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The Tourist Guide Chapter 3 Written by MTT3

<<<Note: If not mentioned differently, all persons of that story are talking German. I just wrote that story in English to provide it to a wider audience.>>>

---Present Time---

"How is he doing? Is he alright?" Orrlanovs asked. He looked at the door behind Istras.

She just shrugged and her two tail tips coiled around themselves. The shrugging was a human gesture she and the crew had learned from the little bit of audio-visual transmissions they have received from Earth, while the coiling of her tail tips is the equivalent of the Sz'sirona-people.

"The only thing I can tell you that his heart-beat is now steady and strong and he doesn't seem to have any problems with breathing. But he is still unconscious. As you know we have barely any information of human biology, so we cannot really tell if he has any brain damage, but the fact that he has been able to talk and recognize his environment is already a good sign." She looked behind her to the door with the red-cross sign. They have found a machines humans used to show if a human heart was beating steady and strong enough and she could still hear the periodic beeps of the machine.

The security-commander's three pronged tongue flicked out of his short muzzle, tasting the air for a second. It tasted dull and also a bit muddy, the taste of his colleagues nearly overshadowed by the tastes. The base has been empty for several years before Thomas Jenninger found it and activated it again. He smelled the air again. They have already seen that there is quite a number of species on Earth that have developed similar traits, but it seems that the ability to smell/taste with their tongues is better developed than their own ones, or maybe it was just, that fifty-thousand years of civilized evolution has weakened this ability among the Sz'sirona.

"Shrick, does the manual say anything about how long a human needs to regain consciousness?"

The engineer with the manual for the cryo-capsuel in in his clawed hands browsed through it, still a bit fascinated of the feeling the paper leaves in his hands. The paper of humans was much rougher than their own equivalents, which was made out of something humans would have called moss.

"Well, the only thing in the manual that deals with this, tells that there are special medications to help to speed up the human's reviving process. But we haven't found any of them yet, and even if we would find any of them, I doubt that they would still be good. Remember, the extinction happened nearly seven Sol-Standard years ago. There is not much left of human technology that is still working, although the care-taker has done really well in keeping the human cities alive by reprogramming their self-cleaning and self-repair systems. This is the only reason why many major cities still have electric power to keep them alive although nobody lives in them anymore. But unfortunately nearly all medication went bad over the years. The only thing we can do now is wait, hope that the sacred ancestors will give him the power to wake up."

A snarl and several loud barks caught their attention, followed by several yelps. They went into the direction of the sounds and found the dog that has accompanied their group through the base. They had to fasten him at his collar to a handle on the wall to prevent that he would run to the care-taker. They still were not sure what would happen if the dog would meet him. The dog whined when he saw the three small lizards walking in, his ears lowered.

"Did he still not calm down?"

The guard shook his muzzle. The had had some real difficulties to get the dog out of the room from where they saved the young man.

While they were still thinking about their problems, they heard an audible 'Ding' and the doors of the elevator opened and the other guard appeared. He saluted with the Szz'sirona greeting, the clenched fist moving to the spots where their two hears were, instead of the human greeting he had learned. He would safe that for later, when the care-taker was awake.

"Security-commander? I am sorry but I haven't been able to make contact with our base in Colorado Springs, the weather has changed drastically and the sky-fires are causing so much interferences that our radio-devices don't work properly."

Orrlanovs just nodded. "Just keep trying as soon as the weather gets better. We really have to inform Commandant Urloss that we have finally found the last human."

The guard nodded too and saluted again, heading to the elevator and the surface again.

When the guard disappeared behind the elevator doors, Orrlanovs had to think about the problems they had since they first set foot in this planet. So many things were different to their home word. A lot more water, strange weather phenomena, even their solar system was different to their own. This one here had twice as many planets and even something that looked like two planets have collided, forming a ring of rocks of various sizes around their sun. They assumed that some of these rocks would head into the inner solar systems regularly and also hit Earth. For them it would be the only explanation why one of their drones was shot down by a guided missile, fired from an automated system near a city humans called Moscow, that humans had built automated systems to shot down these falling rocks.

But he was also curious about the sky-fires. They don't know how humans called this phenomena but unlike on Zra'shra, their home-planet, where they were pretty rare and only seen during a very short period during a decade period, they seem to happen on Earth all around a solar-orbit. Then he remembered when he experienced such a sky-fire storm here on earth for the first time, together with to his species totally unknown weather phenomena.

---

---Five days and 12 hours after the initial arrival in the Sol-system, Berlin, Germany---

"Still no one found?" Urloss asked into the portable radio.

<"I am sorry my Commandant. There is no one around. But we will continue looking for any sign of human activity."> (<...> means that he speaks over radio)

The little lizard attached his radio at his belt and looked around, four comrades of his crew with him. It was now a little bit over five revolutions of Earth since they have entered this solar-system and just four revolutions since they entered an orbit of this planet. And now they were standing in the city they have seen so often in the audio-visual transmissions they have received on Zra'shra. And not a single human seemed to be on the entire planet.

