“I agree. I think someplace flat and dry with a good field of view.”
“Right. That way we can see any threats approaching from a distance.”
“My thinking exactly.”
“We are over this continent's central plane—it's as flat as Kansas down there... hey! Look over there. That looks like some kind of ruin.”
“I think you're right,” said Beth, looking out of the windscreen as Bobby threw the shuttle into a 45 degree banking turn to circle the site below. “Let's set down a couple of klicks outside whatever that is—I'll tell our passengers we are landing.”
“Fine, I'll tell the ship what our plans are...”
* * * * *
After making two complete circuits of the site, Bobby brought the shuttle to a hover a little less than two kilometers from the edge of the visible ruins. The heavy craft sank slowly to the surface, its repulsors causing rivulets of sand to flee from beneath it. Stout landing legs emerged from the shuttle's underside just before it touched the surface.
“Another smooth landing on a new alien world,” said Bobby.
“Every landing is smooth with deck gravity to compensate for any bumps and shudders,” Beth said.
“Spoil sport,” he replied. “I've landed with the nose pointing to the northwest, into the prevailing wind. That will help keep all of this sand from blowing in the rear hatch when it's open.”
“Good thinking. Well, let's not keep the others waiting.”
Emerging from the shuttle after the uneventful landing, the five Marines exited first, fanning out to form a defensive perimeter. They were followed by the science party, who milled about like a bunch of sightseers off a tour bus.
“I don't see anything threatening,” said Sami, scanning the horizon.
“So we didn't need this restrictive armor after all,” groused Joe, “we could've just worn pressure suits.”
“No one knows what hazards may await us,” said Mizuki, like a school teacher chiding a particularly backward child. “Besides, in a pressure suit you would have no bio-mechanical assist—under this gravity you would be even more uncomfortable.”
“There is no way I could carry all this gear,” Will Krenshaw agreed, shifting the webbing of the pack strapped to the back of his suit. “My pack must weigh 200 pounds in this gravity.”
Beth grinned a private grin, it was her idea to make the scientists carry their own equipment, instead of breaking out a hover sled. That way they couldn't haul along everything including the kitchen sink.
“Ms. Acuna,” she called on the Marines' frequency, “have you spotted anything peculiar or can we head out toward the ruins?”
“Nothing obvious, Ma'am. We are good to go.”
“Very well,” Beth acknowledged, then changed to the expedition's common frequency. “OK people, let's head towards our objective, we're burning daylight.”
A pair of surveillance drones hung in the sky over head. Basketball sized silver spheres, one orbited the shuttle at 200 meters, watching for anything approaching. The second floated ahead of the landing party at 25 meters, scouting for danger and acting as a comm relay back to the ship.
After a bit more milling about the scientists formed a ragged column and headed for the ruins spotted on the flight in. Escorted by the Marines—Umky in the lead and a pair of humans off each flank—the scientists chatted excitedly with each other over suit-to-suit radio. With a range of about five meters, suit-to-suit provided an open voice channel that simulated normal, unencumbered conversation. It even acoustically positioned the voices of communicants to simulate their relative spatial positions. Private conversations could be held at a distance over normal radio channels, but for coordinating the activity of a local group, suit-to-suit was as close to talking without helmets as you could get.
“Interesting how the clouds have a slight red tinge to them, around the edges,” said Gerard.
“Red sun, red clouds, red desert,” replied Sami, glancing at the readouts on his suit's forearm display. “Temperature is a balmy 27ºC, with a light wind out of the northwest, humidity about 23%. Given the conditions we could be walking around in short sleeves and sandals.”
“Not until we check for biological threats,” said Ahnah, who, despite being encased in a space suit, still reflexively sniffed the air.
“Interesting,” said Joe, his breathing slightly labored. “The atmospheric pressure is 170 kilopascals, 70% more than on Earth. Even with only 18% oxygen in the air it should be quite comfortable. The CO
2
is pretty high though, it's nearly 800ppm.”
“Without any plant life to help sequester it I'm surprised it is not higher,” said Sami, “Of course, we didn't see any volcanoes from orbit—vulcanism is the major source of CO
2
back home.”
