The Ctenophorian

But Grape wasn't human. He was an alien. He wondered how a planet could produce something as ugly as this creature. He was really struck by the oddity of her appendages. She had four them, just like he did. They had a hinge in the middle and they seemed to have some rotational capability, but they had nowhere near the dexterity of his tentacles. Another oddity was her perpendicular posture. Her appendages were hinged so that she could partially fold herself to sit or lie down. The upper two were able to manipulate tools and to put food in its mouth with even smaller hinges.

Grape thought she was ugly but then chided himself. He reminded himself that it was unfair to judge her by his planet's concepts and standards of beauty. Her nudity, on the other hand, was unnoticed because on his water planet, clothes were pointless.

Meanwhile, Nadine had been glaring back at him. She waded back to the beach, thinking about the creature's reaction. 'Does it know I can harm with my spear? Is that why it withdrew?'

Nadine realized that she was in a dilemma. She needed the spear gun to protect herself against the shark and maybe against this creature. On the other hand, she wanted to study the creature which had so far made no aggressive move against her. It had saved her and could have taken her as its prey, assuming of course that she was 'prey-worthy'.

She felt her heart beat faster as her mind moved to the conclusion that she had to leave the spear gun behind and take her chances with the creature if she really wanted to learn more about it. She returned to shore, dropped her spear gun next to her other equipment and headed to walk back into the water until she reached the same point off-shore where she could see the creature, assuming it had maintained its position. It had.

The creature came closer. Nadine was on full alert ready to head for shore in a split second. She saw one the creature's tentacles very slowly extend toward her. Warily, she extended her arm. Then tentacle touched the tip of her finger. It felt warm and smooth. It was nothing like an octopus tentacle. It had no suction cups of any kind. The six finger-like mini-tentacles, at the end of each tentacle were slightly larger than her own human fingers. So, she observed, it has 24 fingers and no toes.

Very slowly, the tentacle-fingers started wrap themselves around her hand but she pulled away in fright. The creature seemed to be waiting patiently. This time, Nadine wrapped her fingers around the end of the tentacle until they were almost in a handshake hold but she remained very, very wary. She pressed the tentacle very delicately to indicate to the creature that she meant no harm. She was stunned, not physically, but mentally, when inchoate yet vivid images of an impossible world inhabited by impossible creatures flooded through her mind. When she broke contact, the clarity of images faded.

Then she noticed that another six-fingered tentacle had begun to touch other parts of her naked body. The creature must have noticed her looking at it because the tentacle with a little, waited a few moments and then very slowly touched her body again. Each touch was followed by a moment's pause, followed by a touch at another part of her body. She was embarrassed when its tentacle probed her anus and then her vulva although no effort was made to penetrate either of them.

The first tentacle moved out of her hand and approached her face. It probed her face very gently, much as a blind person might do to feel a person's face. She closed her eyes when the creature's fingers brushed across them. They lingered briefly on each ear, probing them as if to get a sense of its nature and purpose.

"You're very curious, aren't you?" she said out loud.

The creature's tentacles-fingers moved from her ears to her mouth. 'He heard me,' Nadine thought, 'and now he's looking for the source of the sound. Still nervous about the creature's intention, she had kept her mouth tightly shut.

The creature tapped lightly on her mouth.

'Does this creature want me to open my mouth?' she asked herself.

It tapped her mouth again. It made no attempt to force itself into her mouth. Nadine was certain that a creature of this size, a creature that could repel a shark, could have forced her mouth open. 'Is it asking my permission?' she wondered.

She decided that the creature was curious but its intentions were friendly. She opened her mouth and two fingers slipped into her mouth. At first, those strange images swept through her mind again. Suddenly, structured alien thoughts flashed through her mind, 'Please don't be frightened. I will do you no harm.'

She just nodded. What could she say? She was stunned by the creature obvious sentience.

