“One way to find out is to see what that equipment does,” said Beth. “Let's get Dr. Hosseini down here to sample the floor tile while we talk to the ship. We need to see what Chief Engineer Baldursson thinks about disassembling the devices on the wall.”
“Arin was looking for an excuse to come down to the surface,” Bobby grinned.
“Can't blame him, for most of the crew it's their first alien planet.”
“Yes, and my first discovery of a lost alien civilization,” said Misuki with a smile. “I literally fell into it.”
CIC, Peggy Sue
Also present in the CIC was the ship's doctor, Betty White, who was monitoring the vital signs of those on the ground. Given the planet's heavier than Earth standard gravity and the added stress of wearing the unfamiliar armored suits, Doc White was keeping an eye on respiration and heart rates among the explorers.
“Given the gravity, that was quite a fall Mizuki took,” the Captain said.
“She's fine, Captain,” the doctor replied. “Another benefit of wearing armor—it helped cushion her fall. She might have broken a leg or fractured some vertebra in a simple pressure suit.”
“I'll add that to my list of reasons for always sending the crew out wearing armor, Doc.”
“I'm not worried about the old timers, Captain. It's those scientists that concern me. They are inexperienced and not in the best of shape. Both Dr. Rogers and Dr. Krenshaw are showing signs of tachypnea—elevated respiration—and rapid heart rates. Rogers is on the edge of hyperventilating.”
“Do we need to pull them back? I would really like to get through our first surface mission without any casualties.”
“I think if they just took a break, and let things return to normal, they will be OK.”
“Right. Expedition leader, Peggy Sue,” Billy Ray sent over the command frequency.
“Go Peggy Sue,” came Beth's voice, in her BBC news reader accent.
“Dr. White says a number of the science party are over-stressing and would do better if they stopped working for a few minutes.”
“Roger that, Peggy Sue. I will tell them to take a break.”
The Nameless City
“Listen up everyone,” Beth broadcast to the landing party. “The ship says we are ahead of schedule and should take a few minutes of rest. Stand up in a stable position, lock your suit extremities and relax for a bit.”
Beth scanned in all directions and could see members of the science staff standing erect—all except Joe Rogers, who continued to struggle with a core drill.
“Come on, people,” she repeated, “let's take a break.”
“Yeah, just... a... second...” said Rogers, struggling to extract the drill bit from the ground. With a final tug he managed to lift the heavy piece of equipment free, and topple over backward. Landing on his back, with the core drill on top of him, he began to thrash about, making inarticulate gasping sounds.
“Oh, bollocks,” Beth said over suit-to-suit, “the bloody barmpot is acting like a tipped over turtle.”
“Bobby! Come,” Mizuki called. Both Bobby and Mizuki were within range to hear Beth's exclamation, though a few meters closer to the fallen environmentalist. They immediately headed down the sandy slope and ran toward the still flailing Rogers. From the other direction, Rosey Acuna was also racing to help.
“Dr. Rogers, please be calm,” Mizuki shouted. “We are coming.”
“He's hyperventilating,” came Betty's voice over the ship channel. “He is having a panic attack.”
“If he keeps flailing around he's going to hurt himself,” Bobby replied. “Can you sedate him?”
“Yes, I can do that remotely, but he'll probably not appreciated it afterward.”
“If we try to restrain him physically he might really get injured,” said Beth, catch up with Mizuki and Bobby, who were standing helplessly next to the thrashing Rogers. “Better to injure his pride, I should think.”
“Roger that, sending the command to his suit now...”
It took a quarter of a minute for the sedative to quiet Rogers' thrashing but finally he lay still. Rosey moved next to the downed scientist and gently removed the core drill that was still balanced on his chest, her powered armor easily lifting the heavy piece of equipment.
“Well this is a fine mess,” said Beth.
“Yeah,” said Bobby, “get his arms and legs in a comfortable position and I'll lock his suit. Then we can carry him to the shuttle.”
“Does this mean we have to cut the mission short?” asked Mizuki. “Sami, Will and Ahnah wanted to take a trip to the river bed we spotted twenty kilometers west of here.”
