Inspecting the post, he discovered three circular buttons. Each reflected back a unique color from within with a soft phosphorous glow, the first red, the second blue, and the last yellow. Each button was positioned slightly offset to the other.
He tried each button. The last one did the trick, and the floor beneath his feet began to vibrate. From somewhere below came the sound of a low pitched whistle. Instantly the triangle began to rise from the floor.
Ryan laughed. He was right. It was a damned alien elevator! And it worked after how many years?
The elevator climbed steadily. As it moved closer to the top, an easy breeze blew across the platform. He could feel the warmth of the sun's rays on his skin - and it felt good. The air smelled sweet and dry, lacking the earthy overtones and any hint of sulfur.
The platform eased to a silent stop upon reaching the top. The breeze was stronger now, buffeting Ryan's face with an invisible soft hand. He walked over to the edge and looked down one last time. The rover's lights were diffused and weak in the distance. It had the dimensions of a child's toy.
Bosn, if you could just see this.
The wind caressed his cheek, and he remembered the smell of the hot Arizona breeze. A brief memory, seemingly so long ago.
Turning around, the thing that had beckoned his attention lay before him. A flattened oval, at least 100 meters wide. Its hull was seamless and dulled with smudges of black carbon. Five thick legs jutted out and held it suspended about three meters in the air.
Again he laughed, this time falling to his knees. Tears came to his eyes. There was no mistake in what it was. A damned flying saucer, like he had seen in the crazy UFO programs on TV. How? How was this possible?
Of course, he had no answer.
His legs were weak as a baby’s, and his hands were shaking crazily. For a moment he thought he was going to throw up. It took a moment before he was able to stand.
Maybe though, this isn’t what he thought.
The idea burned through him, exposing his logical pessimism. He hated that side of himself sometimes. Too many practical thoughts had a habit of dashing hope to very small irretrievable pieces. So what if this was a spaceship. He certainly couldn’t fly it anywhere. Hell, he didn’t even know where Earth was.
He grabbed his gear and left the elevator. At first, he circumvented it, walking along the edge of the plateau inspecting every minute detail. The thing appeared uniform from every angle. There were no outer hull markings, no protruding sections of machinery. Everything was smooth and unremarkable. Underneath its belly, toward the center, a ramp extended down to meet the floor.
He walked over to it, hesitating a moment before advancing. Despite its great age, could something still be alive within it?
He flicked on the light and started up the entrance into the ship, gun ready, listening for the faintest of sounds. He met barren metallic walls and a dead cold that gave him a chill. The airlock hatch was rectangular, large enough to step through, but just short enough that he had to duck. Careful not to bang his head, he peered down a small hallway at the facing hatch door. A shiny plate sat obtrusively in the middle of it – probably the control panel. He would have to open this door to go any further.
The panel was a featureless oval, looking similar to stainless steel. He placed his hands upon it and pressed. Surprisingly, it gave – and the door slid open without hesitation and only a slight hiss. Air rushed out smelling stale, acrid – but not poisonous.
So far so good.
Stepping through, he found himself in a large circular room. On cue, the ceiling began to give off a luminescent glow that grew brighter and brighter. In seconds, they became too bright for unaccustomed eyes, and Ryan squinted as his vision fought to adjust.
Too many days in near darkness.
He could make out a shiny cylinder in the center of the room. It came from a hole in the floor and disappeared into the ceiling.
Like a fire station pole! Simple but effective, especially in zero-g.
He approached it, looking up, then down, into darkness. A faint whistle started far behind him from the direction of the outside hatch. The wind must have picked up, or possibly, some kind of ventilation system had started.
He dropped his load of supplies and tied the gun off around his shoulder. Using the pole, he shimmied up to the next level. It was quite different than the entry. The room's walls were lined with instrument displays and monitors. Everywhere he moved the ship woke up. Lights and displays came on and bathed him in a mirage of colors.
What else was waking up in here?
