Their first target was the largest of the moons around the gas giant. Once there, they found that the moon had an atmosphere of thick methane, and didn’t show any signs of life or activity that they could detect. There could, of course, have been life but not anything they could recognize as such without spending a long time searching for it. If there was something there, it wasn’t their fly-by visitors, so they didn’t stay to search further.
They moved on to the second largest moon, but there were no traces of anything alive there either. They did however find a fairly large meteor containing crystals and sizeable chunks of the peculiar metal, which they mined to replenish their dwindling supplies. It was a relief to all of them to know they’d be able to get more if and when needed. That alone made their trip worthwhile.
The next six moons they visited were just barren chunks of rock, but in passing one that was only about thirty miles in diameters Gemma called their attention to an anomaly. “There are large quantities of crystal and metal here too,” she announced. “I think the little moon needs some further study. There are different readings in one area that show some sort of structure—even though there is absolutely zero atmosphere.”
Shana asked “Do you think it’s a building, or some sort of vessel or ship?”
“I don’t know,” Gemma answered. “It is anchored deeply into the planet and there a very high energy reading, indicating a possible force field of some sort. It’s definitely not the kind of thing that I’ve ever detected before.” Her holographic brow furrowed. “If forced to guess, I’d say it could be some kind of defense system, though whether to protect from visitors or to intercept meteor impacts is impossible to tell. The site is emitting enough energy that we won’t be able to get within two miles of the structure without getting fried, at least not from this angle. I can’t tell from here if the shield extends all the way to ground level.”
Kelsan, who was seriously studying the readouts of Gemma’s scans, said, “If we land outside the shielded radius we should be able to make some observations without any danger.”
“I agree,” Gemma said.
“I think this may be what we’ve come to find,” Elton speculated. “It’s an area of non-natural development and just the type of thing that indicates the presence of other intelligent life forms.”
“I think we’d better approach with extreme caution,” warned Shana. “Who knows what other defenses may exist here.”
“Well, once we’re on the ground I’ll be more than willing to take the lead in approaching the installation, if you’re concerned about safety,” said Kelsan. His tone was even but Shana knew there was an implied insult in the statement. She stared hard at him.
“Let’s not take unnecessary risks,” interjected Tanya, diffusing the situation. “I have very little need for a brave dead husband. And we still have children expecting us to come back alive,” she added, with a warning look at Kelsan.
Kelsan just shrugged it off in his usual fashion. “I certainly don‘t intend to charge in like the light brigade.” He threw up his hands. “But for goodness sake, have we become so complacent since we left Prometheus? We used to be fearless.”
“Okay, okay,” said Shana impatiently. “It’s not a case of courage under fire here but I think we should have Gemma go in front of us.” They had brought Gemma’s old mining-robot body, the prototype for the Striders, and that could act as their advance party. N’ixie offered to accompany her, but Gemma declined. “There’s only one of you, N’ixie. If my ‘Bot is damaged, I still exist in the computer. You do not.”
N’ixie did not insist.
As they dropped lower toward a landing site just beyond the perimeter of the shielding, Gemma announced that by the readings she was getting, the shielding did not extend below a thousand feet. That, of course, did not preclude there were no other defenses at the site, but it was one less obstacle at ground level.
“Look at that,” Elton breathed, zooming the vid screen to show the surface where they intended to land. The surface was marked with squares and lines, very clearly a large landing pad, with a perimeter for a ship much larger than Curiosity. Beyond that, in the distance, was the structure emitting the energy they had detected. It was an elaborate complex, with high towers and large pumping arms, something like mining pinions, which were still at the moment but seemed likely to have a long range of movement. The entire structure was a dull gray, dusty, like the surface of the moon, and as it neared the surface, it became cloudy, blurred, perhaps distorted by the shielding, or dust. Either way, from Curiosity, they could not detect any life forms in or around it.
“A mine?” Shana asked, curiously.
“Looks like it,” Zo’Rak agreed. “I’ll transmit this back to Hope so the others can take a look.”
“Good idea,” Shana nodded, resting a hand comfortably on Zo’Rak’s metallic shoulder. She was fond of all the Striders, and could not imagine their colony without them. “If something were to happen to us, at least the colony will know not to come here after us. Set it up so Gemma back at the Wanderer can monitor the whole operation that is on our screens and Links.
They landed without incident and the four organic crew members proceeded to suit up for exiting the ship. They entered the airlock with the two Striders and Gemma’s mining robot, and waited while the pressure equalized. When they got the green light, Kelsan opened the hatch and they stepped out onto a cold, barren landscape, stretching gray and flat before them, the sky an inky expanse of space, the sun unshielded but small in the distance.
Kelsan glanced over at Gemma. “After you,” he gestured to allow her to pass, and Gemma’s robot preceded them toward the site.
The little moon was almost featureless. They were able to see clearly the top half of the mining building after walking only a half mile, though the curve of the little world still didn’t allow them to see quite to ground level until they were less than half a mile away. Once they did, and knew they were well within the dome of the protective shield above, they came to a place they couldn’t penetrate.
