Administrator Teyin had been puzzled by the findings of our ancestors' probes. We all had, but he especially became… obsessed.

  It was that chemical. Some element or compound that none of the sensors recognized… but it could be measured. It was often forcefully bonded with what appeared to be segments of protein chains, but ripped apart at the molecular level... seeing it made a pit form in my stomach.

  "I'm calling it Hope’s Ash, at least until we think of something better," our lead chemist told us, after spending all night analyzing the Hope probe data. "Comparing all the probes, it's definitely the same chemical, it's present on all the "gray" planets– the ashy, dusty ones. It doesn't appear to be a new element, it's probably some sort of complex molecule but the spectrometers onboard weren't built with something like this in mind."

  "So you can't tell what it is. Can you atleast run some tests on it?"

  "Not necessarily… there's still more analysis we can do, but our actions are limited. It'd take over a decade for any of our signals to reach them, and double that for the response. These were never intended for two-way communication… they just relay everything they can till the power runs dry, and right now this is all we're getting."

  He continued, "but while we can't figure out exactly what it is, we can make observations based on what it's already doing. The chemical appears stable, but it is in fact decaying, at a constant rate."

  "Decaying?"

  He nodded his head and smiled. "This chemical has a half-life of 17,480 years. Meaning…"

  "You can figure out exactly how old the chemical is."

  "That's right. And I don't think this chemical is natural, either."

  Weeks later, myself and several others working on the IHV program were called into his personal office. When we entered the room, it was silent. The administrator and his top scientists had been pouring over the data, but their faces and body language betrayed their despair. Something was wrong.

  "Did you… uhm… find out the age of those chemicals?" One of us asked.

  They were quiet for a moment, before the administrator spoke for them. "Yes, we did."

  "And what did you find?" one of us asked.

  "On one planet, the chemicals are 13,841 years old, on another, they're 4,493 years old. On another, they're 976 cycles old."

  He pulled out the paper star map, circling each star system with an affected planet with a pencil.

  "They follow a strict mathematical pattern, and the rate at which planets have this… thing happen... it goes back billions of years, but increases exponentially in frequency."

  He drew paths between the stars, then to our own. “Everything is centered around this star system… Criah is its closest neighbor… it hasn’t been affected yet. But…”

  He traced along the lines between stars, "Whatever happened to these planets, our is next, and it will happen to our own in less than 100 years, and Criah 400 years later.”

  /////

  The suited creatures had been brought inside, through the airlock. The captain had decided to allow them to enter, and to seal off this section of the ship, leaving only a small team in pressure suits to interact with them. Owing to my EVA experience, I was one of them.

  There was something deeply unsettling about their appearance. The suits they wore masked their faces, if they had any, and lacked any sort of neck, with a large, spherical helmet sunk into their shoulders. It was as though their nonexistent tail was split into two distorted, mirrored arms sprouting from the bottom of their torso, ending in flat pads instead of fingers. Their bodies appeared stocky and short, but it was difficult to determine how much of their apparent bulk was because of their suits, or how they appeared beneath them.

  There were two of them, each in identical suits, though one had a red stripe, and the other was pure white, save for the black highlights both of them had. The stripeless alien carried an item in each hand; a metal box with a protruding cylinder in one hand, and some sort of box with a handle, coated in a white fabric, in the other.

  It was hard to gauge the composure of my fellow crewmates, but their collective silence did little to ease me. We knew nothing about these beings… or what they carried with them. It's why we kept our suits on and sealed off this section of the ship; we couldn't risk any contaminants.

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  One of the aliens began opening the container, thick gloves unfastening a latch on the metal and fabric.

  "It's opening it!" one of us blurted out.

  "Stay alert…" captain Riys told us.

  My heart raced as the box was opened, and what was taken out of it… was a metal card. It pushed the card toward us, floating across the room until one of my crewmates caught it.

  "It's… an illustration?"

  He passed it around. As it made its way into my hands, I examined it in detail. It was a gray metal, with a simple picture etched into it, probably by laser. It depicted what appeared to be four simplified figures of the aliens' bodies outside of their protective suits. There were two here, inside of their spacecraft, and two outside. A path was drawn from their spacecraft to the surface of the planet beside them.

  Through pictures it conveyed a simple message. "We live on this planet, and have traveled to see you. There are four of us present; two in your ship, the other two are waiting in our ship." An effective, if primitive way of communicating without a language.

  We all took photographs of the card with our helmet's cameras, before floating the card back to them. "They're trying to communicate with us. We should respond somehow," I said.

  "Obviously. Is anyone here a good artist?"

  One crewmate, Wuro, piped in, "I'm competent."

  Riys handed him a drawing board sitting in a tool locker. "Let's reply."

  We all huddled together around the board.

  /////

  After much deliberation, our response was ready.

