Red was the color of the land, but it was not the red they were used to, vibrant and iridescent, unraveling every shade of the spectrum: scarlet and crimson, carmine and vermilion, garnet, coral, maroon. It was magma, the blood of mammals, the fruits and the flowers, the crystals that formed in caves. Yet the iron oxide that painted this planet red turned it dull and pale, and all they could see as they descended were its sandy plains.

The three of them held their breath, watching their little spacecraft land.

The only sound they heard was the howling wind, blowing copper-colored dust in the desert. Despite the distance from the polar ice caps, the temperature was freezing cold, and the spacecraft readjusted its radiator to keep a pleasant, tropical heat inside the deck.

Mango was the first to hurry to a porthole. “Are the signs of life close to us? Can we see them?”

“Approximately three kilometers from here,” answered Kinnabari.

Galena looked at the control panel. She had turned off the autopilot at their request, when they found signals of activity on the red planet, but she was unsure if it had been wise to do so without warning home. Mango insisted that the command center would never allow them to land with such a tiny shuttle, and Kinnabari agreed: they would tell us to leave that to specialized teams.

“We should show that we come in peace,” suggested Mango, her high-pitched voice speaking faster than normal. “They might not understand, but they will know that we are attempting contact. I can think of a few things—”

“We agreed on looking, not interacting,” Galena interrupted, clenching her jaw. When Mango looked at her, puzzled, she added: “Concerned yet excited. Apprehensively curious. Fear of disobeying orders plus the thrill of doing it.”

“Surprisingly, I agree with Mango,” said Kinnabari. “The planet is barren despite the presence of ice, and it harbors no life outside of what the motherboard registered.”

“Think how you would feel if we returned without even seeing their faces.” Mango stepped on the grass that covered the floor, approaching Galena with curiosity. “They might be extremely far from home. Nothing will happen to us. And if we take appropriate care, nothing will happen to them either. Right, Kinnabari?”

“Yes.”

Galena thought of everything that could go wrong: what the command center might say if they found out, what could be the likely punishment. Still, a smaller part of her reminded her that, if anyone could communicate with a new species, that person was Mango. That was why they were there, wasn’t it? To ensure such a talented linguist would arrive safely.

A bubbling feeling began in the middle of her chest, a slow-boiling euphoria, special and exhilarating, and she wanted to say yes, it’s our only chance, yes, before I regret it, yes. The feeling continued even as Galena’s instincts told her to recompose herself, and she looked at their expectant eyes.

“The majority always decides,” she said. “But don’t blame me if something goes wrong.”

A beeping sound echoed in the hall.

Rosa Monteiro pressed the button next to the hatch, balancing a basket of vegetables against her hip and holding a jar of honey with her other hand. The bees buzzed behind her as the main computer continued to beep, announcing a new call.

For the past thirty days, the research center of Ippios had been empty except for her.  The base had been built on the red planet with three modules to accommodate up to twenty scientists at a time, but the buildings would remain empty until she completed the trial phase. Emptier now that all communication with the orbiter had been interrupted because of the last dust storm, but Rosa had been trained to withstand the isolation.

After all, it was only for a limited period of time.

“Computer, accept the call.”

A series of ear-piercing screeching and clacking sounds came from the speakers, and Rosa winced, dropping the vegetables on the floor. The basket rolled around her feet as she stared at the screen, speechless, carrots, tomatoes and lettuce scattered everywhere as the noise continued.

She tried to call the orbiter, but it was just as silent as before.

Rosa nibbled her lower lip. The sender’s signal came from the surface, somewhere between three to five kilometers from where she was. She tapped the rover’s camera, enhancing it on the screen. Outside the day was pale and orange, and the little machine moved up a small dune.

“Computer, log a new message for the orbiter,” said Rosa, leaving the bee veil aside and scooping the vegetables scattered on the floor. “I received an unknown audio from nearby. Investigating. End message.”

She continued watching the rover. Ippios had been chosen for its almost uncanny similarity to Mars, but if she were on Mars, she could have blamed the activity on a number of rovers and helicopters. There should be nothing on the surface of Ippios she had not yet seen, either in the training that preceded the mission or on the cameras.

Only now there was.

Rosa squinted, seeing a dark spot on the sand. It was something flat, moving swiftly toward the rover. Its form and locomotion reminded her of a Devonian chasmataspid, with its segmented body and six pairs of appendages. Rosa dropped on the chair, covering her mouth. The creature approached the rover, and, when it did, Rosa realized it was no creature, but a finely built machine.

The mechanical chasmataspid stopped. It had two lateral eyes that might have worked as cameras, plus seven other simple eyes like a horseshoe crab. Its strong and slick carapace did not accumulate as much dust as the base’s robots. It extended a pair of artificial pedipalps toward their explorer.

The pedipalps grabbed the front of the rover, right under the solar panels, and began dragging it up a slope. The rover followed, an obedient cub after its chelicerate companion, and Rosa exhaled loudly.

The explorer’s camera caught the image of a compact construction that looked like a black crustacean held high by six thin appendages. The creature—the spacecraft—seemed to notice their arrival, and it bowed, lowering as it folded its legs. The chasmataspid retracted its pedipalps, and the two machines seemed to look at the rover like they expected a response.

Rosa found herself laughing, the ecstasy of discovery and the fear of the unknown taking charge of her.

“Well,” she opened a new message. “I guess someone wants us to know that they’re here.”

The sky was blue, almost lavender, but even those colors had been blurred by the dust coating that made everything seem lifeless on the planet. A graveyard, thought Kinnabari, her eyes following the singular sun of the system as it slowly disappeared on the horizon. There were two moons and a couple of brilliant stars, but otherwise it was nothing like what they saw back home. Her sky glittered, purpureus and cerulean, sprinkled with millions of dots, reminding her that the universe was vast and rich above their heads, that infinity could not be measured by any machine.

Not this sky.

Yet Kinnabari observed it, trying to retain the image. When they left, there would be nothing but her memories, nothing she could access, at least.

