a break it’ll come to you?” he offered.
“Sounds like you just want to get me alone with you,” Zvezda said with a grin and stuck his tongue out teasingly.
“Maybe,” Zahfear demurred before pressing his lips to Zvezda’s, catching the fox’s tongue between gentle teeth before it could escape. The wolf’s strong paws slipped down Zvezda’s back to grope his rear.
The fox’s sheath was stirring within moments, and as their lips parted he angled his hips and pressed them to Zahfear to find his was as well. “We’re alone now,” he said in a sultry voice.
“I, uh…” Zahfear hesitated, shooting a look at the door to the lab. “What if someone comes back?”
“We’ll tell them to go away,” Zvezda answered with a mischievous smile. At the same time he pressed his paws to the wolf’s groin, gripping the hardening shaft beneath the fabric and pressing firmly.
Zahfear grunted and pressed his hips forward, grinding his maleness into Zvezda’s paws. The wolf seemed to mull it over for a moment and shot the door another glance before finally relenting. His own paws went to the matching hardness in Zvezda’s pants and their lips met again, kissing as they groped each other’s arousal through their pants.
Zvezda’s heart beat faster with excitement as their lips parted and they unfastened each other’s pants while grinning and giggling to each other. In moments their matching canine cocks were free from their fabric prisons and standing erect in the open air. With a paw gripping Zveda’s ass, the wolf pulled him closer until their shafts bumped together and the wolf’s other paw encircled them.
Zvezda groaned softly and arched his hips, thrusting his hardness against Zahfear’s as their hot flesh met. An answering growl and thrust came from the wolf as a shiver ran down Zvezda’s spine. Zahfear collected the pre already emerging at their tips, using it to slick his paw pads and their cocks, allowing him to start stroking them together.
Their soft groans and pants of pleasure filled the silent lab as Zahfear’s paw worked up and down. Zvezda snuck a paw under the wolf’s shirt and stroked up over his chest, his fingers running through the fur and feeling the taught muscle beneath. Their eyes met and grins came to their muzzles before their lips met again.
Zahfear’s tongue pressed into the fox’s muzzle, seeking his out. Zvezda’s withdrew and darted away playfully, at which a growl rose in Zahfear’s chest. The wolf gripped Zvezda’s ass firmly and pulled him into a heavy thrust of his hips, grinding their swelling knots together. Zvezda moaned into Zahfear’s muzzle as a jolt of pleasure shot through him, and the wolf seized the opportunity to catch his tongue. At that moment, the fox didn’t mind very much, and laid his ears back against his head as their tongues danced together in his muzzle.
Jolts of pleasure shot up Zvezda’s spine like arcing electricity as Zahfear’s hard cock rubbed against his. It teased his orgasm closer and closer, and seemed to be doing so for the wolf too, judging by the volume of pre now covering their shafts. Their lips parted and Zahfear’s muzzle rested over his, parted and panting slightly. The wolf’s body was tensing up just as Zvezda’s was, and together the males rode towards climax.
Their knots swelled full, and Zvezda lent a paw and gripped their knots together while Zahfear continued stroking their shafts. They moaned their pleasure together as their cocks pulsed, seed pumping through them until at nearly the same moment, they crested their peaks. Their muzzles both tilted down, brushing together to watch as white cum erupted from their cocks.
Without gravity to pull them back down, the long ropes of semen shot straight up between them. They were quickly followed by more as they released together, rope after rope of cum surging from their bodies. Zvezda moaned and shuddered, and rode the wave of pleasure down with his mate towards a satisfied feeling of spent emptiness.
They were left panting, chests heaving for breath as they watched the ropes of seed drift upwards. Their combined release drifted as a long stream of ropes extending upwards towards the ceiling. Suddenly light poured through the windows in as Titan rotated in its orbit and exposed the station to the sun. The sun’s bright rays first spread across the ceiling, and then began to fill the room. Zvezda watched as the rays of light seemed to descend down the stream of spent seed he and his mate had made, illuminating it from the ceiling downwards until the sunlight fell on their receding shafts.
“Hey, where are you going?” Zahfear said. Epiphany had struck Zvezda suddenly. Without warning he disentangled himself from Zahfear and pushed himself over to his work station. Zvezda’s mind was whirring too fast to reply, only pausing to stuff his sheath and shrinking member back into his pants. He withdrew the tablet and controller from their acryllic box before unwinding a couple of cable leads from the table’s surface and clamped the bare metal ends to the tablet’s stone surface.
“Hey, you have to help me clean this up, foxy!” Zahfear exclaimed. Zvezda was distantly aware of the wolf scrambling to find towels to capture the ropes of semen they had left floating in the air. The fox was busy turning through pages in the tablet however. Frustratingly, there was no result until he tried swiping up and down again.
There was a beep from Zvezda’s wrist computer and a holographic display appeared in front of him at the edge of the table. It showed a graph of a consistent low energy output, with a single spike at the end – the moment he had swiped the controller up.
“It’s putting out an energy signal!” Zvezda said triumphantly and looked up. “Wolfy, stop flailing around and come here.”
Zahfear finished capturing the last of their fluids in some pilfered paper towels and turned his head to glare faux daggers at Zvezda. The fox was unable to contain a mischievous grin from spreading across his vulpine muzzle.