  We agreed to keep the symbols as simple as possible; it was better to give too little information than to confuse them with too much, and arrive at a misunderstanding. We used a reusable writing board, pictograms drawn upon it with the hope they’d understand. A writing utensil was included, so they could use it to make their own response.

  Our ship leaving, an explosion during our entry burn, ditching our cargo, our intention to set up a research camp, but now being stranded with little hope of survival. It was laid out to the best of our ability, we had to hope they would understand.

  They studied our message for several minutes. Passed it between themselves, before making their reply.

  This one was much quicker and simpler. It showed the four of them again, two in a vessel outside, and two with us. But one of them was larger, and had a stripe on their suit. Below were the four of us, all identical, but one larger than the other.

  They're asking which one of us is in charge.

  Wordlessly looking at each other, Commander Riys moved forward, letting his tail loosen from the handle it had anchored itself to. As he did, the red-striped being moved closer. I instinctively moved back, as Riys slowly made his way toward the alien, careful to do so at an identical rate to it. It was much closer now. I could almost make out some detail beneath the visor. Smooth, scaleless and fur-less skin with anatomy matching that of their original plaque. Small eyes embedded in caved-in holes in their skull. They were so… unsettling.

  They met in the middle, and the alien commander held out one hand. It was covered in a thick glove, but its fingers were round and unsymmetrical, it waited outstretched, as if expecting someone to hand it something. Riys and the alien commander stared at each other for a moment. The alien must have noticed the confusion, and motioned its other hand into its outstretched hand, before removing it again.

  Riys extended his hand to the alien's. It grabbed his hand. I gasped, as did one of my crewmates. The alien moved Riys hand up, then down. When it released its grip, a small object was in his hand. The alien returned to its side of the room, leaving Riys to return to us. The object appeared to be some sort of device. It was covered in white thermal blankets, and consisted of a screen that showed… us, looking at it.

  I looked up, the aliens at the other end had an identical device, facing us.It's a two-way radio camera. They turned and moved out the still-open hatch, leaving our vessel. They must be ending their EVA, and left us this to continue communication in their own vessel.

  We looked back to the device they left us.

  "Looks like you're gonna be busy, Wuro."

  The device caused something to click in Commander Riys's mind.

  "Radio. Of course, they have radio."

  Everyone looked to him.

  "I know how to contact Admiralty."

  /////

  The section off portion of the ship was inspected and cleaned of any possible biohazards, but it would seem that the aliens here were just as weary of cross-contamination as we were. Once the section of the ship was re-pressurized and its hatches opened, the time came to communicate properly. Most of the crew desperately wanted to see, but the screen was small, so Commander Riys allocated for a small group of people, primarily those that were present for first contact, like me, while allowing others to pass by and get a look at them, so it would not impede our ability to consistently make progress in our attempts to communicate.

  It was agreed that the best course of action would be to try and work with these aliens, and assuming they had radio equipment powerful enough, use their antenna arrays to transmit a warning to Admiralty so they could avoid a catastrophe like we did. That was our number one priority, and since we were effectively at the mercy of these aliens, negotiating however we could for the safety of the crew was what everything hinged upon.

  The aliens had taken off their suits, and their visage was now unobstructed. Alien really was the right word to describe them; their eyes were sunken into pits at the front of their skulls, their nostrils elevated above their mouth in a protrusion of cartilage, thin necks that instead of gradually widening from the chin to shoulders, were an unnaturally narrow pipe that was even smaller than their own heads. I had to remind myself that it was not fair to judge a creature based on its appearance… as strange as their bodies were, perhaps it was simply the norm on their planet. With a gentler sun and weaker gravity than our home, they lacked scales or the otherwise very necessary muscle and bodily girth that we had, making them appear… almost fragile.

  They seemed… happy, if I was reading their expressions right. Like our own, they contorted their facial muscles to display mood, though the wrinkles in skin it caused were somewhat unnerving. They spoke in a verbal language that we obviously couldn’t understand, but among their overlapping speech was… laughter? They were filled with joy, to meet us, which gave hope that this would be peacefully resolved.

  If we can communicate with them, maybe we can negotiate a place for us to take shelter! The lack of our cargo may not be a death sentence!

  The next several days would be spent slowly gathering a better and better understanding of this planet and its inhabitants. They were very eager to share information with us, like a neglected child who just wanted someone to talk to. I couldn’t help but wonder how prepared they had been, it was as if this was something they had always dreamed of.

  Ultimately, it would only be a handful of people who kept constant communication with them. The four aliens would sleep in shifts, while Riys stayed awake almost constantly, working with his team to better understand and communicate with them. By this point I was no longer watching; as exciting and world-changing as this was, the vast majority of it was actually somewhat boring… as the two species conversed. Occasionally, I would hear Riys speak a foreign word, and I would hear one of the aliens say one of our words. It was basic, but progress was being made.

  I couldn’t stay awake, so I finally elected to move to the bunks, and rest my eyes. Maybe things would be alright.