She touched the carapace of the robot, already clean and sterilized after its mission, and turned to the others.

“It’s just noise.”

Kinnabari replayed the radio message the living creatures had sent them, but nothing about those low frequency sounds made her think of a sentient being. Galena crouched near the robot, holding it in the air.

“Happy, Mango? Can we go now?”

“Or we could test a few ideas. I was thinking…” Mango started in a way that they knew she was not going to stop talking anytime soon. “If we could increase the pitch and readjust the speed…”

Kinnabari was not convinced, but she followed Mango’s idea, speeding up the pitch to something slightly more audible than before. The three of them looked at each other as they replayed the recorded message. They still could not understand anything, but now it sounded like it had intent—it sounded like language.

“If you give me time, I could analyze the sample,” continued Mango. “It would be ideal to meet them, of course, I feel like I could decode at least some words of their language if we were face to face. That would require us to stay a little bit longer here. Do you think they breathe oxygen? If they don’t, it would be too complicated. But there are cameras, and…”

“Mango,” interrupted Kinnabari. “You’ve been going on for minutes.”

“Oh! Apologies.” Mango shook her head, her bright eyes glowing even greener under the lights, like the fruit she was named after. “We could send them a gift. Something to show friendliness. Something of ours.”

“I have an architectural model of our cities,” said Kinnabari, searching on the egg-like bags of their belongings.

“I collect those too!” Mango answered with enthusiasm. She was taller than them, but she talked like a happy little girl whenever she was interested in a subject. Kinnabari showed her the small sculpture, and Mango let out a disappointed sound. “It is one of your cities, I guess. Well! It’s what we have.”

“Why something decorative?” Galena took the brown object from Kinnabari’s hand. “It’s pointless.”

“Communication requires a degree of vulnerability.” Kinnabari took the model back, clicking her mouth. “The model shows both the beautiful things we can do, and our willingness to share them.”

“There are better ways to communicate than giving them a souvenir.”

“If you’re not going to suggest any constructive ideas, you can at least keep your complaints to yourself.” Kinnabari grasped Galena by the arm with a grave look. “Be helpful for once, won’t you?”

“Who died and made you queen?” Galena slapped her hand away. Then, she added, before Mango could open her curious mouth: “Sarcasm. Offense intended.”

“I’m not being authoritative or demanding!” Kinnabari felt her pressure rising. Galena always got on her nerves, for good or for bad. “I just think trying to help is more useful than complaining the entire trip.”

“Offense intended?” asked Mango.

“Yes, Mango. Offense intended.”

Galena looked up to face the other woman, who was bigger and stronger than she was. “Just because you were overfed as a child, that doesn’t make you our leader. And I’m speaking literally now. Let’s at least agree that, if they enjoy our first gift, Mango and I will choose the next ones.”

“Fine,” said Kinnabari, stomping toward the deck to hygienize the sculpture. “The next ones are yours.”

It took Rosa a few hours to successfully isolate, disinfect and analyze the object brought by the chasmataspid. The robots had cleaned the item during the night, and concluded it was a distant cousin of terrestrial baryte, sculpted and polished. The mineral crystal now rested on a Petri dish, and Rosa hovered over it to see it.

The object had formations that made it look like a desert rose, but there was clear purpose in the way it had been delicately carved. At first glance, she had been amazed by the richness of its hue, golden brown with salmon reflections, terracotta lines interwoven with bronze. The more she admired it, the more it looked like a cathedral termite mound or a miniature of a city with tall towers, finely curved and ascending, connected by tiny bridges and sprawling hundreds of windows and doors.

Against the light, the baryte-like mineral revealed a new layer: labyrinthine corridors and tunnels in every level, from the bottom-most to the highest tower, a city hidden within a city.

Rosa tapped the screen to record another message.

“First, they send an audio. Then, they show their location. And now, a gift. They want to communicate.”

Rosa twirled the miniature. It was the size of a brick, but extremely light, and it had an almost unnoticeable golden ring at the top of the central tower, like it was meant to be hung from somewhere.

“Should I answer? Is it dangerous?” Rosa knew better than to anthropomorphize an extraterrestrial species, and the audio was surely disconcerting, but… “I guess there is only one way to find out. Computer, end message.”

There were still some live fish in the aquarium. Mango observed their tails dancing as they swam, their scales glittering, their circular eyes unaware of her presence. She caught one of them, clutching the struggling animal and bringing it to her mouth. The others thought her a savage when she ate like that, but sometimes Mango wanted to enjoy her meal like a child.

The fish contracted when she took another bite, and drops of blood ran down her hands, scintillating and orange-red. Mango ate it piece by piece, tearing the gills to expose the insides, squeezing it harder as it made its last attempts at escaping, tearing the fins and munching the organs. When she finished, there was only a soft carcass to be disposed of.

Mango wiped herself, cleaning the blood that had trickled down her long, lean neck. The tank was almost as tall as her, and she liked to stand next to it sometimes, just to see water again. The inhabitants of the aquarium had decreased noticeably thanks to her hunger, but she felt more real whenever she saw them swimming, or when she woke up at night and the bioluminescent shrimps glowed softly in the darkness of the ship.

“Mango,” called Kinnabari as she cleaned the box sent by the creatures. “Have you finished?”

Mango turned around. “Can I see it now?”

“Yes. I think you might find it interesting.”

Kinnabari and Galena made space for her. They had spent a good while discussing, but she saw them later, forehead against forehead, communicating in their strange telepathic way. Mango could not hear what they said, but whatever they’d spoken inside their minds seemed to have worked. There were no more fights—not that she knew of—and Galena had even been kind to Kinnabari in the early morning, brushing her arm with surprising softness until the other woman woke up.

“What is it?” asked Mango. “What is it?”

The three surrounded the synthetic box. Inside were a flat black device, smaller than the fish she had just eaten, a compilation of hundreds of rectangular sheets bound by a lateral spine, like a bunch of thin leaves, and, also a spongy white statue.