“What is it?” the wolf asked as he approached.
“Hold these,” Zvezda instructed, pressing the Precursor device into Zahfear’s paws. He pushed himself away and lifted his wrist computer to run a scan. “Swipe up,” he said and the wolf did so.
There was another beep and a moment later a new projection appeared above the table. It was a graphical representation of Titan, with Huygens Station clearly visible orbiting above. A blue line appeared, indicating the approximate path of the energy signal sent by the tablet. It shot from the top of the station down to the moon’s surface, not far from the outpost at the base of the station’s tether. It appeared to end near the edge of a hydrocarbon lake, presumably where Zahfear and his crew had been working to install a new pipeline.
Zvezda stabbed a claw that the blue line’s terminus on Titan’s surface. “There’s something down there.”
Zvezda struggled to read through the lines of symbols on the tablet as the exploration truck bounced around him. It felt unusual to be back on solid ground after so many months with nothing but artificial gravity, even more so to be aboard the bucking truck. With Zahfear driving though, he wasn’t worried. The wolf knew the way, and he was following the utility truck full of miners that had grumbled about “babysitting scientists”.
The back of the truck was dark and the instrumentation and tools tied down for transport. The handful of other scientists, mostly geologists and meteorologists, were peering anxiously out of the small porthole-like windows in the sides of the truck’s hull. Titan’s fierce winds threw sand at the windows and a light methane rain pelted the roof with a dull rumble. The truck’s six knobbly tires churned through the dirt steadily, following a faint lurching trail that had been pioneered for the new pipeline. The rust-orange utility truck ahead of them had a powerful crane latched to the roof where the white exploration truck had a delicate array of sensors.
“Any luck making anything of the writing?” Felix asked Zvezda curiously. He was leaning over annoyingly to peer at the tablet in the fox’s paws, even though he was quite sure the ferret was completely incapable of reading the symbols.
Zvezda nodded, ignoring the ferret’s obnoxiousness for the moment. “They look like fragments of stories. But there are words in them that aren’t in the database at all. They could be names…” he explained, trailing off as he read.
“We’ll be at the site in a couple minutes!” Zahfear called over his shoulder as the truck crested over a steep hill with a sickening lurch and began crawling down the slope. Unable to focus because of the truck’s bouncing and his growing excitement, Zvezda secured the tablet and its controller in a sturdy pelican case before unbuckling his seat belt. The fox carefully made his way to the short ladder towards the front of the compartment and pulled himself up the couple feet to the driver’s compartment.
“Everyone okay back there?” Zahfear asked him without taking his eyes off the truck further down the slope.
Zvezda buckled himself into the co-pilot’s seat beside the wolf. The compartment was cramped, with instrumentation panels crowded around both seats that displayed the status of the truck’s hull and the atmosphere outside. A quarter dome of glass offered a spectacular view of the alien valley they were descending into. It was shaped like an elongated bowl, with a channel cut through the icy surface by millions of years of flowing liquid hydrocarbons. At the center lay a broad yellow lake, its surface choppy with waves kicked up by the strong winds.
Before Zvezda could answer the truck abruptly lurched sideways as the icy earth gave way. Alarmingly the truck swung and began sliding downhill towards the other vehicle. Zahfear swung his steering wheel hard and hit the accelerator before slowing the truck, bringing it back under control. The vehicles had reached the base of the hill and sat at the bottom of the valley, in a vast open space.
With the wolf’s question forgotten, Zvezda blinked in disbelief as he peered through the domed windshield towards the methane lake ahead. “What is that?” he breathed.
Incongruously, two massive almost pyramidal stone monoliths with flat tops stood near the lake’s edge, the liquid methane just a few feet from their base. They stood nearly twenty feet high and about half as wide, and an equal space separating them. They stood impassively, seemingly uncaring of the icy dust that swirled around them and tried in vain to wear at their bulk.
Silence reigned in the truck as it rolled to a halt yet yards away from the incongruous structures. The wind howled against the hull as both Zvezda and Zahfear stared at the imposing alien monoliths. The other truck had stopped dead too, its driver as overawed as they.
“What’s going on? Are we there…” Felix’s voice died in his throat as he climbed up the ladder and peered over the dashboard.
“Is this where you found the tablet?” Zvezda asked Zahfear in a murmur. The long shadows of the monoliths reaching towards them seemed to demand the voice be hushed in respect, as if in a great cathedral.
The wolf nodded slowly. “They weren’t here when we were here…” he replied. “Are these like the beacons on Mars and Europa?”
Zvezda shook his head. “No, those were like pylons. They were pouring out radio signals. They were meant to be found…” he left the rest of the sentence left unsaid and it churned in his gut uncomfortably – that these weren’t.
Zahfear touched a finger to the headset he was wearing clipped to his ears and which had a small boom that brought a microphone near the end of his muzzle. “Sierra Gulf One, everybody okay up there?” he murmured.
Zvezda’s ears rotated of their own accord, listening to the crackling voice that came through Zahfear’s headset. “Sierra Gulf Two, we’re okay. Just… surprised.” came the muffled reply. “We saw you had some trouble back there. Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine, just some loose ice.” Zahfear explained. “Sierra Gulf One is going to approach the… structures, for a better look,” he said and looked over at Zvezda. The fox gave a nod and the wolf eased the truck forward. They rolled slowly around the other truck and towards the monoliths, edging into their dark shadows.