'Please allow me to leave my appendage in your mouth so that we can communicate with each other and can learn from each other. My species is telepathic,' he quickly explained. 'That is why you receive my thoughts in your mind but hear nothing through the sensory organs on the sides of your head.'

'Ears,' she informed him mentally.

Nadine could only nod her head. This creature made no sounds. As the creature would later confirm, he had detected the vibrations coming from her throat that constituted speech, but could not actually hear them like a human could. He had noticed a pattern in the vibrations that was unlike any other sound-making species he had come across on your planet.

'Earth,' she specified, projecting an image of both the planet and the soil on land. 'That's the name of our planet.'

For more than an hour, she stood in the water with the tentacle fingers in her mouth. She was unaware of the passing time. He introduced himself first. He was a scientist specializing in astronomy, ectobiology and xenobiology on his home planet. He was a male. Like humans, the species had males and females. The species was strongly dimorphic. Males were almost twice the size of females.

She learned about his planet, that irradiation from a relatively nearby supernova had done considerable damage done to many life forms on the planet. He was on a mission to save his people from long-term population decline and eventual extinction. He had already spent three years in Earth's oceans looking for a specific tRNA molecule but, so far, had met with no success.

The giant alien comb jelly had, until now, avoided any kind of contact with the planet's sentient and dominant life form.

'We call ourselves humans,' Nadine had interjected at that point.

His research indicated that humans were fearful of the unknown. They were often aggressive and given to violence. As a large totally alien creature, he had decided he would not reveal his presence because it would put his mission, if not his life, in jeopardy. He was glad that humans were still technologically hundreds of years away from achieving true interstellar travel but he also admitted to himself that his own species had gone through a similar stage in its evolution.

The creature explained how his species communicated telepathically with each other, how they could shut out other's thoughts, or limit their thoughts to a smaller room by linking tentacles. He informed her that his ability to link telepathically with her was the biggest, most exciting discovery he had made so far. That was why he decided to take the risk of making contact. The shark's attack on her had given him the opportunity.

Although he was becoming increasingly pessimistic about finding solution for his own people, it was absolutely extraordinary to actually communicate with a sentient being from another planet. That alone would make him famous on his home planet, as the first of his kind to make first contact with another intelligent species.

Nadine asked for his name. He projected an image of a creature that had no resemblance to anything on earth. So, she had asked, "Do you mind if I call you Grape?" She projected an oblong-shaped greenish grape held between two fingers and then putting it in her mouth.

Grape trembled and broke contact. The image of being swallowed whole had briefly frightened him. When he put his tentacle in her mouth, Nadine asked, "What did you pull out when I said that?" she asked.

"You evoked an image from our species' primeval past when we were prey for huge ocean carnivores."

'Oh, I'm sorry,' she apologized. 'I didn't know.' She went on to explain that a grape was the reproductive result of a cultivated non-sentient land-swelling species which humans enjoyed eating. Plants are very common on land but relatively rare in Earth's oceans. She projected an image of kelp. That is a plant too, but lives in salt-water oceans,' she informed him.

'Ah,' Grape thought privately. 'I came across that curious life form during my exploration of your planet's oceans. Now I know that they are as common on this planet as they are rare on mine.'

For some reason, Grape started to laugh. Physically his body seemed to thrum like a drum while the cilia on the sides of his body waved asynchronously. His laughter even disrupted their mental kink for a second or two. 'Okay,' he signaled back and laughed again. 'You may call me Grape.'

He silently chided himself for 'ctenophorianizing' an alien. It was unreasonable to expect a human to think like a Ctenophorian. She probably had the same problem with what she had seen in his thoughts. He must have looked very frightening to her.

The tentacles finally withdrew from her mouth. It was late afternoon. Mentally exhausted, Nadine returned to shore, ate some rations and fell into a deep dream-less sleep almost immediately. She stayed asleep until the following morning.