Mango pulled down her goggles to cover her wide-set eyes. The lenses were always attached to the top of her head, either for her eyes to rest, or to correct the colors she could not perceive. She had been born with eight photoreceptors, five less than the average, but still one more than people like Galena and Kinnabari. It was a rare dysfunction that diminished her stereopsis and made her a little slower to perceive motion, but with the goggles on it didn’t really bother her.

“Do you think they look like this?” Mango held the statue close to her face. The thing was porous and simple, and she suspected it was a replica, but that didn’t make it any less fascinating. “If it is, they have one head, two arms, two legs…”

“What are those formations?” Galena pointed at the statue’s head. “Looks like a tamarin.”

“Now we know why we should have brought a biologist with us,” said Kinnabari. “Light jest.”

Mango turned the statue around, wondering if the creatures were as colorless and pale as the sculpture. She was afraid of breaking it if she squeezed it, just like the others were often apprehensive that she would not control her strength. Looking closely, if those creatures were like the object, they were not that different from them: they stood on two legs that were attached to a torso, they were similarly proportionate, their five fingers clearly could grab things, they had eyes in their heads and a slit that looked like a mouth.

“They look … edible,” said Mango at last, and the others turned to look at her, startled. “Playful joke. If they’re primates, and I think they are, they lack fur.”

“I wonder how tall they are.”

“I think those are their genitals.” Mango pointed at the small protuberance in the middle, right where the thighs met. “I’m not impressed. Light jest.”

“Be serious, Mango.”

Kinnabari, who had started to look at the other objects of the box, held the device with two hands. The screen was black and it reflected her face in a distortion of reddish brown. She found a button on one of the sides, and the screen lightened up. Galena spied over her shoulder to see what the device looked like, but Mango was still marveling at the little statue.

“This must be their language,” said Galena, tapping the screen. “Touch that square.”

Mango lifted her head. “Language?”

“The interface looks simple enough,” Kinnabari told Galena. “Although a little too bright for my taste.”

“Is it to contact them?” Galena touched the screen again. The device made a low sound that might have been a vocalization. “What if they’re recording us?”

“Let me see, let me see.” Mango took the machine from their hands and looked at it.

By touching some of the images, she found that they produced sounds. Some were easily deduced: one was a very simplistic drawing of a tree, and another seemed like some kind of fruit. Others, Mango supposed, might have been their planetary neighbors, but with more colors than the white sculpture they had sent. It didn’t take long for her to realize it was some sort of language-learning system.

“I think—I want to believe—” Mango felt her entire body tremble with exhilaration; it was almost like there was a greater reason for her to be there, in that spacecraft, on that planet. “If I could study this…. Maybe adjust the speed of the audio and the pitch like we did last time…. I’m excited, I’m excited!”

“If anyone in the world can do it, it’s you.” Kinnabari opened the third gift, leafing through it with curiosity. “Try to learn the basics.”

“Yes—yes.”

“Mango, your entire body is vibrating.”

“Euphoria. Joy with fear of failure. Terrified of the future. What if I mess this up? More excitement. I want to talk to them,” Mango continued. “I want to see them.”

Kinnabari left the item she was holding on the table. “I don’t know if meeting them would be a good idea, Mango.”

“Again with the tyrannical urges?” teased Galena. “Irony.”

“I’m not being a tyrant.” Kinnabari glanced at Mango, who still happily tapped on the screen. “Instead of feeling defensive, you should choose what we are going to send them now. If you have any good ideas.”

Mango ignored their bickering. She was sure the images represented basic concepts that children could understand, and that the creatures who had contacted them were primates, hairless or mostly hairless. That could lead to some sort of cultural clash, the kind of shock that should be handled by a diplomat or an anthropologist, not a translator.

Was she the right person to deal with this? Her people always said she was odd, inappropriate, infantile; even Galena and Kinnabari commented several times how unlike her kind Mango was. According to them, it was a compliment—she was not aggressive or hostile, she was just silly little Mango, who needed others to point out their feelings and intentions clearly, since she understood everything literally, otherwise.

And maybe it would have been better for everyone if anyone but Mango had been transported in that spacecraft, in that time, but she was the one there. She was the only person who could do this now, and she knew she would—she could memorize anything, she could associate a vast number of written symbols to images, she could break down sounds and understand them.

Of course, she would never be able to speak in their pitch, but she could do all the rest at terrifying speed. It was the only thing she was good at, wasn’t it? It was the very reason she had been given private relocation despite being a foreigner. They needed a linguist, and Mango could speak eight of their dialects, five of her own, and thirteen other languages.

“I know what I want to send,” Mango said abruptly. She left the device on the table and walked to one of the leafed branches that grew inside the tropical heat of the ship. “Mango.”

“We can’t send them food,” scolded Kinnabari. “What if they drop dead?”

“They’re not stupid.” Mango took one of the fruits, large and round, covered by a thin layer of peel. “You said we could choose, but you’re still acting like a queen. Right, Galena?”

Galena and Kinnabari exchanged a concerned glance.

“Mango is right,” Galena admitted. “Communication always poses risks, they should know that already.”

Two days of absolute silence had passed since she’d sent the gifts. Rosa tried not to think too hard about it; she exercised in the early morning, tended to the small beehive they kept in the biodome, meditated, wrote letters to her grandchildren and took her daily nap. They are still there, she reminded herself. They don’t mean any harm.

Never, in all two months of this mission, had she been so restless. The isolation had drained some of the color from her already-graying hair, but never her peace of mind. She knew she was there to see if humans could keep sane and mildly healthy in Ippios. She could handle all of this, so she could handle waiting for a response.

On the third day, the chasmataspid crossed the desert again, carrying another parcel. She practiced her morning Lian Gong while the base’s computer sanitized and inspected the contents, and she had just left the biodome when one of the machines brought the parcel to the sofa. This time, the gift was a large ball that looked organic, and what seemed like a heavy flat coin the size of her hand.

