“You know what it is.”
“Please remind us,” Stiles requested.
Peter could tell that Ali was considering some places he might suggest Stiles could stuff his highborn attitude. “Forty–six degrees, Fahrenheit,” Ali relented.
“I think they call that ‘shirt-sleeve weather’ don’t they?”
“Stiles,” Peter cautioned, “you really don’t need to gloat. We all hope you’re right. Everyone wants to find food. But nitrogen itself doesn’t make for a good atmosphere—just look at Bellingham back in the Colonies. There’re still no precursor signs of biological activity over there at Xi. We should be picking them up on our sensors by now.”
Stiles looked as though he smelled something peculiar. “These space clouds still make long-range scanning questionable. I don’t plan to arrive there and not be prepared to get down to the surface. Nu is just what we need for practice to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
Stiles signed off the logs on the bridge, “Ali, you have temporary command of the bridge. But Perry, no one but me has authority to break orbit. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Captain Essen,” Perry replied. “Ali has emergency command prerogatives only.”
“Thank you,” Stiles replied in self-satisfaction. Apparently, it mattered little to Stiles who treated him subserviently, as long as someone did. “Mr. Dallas, please accompany me to the hangar. You’re going for a ride.”
“Whoopee. Lucky me,” Jimmy answered in a deadpan voice. He reluctantly joined Stiles as they headed off the bridge. Jimmy glanced at the others, making temporary eye contact with them all. He then imitated a monkey as he followed closely behind Stiles.
“That boy’s as crazy as a Stagecoach Prairie Hopper,” Ali said.
“Which one?” Peter asked.
“Both,” Ali answered. He glanced at Henrietta, “He’s determined to get us all killed.”
Henrietta was still not talking to Ali after their fight of a couple days ago and decided not to get drawn into the conversation. Instead, Perry offered his counter to Ali’s accusations, “There is some logic to his request for practicing landing and take-off procedures in a more-forgiving environment. For that matter, Stiles has yet to maneuver the shuttle out the hangar.”
“But the benefits are clearly not worth the delays,” Peter observed. He coughed. Weakly, he continued between labored breaths, “We won’t find any life at Xi so we shouldn’t be wasting any time on this.”
Henrietta silently handed him a bulb of water and he took a grateful sip. Peter knew he must have looked pale as a sheet, and nodded in gratitude.
“The likelihood of you being correct about finding no life at Xi is staggeringly in your favor, Peter,” Perry replied. “But he is the acting captain.”
“Only until Peter gets better,” Henrietta added, returning to her station. She glanced quickly at Ali and sank back into her shell. For some reason, Henrietta looks guilty of something, Peter thought.
“This is true,” Perry admitted. “Unfortunately, that time has not yet arrived.”
The bridge crew followed Stiles and Jimmy’s progress to the hangar, and continued to monitor them prepping the small craft. As they prepared the shuttle, Perry initialized the orbital procedures. Ali waited until all the diagnostics were green before opening the com. He was now at tactical, studying the shuttle’s readouts. “I’m reading you in Shuttle-One, with all external indicators shown as sealed. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Jimmy replied from the copilot’s seat. “Stiles is working preflight now.”
“I can see him ticking off the checklist from here,” Ali said. “About half-way done, looks like. Hey guys, open your tac screen; Perry is inserting into Nu’s orbit and it looks pretty interesting down there. Ain’t like anything I’ve ever seen before.”
They could see the planet’s surface on the external cameras. It was a rugged landscape with huge, blood-rust-colored lava pinnacles jutting up like raw coral. Between the badlands were isolated upland mesas. Some of the elevated flatlands were covered by extensive black sand dunes, peppered with dark basalt boulders ranging in size from small mountains to tiny pebbles. The planet was airless and as barren as could be.
“LiDAR scans completed,” Perry reported. “Median elevation is 3,200 feet, ranging from relative zero to 7,962 feet. The highest peak appears to be a dormant volcano along a magmatic arch chain on the far hemisphere. The surface is eighty–seven percent ferrosilite. There is no detectable atmosphere; however, there are trace amounts of sulfur oxides that are accumulating along low-lying depressions. Trace water is locked within the rock matrices in amounts up to 0.4 percent, by volume. There are no standing pools of water or ice anywhere on the planet.”