As they got closer, Zvezda’s sharp vulpine eyes were able to make out reliefs etched into the stone. The symbols of the Precursor language stood out from the smooth surface in self-contained chunks. Incredibly, every edge of every symbol and those of the great stones themselves, were perfect. It was as if they had been carved by a laser, leaving every edge seemingly sharp enough to cut the eye that gazed upon it.
When the truck rolled to a stop within the monoliths’ long shadow Zvezda flipped a couple of switches on the dash and took control of a long boom that extended from the truck’s roof. It swung into view as a holographic display appeared to the side of the dash, showing a feed from the camera on the sensory array at the end of the boom. In addition to that were a number of tools, including a clamp and drill.
“What does it say?” Felix demanded as Zvezda panned the camera over one of the chunks of text on the stone.
The fox ignored him as his eyes darted furiously over the holographic display. His fur prickled, the fur on his bushy tail standing on end. He stared wide-eyed out the domed window at the monoliths outside in disbelief.
“What is it, fox?” Zahfear asked cautiously. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
The scraps of text, fragments of stories, from the tablet slid into place. The unknown words had kept him from seeing the whole. He had missed the forest for the trees.
“They’re Aesop’s Fables,” Zvezda said.
The sound of the wind’s howling reigned again in the truck as everyone remained silent, alternatively staring at him and the monoliths outside, even the scientists in the back.
“How?” Zahfear asked with incredulity.
“Maybe they were studying us in our past. We don’t know how old these things are,” Zvezda ventured, indicating the monoliths with a paw.
“And why here?” Zahfear said in a low voice, peering out the domed window. It was a bleak and unlikely place for such an incredible find. If these stones could sprout from Titan’s surface, perhaps the moon held yet more secrets.
Zvezda reached for the pelican case containing the tablet and its controller, popping the lid open quickly and taking the artifacts out. “This was sending an energy signal down here. Maybe it has something to do with these…” he said as he paged through the text on the tablet. The sound of grinding river rocks came again, louder, and from outside the truck’s hull this time.
“It’s changing. On that one, there,” Zahfear said, looking up at the stone on the right, indicating a chunk of text with a claw.
Zvezda followed his finger with his eyes and waved the control stone over the tablet again. A portion of the text on the rightmost chunk wavered and the lines of the symbols shifted into a new passage. “It’s a combination lock,” he said.
“To what?” Felix asked from behind them, still on the ladder.
“I don’t know, but maybe we were meant to find it…” Zvezda said as he paged through the tablet quickly. Indeed, if one knew or had access to the fables, it wouldn’t be difficult to match up the passages. As the fox worked through the lock, he realized that the unknown words were standing in the place of the animals’ names in the story.
While the process was simple, there were many stories etched in the stones, and many fragments to sort through on the tablet. It took nearly an hour of work before finally Zvezda set the final passage into its correct order. “Got it!” he called back to Zahfear and the other scientists, who were talking in the back of the truck. Zahfear rushed up the ladder while the other scientists crowded around a display of the truck’s exterior camera feeds. Even the other truck had crept closer in the meantime.
At first nothing happened. There had been nothing to indicate that Zvezda had made the correct selections. He began to worry he had mixed up one of the previous passages, and would have to start all over again. He didn’t even know what they were waiting for, if anything.
“The lake, look!” Zahfear said, pointing with a paw. In the space between the stones, the liquid methane seemed to be sinking and rushing away as if the bottom of the lake had split open. A new longer pair of dark stones appeared from beneath the surface, stretching out in parallel towards the center of the lake. Zvezda blinked at the black sliver left stretching from the shore to the middle of the lake, a dark void that the weak sunlight struggled to penetrate.
“Let’s get a closer look,” Zvezda said, setting the tablet down carefully. The gap between the monoliths was too narrow for the truck; they would have to investigate on foot.
Zvezda heard the others murmuring as he stepped into the black and blue space suit embedded in its storage pod in the side of the hull. With it on he stepped back and zipped up the self-sealing zipper up the torso. A mix of apprehension and excitement built in his chest as he turned and grabbed the suit’s clear tail section. He carefully stuffed his bushy tail inside and fastened it to the back of the suit. He grabbed the clear fishbowl helmet, designed to accommodate most species, off the top rack of the pod. He tilted his muzzle up into it before seating it onto the suit’s attachment ring, twisting and locking it into place, and actuating the sealing clamps. He tried and failed to resist flicking his ears reflexively as he felt their tips brush against the clear polymer material.
An audible hiss filled his ears for a moment as the suit pressurized and filled with oxygen. He checked the wrist-mounted computer and the readout told him the suit was functioning properly. He looked up to see that everyone else was ready too.
They crowded into the tiny airlock at the back of the truck, practically bumping into each other, as the atmosphere was equalized with Titan’s. Zvezda was glad to find that the wind and rain had died down, letting them easily descend the short ramp to the surface. Instead, the alien moon had become eerily silent now save for the crunching of the ice under the fox’s feet. Even more incredibly, the gases in Titan’s thick atmosphere had shifted, allowing for the faint twinkling of starlight to filter down to the surface.