Under a closer inspection, she realized the globe was a fruit. The peel was smooth, and the outside was a rich shade of orange with specks of bronze amid the amber. It smelled sweet and ripe, something between mango and passion fruit.

Rosa left the fruit on her lap and took the coin with a forceps. The surface had minuscule holes that must have had a purpose, but she couldn’t tell what. After observing it for a while, Rosa touched the coin. Tiny spots of color twinkled on it, activating the device, but instead of showing a lock screen like the tablet she had given them, it triggered a song.

Rosa closed her eyes.

The music had none of the beastly screeches of the first day; it was celestial, synchronized, refined, what a chorus of castrati must have sounded like, in another time. The melody continued for a long time, and Rosa’s cheeks turned wet and warm. The tears escaped without permission, but she allowed herself to enjoy them. How sweet, how human-like.

The song kept playing for hours, and Rosa went to the laboratory to test the stone fruit. Inside, it was fibrous and soft like mango, but instead of orange or yellow, it was emerald green and dripping with juice.

Rosa felt like a greedy child, wanting this moment for herself, wishing to be the first to ever try it, to have this memory engraved in her mind. She ran a chemical analysis, and there were no traces of heavy metals, acids or other toxins. The next step was testing it on mice. The rats had been brought to Ippios with her, and Rosa always felt sick in her stomach when they had to use them, but it was standard procedure and she would follow it.

The next morning, she decided it was her turn to send music and food.

In the library, she considered several songs that were archived there, but ended up choosing Canción con Todos by Mercedes Sosa. Maybe they would see the beauty in it too; maybe, in the future, they could even understand what it meant.

Rosa wanted to send a sample of fern or a flower, but the available materials were too limited to insulate a parcel in the cold of Ippios.

I did what I could, thought Rosa, as the rover maneuvered up a slope and disappeared in the sand.

The desert was pale ocher, with specks of rust and marigold lost in the middle of the lifeless dust. Kinnabari walked away from the porthole and looked up to find Mango, who had climbed up the wall to sit on top of one of the interior trees. The white screen cast a bright light on her green eyes, and she tapped it frenetically, hearing again and again the guttural sounds. According to Mango, she could understand enough of the language to discover that there were more options in the device: additional languages, pictures, a camera, and dictionaries she was still unable to decode.

They look like this, she had said, pointing at the screen. The image showed an endearing creature: an oval head with straight fur coming from it in shades of black, gray and brown, two diminutive eyes that occupied very little space on the face, a large nasal protuberance, a small orifice for a mouth surrounded by two pink bits of flesh. Their ears were located on the sides of their head, their thick neck did not seem to allow great movement, they had wide hands with five stubby fingers, and their fleshy bodies were plump and hairless.

But their skin was particularly beautiful: cashew-like and covered in stripes, creating darker and lighter waves of color on the cheeks and forehead, going down the visible areas of chest and arms in a delicate mosaicism, emitting a soft luminescence.

It wasn’t easy to say how tall they were. She felt like they must not have been as small as the tamarins of their homeland, but since she did not recognize any of the trees or structures behind them, she could not measure their scale. Kinnabari’s first reaction had been to find them too animalistic in appearance, but the more she looked, the more she thought that the round lines of their bodies were interesting.

Mango had also found a mechanism on the device that made it vocalize the words she typed in a stilted robotic sound, and she spent the entire afternoon making it say things she could not pronounce.

“Any luck with the song?” Kinnabari asked after the sun disappeared in the horizon. She was starting to feel lethargic. The planet’s sky was polluted by a thick layer of dust, and the stars were almost invisible.

“The song is in a similar dialect to the one I was studying, but not quite the same,” said Mango, playing the record again. Galena had told her the previous night that the music reminded her of their work songs, and Kinnabari agreed, her body vibrating with the rhythm. “I was able to find some translations, but the words are disconnected from each other: south, wind, blood, skin.”

“So no luck,” answered Kinnabari.

“All the luck!” Mango descended elegantly from the tree, her long limbs holding the device with care as she returned to the floor. “I want to contact them.”

Kinnabari could feel Galena’s irritation from the other side of the ship.

“You can’t be sure if your translations are correct, Mango.”

“Trust me,” Mango insisted. “Honesty.”

Kinnabari shook her head. “And what do you plan to say?”

Mango typed on the white screen again, and when she lifted the screen, there were symbols on it Kinnabari could not comprehend:

CAN WE COME?

Rosa touched the sleeve of her tan flight suit, pulling the Velcro distractedly as she stared at her own boots. The base was hotter than the usual, and the clothes clung to her back, drops of sweat running down her short neck. She had been contacted twice by the unknown species since the written message, always by radio. By the sound of it, they seemed to have learned how to make the tablet pronounce sentences for them, enough to list their specifications for a visit.

The temperature and oxygen level were surprisingly similar to what she was used to, but it made the base feel more like a tropical rainforest than a space station. That alone was a victory, she knew—a victory Rosa was eager to savor.

She glanced at the screen. The rover’s camera allowed her to follow the black spacecraft moving through the sand, its six articulated legs crossing the desert. The ship stopped in front of the first module, folded its appendages, and rested close to the ground. The first to come out was the chasmastaspid. The computers analyzed it until they made sure it was not contaminated, but were unable to decipher its technology. Then, the chasmastaspid came in, fast and looking incredibly organic up close.

“Hello to you too,” said Rosa. Her gray hair had been pulled to a bun, and she wore a flight suit as a precaution.

The chasmastaspid ran back to the entrance with a shriek, and the screens flickered.

With a blink, the base was cloaked in darkness, and the emergency lights activated, gleaming softly.

There, as the only human in the module, Rosa had to let go of fear. She was systems away from home. She had nowhere to run. She had to believe that all would be well, that the energy would not run off on that cold and hostile planet. That whatever came into that room would not be dangerous or deceitful. That the sounds and shadows that came from the quarantine room were just that: sounds and shadows, unknown but harmless, and that choosing to communicate had not been the wrong choice to make.