He reached out and touched one of the black panels on the wall. A colorful and detailed image leapt to life behind it. He could feel warmth under his fingers. When he took his hand away, the display faded to black. His finger had left a small smudge where he had disturbed the slight film of dust that lay upon the panel's surface.
How long has it been since anyone was in here? Centuries? A millennium? Amazing technology.
Not wanting any surprises to find him, he moved on, searching each level methodically and thoroughly, winding through twisting corridors and tight, oppressive rooms. He eventually located the bridge in the very heart of the vessel. It was a large room, circular in shape, with no real walls, just a large domed ceiling that ended at the floor. In the center, within a sunken semi-circle, three large and luxurious chairs were mounted, invitingly.
The outer walls had a look of black glass. He touched one and it started - as before - lights fanning out from where he had placed his hand, tracing images in a multitude of symbols of color and complication. They were virtual controls, graphic representations of the ships’ systems.
To understand this could free him. If he could somehow figure out the basics.
The images continued to appear, exploding across the room, painting it in a myriad of color and movement. At the very top of the domed ceiling, a triangle formed, with sides that traveled down to touch the floor. Within this triangle, a scene emerged from a background of gray. White specks of dust in a soft beam of sunlight, fading to darkness in the distance.
It took him a moment to understand it. It was a view from outside of the ship, at which angle he could only wonder.
The chairs looked inviting to his sore muscles. He would return here, once he finished.
The remainder of the inspection was uneventful. He found no alien corpses, nothing but empty rooms in an empty ship.
He grabbed a flask of water from his supplies and returned to the bridge. It was just as he had left it. Settling down into the center chair, he could feel the tension drain from his body. Content for the moment that he was safe, he drifted off into a needed sleep.
Deep within the ship's core, the main drive was now staging up. The onboard computer, awakened from its rest of a millennium, commenced its designated programming.
Ryan, now settled in a deep sleep, didn't feel the low vibration emanating throughout the ship. Nor did he hear the hatch doors slide shut as the ship progressed through pre-flight preparation. The ship’s outer hull began to glow brighter and brighter accompanied by a low-frequency hum which permeating in the air.
Inside the great pyramid, the chamber, now lit up to a daylight brilliance, gave up its ancient secrets. Walls that had been hidden in darkness for centuries now reflected back with golden luster. Images of creatures of all shapes, depictions of stories and wondrous scenes, each meticulously carved and outlined in gold, colored marble, and glistening precious stones, were brought back to a brief majestic life.
The ship began to rise from its monolithic perch, its legs retracting as it ascended. Dust scattered up into the air, to dance in the sun's beam as it had once done so many eons before. Accelerating as it climbed, the ship followed the steady stream of light, up and through the roof of the chamber, breaking free into the open sky.
Within the chamber, the disturbed clouds of dust soon settled back down, coming to rest in delicate layers upon the rover. The vehicle’s searchlight
s dimming to yellow embers as the last bit of energy drained from its fuel supply. In the co-pilot’s chair, a Signite human would eventually mummify in the dry air, a sly grin upon his face.
The ship's onboard program had prepared a maximum security flight. Scramblers were engaged, and radio emissions were produced to hide its signature within background radiation. The craft was now increasing its speed almost exponentially, leaving the planet behind in minutes. Within the control room, the image of the magnificent jungle planet shrunk to a mere dot.
The vessel thundered on into the great emptiness of space, constantly accelerating. At the molecular level, it transformed itself into an enhanced energy state. Reality now warped and churned around its hull as it passed its first hurdle of acroluc, then the second, and the third, and on. As it cut through the matter of the universe, it contorted space-time before it, passing by whole constellations in a blink of an eye, on its way to a pre-set destination.
On Kalmaka, the makeshift Xi-Empire flight control center had picked up a signal, although very faint. The reading was unusual and disappeared quickly. It was discounted as a glitch in the system and ignored. After all, no ship was due to arrive for at least another three zanii.