Figures waved from the cockpit of the other truck as Zvezda and Zahfear made their way around their own truck, the other scientists close behind them. Zahfear waved back as Zvezda approached one of the large stone monoliths.
“It’s the same material as the tablet,” Zvezda explained over the intercom after inspecting the stone more closely and giving it a few taps with the suit’s clawed fingers. No mere stone, the monolith’s could endure the worst Titan could throw at them for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years.
“There’s something happening down there,” Zahfear said. He had stepped through the space between the great monoliths, and was pointing into the black sliver that cut through the center of the lake. Zvezda joined him, and saw at the far end of the void, a bright white light was appearing. Stairs appeared before them, revealed by the white light appearing as if a door was opening, sliding upward from the floor. The stairs lead down, below the waves of liquid methane and into the heart of the hydrocarbon lake, towards the white light.
“What do you think is down there?” Zvezda murmured as he turned to look at the wolf, his eyes shining through his domed helmet. Anxiety warred with curiosity within him.
Zahfear offered his gloved paw to the fox. “You said we were meant to be on the frontier, together, wherever that is. Let’s find out,” he said.
Zvezda hesitated, shooting another glance at the white light at the end of the chasm awaiting them. Then he nodded and took Zahfear’s paw. Together, they began the descent into Titan’s mysterious depths.
Commission for
coolwhiprenegadeArt by
invidiasaunderStory by me
<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>FRONTIER’S EMBRACE
PART 2
By Aygis
A ding from the computer strapped to Zvezda’s wrist abruptly dragged him from the pleasant afterglow of sex. His ears flicked with annoyance and released Zahfear’s paws, which were still clutching him to the wolf’s chest, and checked the computer. A new message read: “WE HAVE SOMETHING IN THE LAB I’M SURE YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE. WE COULD USE YOUR HELP. - Dr. Felix Klein”. It seemed like Felix had left caps-lock on, as usual. Zvezda wondered if the head researcher of his department simply forgot, or did it intentionally to match his forceful personality.
The fox sighed and let his paw fall back to Zahfear’s, and the wolf snuffled over his ears. “What’s up, foxy?” he asked.
“They have something in the lab they want me to see,” Zvezda answered, his chocolate brown ears flicking under Zahfear’s nuzzling. He was torn, the message having piqued his curiosity, but he didn’t want to leave Zahfear on one of his visits. “But I’m off, and you’re here.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go see? I can come with you, if they don’t mind me being there,” Zahfear said, picking up on Zvezda’s curiosity. The fox thought it over for a moment and his curiosity won out.
By now the wolf’s knot had shrunk enough for them to separate. They cleaned up in the sponge-bath shower in the corner of Zvezda’s quarters before dressing and leaving for the station’s central corridor. They made their way towards the tip of Huygens Station furthest from where it was anchored to Titan by the enormous space elevator. Using the metal rungs within the cylindrical corridor, their weightlessness sped them along swiftly.
“Zvezda! There you are! Yes, come in and have a look at what the lads down on Titan found for us!” Felix’s booming voice, surprising for a ferret, crashed out of the lab almost the moment the doors began to slide open. Like the other researchers in the lab, Felix wore a white suit, reminiscent of a lab coat albeit adapted for a zero gravity environment, over his brown and white fur.
The ferret waved him in from where he hovered over a table with instruments fastened to it by magnetism, but hesitated when Zahfear moved to join Zvezda as he entered. “Uh, who is that? You know access to the lab is strictly limited to the research team,” Felix said uncertainly, eyeing Zahfear.
“I was on the team that recovered the artifact, doctor,” Zahfear explained with a smile. Zvezda shot the wolf a look of surprise, but Zahfear’s eyes were still on the ferret. The fox knew that behind that polite smile was an iron-willed determination not to let this ferret push him around.
Sure enough, after a moment’s hesitation, Felix folded, “Oh, very well. Come see, then,” he said, waving them over again quickly.
Zvezda smiled to himself despite his slight consternation at the wolf for not telling him what was going on sooner. “What do you have, Felix?” Zvezda asked as he floated into the room.
The lab was circular, and being at the end of the station, enjoyed broad windows that covered the walls and ceiling. The work stations around the room had a wide array of artifacts and equipment secured to their surfaces. Scientists and their assistants worked fastened to these tables by nylon straps to keep them from drifting away from their subject of study.
“Something most extraordinary! A Precursor artifact that just came up on the recent car from Titan, no doubt with your friend here,” Felix explained with a nod to Zahfear. He handed to Zvezda what appeared to be a trapezoidal dark stone tablet with ornate carvings around its edges, framing several lines of mysterious symbols standing in relief in the center of the tablet.
“This was found nearby also, we think they’re related somehow…” Felix said, pressing a small half-sphere of similarly colored stone into Zvezda’s other paw. The fox hummed in thought, peering over the tablet and accompanying stone, eyes trailing over the symbols in relief. “It is Precursor, isn’t it? I didn’t even have a chance to run it through the VI program yet,” Felix went on.
Zvezda nodded and glanced at Zahfear, who was looking between him and the tablet with interest. “Where did you find these?” he asked.