Rosa closed her eyes, humming a comforting song. Her round nails sunk into the gloves, forming a fist, and her wide nostrils flared, breathing in and out.

The gates opened, and three creatures entered the base.

For an instant that felt too brief, Rosa thought they were humanoid. Two of them walked ahead: bipedal, erect, symmetrical, their skins profoundly dark, their stiff postures soldier-like. The lights flickered again, returning to their full brightness, and only then she realized how wrong she was.

The pair stopped meters away from her. They were nearly identical, both tall and sinewy, but while one was graphite in color and scrawnier in build, the other was bigger and had a maroon complexion with shades of vermilion. Their heads were round, with black compound eyes on the sides of their faces, three tiny ocelli, strong mandibles, and long geniculate antennae.

Rosa blinked, trying to process the information. They were most similar to terrestrial ants: their bodies seemed to be covered by a thin exoskeleton instead of skin, their faces were incredibly formic, and their limbs were articulated and somewhat segmented. Unlike ants, their narrow petioles did not lead to an elongated metasoma with a sting, but a pelvis attached to two curved muscular legs that reminded her of a person, if it weren’t for their digitigrade shape.

To her surprise, they lacked two extra limbs, and wore a flexible layer of copper clothes that looked both like armor and like her very own flight suit.

Rosa squinted when the third one entered.

Behind the ants walked an even taller creature, about two meters in height and with a sylphlike build. They were entirely mint green, almost translucent, and their triangular head was supported by a long neck. Their first two slender limbs were raptorial and folded near the torso, followed by two lower arms with something similar to fingers holding the tablet she had sent, along with a pair of elegant digitigrade legs.

The third one looked over their shoulders, twisting their neck at an impossible angle, their eyes covered by goggles attached to the back of their head. Whenever they looked around, their antennae pointed up, moving slightly. Rosa didn’t need to see the huge compound eyes underneath to imagine the pseudopupils lost in a sea of green, as it was obvious who was this creature’s closest Earth equivalent—the praying mantis.

“GREETINGS,” the computerized voice of the tablet broke the silence. The mantis held the device toward her, head tilting to a side.

The ants made way for the mantis to walk toward her. Rosa stood there, trembling, her round chin lifted up.

“Greetings,” answered Rosa, but she barely sounded like herself. “And welcome to Ippios.”

Galena and Kinnabari lowered their heads. It was the only thing they could think of that would show the tamarin that they did not mean to hurt her, and she seemed to understand, as the creature imitated their gesture, bowing and breaking eye contact. Only Mango continued in the middle, with the device in her hands and her two spiked forelegs folded near her chest, eyeing everyone with casual curiosity.

“Mango,” called Kinnabari. “You have to bow too.”

“But I have already greeted them,” replied Mango. Her voice seemed to scare the tamarin, her dilated pupil and tense round body looking like the mammals they had back home.

It was impossible to reason with Mango. Her people did not understand why others would see them as threatening, and they were too individualistic to operate as a team.

Galena tapped Mango’s shoulder. “She looks frightened. Talk to her to calm her down.”

“Ask how they call themselves,” suggested Kinnabari. Her body looked redder under the artificial glow of the creature’s burrow, and her strong arms were stiff by her sides.

“No, ask where the others of her species are.”

Mango looked at the flat device and taped it several times with the tip of her green finger. When she finished, she showed it to the tamarin.

“WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” The device lightened up whenever it spoke. “WHERE IS ALONE?”

“What did she say?” asked Kinnabari.

“I don’t know.” Mango typed again, her antennae looking like two tremulous twigs in the air. “Confused euphoria. Amused anxiety. Ow, ow.”

“Calm down, Mango.” Galena grabbed her shoulder to stop her from rocking back and forth like she did when she was particularly nervous. “Try again.”

“OTHER WHERE OF YOU?” asked the device, and this time, the creature seemed to understand.

Galena observed the tamarin, recognizing her from one of the images they saw in the rectangular device. She had an interesting body structure, composed of several harmonious circles: the head, the round abdomen, the curved legs. Galena wondered if she was pregnant, as she had two developed prominences in her upper torso, or if that was a normal trait in her species. Looking more closely, Galena noticed her hairless skin was the color of myrrh, and a silver pelage spotted with dark markings sprouted above her eyes.

“What did the tamarin say?”

“I think she and her people are also visitors,” answered Mango. “She asks where we come from, but I don’t know how to explain with the knowledge I have acquired.”

“Tell them our planet is distant from the one we are in right now.”

“FAR.” Mango’s device took a few seconds between the time to type and vocalize, and the tamarin’s eyes were wide despite their small size. “HOUSE.”

“Ask them why they’re scared,” said Kinnabari.

“No, ask if they liked the gifts,” countered Galena.

Mango started to move back and forth again. “You’re asking too many questions.”

The tamarin took a step forward, as if sensing their confusion, and she carefully extended one arm toward Mango, with her lined palm facing up. Mango looked at her hand and unfolded her foreleg, touching the middle of the pale palm of the creature. She was delicate enough to avoid harming her with the serrated spikes of her raptorial arm—surprisingly so, considering the curved end, sharp as a blade.

“FRIEND,” typed Mango.

“Friend,” the tamarin said.

The growls were unintelligible, but whatever they were saying seemed to calm everyone down. The tamarin also offered her paw to them. Kinnabari took it, her three-fingered palm against her five-fingered one, and Galena did the same, surprised by how warm and soft she was.

Maybe the touch made her real, not an oddity to report to the command center, or a quirky story to tell back home. The time they’d made contact with primates on a dead planet, they could have said until a few minutes ago, but not anymore. They had language and emotions; they had a house, they had fears, they were like them. Not exactly, not entirely; enough.

As they continued to find ways to communicate, Galena wondered if the tamarin felt the same. That, since their arrival, they were just faceless strangers, or the hostile black surface of their arthropod ship. The thought alleviated her worries, and she didn’t complain when Mango insisted they should keep trying for at least a few days.

“But no more than three days,” warned Kinnabari when they returned to the spacecraft.