Kelsan was on Gemma’s heels, when he suddenly stopped, and growled with frustration. “Gemma!” he called out. She turned and seemed surprised that he was not following her.
“What is it?” Shana asked, approaching the two cautiously. She moved awkwardly, out of practice in a space suit, and then was forced to stop, herself, as if she had run into a wall. She reached out one hand and pushed in front of her.
“I don’t see anything but it feels like a foam rubber wall.” She said.
“It’s definitely some sort of force field,” Kelsan agreed.
Elton shook his head. “How did it stop us, but Gemma passed right through it?”
“Let’s test it,” said N’ixie, and walked through the barrier, followed by Zo’Rak. The rest remained trapped on the outside of the strange wall.
“Alright,” Elton said, “let’s try to walk the perimeter and see if we can find an end to this barrier. Kelsan, you and Tanya go that way, and Shana and I will take the opposite side.”
“We’ll keep going forward with Gemma,” Zo’Rak offered. They agreed and took off in different directions, the humans trailing their gloved hands on the invisible wall, hoping to find a break in it.
A half an hour later, Gemma announced over the Link that they had run into a similar barrier, which stopped the robots as well. They had made no progress in finding a chink in the wall, and Kelsan suggested that the humans backtrack and reconvene at the point where they first hit the wall.
“That’s a good idea,” Gemma said. “We have a fairly clear view of the mine, and there appears to be some activity. Look at this.”
She linked to their face shield screens and sent magnified images of what was going on in plain sight. It appeared to be a completely robotic operation. There were large robots, with bulky bodies and multiple arms, like giant octopi, moving around the equipment with a strange elegance and grace. The arms swayed and flowed from the cumbersome-l
ooking body as if they had no joints, but were simply flexible muscle—although they were clearly metallic. The octopi-robots manipulated the machinery and moved vats as big as houses from one station to another, in a system that was not immediately obvious. They could see that some of the vats contained crystals and others the dark metal. One robot stood by a window into the center of the system, through which they could see vague movement of machinery. The robot was putting large chunks of crystal in one port and chunks of metal in another. When it extended a tentacle, the tip retracted to show built in apparatus for grasping the crystals, and a different one for handling the metal; it was clear that there were multiple options for each tentacle.
“Those things are amazing,” said Shana dumbfounded.
Suddenly, the ground rumbled, making Shana jump. One of the giant pistons on the mining building began to turn, and pump. The mine was gearing up, and this seemed to trigger another process. An octo-bot began extracting items from a port to the right of where raw materials were being fed into the machine—the finished product after some intense refining.
One after another, he pulled out large, round crystals, wrapped in a mesh of the metal. The mesh was clearly intricate; the crystal looked smooth and round as a medium’s crystal ball. These caged crystals were stacked into yet another vat, which was filling up with them as they watched.
“I think they may be at least as far ahead of us technologically as we were above the Untrans,” said Elton in awe.
“That’s probably why the saucers haven’t bothered with us up to this point,” Kelsan muttered.
They all stared at the scene in awe for a few minutes until they realized that one of the robots was heading straight toward them! That is, toward Gemma, whose video feed they were all watching voraciously.
“Do we stay or do we run now while we have something of a head start?” Tanya asked.
“One thing is certain,” said Shana. “If they wanted to do us harm we wouldn’t still be standing here or, even have gotten here in the first place. So we may as well wait and see what happens!”
The robot approaching Gemma was a variation on some of the others at the mine. It looked like a perfectly round body with no visible markings, features or even hollows from which the leg/tentacles protruded; the legs seemed to move over the surface of the body with a liquid fluidity, as if the surface of the creature was itself fluid. It approached steadily and stopped a few feet away from Gemma.
They all found themselves holding their breath. Kelsan drew his Lase pistol, and was ready to fire if anything approached closer to the humans; and then to his surprise, the power indicator on the weapon showed the power drain right out of it.
“I don’t think we can do anything to defend ourselves even if we need to,” he said grimly. “I don’t much like it but that’s the fact of the matter.”
Shana looked down at her pistol, still in the holster. Its indicator showed a full charge. “Mine still has its charge,” she informed him. “I take that as a sign that if we make no hostile move we have nothing to fear.”
“It knows our language,” informed Gemma over Link in their helmets—although how the robot, if that’s what it was, had communicated to her they could not tell. “It says we cannot stay on this moon, or any of the moons of the gas giant, or the giant itself; we’re not ready. It has a gift for us though.” Her voice sounded puzzled as she relayed this message.
The strange machine rotated a set of hand appendages around and held out one of the crystal spheres wrapped in a mesh of metal. Gemma’s Strider took it. The octo-bot stayed a moment longer, sitting silently in front of Gemma, and then reversed course and returned to its work, dismissing them.
“It says the others will visit us in the near future but we may not return to this moon without their permission or our ship will be destroyed,” Gemma told them. “They don’t mean us harm and wish us well but are not sentimental about killing us if they have to.”
Shana shivered.
Tanya whistled. “What in the world do we make of that?”
