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Index:

1. The happening.
2. Contact. (You can read this chapter down there).
3. Polhol.
4. The iron ship.
5. The captain.
6. The Hurl and Hurland,
7. The Iron Fleet.
8. Federation's strength.
9. Time table.
10. He, robot.
11. The strange ship Fnkcriĉ'.
12. New life, old culture.

The end.

2 Contact.

Then I understood that I could communicate with her with feelings. Suddenly I radiated a comfort feeling to them both. She looked at me, beyond me, over me, and around me, missing me all the time.

   "Pol, "said the Commander, "what happened?"
   "Commander! You are alive! Good God!"
   "Yes", he said as he stood up. "I suddenly felt an electric bolt. In this strange planet trees grow up on iron and there is natural electricity".
   "Yes, but there is peace here. Do you not feel well, Commander?"
   "Better than never in my life! Probably here there is an iron paradise."

Pol laughed. I enjoyed that laugh: fresh, smart, melodic...

 "Fortunately there is no iron snake, Commander".

I could not understand then that the name Pol was so short, and yet the other one's name was four times as long, Commander. But then I understood that they come from a place I never had heard of. From their talking I understood that they come from another planet, which was not mine. I understood, too, that my world is not the universe, but there are other worlds in the universe. At least mine and their planet, which has a name, Earth. But then I understood that Pol's planet ne estis Earth, so there are at least three planets in the universe: Earth, Klato and my own one, which has no name till now. Probably Commander and Pol would give it a name, and then it would not longer be The World.

I also understood that earthlings and Klatans have two sexes, and Pol was a female and Commander was male. Later I would understand that male and female can come together, excited, and then there would be another small person, who they two must care of till the time when it can take care of him or herself. However, Commander and Pol never joined in such a way, because they are from different planets, different species really, and they were afraid they were not compatible, and were not willing to test it. Commander's hair was yellow, and his eyes were blue, whereas Pol had very thick, short black hair, and even blacker eyes.

For a whole year they were on my place, and when the season changed for the fifth time, they decided to go. Along that period of time they went to and fro, (up and down, really) by means of their craft, and they broke pieces of iron from the ground and decided to build a new ship by means of which they could carry up many things they collected from my planet, among them several animals and plants. I tried to tell them they were going to die if they were away from the planet, but I could not make any sound, and I could not understand their language very well. That's why I could not talk to them and thought with sorrow, that those poor beasts and plants were going to die.

Pol did not come often, but many other individuals of either sex came to do strange, differente functions on my ground. At last they managed to break me an arm, and were very surprised that almost instantly I could grow a new one in the place where the old one had been. Yes, they realised that I was there, and had been from the very beginning. Even if they still did not understand that I was an intelligent being.