And three days passed, with Mango spending most of her time in the base. Ippios base, she corrected happily, repeating what the tamarin had told her. Galena and Kinnabari were more cautious than she was, but even they were curious as they were guided through every space of the artificial burrow.

Mango tried to convince the female tamarin to try the fruits they’d brought, but refused when she was offered a slice. NO, her device said. She was not able yet to explain her dietary needs in detail, so she simplified it to MEAT. Galena only started to truly worry when Kinnabari woke her up before the sun had even risen on the pale horizon, clenching her arm with unsettling strength.

Their antennae touched, and Kinnabari’s tension contaminated Galena. The memories flooded into her mind: the call from the command center—concerns regarding their lateness—report back immediately—can’t tell them about Mango’s ideas—Galena, need to talk to Galena.

She grasped Kinnabari’s vermilion face, rubbing her forehead against hers.

“We have to go back,” said Galena, and they stayed like that for a few seconds, grabbing each other so hard it hurt. “Right now.”

Kinnabari hurried to the control panel to reprogram the route and prepare the spacecraft to go back to autopilot after they left the planet, while Galena organized the ship. They were most efficient when they worked together, but Mango’s growing chaos made it difficult to finish everything as quickly as she would have liked.

“Why are you doing this now?” A pair of green legs appeared in her eye range. Galena looked up, still gathering the leaves that had fallen from the branches that grew inside the ship, and she stared at Mango’s face. “I’ve been thinking that we should…”

“We shouldn’t do anything,” interrupted Galena. “We’re going back home.”

Mango hugged the device against her torso. “Home?”

“Yes, Mango, home.” Galena disposed of the leaves, and checked the quantity of food they would need. “We just received a call asking why we’re taking so long.”

“But I can’t go back yet,” said Mango. “I need to learn their language.”

“You can request permission to come back sometime in the future.” Galena clicked her mandibles with annoyance. When Mango cocked her head, trying to understand, Galena added: “Irritation.”

“No, no, I don’t even know their name yet…”

“You don’t need to know their name!” snapped Galena, and she regretted it as soon as she saw Mango’s pupils going down, her forelegs even more curled against herself, her antennae dropping lifelessly over her face.

“Why are you screaming?” Kinnabari returned to the main deck. “Mango, get your things ready. We’re leaving soon.”

“Let me at least try to call the command center myself.” Mango started the repetitive movements that made her look like she was cradling herself. “Tense concern. Slight hope.”

“No.” Kinnabari didn’t bother looking at her. If she did, she might have felt bad, like Galena did. “We won’t disobey direct orders.”

“If I explain to them how…”

“No.”

“Maybe she should have a chance to explain her point.” Galena stared at the porthole. Outside, the desert was the color of carved wood, but it lacked the texture, fragrance and richness of the trees of their homeland.

“My answer is final,” said Kinnabari, the tips of her three fingers seizing Galena’s wrist joint. “Be reasonable.”

“I am being reasonable!” Galena pushed her away, and Mango stepped back.

“Then act like it!”

“And then what, queen Kinnabari? What should your subjects do?” Galena opened her mandibles, and Kinnabari started doing the same. Mango just observed the situation with her huge eyes, greener than anything else in their spaceship.

“Stop…”

“Someone needs to make the calls!” Kinnabari lunged at her, and Galena felt an animal urge to bite her. “Maybe you’re the one who needs to change!”

“Just because you’re bigger, that doesn’t mean you can treat us like your servants!”

“STOP!”

Mango lifted her forelegs, looking even taller, the spikes of her raptorial limbs dangerously close to their heads, her mouth open after screaming, and a low hiss escaping from her throat. Galena flinched, and Kinnabari covered her face.

“Stop,” Mango repeated meekly. “Stop, stop. Honesty. Peace.”

“Mango,” Kinnabari said with a small voice. “Please lower your arms.”

Mango brought her pointy forelegs close to her neck, shy after the threat display.

“I realize now that I have been inconsiderate with you two and your worries,” Mango started saying, and her secondary arms patted the device. “Please return today. I will stay.”

“Mango.” Galena felt her whole body shaking with adrenaline; she didn’t like to feel so afraid, but the sight of Mango’s forearms and her open mouth would be enough to make any ant wince. “You can’t stay. We don’t know if it’s truly safe.”

Kinnabari agreed, her red antennae going up and down.

“It won’t take long,” said Mango. “Tell the command center everything when you arrive. I’m sure I can learn enough in the few months that would take them to send someone to bring me back.”

“Don’t be stupid. What would you eat, here alone?” Galena brushed the dust off Mango’s sleeve, feeling like she was taking care of a nymph. “Don’t say them. Joke.”

“That was funny, Galena.”

Galena shook her head. “I’m serious now. We’re not leaving you behind.”

“I’ll keep the meat. If I eat moderately, it will last me enough time.”

“Mango.” Kinnabari did the same, brushing Mango’s other secondary arm. “I know we have been impatient, but we care about your safety.”

“Is this grooming?” Mango asked, looking at their hands. “I enjoy it.”

“It is grooming.” Galena clicked her iron-hard mandibles again.

“I saw your antennae touching for a long time the other night,” Mango commented, and Galena was almost sure she could read amusement in her voice. “But that wasn’t grooming, was it?”

“Answer what we said.”

“I’ve made up my mind.” Mango looked at the ceiling of the ship, at the braided branches crossing the structure, at the leaves that sprouted everywhere. “I’ll make sure to learn the most I can while I’m here. Thank you for worrying about me. Bittersweet gratitude.”

Mango gently took their hands from her arms, and turned around to pack her things.

The Girls left forty minutes after announcing their departure. Rosa called them “As Gurias” in her Southern Brazilian accent, because it was better than calling them bugs. The nickname had started when she reported her activities in the log, right after she took the mantis to see the hive in the biodome, and the alien had trapped one of the bees with a quick movement of her hand.

