by John Coon
“You're right.” Noticeable awe tinged her voice. “This is the best part.”
Xttra pivoted the ship away from the planet a second time. He pushed an engine control lever far forward. The thrusters emitted a loud hum, followed by a whoosh, as antimatter fuel pumped into the engine. Calandra watched as each distant star stretched out into a brilliant streak of light.
“This is where the fun starts,” Xttra said.
Calandra could not agree more. She could barely sit still knowing their next stop would be the alien planet called Earth.
10
Exploring a remote hiking trail in the Aurora Mountains paid off in an unexpected way for Calandra. She did not anticipate seeing anything beyond a roaring waterfall cascading into a cold pool atop the trail. Running into a handsome man defied those expectations. Once she saw his dark blue eyes and light brown hair with slight curls, Calandra could not resist dropping back to chat.
She flashed a playful smile at him.
“I thought only I knew this trail existed.”
He tilted back his head, as he returned the smile, and let clear water from a flat, silver canteen trickle down his parched throat.
“I love searching out hidden trails. It's just a part of who I am.”
Those words seemed calculated to stimulate her curiosity. And it worked.
“Does this mean you're an adventurer?”
“Only if you consider being a pilot adventurous.”
Calandra's eyes brightened.
“A pilot? With the Stellar Guard?”
“Naturally.”
“I am so jealous.”
He answered with a small laugh. “It's fun. So is hiking this trail and running into you.”
She extended her hand. “I'm Calandra.”
“I'm Xttra.”
They clasped one another’s wrists in a traditional Ra’ahm greeting.
“Are you headed to the waterfall?”
Calandra turned and pointed further up the narrow trail at a spot where it wound through a thicket of fraxa trees. Flowers that would soon become berries and leaves covered the branches.
She glanced back at him and smiled. “I wouldn't mind the company.”
Xttra opened his mouth and froze. No words exited from between his lips. Only blaring sounds greeted her ears. The blissful scene dissolved before her like a mirage.
Calandra cracked her eyelids. A persistent alarm dug into her ears. The variable pitch and increasing volume would not allow even the dead to slumber. She blinked rapidly as the door sealing her hibernation pod raised. How long had she slept inside her pod? How far had their ship traveled in deep space? Even going at a faster than light speed, journeying 3.5 parsecs from Lathos to Earth took at least six months.
After the door lifted up and away, the pod tilted forward and raised Calandra's upper body until she was in an almost straight vertical position. She flinched as her bare feet touched the cold floor. Calandra stumbled for a moment but clutched the pod door to keep herself from falling on her face. Her legs felt rubbery as she took her first steps forward. Spending many months in hibernation made it tougher to get her body to cooperate with a task as simple and basic as walking. Electric stimulation inside the pod kept nerves firing to support muscle strength and volume. Still, her joints, ligaments, bones, and muscles struggled to support an immediate return to her natural range of motion after so much prolonged stillness.
Calandra plodded over to an exercise machine set up against a wall inside the crew’s sleeping quarters. Two mechanical arms held up a long metallic bar. These arms connected to a pair of vacuum cylinders offering adjustable levels of resistance. Calandra placed the bar under her shoulders and adjusted the resistance level upward. She drew in a deep breath, clenched her teeth, and started doing a series of squats. Each rep made her muscles burn. Still, it was a good burn. She needed to get those muscles in proper working order again.
"Coming out of hibernation is awful when you're not used to it. How are you holding up?"
Calandra released the bar and turned toward the doorway. Xttra entered the room. He showed signs of being awake much longer than her. His uniform had replaced his sleep clothes. She smiled at the thought of being with him in deep space. Their far-off hike together still lingered in her mind as though they climbed that trail only minutes ago.
Xttra snacked on pieces of dried fruit as he approached her. She could not identify the fruit in his hand, but it did not stop Calandra from licking her lips.
"I'm starving."
Xttra stuck out a small pouch holding the fruit.
"Help yourself."
Calandra scooped a handful from the pouch and popped a piece into her mouth. She squeezed her eyes shut and stuck out her tongue after the first bite. A burst of sourness coated the inside of her mouth. It took every particle of willpower she owned to keep from spitting the dried fruit out onto the floor.
"Ugh. That tastes terrible.”
"Not much you can do about the menu on a deep-space expedition. Dried food or nutrition pellets. Take your pick."
Calandra shrugged, closed her eyes, and wolfed down the remaining pieces in her hand. She wanted to taste as little of the gross fruit as possible while satisfying her hunger pangs.
"How long have you been awake?" she asked, after finishing off the last piece.
"Long enough to get bored with seeing the emptiness of deep space." Xttra closed the pouch again after Calandra finished eating. "Lance, Atch, and I took turns monitoring our flight path over the past six months while the remainder of the crew hibernated.”
“How long were you awake alone?”
“Only a couple of weeks at a time.” Xttra crossed the room and checked some numbers on a monitor embedded in another hibernation pod. “That was more than enough. Let me tell you, spending even a few days alone with your thoughts is enough to make anyone question their sanity."