6 The Explanation

When Nadine woke up, she very hungry. She realized that she had only eaten one meal on the previous day. She needed to fish. She took her spear gun and headed for the water. She saw the creature at his usual place. She showed him the spear gun and then swerved away to signal to him that she had no hostile intentions. Then she dove into the water to see if she could catch a suitable fish. Not seeing any, she ventured into deeper water and then found a fish that was just the right size and speared it.

When she turned around, she was surprised to see that Grape had quietly approached her from behind. She was startled for a moment but saw that he was just observing. There was no doubt in her mind that this alien was entirely peaceful but also curious.

She returned to shore with her fish which she then cooked and ate. It was enough to satisfy most of her hunger. The rest she made up by eating fruit from a nearby tree.

She stayed on shore for about an hour to let her meal digest. Then she took her snorkel to continue her research on Grape. Meanwhile, grape had taken his usual position waiting for the human to return. He wanted to learn more about her.

This time, when his tentacles-fingers approached her mouth, she opened it to let him in. Although he could project his general state of mind to her without touching her, clear, coherent communication between the two beings seemed to require actual, physical contact. Grape explained how members of his species communicated with each, including how they were able to keep their privates or share thought to a select group. Direct physical contact with her was necessary because her ability in and receptivity to telepathic thought was much weaker than in his own species. Still, it was stunning that two individuals whose planets were separated by the vastness of outer space and totally separate evolutionary development could even communicate at all. Her mouth was ideal contact because it was the shortest route to her brain.

'Can you read my mind?' she asked.

'No, among our own kind, we can only read the thoughts our interlocutor is willing to let us read. How it will work with you, I don't know yet. I have to do a few experiments, but I suspect you can keep your most private thoughts to yourself.'

'Experiments?' she beamed back.

'Yes, but nothing that will harm you. I need you to trust me. But if you still worried, I won't go further.'

'I trust you,' she replied through her link with the creature. 'If you intended harm, you could have and would have done it already.'

'I need to understand how your body works, how you function. The more I learn, the better are the chances that I can find something to focus on that might help my own species. I promise to do no harm.'

'I'm willing,' she said, 'but frankly, I doubt that you'll finding anything useful. As you know, humans are fundamentally land-based creatures with specialized internal organs we call lungs. The lungs extract oxygen from the air and uses blood to transmit it to all our living cells.'

'And I,' Grape continued, 'am an aquatic species which extracts oxygen directly from water through tiny specialized organs that cover most of the surface of my body. Oxygen is passed from cell to cell without the aid of a respiratory or a circulatory system.'

'So, why bother coming all the way here?' she asked. 'It seems like waste of time.'

'You're probably right,' he agreed sadly, 'but the survival of our species is at stake. I am desperate. We are desperate. It would be foolish to close down an inquiry before even starting it. You are an intelligent being and, from what your thoughts have told me, you are a scientist specializing in biology. I need your help in my research,' he pleaded. 'I suppose it would help if you are a geneticist too, but I'm lucky to have found you.'

He sensed her doubt.

"We do have some characteristics in common despite our origins on two entirely different planets,' he continued. We are carbon-based life forms who live on planets with whose air and oceanic waters are remarkably similar in composition. My research indicates that the molecules that produced life on both our planets were fundamentally the same, but took entirely different evolutionary routes. So, this gives me at least a tiny bit of hope. However, I'm realist. I have to be. The chances of finding the tRNA I need is somewhere between remote and non-existent.'

Nadine paused in thought. She understood his desperation. If humans were in existential danger and she was the only one who could help, she too would leave no stone unturned to save humanity, including seeking the help of an alien from outer space. She felt sorry for Grape's dilemma and the grave danger facing his compatriots.

'Okay,' she finally replied, 'what do you want me to do? Just remember, I have no idea how I will react to whatever you plan to do. And how are we going to do it? You're a sea creature and need water to breathe. I'm a land creature and I need air.'

'I have been genetically modified so that I can breathe air and travel short distances on land,' he told her.

That new information stunned Nadine. She had thought she was safe in shallow water and certainly on land. 'He could have snatched me at any time!' she realized. Now she was certain that this strange extraterrestrial could be trusted.

