"What's our speed Tris," he asked, without looking up.
"Mak C5." Tris replied, a little breathlessly.
"What does C5 mean daddy?"
"It means we get to where we're going in a week Hops, instead of years."
Tris leaned over and said, "It's five hundred times the speed of light."
Hope seemed suitably impressed, more so with the 'weeks' part, than the 'five hundred times' part.
"I'm glad to hear it," she said, "there's only so many times I can check mom's plants!"
They left the cockpit laughing.
The dogs were released from under the table, and began some doggy horseplay. Clare took the hint and made for a cushion.
"Oh no you don't," Steve shouted, getting to a cushion first. The pair of them began a cushion fight, rolling on the floor and giggling like little kids. Tris looked at Hope and went for it. He grabbed a cushion and chased her around the living quarters. She squealed with laughter as she tried to escape, it was no use though, as Steve and Clare were always in the way. She eventually fell over them, as did Tris, he landed on the cushion he was carrying and so lost its use as a weapon. Hope seized her chance and began to tickle him. He became a heap of shaking jelly on the floor unable to fight back.
"Aha," Hope laughed, "so you're ticklish, what a shame." She was merciless, and had him to the point of not being able to breath when a well-aimed cushion hit her full in the face knocking her over.
"Eureka!" Steve shouted, "Come on Tris, we can't let these women get the better of us."
Tris was up in a flash, armed with two cushions. "Now you're for it," he shouted and began chasing Hope across the floor pummelling her with each cushion in turn. She yelped and screamed with laughter as she tried to hide under the table.
"Enough," she pleaded, tears streaming down her face.
Tris took pity on her and relented. He joined her under the table and sat with her, catching his breath. Steve and Clare had gone quiet, they were in a passionate clinch, kissing.
"Look at them," Hope said. "they're behaving like a couple of teenagers."
"OH no they're not!" Tris protested, then, grabbing Hope in his arms, he kissed her passionately. When the kiss ended he said, "Now, they're behaving like teenagers!" Hope laughed again, but only until Tris kissed her again. The silence lasted a couple of minutes until Steve and Clare got up off the floor and headed for their room.
"Night you two," Clare said, "behave now..."
The door closed and Tris and Hope kissed again.
"It's nice to be alone at last," she said.
"Yes, it is," he agreed.
Just then, Rufus and Lady landed in their laps.
"Did you say alone," Tris said laughing. They got up, said good night, and went to their rooms, and Rufus and Lady settled down for a bit of peace and quiet.
❧
"Why is it always the middle of the night?" Steve said, more than a little disgruntled. An alarm was sounding in the cockpit and he had to go and see what it was. On reaching there, he looked around the control panel to see what was making the noise. It was the Navcom. Steve bent down rubbing sleep from his eyes.
"Destination arrival -- system shut down." It was flashing in green. "But we shouldn't be here until next week!" Steve said, out loud. It was then that he noticed the blackness of space through the front ports and began to wake up rapidly. The speed gauge said zero, they were at a dead stop.
"What's going on Hun?" Clare said, as she came through the hatch.
"It seems we have arrived," he answered her, "we're not moving at all, look."
He pointed to the stars.
Clare looked out and saw a beautiful yellow star, a sun. "It's just like ours," she said, "and there are planets in orbit around it."
"What?" Steve said. He'd been so intent on the controls he hadn't noticed. He looked out of the ports and saw the new solar system for the first time. "It's beautiful," he said, "and look, the third planet...It's blue! It could be Earth, but the continents are wrong."
They stood gazing at the vista for some time, all thought of sleep was now well behind them. "Let's wake the kids," Clare said, and went to do it. Clare burst in on Hope, and Steve on Tris.
"Come on you guys," they shouted, "you've got to come and see this."
In a few seconds they were all in the cockpit gazing out of the ports. This new sun had three major planets in orbit around it that were close in, and at least one gas giant further out. The charts were not complete, but the location was perfect.
"How did we get here so fast Steve?"
"I honestly don't know Tris, but I'm glad we did."
"Me too," Hope said, "travelling across space is not exactly exciting, but arriving at a place like this certainly is."
Steve turned the scanners on. "We may as well take a look around before we go in, see if there are any nasties close by."
The scanners went through a predetermined set of tests which took some time, this gave everyone a chance to get dressed and have breakfast.
"We need a plan of attack," Steve said, "but I fancy the blue planet first, any objections?"
The blue planet was everybody's first choice, so they made ready to survey it first. Steve went to check out the scans. "All OK," he called back to them, "no surprises, shall we get started."
There were science stations in the cockpit. Clare and Hope were looking at vegetation, whilst Steve and Tris were looking for signs of life. Tris fired up the rockets and set the ship in motion towards the blue planet. There were several large asteroids along the way, lumbering slowly around the sun. Steve scanned them as they went by.
"Pretty much as you'd expect," he said, "same as in our own solar system."