“I think we need to get Rogers to sick bay as soon as possible,” Beth replied, “and I don't like the idea of staying on the surface with no transport.”
“We've found nothing dangerous so far,” Bobby said, “and once we get him secured on board the shuttle I can take him back to the ship without assistance.”
“We still have seven hours of daylight, it would be a shame to waste them,” said Mizuki.
“Engineer Baldursson and a couple of the crew were going to come down in a small shuttle to work on removing the equipment we found in the ruined building,” Beth said, thinking through their options. “If they bring the other large shuttle instead, we could use it to evacuate in an emergency.”
“That would work,” Bobby said.
“Let me run it by the Captain. Peggy Sue, were you listening to that?”
“Affirmative, Expedition leader. We can have Shuttle Two underway before you get Dr. Rogers to your boat.”
“Roger that, Peggy Sue. We are heading for the shuttle now.”
“I will walk to the shuttle with Bobby and bring back a hover sled,” said Mizuki. “A 40 kilometer hike is probably not a reasonable thing to ask of the other scientists.”
“Excuse me, Ma'am,” said Rosey. “It would be best if both hover sleds were left. If the river party runs into trouble I'd hate to be twenty klicks away with no transport.”
“Good thinking, Acuna,” said Beth. “You bring the boffin and I'll come along to fetch the second sled.”
“Aye, aye, Ma'am.” Rosey gently picked up Rogers' rigid form and headed back to the shuttle, carrying him in her arms like a sleeping child. She didn't see the thoughtful look the First Officer gave her, as she strode purposefully across the sandy wasteland.
Chapter 9
Main Mess, Peggy Sue
“So you're tellin' me, that after almost two weeks of poking around on the surface, we have found absolutely nothing alive on the planet?” asked the Captain.
“That is correct, Billy Ray,” said Mizuki. The head scientist, Beth and Bobby were seated at a table, drinking tea and coffee with Billy Ray. On the bridge, the four friends adopted a more formal, almost military form of address. This was mostly from long habit but also because it kept things orderly and efficient. Also following naval tradition first names were used in the mess, giving the meeting an informal air.
“It is so odd,” said Beth. “Not only have we failed to uncover any living lifeforms, we haven't even found the remains of any. No organic material in the soil or seabeds, no graves of the creatures that built and inhabited the ruins scattered about the planet. Nothing.”
“We have identified banded iron formations, indicating a period of strong environmental oxygenation. Back on Earth, this marked the development of photosynthetic organisms. We also found beds of limestone and other sedimentary formations consistent with the development of indigenous life, at least in the ocean. But Beth is correct, no signs of larger creatures have been found, yet someone built the city where we found the strange equipment.”
“But we do know when the city was abandoned?” Billy Ray queried Mizuki.
“Yes, from ceramic samples we have dated the ruins at around 10,000 years old. Fortunately, ceramics were widely used by the missing inhabitants. Samples taken from other sites—including some recovered by the robosnakes from cities sunk beneath the ocean—all give the same result.”
“So whatever wiped them out happened all over the planet at the same time,” said Bobby. His companions could almost see the conspiracy taking form in the sailing master's imagination.
“The dating methods are not accurate enough to support that conclusion,” Mizuki said, trying to keep Bobby grounded in fact. “Whatever ended this planet's civilization could have taken several hundred years to spread across the globe.”
“Or it could have happened in a matter of days, or even hours,” Bobby persisted.
“Yes, that is possible, but we have no way to prove the timeline one way or the other.”
“Have we found out anything from the equipment we discovered in the first ruin?” asked Billy Ray, steering the conversation away from hypothetical doomsdays and back to knowable information.
“Chief Engineer Baldursson has done an analysis of the equipment and found it contains some kind of crystalline storage matrix and circuitry to access it,” Beth replied. “The circuits themselves seem to be made from semiconductors and the storage holographic.”
“Sounds similar to the T'aafhal memory array in the ship's computer.”
“Only in concept, Captain,” said the voice of the ship's computer. “I have been working with Engineer Baldursson on reconstructing the circuitry needed to access the array.”
“That's good Peggy Sue. If we could read that memory module, it might give us some idea of what happened to these folks.”