“You should have awoken me from my pod.” Disappointment tinged Calandra's voice. “I would have kept you company.”
Xttra turned and walked over to the exercise machine again. He grasped her hand with tenderness.
“You needed the time in your pod. I wanted you to experience a complete, uninterrupted bone strengthener infusion cycle. I made sure we all monitored it nonstop throughout our journey.”
Calandra glanced at her feet and then gazed up at Xttra through her eyelashes. She flashed a grateful smile.
“I truly appreciate you looking out for me.”
She drew closer to him and tilted her head. Calandra's lips parted slightly as his lips made contact. Neither wanted to disengage and clung together as her hand pressed against his back and his hand circled her neck. Xttra trailed his fingers through her auburn hair when their lips finally parted.
“I love you. You know that.”
“I do. And I love you too.”
Calandra pulled away from his embrace and resumed her spot at the exercise machine. Xttra turned and headed back to the bridge. He cast a glance over his shoulder one final time before leaving the room.
“When you finish up your strengthening exercises, you'll want to join me at the helm,” Xttra said. “It will be well worth your time.”
Xttra was not kidding. Once Calandra entered the bridge, she learned their ship had crossed into the Aramus system at last. Her eyes quickly became glued to watching every last thing that lay outside the ship. It zipped through the outer edges of this alien solar system at quarter-light speed, on a trajectory taking them past a series of planetoids and asteroids. Most of these bodies were nondescript chunks of rock and ice. Only a couple truly stood out to Calandra – an egg-shaped planetoid surrounded by a faint ring and an icy planetoid with a dark heart-shaped region. All orbited much too distant from their parent star to harbor life.
A giant planet with an expansive band of rings became the first object to seize her attention. The rings stretched out across a vast distance. Jbali appeared equally intrigued by the distant planet as the sco
ut ship passed through its orbital path.
“This reminds me so much of Cabri,” he said, mentioning a planet neighboring his homeworld of Serbius. “I never thought I'd see another giant planet with rings as spectacular as the ones circling that world.”
Her natural curiosity always grew from a tiny spark to a roaring flame whenever Calandra studied images of giant planets. She longed to plunge inside their endless cloud layers and uncover the mysteries that lay beneath. Her desire only grew stronger seeing one up close. Calandra knew, of course, she could not fulfill her wish. Giant planets were strangely beautiful but also lethal. Intense atmospheric pressure would crush and disintegrate their scout ship in only a brief time.
Atch altered their trajectory by a couple of degrees as the ship cleared the ringed planet's orbital path. Sensors detected a strong magnetic field on the horizon, emanating from a much larger giant planet.
“How are our radiation shields holding up?” Xttra glanced over at the navigation station. “We don't need to get ourselves cooked out here.”
Her eyes widened when Calandra heard his question. She could not see any sensor data from her chair. Letting her imagination fill in the blanks only made the situation feel scarier.
“How much radiation are we talking about?”
“Enough that we'll play it safe and not do a fly-by to see that particular planet.”
Xttra's response did little to reassure her. Now Calandra could not stop thinking about solar wind buffeting the outer hull. She wondered how much radiation these shields were capable of withstanding before dangerous particles started slicing through the protective components and bombarding the entire crew. Did a dangerous amount already breach their shields while they crossed through deep space?
A new flight path popped up on a holoscreen above the helm console. Xttra released a small probe when they first entered the system and sent it on a trajectory toward the central star Aramus. The probe recorded data as it traveled along, helping the scout ship chart a safe course toward Earth. Aside from a close brush with a powerful magnetic field, their ship had avoided potential hazards.
“Only a small red planet lies ahead before we hit the habitable zone.” Xttra traced the new flight path on the holoscreen with his finger. “We should reach our destination planet soon.”
Passing the small red planet confirmed what the survey probe already revealed. It did not harbor key ingredients needed for intelligent life. The probe detected only trace amounts of oxygen within a thin atmosphere and no liquid water on the surface.
Nothing more than a lifeless rocky husk.
Still, the red planet's appearance reminded Calandra of Laxa – one of the twin moons orbiting Lathos. Their survey probe also showed some evidence of small robotic vehicles traversing the reddish rocky surface and sending back multiple transmissions from the planet.
“I think this alien species established a fledgling colony on that red planet,” Lance said, while poring over new data they collected. “It could be worth checking out.”
Doni at once vetoed that idea.
“Reaching the planet called Earth is our top priority. We must contact the beings who sent that probe to us.”
Lance rolled his eyes and mumbled some choice words under his breath. Xttra showed a less restrained reaction.
“I'll make the call on where we go around here,” He cast an irritated sideways glance at Doni. “Our chief sovereign assigned you to my crew, but you are not in charge of this expedition.”
Doni matched him glare for glare.
“If you think I'm only here to sit quietly in the background, prepare to be surprised.”
Xttra turned to Lance. “We'll stop by the red planet before we head back to Lathos.”