The drone struggled between her fingers, its wings flapping frenetically. Rosa supposed the bees were too small to be grasped by her forelegs, and the hand was more than enough, but she didn’t want to imagine the damage those spikes could cause to a human body.

What are you? The mantis had asked, showing her a drone and a worker. Female, Rosa enunciated clearly, pointing at the worker and herself. Male, she pointed at the drone. The mantis pointed at herself and her companions, and the pronunciation tool of the tablet said: Female.

Since then, Rosa had called all of them girls, as they had not yet managed to exchange names. Rosa had tried several times, but the language app was insufficient in that sense.

“I don’t know if allowing her to stay was the best decision,” Rosa said, while the computer registered her report. The mantis would stay for an indeterminate period in one of the lodgings of the base, where she had a room of her own. “If her food ends, who will she eat? Then again, they’re obviously very civilized, and she’s learning very fast.”

But Rosa was no teacher. She knew fluent Portuguese and English, some Spanish, and she had started Mandarin on the app because she knew that it was good to keep the brain active. Yet none of them were because she loved the act of learning, but because she needed to. Portuguese at birth, English when she lived in Australia, Mandarin because many of her coworkers were Chinese, Spanish because of Brazil’s proximity to Hispanic countries.

That didn’t make her a linguist. Far from it: Rosa had volunteered to test an exoplanetary base, not to teach an alien species how to speak.

Still, it was hard to ignore the mantis. The girl woke up every day and followed her to her Lian Gong sessions, and either typed quickly on the tablet, or drew symbols that Rosa supposed were her language on a circular flat device. What? The mantis would point at the Swiss ball, and Rosa would answer: ball. The mantis saw potential translation everywhere: the solar panels outside, the wheels of the rover, the food they ate.

Rosa had the idea of showing her illustrations of the human body, and she pointed at each part, using herself as an example.

“Bone,” Rosa said, showing her an image of the human skeleton. She held the left hand of the mantis, and allowed her to squeeze her own elbow to feel the joints. “Elbow.”

The mantis grabbed her arm, and Rosa yelped. The pressure of her fingers was stronger than she expected, and she couldn’t help but flinch.

“Pain.” Rosa pointed at the red marks that appeared on her skin when the mantis released her. “It hurts. Pain.”

“Pain.” The mantis took Rosa’s hand and made her pinch her green antenna. She let out a high-pitched hiss. “Pain.”

“Yes, pain.” Rosa smiled. “Pain is bad.”

“Pain is bad,” the tablet echoed.

It reminded her of teaching the same obvious feelings to her first daughter, with the difference that the mantis absorbed everything with tremendous facility, but failed to understand body language. In a few weeks she was already forming fully fleshed sentences in Portuguese, even if some were jarring to a native speaker, and they could have more interesting conversations, like sharing each other’s names.

“What is Rosa?” The mantis asked. Under some lights, Rosa could see lines of green veins under the mint-colored surface of her exoskeleton, and even the vague color of the organs inside her torso.

“Me,” Rosa replied, one hand on her own chest. “It’s my name.”

“No, meaning?”

“This flower.” Rosa showed her a picture of a rose in the library, then pointed at another botanical image. “This color.”

“Flower and color?”

“Yes. And your name?” Like always, Rosa touched the space under the mantis’ long neck to show she was speaking about her.

The mantis took her to the biodome and showed one of the fruits the ants had brought. She sliced it with her sharp forelegs, and pointed at the emerald interior of the fruit.

“Do you know the name?”

“Of this fruit?” Rosa inhaled the aroma, feeling more homesick than she had felt in years. It smelled like the mango fruits she found on the streets of Porto Alegre on a summer’s day. “It looks like a green mango.”

“Mango is the fruit?”

“We have something similar where I come from. But it’s not green.”

“Mango is the name.” The mantis sliced the fruit again, and gave Rosa a chunk. She took a bite, stunned by the richness of the flavor, and a sound of pleasure came from her throat. The mantis pointed at herself. “Green like mango.”

“You’re Mango?”

“I’m Mango.”

After an hour in the biodome, the mantis decided to translate her name as Mango, instead of manga, like the app taught her to. The reason had been that Rosa told her that in most languages she knew, like Spanish and English, the letter O was used at the end, which made Mango believe it would be a more accurate translation of her real name.

Rosa helped Mango in the library as she researched appropriate ways to adapt the names of the ants. She said she wanted to respect their backgrounds and meanings, and ended up choosing the Ancient Greek word Kinnabari for the red ant, whose color closely resembled a mineral from their planet associated with volcanic activity. It was a decent equivalent for cinnabar, but it also represented Kinnabari’s culture. For the silver ant she chose Galena; according to Mango, her name existed as well in several of their languages, and the rock was somewhat similar to lead glance.

They also struggled to translate the respective names for their planets and species. Terra, as she called Earth in her mother tongue, was easier: Rosa showed Mango the dark soil of the plants of the biodome, even if the mantis failed to understand why they didn’t call it water instead.

Humans, on the other hand, brought them to another dilemma. Mango was shown images and names of several types of primates, but the only one that vaguely resembled the animals she knew back home were tamarins of the genus Saguinus. She admitted it would take her a while to find a better translation for “human,” and was surprised to know that Earth also housed creatures that were very similar to her.

Mantis, Rosa pointed at the image of the insect, green like her. Then, she showed a picture of a fire ant. Ants. Mango was amused by the spectacular size difference. When Rosa asked her the names of each of their species, Mango cocked her head, confused. We are the same, she said. Ants and mantises and all the others are people just the same.

Similarly, it took her almost a month to explain what the word for her planet meant. She pronounced it for Rosa, but her vocalizations sounded only like alien screeches, and the tablet translated it to Portuguese:

“Colony. Nest.” Mango tried to point at the beehive, at the images on encyclopedias, at herself. “House. Body. Us.”

“Which of the words? Or all of them?”

Mango looked at the bees flying around the hives, her eyes lost in their black and yellow stripes. “All of them.”