“Well,” Ali observed after taking in the sights, “I don’t think you’ll need to bio-decontaminate after coming back from there.”
If a planetary architect designed a world to be as inhospitable as possible, they would not have done much better coming up with a place like this. The deep, narrow valleys were bathed in eternal shadow and completely inaccessible from the surrounding uplands. There was no soil to speak of, and the sand deposits mantling the scattered mesas were more likely the result of billions of years of decomposition from cosmic rays hurling unimpeded onto the surface than from any local geomorphic activity.
“There are several peculiarities associated with this planet,” Perry observed.
“You mean there’s something that stands out as particularly odd about this place?” Ali asked.
“Oh, definitely,” Perry replied.
“Such as?” Peter prompted.
“The main mystery is that for its size and distance from Antares, sufficient surface pressures, and thermal conditions should have developed here to produce an atmosphere, but it is essentially a vacuum to its very surface.”
“Maybe some stellar event from Antares burned it away,” Henrietta suggested. “The surface—at least—looks that way, like there was some gigantic fire storm in its past.”
“Well, we may never know what it looked like long ago. What else is wrong with it?” Peter asked.
“There are some very unusual landforms,” Perry replied.
“You sure have a way with understatement,” Ali commented.
Before Perry could continue, Stiles broke in, “Done with preflight, so we’re ready to head out. Pick us a good place to land, Perry,”
“That leads me to what I was just talking about, Captain Essen. If we assign Peak-7962 as the Prime Meridian, there is an area of nearly 310 square miles at 103° 23’ latitude, and +40° 00’ longitude. This upland plain is composed of bare bedrock, with no appreciable regolith, and has an absolute grade less than half a percent. It would provide a very attractive landing site,” Perry replied. “It is also quite unusual in that all four sides of this plateau are precisely 17.63 miles long. I can establish geosynchronous orbit over that region and paint the target, if you wish.”
Peter wondered what the chances were of that feature being natural. He had seen the Face of Mars, the Sphinx of Jackson’s Landing, and the Himalayan Lady up close in his travels across the Colonies, and would have sworn they were all crafted by alien hands. Everyone agreed, including himself, that they were simple—yet unusual—natural landforms. Peter wondered if this could be yet another accident of nature. “Are you telling us it is a perfect square?” Peter asked.
“Yes,” Perry confirmed. “For all intents and purposes, it cannot be more of a square than it is.”
“And almost perfectly flat.” Peter added. About this time he was wishing he could go down and visit that landmark himself.
“Like it was sculpted by someone,” Ali observed. He was obviously reading Peter’s mind.
“That thought also crossed my mind,” Perry replied.
Good to know we’re all thinking the same thing, Peter thought. He had to admit this was getting pretty interesting, and providing the crew with something to occupy their minds would not be a ba
d thing. Maybe this will lift them all out of their funk. “Arietta, you’ve been silent for awhile. What d’ you think of all this?”
“Neh …. Beats me,” she replied sullenly. She was showing little interest in the latest mystery and acted like she did not care, like everything else in her life for the past couple days.
“She’s probably thinking of more ways she can turn on us,” Ali offered.
Henrietta finally looked up. “That’s not fair!” she shouted. “You really don’t know what you’re talking about, so shut up!”
What got into the two of them? Peter wondered.
“Hey, up there,” Stiles threw in, “let’s keep our eyes on the ball! We have a mission to carry out, so quit the chatter.”
“Sorry, Stiles,” Ali replied, “you’re right.”
“Of course I am. Anyway, looks like you picked us an interesting place to visit, Perry. Gives us another reason to go down there, huh? Project an IR marker at the center of that flat land and I’ll try to land right next to it.”
“Very well, Captain Essen,” Perry replied. “I will adjust our orbital parameters to remain over the plateau in a geosynchronous orbit. It will take a few minutes to maneuver and match the planet’s rotation.”