“Other than people you mean,” said Joe.
“Not people anymore,” said Gerard, ending the conversation for the time being. Trudging on in silence, the party crested a slight rise in the terrain and the ruins ahead became clearly visible. The science party and officers stood and stared at the eerie desolation before them.
“'When I drew nigh the nameless city I knew it was accursed,'” recited Bobby, “'afar I saw it protruding uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave.'”
“Now you are quoting things like Billy Ray,” said Mizuki, while staring across the sands at the bones of the alien city.
“Yeah. 'The Nameless City' by H. P. Lovecraft,” he replied. “You have to admit it fits.”
“'There is no legend so old as to give it a name, or to recall that it was ever alive;'” quoted Beth. “I've read Lovecraft also.”
“I wonder how old it is?” said Sami. “Things in the desert have a way of looking equally decrepit whether they are fifty years old or two thousand.”
“I don't know,” said Gerard, “but it feels really old.”
“I once went to Petra, the Rose City in Jordan,” Sami continued.
“Wasn't that the place they used in one of the Indiana Jones movies?” asked Bobby.
“Yes, huge monuments carved out of the living sandstone. There was a road there built by the Romans around 100AD, but the Nebataeans had been there for 600 years before the Romans came. Those ruins felt old, but these feel even older for some reason.”
“If we can find some organic material maybe we can do radiocarbon dating,” said Will. “Of course, without growing plants to provide an isotope ratio baseline, we won't know what the samples started decaying from.”
“I guess we should have brought an archaeologist with us as well,” said Beth.
“Most of their methods still require organic material of some sort. Maybe we'll get lucky and find something buried. Outside of that it could take years to figure out how old these ruins are.”
“There are other radiometric dating methods based on other isotopes,” said Sami. “Unfortunately, they work on longer, mostly geologic time scales. On Earth we had all sorts of metrics, all tied back to the strata—the layers of rock found around the world.”
“Those measurement methods were the end result of thousands of scientists working over centuries,” said Gerard, “here we have none of that.”
“It appears that a number of scientific disciplines have become many times more complicated since leaving our home planet,” Will said, a hint of sad resignation in his voice.
“Let's concentrate on what we can do and get to work on the preliminary survey,” said Mizuki. “Remember, nobody wanders off alone. Stay in pairs.”
The Nameless City
The city was significantly bigger than it looked from the air, or maybe walking across its sandy, undulating surface in spacesuits changed that perspective. Wandering among the badly weathered ruins it was possible to make out a grid where streets ran between the low mounds, all that was left of the city's buildings. Bobby was helping Sami drill core samples; Gerard and Joe were off taking samples on their own; and Ahnah and Will were looking for something, anything, living. In contrast, the Marines were not looking down, they were keeping an eye out for trouble while spreading out around the clump of scientists.
“So what are we looking for, Sergeant?” asked Dmitry Boskovitch.
“Anything unusual, Bosco,” Rosey replied. “Let's fan out on compass points with Umky near the middle so he can reinforce anyone who gets in trouble.”
“Aye, aye, Gunny,” said Kato Kwan.
“I ain't a gunnery sergeant any more, Kato.”
“The XO treats you like you are.”
“Right. Notice how she doesn't mention rank when she's telling me what to do. She's got some kind of hard on for me so the rest of you would do well to stay out of splatter range.”
“I think you are reading more into it than you should, Gunny,” said Vinny DeSilva.
“Da. Except for the Captain and Chief Ship Starshina Zackly she addresses no one by rank.”
“That's because she's married to the Captain and I think that 'Chief' is Zackly's first name,” said Kato.
“She commanded the corvette squadron during the Great Alien Hunt,” said Umky. “I got the impression her people really liked her.”
“I'm not saying she's a bad officer, just that I'm on her shit list at the moment and you should all keep some distance.”
“Hey, she'll come around, Rosey,” said Vinny.
“We'll see. In the mean time shut your pie holes and keep an eye pealed for angry aliens.”
“Aye, Gunny.”