“We found them lying in the dust when we were prospecting for a new line to one of the lakes nearby,” Zahfear explained.
“Near the surface? It can’t be stone, despite what it looks like. It would be weathered,” Zvezda said in thought He passed the half-sphere into his other paw, gripping it and the tablet together so he could pull himself closer to the table in front of him. A sound like smooth river rocks grinding over each other with a wet hiss suddenly came from the tablet. He peered at it curiously, and realized that the symbols framed in the middle of the tablet had changed. They had seemingly rearranged themselves into a new pattern.
“What was that? Did you damage it?” Felix said with concern and both he and Zahfear crowded closer to peer at the tablet.
Zvezda’s ears flicked with annoyance at the ferret’s suggestion he could damage an artifact Titan hadn’t managed to in some 50,000 years, but paid him no mind. Instead he took the half-sphere in one paw and drew it from right to left just a centimeter over the surface of the tablet again. There was the sound of the river rocks again, and when Zvezda drew his paw away, new symbols had appeared on the tablet.
“Extraordinary!” Felix breathed. “Can you read it?”
Zvezda nodded. “I recognize it, but there are words I haven’t seen before…” he said and began swiping through the tablet’s ‘pages’, trying to find a complete passage.
Felix seemed disappointed for a moment but quickly brightened. “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Let me know if you find anything!” the ferret said with a slap to Zvezda’s shoulder before launching himself away to bother some of his other underlings. Where normally the fox would have been annoyed with Felix’s assumption that he would stay and work on the tablet, he quickly grew too engrossed in the thing to put it down.
Zvezda began scanning each page of text with his wrist computer and running it through a virtual intelligence program. There proved to be a surprising amount of data on the tablet. He tried to see if he could switch to other “programs” on the thing by moving the stone over the surface of the tablet in other directions, but nothing seemed to happen other than when it moved it left or right.
After feeding several pages to the virtual intelligence, it gave a couple beeps and a blue holographic image was displayed above the table. Files containing the text from the Precursor beacons found on Mars and Europa were opened, displaying the text in the original Precursor script and their translations. This was provided by way of the ‘Rosette stone’ files originally found within the beacon on Mars. The Precursors had designed it using universal constants, mathematics, the consistent spin rates of the pulsars nearest Earth, and the like, to provide the key to their language.
These scraps from the data-mines stored in the beacons were the only thing the VI program was able to glean from the couple hundred pages on the tablet. So Zvezda turned his attention to these, reading the files for any clues to the tablet’s purpose.
He failed to notice the time passing, thoroughly engrossed in his research until a couple of gray paws appeared in his peripheral vision. The fox looked over to find a thermal drink bag containing hot tea floating beside a boxed pastry near the table. He looked up and found that the other scientists had gone, leaving the lab empty save for himself and the wolf floating by a window and staring out at the stars. The room was dim, light only by the stars and some of the lamps at the tables.
Zvezda’s ears folded back guiltily. “I’m sorry, wolfy,” he said to Zahfear. He turned off the VI program and enclosed the tablet and stone in a clear acrylic box secured to the table. “I should have been spending the time with you.”
Zahfear turned and smiled as Zvezda pushed himself over to the wolf, who wrapped him in a tight hug. “You’re fine, foxy,” he said quietly with a nuzzle. Zvezda returned his nuzzle appreciatively and allowed himself to melt into his mate’s arms, sighing quietly and enjoying his presence as he hugged him back. “Any luck figuring that thing out?” Zahfear asked.
Zvezda shook his head. “Not really. There’s bits and pieces from the beacons on Mars and Europa, but I’m missing something,” he paused then and looked at the wolf, “Why didn’t you say something about finding the thing?”
Zahfear smiled, “I wanted it to be a surprise, I knew you’d be interested in it. And we had something more important to do anyway,” he said and gave the fox a squeeze. “Maybe if you take a break it’ll come to you?” he offered.
“Sounds like you just want to get me alone with you,” Zvezda said with a grin and stuck his tongue out teasingly.
“Maybe,” Zahfear demurred before pressing his lips to Zvezda’s, catching the fox’s tongue between gentle teeth before it could escape. The wolf’s strong paws slipped down Zvezda’s back to grope his rear.
The fox’s sheath was stirring within moments, and as their lips parted he angled his hips and pressed them to Zahfear to find his was as well. “We’re alone now,” he said in a sultry voice.
“I, uh…” Zahfear hesitated, shooting a look at the door to the lab. “What if someone comes back?”
“We’ll tell them to go away,” Zvezda answered with a mischievous smile. At the same time he pressed his paws to the wolf’s groin, gripping the hardening shaft beneath the fabric and pressing firmly.
Zahfear grunted and pressed his hips forward, grinding his maleness into Zvezda’s paws. The wolf seemed to mull it over for a moment and shot the door another glance before finally relenting. His own paws went to the matching hardness in Zvezda’s pants and their lips met again, kissing as they groped each other’s arousal through their pants.
Zvezda’s heart beat faster with excitement as their lips parted and they unfastened each other’s pants while grinning and giggling to each other. In moments their matching canine cocks were free from their fabric prisons and standing erect in the open air. With a paw gripping Zveda’s ass, the wolf pulled him closer until their shafts bumped together and the wolf’s other paw encircled them.