* * *
4. Oasis
T he vessel, designed to traverse the spans between the stars, continued on its lonely course through the emptiness of space, its destination long ago programmed into its navigation systems. A concert of data, bits of navigational references, reams of mathematical algorithms, were all unceasingly sequestered by the Master Program as it patiently, and with absolute accuracy, guided the ship along the pre-set course.
In a lonely, unremarkable point in space, the ship came to rest. A communication request was sent out. After a set amount of time had passed, the request was issued again. No response. Three times the Master Program attempted, and three times it failed. Self-diagnostic subroutines scoured through its ancient systems but found no faults. The messages had been sent successfully. Contingency logic was invoked, and a new set of coordinates attempted. A small satellite, prodded to life by the unique, invulnerable hail, responded. The envoy relayed a coded message. The Master Program acknowledged, then dropped the link unceremoniously, undisturbed by the new information it received. It meticulously calculated new flight vectors, realigned the ship onto its newly calculated navigation vector, then promptly resumed acceleration.
Time passed. Light-years passed...
At a set time, as measured precisely by the Master Program, deceleration was initiated by the ancient ship's drives. Ever so slowly, the galaxies and stars outside stopped their fluid swirling, and gradually transformed into static light images suspended in an empty coldness. Once the ship's velocity dropped below the threshold of light speed, the universe returned in its recognizable glory, pockmarked with fiery points of color and distant suns emanating pinpoints of light from all directions.
Reference points were verified, satisfying the Master Program’s directives. Ahead, a red-dwarf star, inflated against a speckled background of celestial matter, steadily grew larger in perspective. Soon three planets appeared, each orbiting in varying degrees of arc around the sun's equatorial plane.
The first planet, in closest orbit, was a large ball of gas with a molten core. It was too close to the star's massive furnace to be cool enough to form a solid crust on its mantle, its molten surface running thick with veins of competing fluid densities.
The second, middle planet did not suffer such hellish abuse, being much farther away from its sun, but its skies were enveloped in a reddish, orange atmosphere of savagely blowing winds and vicious continuous storms.
The third, and last planet of the system held an erratic course. It was, possibly, a recent acquisition of the star’s gravity well, a captured rock with no more than a trace of atmosphere. Frozen lakes of oxygen, nitrogen, and ice covered its surface.
None were suitable for human habitation.
The ship approached the middle planet. The Master Program propagated many virtual children, each working furiously on the task of navigation and helm control, to align the vessel on an exact course. They churned through billions of calculations in a concerted effort to guide the ship into and through the planet's turbulent atmosphere.
* * *
Ryan woke from his sleep, startled and overcome by a feeling of dread and unmitigated fear. He launched from his seat, weapon in hand, ready to battle the aggressor, but found none. The bridge was the same as he had left it, with one exception: the scene from the large triangular viewscreen was no longer that of the inside of the ancient chamber.
He stared at it mutely, all the while soaking in the facts around him, desperately trying to avoid his own realization.
He was in space.
His eyes probed the bridge. It was alive with the quiet blinking of tiny lights. But there was no pilot, certainly no crew on board. Nothing living had coordinated this launch. A computer was at the helm or some resemblance of such a creation.
Where was it taking him? What was it programmed to do?
He lay down his fabricated weapon onto the arm of his chair. Instinct had made him seize it, and he felt foolish for being so frightened.
It would not do to act rash, to take action without thinking, especially out here, in cold, empty space where it would definitively kill you. How long had he been traveling? He could not have slept more than five or six hours, but what distance can a starship travel in that span of time? A light-year? 10 light-years? A thousand?
He mentally retraced his steps.
He had touched some of the panels. Could this have triggered it? The ship had awakened somehow; maybe just entering the bridge was enough. Whatever the cause, it was not important now.
The image of a red planet slowly filled the viewscreen, its details ominously clear. He could see the perpetual dust storms tearing their way across its surface, enveloping everything around them for thousands of kilometers, whole segments of hemisphere disappeared under the cover of angry darkness.