But she had a question. 'If your scientists can manipulate your DNA so that you can breathe air, why are they unable to do the same to deal with your species' fertility crisis?'

'An excellent question,' he conceded and then telepathed, 'It was relatively easy for our scientists to make slight changes to the specific structure of my genes to make me capable of breathing air.'

'Is it inheritable?' she asked.

'No, because the alteration was made specifically to the ovum that became me. Also, we've discovered that altered genes can only be transmitted through the females of our species. The planet's irradiation affected the fertility of all our females. A portion of their ova became incapable of merging with sperm. The remaining ova were altered so that they carrieda recessive mutation which is passed on to our female children. Basically, our species is losing about ten percent of its reproductive capacity with each generation.'

'That's terrible!' Nadine said in sympathy.

Grape saw that she grasped the content of his explanations quite readily. Her question struck at the very heart of his planet's crisis. He was beginning to admire her. In fact, he considered to be brilliant. She was a scientist too. She had an open mind, and much to his pleasant surprise, she was brilliant and sympathetic.

Privately, he thought, 'I think I've underestimated this species' intelligence and capability.' He wondered if her alien perspective might open the door to concepts he had not previously considered, concepts that might lead to a breakthrough that could save his planet. He felt a surge of hope but suppressed it as irrational. As things stood, there was no evidence that something on this planet could help his fellow Ctenophorians.

Grape sensed her consternation at the thought that he was the product of sophisticated genetic engineering. He explained that such a step had been necessary for his species to explore their own planet's much smaller land masses.

When Nadine asked, Grape replied that he felt no resentment towards the Ctenophorians scientists who had manipulated his genes and predetermined his career path. 'If this had not happened, I would not have been selected to travel to your world and become the first Ctenophorian ever to leave our solar system and the first to meet an alien intelligent species. Most of my fellows will never break the surface of our ocean, and will never try to. I can do my research on land where it's safe for an air-breather like you. But most of all,' he bubbled with excitement, I have a whole new universe open to me, and a chance to help my species survive.'

'You're extraordinary,' she transmitted to Grape through his tentacle.

'So, are you," Grape said, transmitting back. 'Until we discovered your planet, we would never have guessed that true sentience could evolve in an atmosphere!'

Nadine laughed. She had never thought of herself as extraordinary. 'I guess it all depends on your perspective,' she thought to herself.

Grape sense that she was having a private thought.

'Are you thinking something but not sharing it with me?'

'Very perceptive for an alien,' she replied. 'Yes, but it wasn't an important thought. I was just reflecting.'

'And you've already learned to select thoughts you want to share with me and while automatically keeping others to yourself,' he observed. 'Your progress in telepathy is remarkable.'

As the naked woman and her strange companion made their way to shore, they felt that they had become both friends and colleagues. When they were in shallower water, Nadine saw him move by undulate his body in manner that was reminiscent of a caterpillar.

They agreed to sit in the shade of some palm trees that were hanging over the edge of the water. Although the engineering of his genes had given him some measure of protection against the sun, Grape informed Nadine that direct sunlight for even a few minutes could cause the sensitive surface of his body to burn. When he was on the job on land on his own planet, he normally wore specially-made cover to protect himself from the sun. Because room in the space pod was limited, he had not brought it with him. That was why he preferred shade.

'Oh,' Nadine said, 'we normally wear clothes to protect us against the elements too. Humans habitually wear clothing.' She projected an image of herself in street clothes.

'But if you need clothes to protect yourself against the sun, why are naked?'

'Well, because nobody's around and it's easier to go naked than to get my clothes wet in the water or dirty with stand.'

'So, are humans normally naked?' he asked.

'No.'

Now Grape was confused.

'Why?'

'A naked woman is likely to attract a male who would want to mate with her,' she answered, blushing. 'Humans have a very complex system of values, mores and morals that sets the framework for social and sexual interaction that involves wearing clothes.'