Zvezda groaned softly and arched his hips, thrusting his hardness against Zahfear’s as their hot flesh met. An answering growl and thrust came from the wolf as a shiver ran down Zvezda’s spine. Zahfear collected the pre already emerging at their tips, using it to slick his paw pads and their cocks, allowing him to start stroking them together.
Their soft groans and pants of pleasure filled the silent lab as Zahfear’s paw worked up and down. Zvezda snuck a paw under the wolf’s shirt and stroked up over his chest, his fingers running through the fur and feeling the taught muscle beneath. Their eyes met and grins came to their muzzles before their lips met again.
Zahfear’s tongue pressed into the fox’s muzzle, seeking his out. Zvezda’s withdrew and darted away playfully, at which a growl rose in Zahfear’s chest. The wolf gripped Zvezda’s ass firmly and pulled him into a heavy thrust of his hips, grinding their swelling knots together. Zvezda moaned into Zahfear’s muzzle as a jolt of pleasure shot through him, and the wolf seized the opportunity to catch his tongue. At that moment, the fox didn’t mind very much, and laid his ears back against his head as their tongues danced together in his muzzle.
Jolts of pleasure shot up Zvezda’s spine like arcing electricity as Zahfear’s hard cock rubbed against his. It teased his orgasm closer and closer, and seemed to be doing so for the wolf too, judging by the volume of pre now covering their shafts. Their lips parted and Zahfear’s muzzle rested over his, parted and panting slightly. The wolf’s body was tensing up just as Zvezda’s was, and together the males rode towards climax.
Their knots swelled full, and Zvezda lent a paw and gripped their knots together while Zahfear continued stroking their shafts. They moaned their pleasure together as their cocks pulsed, seed pumping through them until at nearly the same moment, they crested their peaks. Their muzzles both tilted down, brushing together to watch as white cum erupted from their cocks.
Without gravity to pull them back down, the long ropes of semen shot straight up between them. They were quickly followed by more as they released together, rope after rope of cum surging from their bodies. Zvezda moaned and shuddered, and rode the wave of pleasure down with his mate towards a satisfied feeling of spent emptiness.
They were left panting, chests heaving for breath as they watched the ropes of seed drift upwards. Their combined release drifted as a long stream of ropes extending upwards towards the ceiling. Suddenly light poured through the windows in as Titan rotated in its orbit and exposed the station to the sun. The sun’s bright rays first spread across the ceiling, and then began to fill the room. Zvezda watched as the rays of light seemed to descend down the stream of spent seed he and his mate had made, illuminating it from the ceiling downwards until the sunlight fell on their receding shafts.
“Hey, where are you going?” Zahfear said. Epiphany had struck Zvezda suddenly. Without warning he disentangled himself from Zahfear and pushed himself over to his work station. Zvezda’s mind was whirring too fast to reply, only pausing to stuff his sheath and shrinking member back into his pants. He withdrew the tablet and controller from their acryllic box before unwinding a couple of cable leads from the table’s surface and clamped the bare metal ends to the tablet’s stone surface.
“Hey, you have to help me clean this up, foxy!” Zahfear exclaimed. Zvezda was distantly aware of the wolf scrambling to find towels to capture the ropes of semen they had left floating in the air. The fox was busy turning through pages in the tablet however. Frustratingly, there was no result until he tried swiping up and down again.
There was a beep from Zvezda’s wrist computer and a holographic display appeared in front of him at the edge of the table. It showed a graph of a consistent low energy output, with a single spike at the end – the moment he had swiped the controller up.
“It’s putting out an energy signal!” Zvezda said triumphantly and looked up. “Wolfy, stop flailing around and come here.”
Zahfear finished capturing the last of their fluids in some pilfered paper towels and turned his head to glare faux daggers at Zvezda. The fox was unable to contain a mischievous grin from spreading across his vulpine muzzle.
“What is it?” the wolf asked as he approached.
“Hold these,” Zvezda instructed, pressing the Precursor device into Zahfear’s paws. He pushed himself away and lifted his wrist computer to run a scan. “Swipe up,” he said and the wolf did so.
There was another beep and a moment later a new projection appeared above the table. It was a graphical representation of Titan, with Huygens Station clearly visible orbiting above. A blue line appeared, indicating the approximate path of the energy signal sent by the tablet. It shot from the top of the station down to the moon’s surface, not far from the outpost at the base of the station’s tether. It appeared to end near the edge of a hydrocarbon lake, presumably where Zahfear and his crew had been working to install a new pipeline.
Zvezda stabbed a claw that the blue line’s terminus on Titan’s surface. “There’s something down there.”
---Zvezda struggled to read through the lines of symbols on the tablet as the exploration truck bounced around him. It felt unusual to be back on solid ground after so many months with nothing but artificial gravity, even more so to be aboard the bucking truck. With Zahfear driving though, he wasn’t worried. The wolf knew the way, and he was following the utility truck full of miners that had grumbled about “babysitting scientists”.