When they have entered a gravitational stable point between this planet and its satellite, they have examined the planet as best as they could, but they could not tell what has happened to the planet, the only thing they could tell that they didn't receive any sort of transmissions, and they also didn't spot any sort of spacecrafts, so they decided to enter an orbit, but also from here they didn't find out anything new. After a long debate among the entire crew they decided to land on the planet, at best near a city that was not destroyed, and so they decision fell on Berlin. The city was nearly untouched by the destruction that happened to many cities all over the planet and it was also the city they have seen so often on the movies.

But it was quite different. Several decades have went by since the transmissions have been made and the city has changed quite a lot durprisingly.

"Weird." Istras said looking around and tasting the air a single time with her tongue. Her tail was wagging in anticipation and the two tail tips of her did each show into a different direction, a sign that she was confused.

"What do you mean? Did you find something special?" He looked around the place where they were, but couldn't find anything special. But when he thought about it, of course everything was special. The fact alone he was on a planet where once there has been a technological advanced species is remarkable for him. Their architecture, their form of transportation, their way of how they decorated their homes, all of this was so exciting for him. But even more exciting would it be if he would have the opportunity to speak with a human.

But they all have disappeared. The exploration crew didn't knew when and hey didn't knew how. The planet was silent.

"I mean...in all the films we have seen on the exterior records, there were flags with this sign here nearly everywhere." She pointed at the small armband with the white circle and the four small squares that form a big square together.

Orlavnos looked around. She was really right. In the transmissions there have been these signs all around. But here were no flags at all. Strange.

For several more hours the walked through the city and examined several buildings and looked into store windows. It was amazing for everybody of them. It seemed that humans had been still in the 'dispersed-settlements-phase.' Like in their own history they had cities spread all over the planet when they were at s specific point of cultural and scientific development. But at a certain point in time, they started to built massive settlements at several important points and over several centuries they were enlarged until most people had moved into these cities. Only the cities of historic value were still there. Probably humans would have done the same in the future.

Suddenly Istras winced when something fell on her head. At first she thought it was something that fell from these feathered creatures that fly here on this planet. She touched the spot and sniffed at the liquid both with her nose and tongue, but it turned out it was just a water droplet.

She looked up into the gray sky, more water droplets started to fall. She smiled at that sight. Although they were coming from a desert planet and were more adjusted to that climate, all of their people enjoyed rain, since it was much rarer on Zra'shra than on Earth. The feeling of the cool water droplets falling on her scaled skin made her shudder, her both tail tips wiggling in joy.

The others of their exploration-group had already taken off their shirts and were now nude from the waist upwards, which made them look like they were on their home-planet, where people normally wore only a pair of short trousers and maybe a chest-band as a decoration or something similar.

Everybody of them was standing there in the streets of Berlin and enjoyed the small water droplets running down their body, the ones that were running down their short muzzles where they were quickly lapped up by their three-pronged-tongues. The showers together with the wind felt really nice, just like on their home planet, only a bit too cold.

Suddenly a line of pure energy split the sky and a few seconds later loud thunder rolled over the city. All of them jumped at the sudden change of the situation.

"By the ancestors, a sky-fire." one of the guards murmured. He obviously hasn't seen something like that before, on their home planet it was pretty rare. A few seconds later several more lines of light appeared for fractions of a second. One of them hit the highest buildings of the city, a gigantic needle like structure with a sphere shaped structure attached to the upper third. The humans seemed to have built their buildings that they would be able to withstand the hit of a sky-fire. Although their own buildings would surely be able to do that too, they were not really built for that, they don't have any sort of security-system for that. It was amazing to Istras to think about it, that something so simple as weather had such a great effect on architecture.

Suddenly something hard hit Istras muzzle. She jerked at the sudden hit.

<< Hey, why did you do that again?">> she hissed at one of the guards. He had already thrown a pebble at her back one time, when she didn't react to his calls at first. She had been so fixed by a shop mannequin in a window store windows, that she did not realize that the others of the group were already away, and to get her out of the trance one of the guards threw a pebble at her. And now it seemed he did it again, which was the reason why she didn't speak German, but her mother tongue instead.

"What do you mean? I didn't do anything." The guard looked at her confused.

"But if it was not you then what..." Another clacking beside her interrupted her. At first she couldn't tell from where it came from but then she found it. Since it was still slightly raining she had some problems to get a grip on the small pebble that feel beside her. At least she thought it was a pebble. But when she held it between her claw-stump, she noticed that is was...melting?

She had never seen frozen water yet, on her planet there was just one place where you would be able to find frozen water and even there you had to have really lucky to see it falling from the sky. But there it fell in small flakes. So how...

Her thoughts were interrupted again when suddenly more and more of these little frozen-water pebbles started to fall from the skies. All of them hurried into a near by shop, really surprised by the sudden 'attack'. The pebbles didn't really hurt them, but they didn't knew what would come next.

From the inside of the food shop they watched the storm getting heavier. Now he pebbles of frozen water seemed to be bigger than before while the rain has intensified, and so did the wind. All of them backed away from the front glass window involuntarily, when a gust of wind blew through the street, shaking the window in front of their snouts, while more and more sky-fires were lighting up the sky above them, the window shaking even more from the thunder.

