It was not particularly sophisticated; a child could build and program it with parts available at any toy store. After its fiery nighttime entry into the atmosphere, it bounced hard off of a dusty surface and bounced on large airbags into a dense patch of vegetation. It pulled in its deflated bags, extended a small dish antenna towards the lightening purple sky, and began scanning its surroundings.
The watcher scanned everything it could. It noted in its own binary language that its surroundings were a bit chilly, about 8C but rising rapidly as the sun moved higher in a purplish sky. It noted that the humidity was quite low, the sky cloudless, with a southeast wind blowing at 13kph. The air was about 80% nitrogen, 16% oxygen, 4% various trace gases, no significant amount of toxic substances. Its surroundings were organic, essentially plant matter, and it had settled into spongy, wet soil. It transmitted video as well -- mostly vegetation as far as it could see; it could probably have picked a better landing point. Its sniffer devices noted a touch of soot in the air, probably from scorched leaves where it landed. It started to burrow into the soil to take samples.
The watcher took its job very seriously. After all, this was all it knew how to do.
Tarak had gotten up at dawn, as he often did, and climbed aboard his ivarak, a six-legged beast of burden with antlers and fine feathers covering its vaguely horselike body. Remembering to be gentle with it (it was a female that had just calved a week before), he spurred it into action so that he could take a ride around his property. The summer had been good to him, and with the first flush of autumn it was clear that there would be no problem harvesting the eldok early; a good thing, since there was a threat of frost earlier than usual this year. The farmhands weren't here yet -- harvest wouldn't begin for at least another fivedays and until then they could sleep until a reasonable hour.
He rode down a dirt road leading towards the back edge of the property, stopping occasionally to pluck an ear off the occasional plant and crunch on a few kernels. All seemed satisfactory until he looked down a side road to find it badly torn up, the heads torn off a swath of stalks and a clearing in the middle. "Traskulliyam, I'd bet," he said to himself. These were pigeon-like flying beasts that had a nasty habit of building huge nests overnight in grain fields around harvest time and eating everything in the immediate area; they were small and fairly harmless by themselves, but tended to nest in tight colonies and defend themselves in swarms. A traskulli infestation tended to be best dealt with using smoke bombs; they were too numerous to shoot, but easily confused when they couldn't see, and quite edible when caught. Tarak went back to his saddlebag and noticed that his mount had become rather agitated. "What is it, girl?" he asked the ivarak soothingly. "What's bothering..." A sniff of the air answered the question -- slightly smoky, the smell of burning fresh vegetation. The smoke bomb in his saddlebag was going to be useless -- there were not likely to be any traskulliyam in this area.
He slipped quietly in through a gap between the rows of stalks and noticed that it wasn't so much a clearing as a gouge he was looking at. At the bottom, about three paces in, was the source of the smoky smell. Tarak almost didn't see it at first; it seemed to blend in with the scorched and crushed eldok stalks surrounding it. It was not large, perhaps the size of a small suitcase; vaguely conical in shape, with a dome of what looked like some kind of glass on top and some kind of dish antenna poking through the top. A subtle whirring came from something inside; perhaps it was some sort of spy device?
Tarak felt it wise to leave it right where it was and walk away slowly. He knew a little something about spy cameras and magwire spools; after all, he had been a banker before he was a farmer. But this thing had an antenna, and everyone knew that you needed half a roomfull of tubes to build a transmitter device. There was something odd about this thing.
They had taken it back to Shat-Saaxi in the back of one of those new steam-powered vehicles that had become quite common on the roads these last five years or so and given it a heavy once-over, then a twice-over with a group of visiting Astegari researchers, who had a reputation for being very good at deciphering strange things (but then, weren't the Astegari a little strange themselves, with their dark skin, monochromatic hair, and oddly hairless bodies?). The press conference had been interesting, had been broadcast around Grehon by radio (and television, but who had TV yet? Just a fad...).
The atmosphere was tense, to say the least; the media had been speculating wildly since the day Tarak had found the object in his field. Tarak had turned back most interview requests because of the harvest, but there had been no shortage of people willing to talk anyway. It was whispered that it was a spy device (it probably was), that it had a bomb (it didn't, though the power source seemed to be some sort of fuel cell based on a flammable material), that it was a Tziyanin spy probe (never mind that the Tziyanin lived in a very technophobic, almost feudal culture), and even that it might be from another planet, an idea that the religious authorities scoffed at. After all, weren't the Grehonnek put where they were because the rest of the universe was dying? There could be nothing left out there to send the probe!
The press conference, therefore, was run by the President of the Saaxi Republic himself, Ilati Sessorushna, a man who had made his reputation by helping to shore up the Raska River Valley against Tziyanin invasion, and therefore a curious choice to discuss matters regarding alien life. Ears around Grehon heard his voice that day. "To put to rest many of the rumors regarding the recent find of what we believe to be an alien artifact, I have called this conference. First, yes, we do in fact believe it to be alien. We know that it carries a powerful tight-beam transmitter using data transmission methods we simply do not understand."
A reporter with a strong Kazaalot accent -- "Is there any sign of its purpose?"
"We believe it is a scanning device of some sort. We haven't yet identified the types of instrumentation that it carries, but it at least has a camera and a windspeed indicator, as well as a soil probe and what we believe to be a temperature scanner." Another reporter, this one Mwerissek. "Are you able to identify anything else?" Sessorushna pushed a button, bringing up a slide for those with benefit of visual access. The picture was of a small black object with a row of metal prongs coming out of each side. "This is what we're faced with. We are not quite sure what it is, but the artifact contains a significant number of them. We believe that they are some sort of switching or analysis device, but the package cannot be opened easily and we simply cannot imagine what kind of technology can create something like this; it must be extraordinarily complex, though."
"Are there any indications that this artifact was meant to be found?"
"No. The device seems to have been painted to take advantage of some sort of natural camouflage capability that we can't quite explain. It was only found at all because it landed in an agricultural area as opposed to a forest or another wild spot."
"Do you believe that the alien force that sent this is monitoring us, and if so, why?"
"A simple answer for once." The audience laughed. "Yes, and I don't know why."
The laughing stopped.