Mango rocked back and forth on the bed. A bed, she had been told, was the rectangular structure in which tamarins rested, and she would have found it perfectly functional if it weren’t for the neverending whiteness of the space. Not space, she reminded herself, bedroom: the individual pods meant to give them privacy while they slept. It had no warmth or vegetation. It had no visual enrichment, or color, or sound. It had no aquariums with fish that glowed in the dark, or large flowers filled with pollen so she could snack every few hours.

It had no people.

Mango realized she missed Galena and Kinnabari. Their bickering was endlessly amusing, but most of all they were caring: they never allowed her to forget she needed to eat when she was too caught up in an exciting assignment, they never failed to use adaptive language to include her, they changed the lights and temperature of the ship when she felt overwhelmed.

Tamarins were not the same. During all her interactions with Pink, she had hardly learned about emotions, and they never bothered telling her what they felt. It made her feel lonely, scared, hated. It made her feel like she was doing something wrong. Mango had been able to translate units of times, and she knew someone would come back for her in a month or less, but the sensation of isolation didn’t change.

Mango knew she had made incredible progress. It would have been dizzying, in fact, if it weren’t for the lack of emotional complexity, but it was more than enough to communicate. Still, she wanted more, and since she had never been the patient type, she decided to tell her what she felt:

“What does it mean?”

Pink looked at her with her tiny brown eyes. “What?”

Mango touched her face. She had been careful not to hurt her again, and she always tried to behave her best around Pink because she understood she was an elder. Many mammals grayed like that, and she guessed that was why she had lines that made the flesh around her face sag so beautifully, adding a texture that did not exist before.

“When I hurt you, you pain,” said Mango. “When someone dies, do you pain too? How do you say when pain is not because you hurt, but because you…? Word.”

“Feel?” suggested Pink. “Feeling? Emotion?”

“Emotions can be good?”

“Emotions can be of any kind.” Pink touched the device to show the simplified images that represented their planet full of water and soil. One showed a tamarin baring their fangs, but it wasn’t a threat display. “We talked about pleasure when you eat a good meal, and displeasure when you eat a bad one. A feeling can also be good or bad.”

“I want to learn about feelings,” Mango asked. “Teach.”

Feelings, that was the word, the powerful force that drove their every action. Feelings were always hard to translate, here or in any other galaxy: the palpitation of excitement of learning a new language, the warmth of affection as three fingers brushed her arms, the heaviness of pain when she was alone. The pleasant waves caused by the touch of antenna against antenna, the sweet blood of a meal…. The same feelings that had both confused and fascinated her were now what she most missed in this alien environment, so clinical and pristine, so unlike life.

With effort, Mango understood they felt the same. The tamarin had simpler words than they did, but combined they started to make sense. We merge different emotions in the same expression, Mango told Pink, excitement with fear and insecurity. One word. Disliking someone who you like because you feel unprepared and challenged by them. One word.

Pink also tried to teach her body language: the sound that came from their diaphragm when they were happy, the bared fangs was laughter, the water they secreted from the corners of their eyes was crying, their stretched maw was a smile.

“I find it hard even back home to understand non-verbal gestures,” said Mango. She was sitting quietly on the wall while they ate. “I like it when others tell me what they feel.”

“I can do this for you.” Pink looked at her plate, full of a yellow paste of mashed root vegetable. “Right now, I feel compassion for what you just said. I feel connected.”

“Connected?”

“It means that I realize that you’re just like us,” said Rosa. “That you feel, and you’re insecure, and you need help.”

“Person,” Mango said. “It’s because we’re all a person.”

Pink touched the back of Mango’s hand. Touch, they had agreed, was good. It could hurt if misused, but it was a risk worth taking. Mango felt the vibrations of Pink’s movement reverberating through her entire being, and she touched her other hand.

If she could, Mango would have been forever in that moment. Maybe Pink was right, and they were connected like the veins of a leaf because they felt, and they thought, and they had the urge to share those experiences. But she couldn’t—her time with her was finite, restricted, predetermined. And Pink knew it too, despite her stretched mouth showing contentment, other words of affection: thank you for this moment. Thank you for the contact. Thank you.

It was what she wanted to remember when the arthropod spacecraft finally returned to fetch her. Galena came with them, and she hurried to Mango as soon as she entered the base.

“Were you hurt?” Galena took her face with her hands, and Mango’s antennae trembled. “You’re not looking as bright as you should be. Loving concern.”

“I have been eating very little,” admitted Mango.

“You’ll eat again soon,” promised Galena. “Kinnabari insisted on bringing that fish you like.”

Mango wished she could stretch her mandible to smile.

“Joy in seeing you again,” she said instead. “Melancholy for what is about to happen. Emptiness and love.”

The tamarin looked at them while Galena took Mango’s belongings back to the ship. Mango kept holding the tablet, and Pink walked toward her.

“You never told me why you decided to come here,” said Pink, one hand on her arm. “But I’m glad you did.”

“Curiosity,” said Mango. “Honesty.”

Pink wrapped her arms around her, resting her cheek on Mango’s waist for a few seconds. Her warmth was very particular, and so were the heartbeats that reverberated against her when Pink touched her.

“Are you ready to come back home, guriazinha?”

“Yes and no. I didn’t learn a word to represent what I’ve been feeling for the past three months.” Mango touched Pink’s cheek with the end of her stretched foreleg. A teardrop fell on the curved end of her tibia. “Longing for home. Longing for those who are like me. Longing to relive the moment we arrived on this red planet. Sadness that I will never be able to feel it again. Sadness that my time with you has come to an end. Pain of thinking that I will go back, and think of you, and remember that you are part of my past.”

“Saudade.” Pink typed the word for her. “The word you’re searching for is saudade.”

Saudade, the device repeated. Mango already felt it, and she would feel it again many times, but the feeling made her surprisingly happy. Happy to have seen the tears washing her face; happy to hear her laughter; happy that she, too, could experience so many things at the same time. Mango walked behind Galena, and turned to see Pink once more.

“Saudade,” she said again, and the two insects disappeared through the gate.