"This is...I don't know, horrific but also so interesting. We are the first ones to experience a storm on this planet." Orlavnos said. The two guards didn't really agree to that opinion, and backed a bit further into the shop.

"My commandant. Please come here you have to see this."

Orlavnos followed the call of the guard.

At first he didn't knew what they meant, but then he saw it. All the shelves were empty. They have been wandering through various shops and nearly all of them had full shelves, only some were just partially filled. But this here was different. It was totally empty. The Commandant of the expedition looked around and and found a note on a shelf. He took it, but he was only able to read a few words, but some others he wasn't able to read, since it was handwritten.

"Hey Istras, can you please help me? I...have problems reading this." He reached the note to her, who read over it a few times before she was able to understand what is means.

"It...it says that the one who took all the food and everything from this shop here was really sorry that he had to do this and that if the owner should come back somehow, he should please contact him with this number that stands here at the end."

"What? No wait...this doesn't make any sense...But...could it really be? Is there really a survivor?" the commandant murmured.

He thoughts were interrupted by a call via his radio. The bleeping came so unexpected that he totally forgot about the note in his claws and let it fall down.

"Commandant Orlavnos here. What happened?"

<"My commandant, it is pilot Szir'ikas here. We...there is something outside...we don't know what to do...we...">

The pilot seemed to be at the brink of panicking, his breath sounded like steam-engine over the radio.

"Please calm down, my friend. What happened?"

<"Please...look..it is right outside of our shuttle.">

The lizard held his radio in front of him, and pushed the button to activate the little projector inside the radio. It took a few seconds to gain full power but then the command needed all his willpower not to let the radio fall down.

The scene he could see, was taken from the outside-camera of their Surface-Orbit-Shuttle and it looked like one of the Sky-fires has fallen down and was now rolling over the runway. He could see several bright glowing balls rolling and even jumping around, creating sparks and smaller streams of energy a few feet around them. They all watched the scene for about ten more seconds when suddenly one after the other all of the ball-shaped sky-fires exploded with a loud bang.

They all blinked a few times before anybody said something.

<<What was that? How can that be...?">> Istras hissed in heir mother tongue. She was obviously shocked. Nobody did expect something like this to appear.

"I...guess you are safe now. But just stay inside the shuttle, we will return as fast as we can." the commandant advised his crew-members in the shuttle. His tail-tips were both shaking, but not moving out of control. He tried to pull himself together. They knew that they would probably meet things no-one of their people would have ever seen before, but they thought more of cultural things and not weather-phenomena.

They had some more time before they had been able to leave the store, because of the bad weather. The team hurried to the two transportation-vehicles they have left behind at a big area, which according to Istras was called 'Alexanderplatz'. The transporting-vehicles were modified agriculture-vehicles, with two continuous tracks that went over the entire length and length of the vehicle. They were part of the standard equipment of an exploration and now they came handy for the crew, since the couldn't use any human vehicles.

Several hours later they were back at the aircraft-landing-center, that they used as their base here on Berlin for now. The pilot and the other ones that had been in the shuttle, were still frightened and refused to leave the shuttle because they feared that more of these ball-shaped sky-fires would appear.

Orlavnos put his left hand on his short muzzle and sighed. He was now sitting in the rear part of their shuttle and was looking on the records of this strange weather-phenomena over and over again. They had also received reports from one of their drones over the northern burned continent. There they had discovered another strange phenomena, it was a rotating cloud that reaches down to the soil, moving so fast that it destroyed a small settlement that had been spared by the continent-wide fire.

The lizard sighed again. It had truly been an exciting day for all of them.

---

The sudden sound of crashing glass interrupted their conversation, the dog barked two times before one of the guards fastened the leash at his collar a bit more.

Istras looked around the corner into the room where the man was lying. It seems he was slowly gaining his consciousness again and, while still in some sort of half-sleep, he had pushed off a pitcher full of water that was standing on the small counter beside his bed.

"It looks like he may be awake any moment." Her tail-tips were now both looking upwards, slightly shaking, a clear sign that she was pretty nervous.

Orlavnos placed one hand on her shoulder and the other on her chest, near her left heart.

<<"You will know what to do, Istras. There is nobody like you that can understand the human culture and their language as well as you. I have total faith in your abilities.">> he spoke quietly in his mother language, encouraging the First-contact officer.

She took a deep breath, and went through all the stuff she had seen about humans from the audio-visual transmissions as well as some books she had read since they came here on Earth, just to make sure she remembered the important things.

"Hello....anybody there?" The sudden, weak asked question from the sickroom, followed by a groan let them wince. Now that they have been trying to find this person for several months, she was nearly too afraid of going into that room an meet that young man.

She flicked her tongue, trying to taste the human's scents, something that could be a clue of how the human felt or something similar. But she could only taste the dull scent of the base and the chemicals that the human still had on his skin.

<<Okay, let's do this.>> she spoke and stepped into the room, with the Care-taker, starting her real, first contact with a human.