Once past the asteroids, they had a better view of the blue planet, it had a moon of about the same dimensions as Earth's moon, and at a similar distance. The moon looked to be lifeless and was pock marked with craters of all sizes. "No signs of water or atmosphere," Tris called out as they passed it.
They were now in high orbit above the blue planet and could see through gaps in the thin cloud cover. "There are oceans and land masses down there," Steve called out, "and a thick layer of atmosphere, somewhat thicker than earth's. The ozone layer is very substantial, I guess there's no pollution."
"Right," Clare joined in, "there's vegetation in abundance, and the climate seems temperate. There are polar caps too, but larger than Earth's."
"All in all," Steve concluded, "it seems like a friendly place. Now, let's start looking for signs of life."
He re-calibrated the scanners and set a search pattern into the navcom.
"I haven't seen anything that looks man made, but at this height I probably wouldn't."
Tris came away from the port to rest his neck. He went through into the living quarters and flopped into a chair, closely followed by Rufus who jumped onto his lap.
"I'm glad you're here fellah, there's nothing quite like stroking a pet to help you relax."
"I'll remember that," Hope said, picking up Lady and flopping into another chair. They were soon fast asleep. Steve and Clare tip toed through so as not to wake them. According to their body clocks, it was still the early hours.
Several hours passed before anything stirred on board Discovery, but eventually they came to life having had a little more sleep. Clare decided it was time to celebrate their arrival and so set about building one of her culinary delights, Hope helped as usual. The boys went into the cockpit to check the scans.
"We're about half way through the search pattern Steve, and nothing yet."
"We may not find anything Tris, it would be a miracle if we did, but it sure looks like there should be life down there."
"Come and get it!" Clare hollered.
"Oh how I love that sound," Steve said, "come on, let's go, and eat.
The food went down well, and quickly. Talk at the table was of little else other than the planet below.
"We are going to go down there aren't we daddy?"
"Yes, Hops, I can't wait either. Life or no life, I want to see what it's like too. We'll let the scanners do their work first though, we don't want to land in a storm, or something worse."
"How much longer will that take Hun?"
"Oh, a couple of hours give or take a bit. It's the orbits that take the time, but once we've covered the whole planet we'll have a fairly detailed map. The smaller ship has navcom too so we can feed the data in and use it to navigate the planet."
"Pretty neat young Einstein," Clare said, looking at Tris, "was that your idea?"
Tris blushed a little, "Yes, I thought that while we were scanning the surface we could read the contours and make a map. It will have vegetation density on it too."
"Nice," Clare said, "you've got yourself a smart one here Hops."
Hope looked back at her mom who was smiling that knowing smile.
Eventually, the scanner beeped to indicate that it had completed its task. Steve and Tris went through to check the findings.
"Just as we thought," Steve said, "no life signs as we know them, no big structures or industry, no pollution or radiation."
"Sounds wonderful," Clare said, "let's go."
Tris uploaded the data to the small ship, which Steve and Clare had packed with everything they needed for an extended stay on the planet below. They set the big ship in park mode and climbed aboard the smaller one. Once in, Tris took over as pilot and opened the cargo bay doors to space. He manoeuvred the ship out of the bay and set off for the surface. Navcom had selected a suitable landing site and set the autopilot accordingly. The trip down was smooth and without incident.
On entering the lower atmosphere they could see that the white wispy clouds were thin and carried no rain in them. As far as they could see, there were no rain clouds at all, just vivid blue sky and sunshine.
"I don't see any weather patterns Steve," Tris said, "perhaps there's no wind down there."
The ship descended and began skimming over the ocean. They were travelling very quickly so it was hard to see much. Tris hit the power switch on the radio.
"Nice idea Tris," Steve said, "set it to auto scan."
Tris did, and the system began scanning the frequencies for any transmissions, a few seconds later the ship was filled with sound.
"There must be thousands of them," Tris said, smiling.
"This is wonderful," Clare said, "I wonder where they are."
Hope almost stood up to see out of the ports, not easy when you're strapped in.
"There they are," she said excitedly, "a whole school of them."
Tris brought the ship down to one hundred feet, and slowed to a hover over the water. The Whales were just below them, swimming effortlessly in the blue sea and singing as they went.
"Look at the calves," Hope called out, as they swam in and out of the school playfully.
"It's obvious that man isn't here Hun, if he were, he'd have been stupid enough to exterminate these magnificent creatures by now."
They watched the Whales for half an hour or so and then re-set the navcom to take them to the landing site.
The ship picked up speed and headed for land; it took only a few minutes to reach it. The ship slowed automatically and circled an area ready to land. The landing was perfectly smooth, the ship coming to a stationary position two feet off the ground. A last check of the scans showed the air to be about as perfect as it could be, so the hatch was opened. Steve stepped out of the ship first followed by Clare. They breathed in deeply,
"The air is wonderful kids, come out and try it."
Hope and Tris stepped out of the ship and sampled the air, which was filled with bird song, and other pleasant animal sounds.