* * * * *
The Marines assumed perimeter positions, walking slowly around the group of scientists. The science party was oblivious to anything but their own investigations. This left Beth and Misuki with little to do.
“Not a lot of astrophysics going on around here, Misuki.”
“I am afraid not, or starship piloting. Let's go to the top of that big mound and get a feel for how large this city used to be.” Toward the center of the site there was one mound that rose a bit higher than the others.
“At least it will give us something to do, other than watch the others work.”
“Hai.”
The two women trudged up the modest slope of the mound, the electroreactive polymer bundles in their suits compensating for the 27% higher local gravity and the weight of the armor. While not as massive as the heavy suits worn by the Marines, moving about would have soon exhausted the Earthlings without the synthetic muscles. On this planet, even Mizuki weighed more than two hundred kilos in a suit.
Cresting the rounded summit, Mizuki turned to Beth and said, “it seems solid, I wonder if there is anything inside?”
She jumped up and down to test the mound's solidity. On the landing she disappeared from view.
CIC, Peggy Sue
Aft of the bridge and the Captain's sea cabin was the Combat Information Center, or CIC. In Navy speak, it was a room designed to gather and present processed information for command and control of the near battle space or 'area of operations'. In other words, to observe and direct actions outside the ship.
In this case, the large central 3D holotank display showed a real-time reconstruction of the site the surface expedition was exploring. Built from telemetry gathered from the explorers' suits and the surveillance drones circling overhead, it allowed the Captain to follow the situation planet side with only a few seconds of transmission delay.
Mug of coffee in hand, Billy Ray comfortably watched the progress of his crew as they explored the abandoned city. Small black figures moved about over the lumpy, sand colored surface. Each trailed an identification tag, following like a toy balloon above its owner. The Captain blinked twice at the miniature tableau as the display changed—one of the balloons was now ownerless.
“Surface party, Peggy Sue. Interrogative your status?” he called. “Dr. Ogawa has disappeared from the situation display.”
“Wait one, Peggy Sue,” came the hurried response from the First Officer.
The Nameless City
“Ayyiiii!” Mizuki cried as she vanished.
“Mizuki!” yelled Beth, rushing to the edge of the hole that had swallowed her friend.
“Surface party, Peggy Sue. Interrogative your status?” said the Captain's voice over the radio. “Dr. Ogawa has disappeared from the situation display.”
“Wait one, Peggy Sue,” Beth replied. Staring into the ragged opening's dark interior, Beth switched on her suit's light amplification and near infrared illumination. This revealed Mizuki's suited form three meters below, laying on the floor of the cavern, her upper body propped up by her elbows.“Are you alright?”
“Yes, just startled is all.” Mizuki struggled and came to a sitting position. Looking around her she said, “This is not a natural cavern, it is a room. The floor looks like some kind of tile.”
“Are you sure you're not injured?”
“I am fine, more embarrassed than hurt... My God! There are racks of equipment against the far wall!”
“Great, let me tell the ship that you're OK.” Beth switched back to the ship's frequency. “Peggy Sue, Dr. Ogawa is uninjured. She seems to have made a bit of a... breakthrough.”
* * * * *
A half hour later the edge of the hole had been excavated and stabilized. A ladder led from the surface into the hole and both Bobby and Beth had joined Mizuki within the buried chamber.
“You're right about the floor, Mizuki,” said Beth kneeling down to run a gauntleted hand across the chamber's lower surface. “This is nothing that nature did on her own. It looks like a pattern made from ceramic tile, some kind of mosaic.”
“Find some ceramic that has not been exposed to daylight,” said Mizuki. “Sami should be able to date it with optically stimulated luminescence.”
“You mean we can find out how long this place has been buried?” asked Bobby.
“Yes, from OSL dating we can find out how long it has been out of sunlight. And thermal luminescence can tell when the ceramic was fired. That's assuming this floor is older than about 300 years and younger than 100,000.”
“If it's a thousand centuries old it's in damned good shape,” Bobby commented, looking at the racks of equipment against the far wall. Even covered with dust, the devices contained there looked like nothing designed by man. “I wonder what this place was?”