“Roger that,” Stiles replied. “That should give us plenty of time to make our egress and de-orbit. Ali, we’re ready; open the hangar door.”
“Will do,” Ali replied. He initiated the unlock cycle and the large landing bay door began to swing down, providing a handy landing pad. Bright yellow lights flashed throughout the hangar, and a loud claxon sounded. “The road’s open, Stiles.”
Stiles cleared his throat. “Um, okay. Here goes …. I’m lifting off now.”
Peter watched their progress from the bridge, switching to an internal hangar camera pointing at the shuttle.
The craft sat in the middle of the large hangar deck, poised near the pivoting door. The shuttle tentatively lifted off the deck. The right skid lifted a few inches higher than the left, and in response Stiles over-compensated, driving the left skid back down onto the deck. The force bounced the whole shuttle off the landing bay like it was on springs, and they were suddenly airborne again, hovering a foot or so precariously above the bruised flight deck. The poor craft looked like a leaf torn between falling and remaining suspended as it rocked side to side.
The front of the craft began to swing around and Stiles clumsily maneuvered the shuttle into outer space left-side-first, slowly yawing about until the front of the shuttle faced the door they just exited. It was fortunate the hangar door was so wide.
“Gee,” Jimmy proclaimed, “you coulda warned me you were gonna back out.”
“Stuff it, Null-Grav,” Stiles yelled.
“You guys all right down there?” Peter asked.
“Fine,” Stiles replied sharply. He gained control of the craft and slowly backed away from the mother ship, smoothly slipping out the rear. “The ship looks good from this angle,” Stiles reported.
“What he means is, ‘we meant to do that,’ ” Jimmy added.
Everyone on the bridge laughed, including Henrietta. “You’re doing fine, Stiles,” Peter said. “It’s looking smoother now.”
“Captain Essen,” Perry proclaimed, “I would suggest that you not show off so much on your first flight. Heading directly out of the hangar would have been a much safer maneuver.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Stiles replied. “Okay, I’m heading down now.”
The shuttle carved away from Perry and began its descent toward Planet Nu, leaving the ship far behind. As it lost altitude, the shuttle side-slipped from the equator toward the barren northern pole, leveling off at latitude forty. The landing zone was just off to the front, but Stiles would complete an entire orbit before returning to the target area at a lower altitude allowing a safe descent. They passed the square plateau, crossed a massive, black chasm, and flew over a large elevated dune field.
“Looks like where people in hell would go if they went to the beach,” Jimmy observed.
“It does at that,” Ali replied. “Did you bring your swimsuit?”
“Yeah, but it’s under my hard-suit. Think it might be tough stripping off all this stuff; ’specially this nasty helmet.”
“Yep,” Henrietta replied, “best keep it all on. Especially with Stiles at the wheel.”
“You got that right!” Jimmy proclaimed.
“Hey, I’m getting the hang of this.”
“He is, actually,” Jimmy confirmed.
Peter looked at Ali, raising his eyebrows. That might be the first time Jimmy complimented Stiles over anything, Peter thought. Having your life in someone’s hands does that to you, Peter decided.
As the shuttle descended, the mother ship slowed until it remained in place over the landing zone, exactly matching the rotational rate of Nu. The shuttle continued on until it began climbing over the leading limb.
“L-O-S is imminent,” Perry reported. What he meant was that they would have a loss of signal once the shuttle passed behind the planet.
“Roger,” Stiles replied. “We are—” The communications link with the shuttle was abruptly severed.
“Are they okay?” Henrietta asked.
“They are doing fine,” Perry replied. “We have lost contact with them until they reappear on the opposite limb. Communications will return once we reestablish a line-of-sight.”
Peter kept track of time of orbit and followed their progress by the predicted glide path. They should be about ten thousand feet above mean surface elevation just about now and on the far side of the planet. That is, if their rate of descent was perfect.
“This waiting is horrible,” Henrietta observed after several minutes of silence.
“I agree,” Perry said, “In future, we could launch com satellites in advance of any landing missions. That would allow us to relay communications between craft.”