The back of the truck was dark and the instrumentation and tools tied down for transport. The handful of other scientists, mostly geologists and meteorologists, were peering anxiously out of the small porthole-like windows in the sides of the truck’s hull. Titan’s fierce winds threw sand at the windows and a light methane rain pelted the roof with a dull rumble. The truck’s six knobbly tires churned through the dirt steadily, following a faint lurching trail that had been pioneered for the new pipeline. The rust-orange utility truck ahead of them had a powerful crane latched to the roof where the white exploration truck had a delicate array of sensors.
“Any luck making anything of the writing?” Felix asked Zvezda curiously. He was leaning over annoyingly to peer at the tablet in the fox’s paws, even though he was quite sure the ferret was completely incapable of reading the symbols.
Zvezda nodded, ignoring the ferret’s obnoxiousness for the moment. “They look like fragments of stories. But there are words in them that aren’t in the database at all. They could be names…” he explained, trailing off as he read.
“We’ll be at the site in a couple minutes!” Zahfear called over his shoulder as the truck crested over a steep hill with a sickening lurch and began crawling down the slope. Unable to focus because of the truck’s bouncing and his growing excitement, Zvezda secured the tablet and its controller in a sturdy pelican case before unbuckling his seat belt. The fox carefully made his way to the short ladder towards the front of the compartment and pulled himself up the couple feet to the driver’s compartment.
“Everyone okay back there?” Zahfear asked him without taking his eyes off the truck further down the slope.
Zvezda buckled himself into the co-pilot’s seat beside the wolf. The compartment was cramped, with instrumentation panels crowded around both seats that displayed the status of the truck’s hull and the atmosphere outside. A quarter dome of glass offered a spectacular view of the alien valley they were descending into. It was shaped like an elongated bowl, with a channel cut through the icy surface by millions of years of flowing liquid hydrocarbons. At the center lay a broad yellow lake, its surface choppy with waves kicked up by the strong winds.
Before Zvezda could answer the truck abruptly lurched sideways as the icy earth gave way. Alarmingly the truck swung and began sliding downhill towards the other vehicle. Zahfear swung his steering wheel hard and hit the accelerator before slowing the truck, bringing it back under control. The vehicles had reached the base of the hill and sat at the bottom of the valley, in a vast open space.
With the wolf’s question forgotten, Zvezda blinked in disbelief as he peered through the domed windshield towards the methane lake ahead. “What is that?” he breathed.
Incongruously, two massive almost pyramidal stone monoliths with flat tops stood near the lake’s edge, the liquid methane just a few feet from their base. They stood nearly twenty feet high and about half as wide, and an equal space separating them. They stood impassively, seemingly uncaring of the icy dust that swirled around them and tried in vain to wear at their bulk.
Silence reigned in the truck as it rolled to a halt yet yards away from the incongruous structures. The wind howled against the hull as both Zvezda and Zahfear stared at the imposing alien monoliths. The other truck had stopped dead too, its driver as overawed as they.
“What’s going on? Are we there…” Felix’s voice died in his throat as he climbed up the ladder and peered over the dashboard.
“Is this where you found the tablet?” Zvezda asked Zahfear in a murmur. The long shadows of the monoliths reaching towards them seemed to demand the voice be hushed in respect, as if in a great cathedral.
The wolf nodded slowly. “They weren’t here when we were here…” he replied. “Are these like the beacons on Mars and Europa?”
Zvezda shook his head. “No, those were like pylons. They were pouring out radio signals. They were meant to be found…” he left the rest of the sentence left unsaid and it churned in his gut uncomfortably – that these weren’t.
Zahfear touched a finger to the headset he was wearing clipped to his ears and which had a small boom that brought a microphone near the end of his muzzle. “Sierra Gulf One, everybody okay up there?” he murmured.
Zvezda’s ears rotated of their own accord, listening to the crackling voice that came through Zahfear’s headset. “Sierra Gulf Two, we’re okay. Just… surprised.” came the muffled reply. “We saw you had some trouble back there. Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine, just some loose ice.” Zahfear explained. “Sierra Gulf One is going to approach the… structures, for a better look,” he said and looked over at Zvezda. The fox gave a nod and the wolf eased the truck forward. They rolled slowly around the other truck and towards the monoliths, edging into their dark shadows.
As they got closer, Zvezda’s sharp vulpine eyes were able to make out reliefs etched into the stone. The symbols of the Precursor language stood out from the smooth surface in self-contained chunks. Incredibly, every edge of every symbol and those of the great stones themselves, were perfect. It was as if they had been carved by a laser, leaving every edge seemingly sharp enough to cut the eye that gazed upon it.
When the truck rolled to a stop within the monoliths’ long shadow Zvezda flipped a couple of switches on the dash and took control of a long boom that extended from the truck’s roof. It swung into view as a holographic display appeared to the side of the dash, showing a feed from the camera on the sensory array at the end of the boom. In addition to that were a number of tools, including a clamp and drill.
“What does it say?” Felix demanded as Zvezda panned the camera over one of the chunks of text on the stone.
The fox ignored him as his eyes darted furiously over the holographic display. His fur prickled, the fur on his bushy tail standing on end. He stared wide-eyed out the domed window at the monoliths outside in disbelief.
“What is it, fox?” Zahfear asked cautiously. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
The scraps of text, fragments of stories, from the tablet slid into place. The unknown words had kept him from seeing the whole. He had missed the forest for the trees.
“They’re Aesop’s Fables,” Zvezda said.