Calandra kept her eyes focused on Doni. His frown etched deeper into his lips. They had not reached Earth yet and he already appeared to be chafing under Xttra's leadership. She wondered if his ego would turn into a persistent problem once they landed. Doni soon noticed Calandra eyeballing him and shifted his glare over to her. His beady eyes made her shudder. She quickly averted her gaze from Doni and stared straight ahead, keeping her eyes trained on what lay past the helm.
Not much time passed before a small blue and white orb popped into view. The thick shadow of night blanketed one half of the planet. Swirls of white clouds and blue oceans covered the visible half. Portions of two large verdant landmasses peeked out from beneath those clouds. Calandra's eyes shifted upward as she recalled images that she dreamed about seeing for so many months. What lay before their ship now matched what only existed in her mind's eye up to that point.
They had reached the planet called Earth.
"It looks so much like Lathos."
Calandra beamed as she made this declaration. No questions concerning the alien probe's purpose lingered in her mind. An intelligent alien race awaited them on the planet's surface. She could not wait to communicate with these beings.
11
Two questions surfaced in Xttra's mind as his scout ship approached the alien planet. How would they contact the probe builders living on Earth? Once they made contact, how would they communicate with those same aliens? The Stellar Guard outlined specific protocols to guide these first contact situations, but Xttra had no idea how this new alien species would react. So many things had the potential to go awry before they made a peaceful entreaty to communicate.
They translated only a few words from a brief message on a plate affixed to the probe. It did not offer much of a foundation to gain an understanding of an entire alien language. What if multiple alien races called this planet home and each spoke a different language? Could they accurately identify and contact the probe builders they sought? Xttra knew he did not own firm answers to these questions. He did not feel comfortable landing on the planet's surface until he and his crew uncovered those answers.
Xttra steered the scout ship away from Earth before it set up orbit around the blue planet. He veered off and set course for a large moon only a short distance away.
“Where are you taking the ship?” Concern started rising in Calandra's voice. “This isn't where we're supposed to land.”
“We don't even know where we're supposed to land,” Xttra said. “Do we know which aliens built and sent the probe to us? There could be millions or billions of these beings down there.”
Lance glanced over his shoulder at Calandra. His eyes darted back to Xttra and a smirk washed over his lips.
“We definitely don't want to land on an alien planet and wander around lost,” Lance said, adding a chuckle. “What would those aliens think of us?”
Xttra took note of a deepening scowl resting on Calandra's face. It told him in plain terms what she thought of Lance's brand of humor – especially when it came at her expense.
“We'll land on this moon and see if we can intercept transmissions from the planet's surface.” Xttra adopted a reassuring tone while he worked to soothe Calandra's bruised feelings. “It should buy us some time to identify where the probe builders reside on the planet and learn their language. Maybe we’ll also learn a little about their society along the way, so we aren't going down blind.”
The scowl gracing her lips softened.
“That makes sense to me,” she said. “We don't want to go down there blind.”
Xttra flashed a smile at her and returned his attention to the helm. Earth's moon appeared as equally barren as Laxa and Fengar. A small difference existed between the twin moons orbiting Lathos and this one. Laxa and Fengar were each home to multiple domed colonies. This moon showed no evidence of a permanent settlement upon its surface. It offered a perfect spot for Xttra to land the scout ship while they studied this alien planet from a safe distance and better prepared themselves to contact the probe builders.
Much like Earth, the thick shadow of night blanketed half of this moon, leaving a large swath of its surface difficult to study. Xttra aimed for a small crater straddling the boundary between light and darkness. This
would minimize exposure to harsh naked sunlight bombarding the unprotected lunar surface while they did their research. His ship’s radiation shields were among the best produced anywhere on Lathos, but he harbored no desire to test their limits.
Xttra set the scout ship down inside the near wall of the bowl-shaped crater. A small plume of gray dust shot out from under the landing gear as it pressed into the crater floor.
“Anyone in the mood for taking a short walk on an alien moon?”
Xttra unstrapped his safety restraints. He stood and stretched his legs. When he turned and faced the rest of the crew, no one else had budged from their seats. Lance stared at him like Xttra had asked his assistant pilot to cut off his left arm. Everyone, apart from Calandra, visited many planets and moons in the past, and this one did not appear exceptional by comparison.
“This expedition isn't only about making first contact,” Xttra said. “We're here to learn all about this alien system too – this moon included.”
“I get what you're saying.” Lance's breathing had grown noticeably shallower since their ship touched down on the moon's surface. “I don't know how well I can handle being in this place at this moment.”
Xttra frowned as it grew clear why his friend felt disturbed. The trauma Lance endured on the asteroid still weighed down his mind. Xttra wanted to help him heal and move forward. Confronting his fear of being stranded on a barren lifeless space rock again offered an optimal way to promote healing.
“Our ship isn't damaged.” He placed his hand on Lance's shoulder and patted it. “Our suits are in great shape. We have nothing to fear.”
“Except moon dust,” Atch said.
“And pieces of floating rock that can puncture our suits at a moment's notice,” Jbali added.
Xttra frowned at both crew members.
“You're not helping.”
He turned back to Lance.
“I'll be right by your side out there.”