Gemma and the Striders were heading back toward the humans now. Gemma sighed, “That was the whole message. This moon is out of bounds. We can visit, but not settle, the other gas giant moons. The rest of the system is of no concern to them, so we have been granted authority to stay on Hope.”
“Well, I guess we’ve been told,” said Kelsan sarcastically. “Does anybody else feel like a naughty child?”
“I promise I’ll be good,” said Shana with a chuckle. She felt a oddly giddy with this strange new contact. “I’ll go stand in the corner until I’m told to come out.”
They all laughed a little, the strange unrealness of the situation settling in on them. Gemma reached them with the crystal, and they all started back toward the ship so they could examine it out of the watchful eye of the octo-bots.
“It is rather like giving the primitives beads,” said Tanya. “Isn’t that what it feels like to you guys?”
“More like giving primitives a computer,” said Shana. “I have a feeling we’ve a lot to learn from this gift.”
Gemma interrupted her, something she rarely did; she spoke quickly, almost as if reciting a message that she was afraid she would forget (although of course she could not forget). “These crystals are the key to navigating the stars and non-space,” she said, to gasps from the crew. “Although this appears to be perfectly smooth to the naked eye there are a specific number of miniscule facets on it, and each facet is isolated by the fine strings of metal. I believe that eventually we are supposed to learn how to regulate power and crystal facets for direction and distance in non-space, though it will take a long time to figure it all out. They did not give us an instruction manual. I wish our mini-saucers had this technology to work with, but I’d hate to send a probe out with the only one we have.”
By the time they reached the Curiosity, Gemma was already hard at work processing all she could of the dimensions and design patterns of the crystal and the metal mesh surrounding it. She didn’t dare use a full laser scan for fear of jumping them to another place or sending the crystal to one but she was able to use other scans and determine an exact count of facets and size of same.
“There are exactly one million six facets, and the crystal ball is two feet one and one forth inches in diameter,” she told them after they’d unsuited and were preparing to lift off. “How they process it to these dimensions is beyond our technology, though I believe we’ll be able to solve that in the near future.”
“Couldn’t we just put it in one of the Synth Machines? That way we could make as many as we wanted,” said Kelsan.
“Not without a laser scan,” said Shana. “Then we’d lose it or at least mess up our Synth Machine like they did back on Narcissus twenty years ago, when they tried to replicate a raw crystal. The machine stopped functioning because the crystal’s not made of any known construct of atoms or molecules. It’s a completely alien material.”
“Shana’s correct,” said Gemma. “Whatever the process they use is probably the only safe way to manipulate this material. Remember, these beings bother to mine it and their technology is way ahead of ours. If it could be synthesized, I doubt very much they’d bother to do the mining operation.” They lifted off under Gemma’s control, in order to avoid the risk of crossing the octo-bots’ sky defenses, which she now advised them she was positive was designed to protect the site from meteoric impacts and solar radiation.
Elton wondered aloud how large a meteor it could deflect. Most likely they’d never know for sure.
They discussed returning directly to Hope, somewhat unnerved by the octo-bots’ warning, but Gemma assured them that she had been authorized to visit other moons; they just could not stay. And they could not return to the mining moon. So they decided to continue their explorations. They sent a complete report back to Hope, and set a course for their next stop.
After checking half a dozen more moons they came across one that was different from anythin
g they’d seen to date. For one thing, it had a genuine oxygen atmosphere and plant life could be detected even through its thick cloud cover. It was one of the ones they’d been most excited about coming to at the start of the mission.
“It has to be thermal heating from the flexing of the little moon by it oval orbit this close to Goliath. The sun isn’t powerful enough to generate the temperature reading I’m getting from the surface, though there is a sufficient amount of reflected light from Goliath to illuminate the clouds in addition to the weak sunshine that makes it out this far,” Gemma reported, in her customary way.
“It’s probably pretty comfortable there,” Elton opined. “I read temps in the seventies from the surface, but with the cloud cover I can’t be sure of the exact oxygen content. We’ll have to go down if we want to find out what life forms are or may be there.”
“All in favor of landing say aye,” said Shana, followed by a chorus of agreement as they began their decent. The moon was about fifteen hundred miles in diameter, so not that small as compared to some of the others they’d looked over. Many had had fair deposits of the more common metals and a few had some of the heavy elements which could also be useful in the future. None of the heavy elements were easily synthesized so they recorded which moons or planetoids they were on and made names for the ones of any real size for reference purposes.
They were drifting down through the cloud layer and finally had a view of the land below. It was more Earth-like than expected, except for the pinkish orange sky, and there were several volcanoes in sight from their altitude of around thirty thousand feet. The forests, when they zoomed in the screens were familiar looking, and there were lakes and streams galore. Some of the lakes were quite large but there were no oceans in sight of the area they could see. They decided to fly around the surface to see all they could, and eventually found an ocean; not a large one but salt water and possibly a third of the planet’s surface.
Starborn Odyssey: Voyage of the Lost (The Starborn Odyssey Trilogy Book 3) Page 20