The sound of the wind’s howling reigned again in the truck as everyone remained silent, alternatively staring at him and the monoliths outside, even the scientists in the back.
“How?” Zahfear asked with incredulity.
“Maybe they were studying us in our past. We don’t know how old these things are,” Zvezda ventured, indicating the monoliths with a paw.
“And why here?” Zahfear said in a low voice, peering out the domed window. It was a bleak and unlikely place for such an incredible find. If these stones could sprout from Titan’s surface, perhaps the moon held yet more secrets.
Zvezda reached for the pelican case containing the tablet and its controller, popping the lid open quickly and taking the artifacts out. “This was sending an energy signal down here. Maybe it has something to do with these…” he said as he paged through the text on the tablet. The sound of grinding river rocks came again, louder, and from outside the truck’s hull this time.
“It’s changing. On that one, there,” Zahfear said, looking up at the stone on the right, indicating a chunk of text with a claw.
Zvezda followed his finger with his eyes and waved the control stone over the tablet again. A portion of the text on the rightmost chunk wavered and the lines of the symbols shifted into a new passage. “It’s a combination lock,” he said.
“To what?” Felix asked from behind them, still on the ladder.
“I don’t know, but maybe we were meant to find it…” Zvezda said as he paged through the tablet quickly. Indeed, if one knew or had access to the fables, it wouldn’t be difficult to match up the passages. As the fox worked through the lock, he realized that the unknown words were standing in the place of the animals’ names in the story.
While the process was simple, there were many stories etched in the stones, and many fragments to sort through on the tablet. It took nearly an hour of work before finally Zvezda set the final passage into its correct order. “Got it!” he called back to Zahfear and the other scientists, who were talking in the back of the truck. Zahfear rushed up the ladder while the other scientists crowded around a display of the truck’s exterior camera feeds. Even the other truck had crept closer in the meantime.
At first nothing happened. There had been nothing to indicate that Zvezda had made the correct selections. He began to worry he had mixed up one of the previous passages, and would have to start all over again. He didn’t even know what they were waiting for, if anything.
“The lake, look!” Zahfear said, pointing with a paw. In the space between the stones, the liquid methane seemed to be sinking and rushing away as if the bottom of the lake had split open. A new longer pair of dark stones appeared from beneath the surface, stretching out in parallel towards the center of the lake. Zvezda blinked at the black sliver left stretching from the shore to the middle of the lake, a dark void that the weak sunlight struggled to penetrate.
“Let’s get a closer look,” Zvezda said, setting the tablet down carefully. The gap between the monoliths was too narrow for the truck; they would have to investigate on foot.
Zvezda heard the others murmuring as he stepped into the black and blue space suit embedded in its storage pod in the side of the hull. With it on he stepped back and zipped up the self-sealing zipper up the torso. A mix of apprehension and excitement built in his chest as he turned and grabbed the suit’s clear tail section. He carefully stuffed his bushy tail inside and fastened it to the back of the suit. He grabbed the clear fishbowl helmet, designed to accommodate most species, off the top rack of the pod. He tilted his muzzle up into it before seating it onto the suit’s attachment ring, twisting and locking it into place, and actuating the sealing clamps. He tried and failed to resist flicking his ears reflexively as he felt their tips brush against the clear polymer material.
An audible hiss filled his ears for a moment as the suit pressurized and filled with oxygen. He checked the wrist-mounted computer and the readout told him the suit was functioning properly. He looked up to see that everyone else was ready too.
They crowded into the tiny airlock at the back of the truck, practically bumping into each other, as the atmosphere was equalized with Titan’s. Zvezda was glad to find that the wind and rain had died down, letting them easily descend the short ramp to the surface. Instead, the alien moon had become eerily silent now save for the crunching of the ice under the fox’s feet. Even more incredibly, the gases in Titan’s thick atmosphere had shifted, allowing for the faint twinkling of starlight to filter down to the surface.
Figures waved from the cockpit of the other truck as Zvezda and Zahfear made their way around their own truck, the other scientists close behind them. Zahfear waved back as Zvezda approached one of the large stone monoliths.
“It’s the same material as the tablet,” Zvezda explained over the intercom after inspecting the stone more closely and giving it a few taps with the suit’s clawed fingers. No mere stone, the monolith’s could endure the worst Titan could throw at them for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years.
“There’s something happening down there,” Zahfear said. He had stepped through the space between the great monoliths, and was pointing into the black sliver that cut through the center of the lake. Zvezda joined him, and saw at the far end of the void, a bright white light was appearing. Stairs appeared before them, revealed by the white light appearing as if a door was opening, sliding upward from the floor. The stairs lead down, below the waves of liquid methane and into the heart of the hydrocarbon lake, towards the white light.
“What do you think is down there?” Zvezda murmured as he turned to look at the wolf, his eyes shining through his domed helmet. Anxiety warred with curiosity within him.
Zahfear offered his gloved paw to the fox. “You said we were meant to be on the frontier, together, wherever that is. Let’s find out,” he said.
Zvezda hesitated, shooting another glance at the white light at the end of the chasm awaiting them. Then he nodded and took Zahfear’s paw. Together, they began the descent into Titan’s mysterious depths.
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 2215 x 1663px
File Size 4.57 MB
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