The ship pitched down into the atmosphere in one sudden, gut-wrenching movement, throwing him back into the chair. The view of the planet’s surface rushed up from below as it careened downward with incredible speed. The bridge filled with a high-pitched shriek. Sounds, akin to alarms, began to sound off.
Ryan covered his ears and watched, helplessly.
In a bone-crushing maneuver, the ship leveled off, barely a kilometer from the surface, then adjusted its approach toward a range of mountains on the horizon. Winds hammered against the hull transferring a muffled but obvious howl. Blinding walls of dust blasted at it from all directions, engulfing it in red spiraling squalls. The view through the screen was often obliterated, lost in a suffocating darkness.
The Master Program continued on, undaunted. Statistical models impressed upon the most up-to-date scans of the terrain replaced temporary losses of sensor data. It was not human and as such, experienced no fear.
Contrary to the ship’s artificial mind, Ryan could feel every shift, dip, and sway and found little comfort in the rough, although precise, handling of the vessel. He dug his fingers deep into the arms of his chair, eyes glued to the viewscreen. The ship wove dizzyingly through the mountains, darting side to side, up and down. Collisions were avoided in a span of milliseconds as the ship adjusted course, giving an illusion of reckless indifference.
In one final graceful epitaph, it slid around a smaller mountain and slowed to a crawl, floating casually up to the base of another. This mountain was gigantic in proportion, dwarfing the others and reaching well above the rushing clouds of the red dust storms and into the thin wispy layers of the upper atmosphere.
The ship eased forward with an uncanny distinction. On the bridge, new displays appeared, replacing others, providing data in a dancing chorus of light.
It was searching… But for what?
A cold shadow cast over them in a dark veil, leaving the harsh daylight behind as it methodically circumven
ted the mountain.
In the darkness, a gray hint of a plateau appeared deep within the recesses of the cliff side – an unnatural, precise wedge cut within a glossy, polished wall. With a sudden jerk, the ship veered into this crevice, stopping just as abruptly to avoid a collision into the mountain face. It hovered momentarily, then descended onto the plateau, legs extending to bite into the smooth rock face. Clouds of dust, disturbed by the ship's landing, resettled slowly, burying the wide feet of the ship's legs under centimeters of superfine red grains.
The Master Program, once again, became one. It ran various tests to ensure critical systems were operating correctly, then promptly put itself into hibernation. The bridge displays responded in like, systematically fading to gloss black, eventually leaving only the triangle of the main viewscreen.
* * *
Ryan took in the new information with despair.
Why the hell would it land here?
He stood up and walked closer to the viewscreen to peer out. Dim light, reflecting from surrounding mountains provided a stark picture. The plateau was featureless – a simple, inadequate haven from the surrounding hell. A deep rumbling permeated through the ship's skin, a testament to the hurricane forces beyond the crevice. Yet the plateau, curiously, seemed unaffected. Traces of dust floated lazily above the plateau floor, settling, like the last few flakes of snow in a peaceful wintry night.
Just great, perched on a ledge a kilometer above a barren wasteland.
He pounded the glossy panel in frustration. A gray ripple dilated radially outward, eventually to disappear at the panels’ edges. He gave the strange phenomenon a cursory glance.
What was he going to do? Get out? Go exploring? Maybe he could if there was something that resembled a spacesuit in here. Then again, that could be a mistake. Once he stepped out, the ship, in turn, might just start itself up again and leave him stranded here to die. Did others before him make the same mistake - and die for it? Maybe once, long ago, this world was a fertile planet capable of sustaining life. There were no signs of that now - no cities, no ruins, certainly nothing obvious. He could only surmise the worst: This ship is very, very old. This planet, if once habitable, had probably undergone some tremendous catastrophe, or worse, given way to the incessant deterioration of time. This ship had returned to its now dead home with him aboard.
A Bellicose Dance Page 11