“Being able to read the data does not mean we will be able to understand it, Captain.”
“As things stand, it might be the only way we can find out what happened here 10,000 years ago,” Beth said. “We've tested for all sorts of calamities—solar eruptions, asteroid impacts, nearby super novae—nothing is consistent with conditions down below.”
“This is true. Any of those events would have left detectable evidence behind—a layer of ejected material, shock formed glass spherules, a spike in certain isotopes,” Mizuki said. “Whatever it was, it did not just kill all life on the planet, it destroyed almost every trace of it.”
“I still think it was the Dark Lords,” said Bobby. “This feels too unnatural, it must have been an intentional act.”
“Pardner, if the Dark Lords had something that could wipe a planet clean of life why would they send a ship full of space bugs to pelt Earth with asteroids?”
“I don't know, Billy Ray, but this just feels... sinister.”
The voyage's leadership fell quiet, pondering the sad fate of the creatures who had once inhabited the planet below. The silence was interrupted when Billy Ray's comm pip chirped.
“This is the Captain, go ahead.”
“Captain, this is Lewis on the bridge. A ship just emerged from alter-space; the transfer point is consistent with a transit from Earth. Sensors say it is probably the colony ship.”
“Very well, Mr. Lewis. I'm heading for the bridge.”
As the four rose from the table, Beth asked her husband, “what are you going to tell the colonists about the planet?”
“I'm going to offer them a data dump of what we found exploring the surface and wish them luck. After all, we haven't found anything that's actually dangerous down there—whatever exterminated life on this world seems long gone.”
Bridge, ESS Fortune
“Earth ship orbiting the second planet, this is the ESS Fortune, please respond.”
“ESS Fortune, this is the Peggy Sue. We read you loud and clear.”
“Peggy Sue, this is Captain Siddhartha
Chakrabarti of the Earth Colonization Council. With whom am I speaking and might I ask your intentions?”
“Greetings, Captain. This is Capt. Billy Ray Vincent of the Orion Arm Trading Company. We are in this system as part of an exploration and trade mission to scout unknown planets.”
“Are you staking a claim to this planet, Captain Vincent?”
“No, Captain Chakrabarti, we have surveyed this planet over the past two weeks and find nothing of interest to the Company.”
Capt. Chakrabarti was visibly relieved at Capt. Vincent's response. He had a hold full of colonists and livestock that he needed to offload somewhere. If these self described traders laid claim to the intended colony planet he didn't know what he could do.
“Thank you, Captain. Will you be staying in the area for a while?”
“Yes and no, we plan on taking a look at some of the outer planets but we are done with
C
. We can send you a dump of all the data we collected during our survey, if you would like.”
“Yes, that would be greatly appreciated. Did you find anything hazardous?”
There was a pause.
“No, we found nothing dangerous. The planet seems totally devoid of indigenous lifeforms.”
“Thank you again, Capt. Vincent. We will be orbiting the planet in about six hours. At that time we will be launching three weather and communications satellites into geosynchronous orbit.”
“Thanks for the heads up. Good luck with your mission, Fortune. Peggy Sue clear.”
“And to you, Peggy Sue.”
“What a coincidence. We spend nearly a month in alter-space and when we get here we find another Earth ship already orbiting the destination planet. The galaxy just isn't that small,” said Raoul Mendez, the ship's navigator.
“The Peggy Sue obviously left before we did. I'm just glad they didn't claim the planet—we would have had to turn around and go back home.”
“Could they do that? Could we have run them off by force?”
“Hardly. That ship has at least as much firepower as a frigate, maybe a cruiser. She may be listed as a rich man's yacht in the database, but the Peggy Sue has fought more battles than most of the ships in the Fleet.”
“We're getting that data dump from them now, Captain. And it looks like they are breaking orbit.”
“Good. Put us on course to orbit the planet. Maybe the data from the Peggy Sue will let us speed up offloading our passengers. The sooner we can select the settlement sites, the sooner we can start ferrying them to the surface.”
“Roger that, Captain,” replied the Navigator, adding, “though I suppose we will have to sit down with the three lead settlers to discuss the landing sites.”