Ayerton stood on a little rock and watched the spacecraft. "I think we should move the ship," he said to the captain standing next to him. "I have a strange feeling we are not safe here." "Rubbish," the captain replied, "we are as safe here as anywhere else on this planet. The ship stays here as long as we are finished with the needed repairing. It will take only twelve hours at most. Only starting the plasma engines and activitation of the antigravity field would take two hours, and I cannot afford this delay. We are already late."
Ayerton said nothing, just stared at those aliens they had seen only after landing because they were so similar to the landscape. These aliens, or creatures, were of huge size compared to humans. Even the smallest of them had a size like an one-family-house, and the largest were like little blocks. They reminded nothing Ayerton had earlier seen during his career in the Space Force. Their skin was like thick grey hair but no organs could be seen. No mouth, eyes, ears or any kind of limbs. And they didnt' move. Only their surface went up and down as if they were breathing. And if you stood right next to them, you could hear a sound like if they were snoring. Because they were sleeping by day, they supposed that they were active only by night.
They had now been on this planet less than two hours. The planet had almost the same size as Earth, but it was circling around two suns, one of which was on the sky at this moment. The second sun would rise about in ten hours. The planet was covered by rocks, hills and mountains, and they were all covered by some kind of short grey gras which very much resembled the skin of the snoring aliens. On the ground there were there and everywhere small ponds of water. Obviously the ponds were connected with each other through rivers running under the surface of the planet. Ayerton looked at the sun. "And remember," the captain said, "the darkness will come not until fiftyseven hours. We have plenty of time to repair the ship and continue our mission. So it is very unlikely we must stay on this planet till darkness.The best thing you can now do is to go back to the engine room and finish your part of the repairs".
Ayerton did as ordered, and the next ten hours he spent in the engine room replacing the damaged parts of the computer system guiding the plasma bursts. When he was almost finished with his work, he raised his eyes and saw on the wall in a corner a framed photo. On the picture there was a beautiful landscape, a river running through mountains. On the sky there was a full moon shining. By looking at that moon Ayerton remembered a moment in his childhood when he was camping with his father in the mountains. The weather had been very cold. No clouds on the sky, only the full moon shining like in this picture. It had been very bright, almost like by day. They had both withered in the cold weather in their sleeping bags and waited for the rise of the sun. Suddenly he understood and reached for the intercom microphone. "Captain!" he yelled. "Captain! These things. They are not waiting for the darkness. They are waiting for the rise of the second sun. They are waiting for THEIR day!" Wild screaming and thunder of guns he heard revealed to him that he had discovered the secret of this planet too late…