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It was further away than we thought. The ship had landed in a deep bed of vegetation and despite our sensitive instruments we had not been able to get an accurate reading. It was misspelt vegetation, precariously clutching to each other and the invisible earth. We couldn't tell how high or low we were as we walked along the leaves and branches.

Archon, one of our small group, slipped once but his fall was stopped just a meter below, even if u had wanted to u cdnt have made it much further down. Despite the thick vegetation there was a curious absence of sound. All we could hear was our own breathing and the rustling of our footsteps. It seemed we had been walking for hours and there was still no sign of it. Our chronometers didn't seem to be working properly for they showed only one hour as having passed since we left the relative safety of the ship. The double sun hardly heated us and it's light was pale, almost like the Earth's moon.

Franton called for a stop with that rough voice of his that had been so useful for us on so many different worlds. I recalled that time when a couple of young men had tried to steal his bag in the spaceport of Ahelia and he had let out such a roar that they both had been literally petrified and the local militia had had to carry them away. Idly i wondered what had happened to them, had they been able to move again ?

We sat down on a patch of thick leaves and looked at each other. We were seven in the group - Archon, Franton, Rebelton, Saliston, Freanon, Alistion and myself - all wearing the standard outfits of our ship - loose blue trousers and jackets, t-shirts, belts with various attachments and carefully worded caps.

Saliston spoke up, her softly phrased speech sounding loud in the silence, "this place is really bizarre, with all this vegetation there isn't even an insect .."

Her voice tailed off. Archon replied "yes it is bizarre but none of our instruments reveal any danger to our organisms, mind you seeing as how they aren't working so well on this planet i'm not sure how much we can trust them ..."

Everyone looked uneasy. Rebelton lit up and passed around a spliff. Everyone took a few puffs on the strong smelling cigarette charged with hydroponic zero/g weed. The smoke relaxed and alerted us. We got up to walk again.

As we walked i started to hear sounds. They were so tiny as that I could hardly say that they were sounds. They were like tiny scrapings or scratchings located at the very edge of my hearing, in that zone that is like the twilight of the senses. I dismissed them as being internally created, blood in my veins, breath in my ears. But they continued. I caught up with Freanon, a black giant of a man, and asked him if he could hear anything. He looked at me surprised.

"I'm only hearing the beating of my heart in my ears , the breath coming in and out of my lungs .. " he said.

i thanked him and we walked on absorbed in keeping our footing on the treacherous surface and in the minimal sounds that were becoming more and more fascinating for me. The sounds were indeed like hearing the whispers of the functioning of the body, i seemed to be hearing my molecular functioning, but as it were from a distance. "We should be there soon" called out Archon, startling us in the silence, "keep your eyes open".

We walked on. It was hard to keep attentive to the outside world. I was becoming more and more engrossed in the sounds that i was hearing inside me. Now it was like insect's wings rubbing against each other, then like the winds that breath between the stars. I began to find it beautiful, the most beautiful music i had ever heard.

I looked at the others. Everybody seemed quite normal and i didnt want to interrupt my concert so i didnt say anything. Now the sounds were suggesting the warmth of the most intimate spaces of the body and those tiny sounds somehow opened up a universe in my heart, some kind of space that seemed to go on forever and that only the sounds made accessible. Only these sounds, only those sounds.

I remembered as i walked and listened, a story that my grandfather had told me, long ago, before he died in the accident. He had told me of a group of people that he had hung out with in his youth who had been obsessed with what he had called dreamsounds. They had collected sounds from dreams with a special instrument and had built mesmerising music from them. According to my grandfather the group had been banned for, he said "danger to the public order". When i had asked him what did he mean, he smiled and said "once you hear the dreamsounds you arent interested in anything else, you just want to keep on hearing them".

I was startled from my memories by Archon's voice. "According to my calculations this is the place" We all looked around. There seemed nothing remarkable. The plain of vegetation stretched unevenly out on all sides of us as it had ever since we had left the ship. "We need to go down".

We all looked at each other uneasily. The thought of trying to work our way down into that vegetation was daunting. Yet we all knew that we were here to find it and we would all do whatever necessary for the success of our mission, to free humanity forever from work. The sounds were continuing, more beautiful even than before. I didnt want to mention them to anyone else, they seemed so personal, so fragile and i didnt want to let them go. I looked at the others, trying to see if they were hearing them too. It was hard to see the expressions in that pale light and so i cdnt be sure.

I found myself speaking, my voice sounded so rough and blunt that it was almost painful "I can wait up here for you all. You can go down with a cord and I will keep the end of it and be the connection with the ship" In reality all i wanted to do was sit down and listen to the music. To my surprise Archon accepted the arrangement. He gave me a tracker, telling me to contact the ship immediately if I could no longer see them on it, and we tied the end of a superstrong cord to a branch. As we prepared i tried again to see if anybody else might be hearing those sounds. I couldn't see any evidence. For me now they were like the sweeping cords of a violin as big as a world, terribly deep and longing. It was moving me so much, I hardly trusted myself to speak. I shook hands with the group and wished them luck. Hacking with machetes they started to make their way down to the surface of the planet.

I sat down, my hand on the rope and allowed myself to be absorbed into the sounds. Soon I could no longer feel or hear anything else, I was inside something that was at the same time so vast and so microscopic that the concept of space itself collapsed. I was hovering on the edges of black holes hearing the songs of the micro and macrocosms.

Until i felt something brush my cheek .......

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what is the secret that will free humanity from work ? who is making the music ? what has brushed Lindion's cheek ? find out next month in ZOOEBAP ....

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