“Ooh, that would be good,” Henrietta agreed. “All I can think about is them crashing.”
“You worried about Jimmy?” Peter asked.
Henrietta huffed, “And Stiles … would you believe?”
Peter figured they were all just as concerned. Waiting was tough, he realized.
After several long minutes of continued static, the com abruptly cleared. Perry purred. “Telemetry is streaming in again. They are directly in the middle of the glide path. All systems appear nominal.”
“Yahoo …!” Jimmy proclaimed. “Hey guys, you shoulda seen that volcano. Stiles flew right over it. I think I coulda looked right down into the core of this planet.”
Peter smiled at Jimmy’s unbridled enthusiasm. It sounded like he was on a rollercoaster ride at some fancy amusement park. “Glad you’re having a good time.”
“Sure am; y’oughta be here.”
“I’m quite happy where I am,” Ali replied.
“Chicken,” Jimmy taunted.
“Better a live chicken, than a dead dinner,” Ali joked. “You should be coming up to the LZ soon.”
“I’m picking up Perry’s ground signal,” Stiles reported. “Looks to be twenty miles ahead and a little over eight thousand feet below. I’m slowing down for approach.” Stiles began arching the shuttle around and began his descent over the square plateau. At about five hundred feet, he stopped their plunge and scanned the surface. “Overall, it’s smooth as a pool table; not a wrinkle in sight.”
“That’s why Perry chose it,” Ali commented.
Stiles continued his slow vertical descent. This time he kept the nose of the shuttle perfectly stationary, about ten feet away from the signal in front of them beaming down from the mother ship. “Two hundred feet; one hundred feet; still no debris or disturbance …. Looks cleaner than the hangar deck.” Stiles slowed to a crawl. “Eighty-five feet … hey, Perry, does that IR wave you’re beaming down generate any heat?” Stiles asked.
“Not enough to excite the iron minerals on the surface, Captain Essen. Temperature differentials are negligibl
e.”
“Well,” Stiles insisted, “something boiled up around your pointer. Looks like a mound or something formed right under your IR paint.”
Stiles zoomed in the front-view camera of the shuttle to the tiny infrared spotlight. It was projected to the direct center of the plateau. As Stiles suggested, there was a square rock at the precise location where the IR beam struck the planetary surface.
Okay, I’ll concede the Himalayan Lady, Peter thought, but this is no coincidence. On an otherwise smooth plain, here was the only blemish.
Perry swept the IR beam around the object, using it as a means of measuring distance to the surface. “You are correct, Captain Essen, there is a mound at that location. It is a perfect cube of what appears to be bedrock exactly 9.3086 feet on all sides.”
“A perfect cube, directly in the center of a perfectly square plateau?” Ali asked.
Peter stared at the image as Stiles continued his descent to thirty feet.
“Not only that,” Perry continued, “but the object is smaller by a factor of precisely 0.0001 than the plateau on which it rests; a scale model of it, so to speak.”
“Why 9.3 feet?” Henrietta asked.
“I cannot say,” Perry replied. “Perhaps, if this is artificial—which now appears to be a near-certainty—this might be the builder’s equivalent of our foot, or yard.”
“Then why here?” Henrietta persisted. “Of all places we chose to come ….”
“I should note, Henrietta,” Perry lectured, “that the unique size and configuration of the plateau attracted us to this spot in the first place. One is immediately reminded of a Venus Fly Trap attracting prey. It could also be possible that each planet in this system has a similar feature; thus whichever planet we approached would contain an irresistible calling card to explorers. Conceding the fact that we came to this planet—and completed a planetary survey—it was inevitable we would find this construct.”
“Why didn’t we see this ‘cube’ in the middle of the plain before?” Stiles asked.
Perry hummed for a moment as he checked his records. “There are no records that it was present prior to now. Perhaps it only appeared when you approached it. Curiously, you were flying approximately ten feet laterally away from it, and only discovered it when you were between eighty–five and one hundred feet above it. Again, that would substantiate the measurement ratios we have been observing as being somehow significant; factors of just below nine and a third.”