by David Smith
Stephens scanned it. “Neither. This is some kind of bacterial culture too, but the bacteria are huge. They’re actually individually visible! I’ll take a sample for further analysis back on board.”
She continued scanning, and found more and more readings of different forms of life.
She was stunned by her findings and said, “Commander, it looks like the terminator is just a ring of life-forms stretching for miles. If the planet is tidally locked there’s probably a circle of life a few kilometers across stretching all the way around the planet’s entire circumference!”
“Why just here?” asked O’Mara.
Crewman Stephens answered “It’s probably because there’s liquid water in this region, Ma’am. With the planet being tidally locked, the side facing the sun is mostly too warm for water to exist other than as a vapour. The hot side of the planet is effectively a desert. It’ll be too cold for water to exist in liquid form on the dark side, so that’ll be an ice-desert. It’s probably only here on the day/night terminator the right conditions exist for liquid water, so life only flourishes here.”
O’Mara called Chief Freema Obote, who was manning the Science Station on the Bridge of the Tiger. “Are you getting all of this Chief?”
“Yes Ma’am, and readings from up here seem to confirm that. We’re getting life signs heading out towards the daylight side of the planet, but they’re definitely thinning out. There are two big sterile areas which seems to start where ever the surface temperature gets much over three hundred Kelvin or below two-fifty. The dark side looks to be near lifeless as a result, and you’re stood on the edge of a habitable zone about fifty to a hundred klicks wide”
Chief Benoit had launched a small drone, and was soon able to summarise its findings for O’Mara “I think I’ve got a handle on the weather system now, Ma’am. The drone says wind speeds are slightly higher in the upper atmosphere but are running in the opposite direction. What we’re looking at is a convection system. The atmosphere on the hot side is heated by the star, and rises in a continuous column, getting pushed away from the hot side of the planet as it does so. It reaches the cold side, loses heat and condenses, sinking back into the lower atmosphere. That displaces the atmosphere there in series of cold air-currents back to the hot side, where it’s heated again, completing the cycle”
“This is fantastic!!” squealed O’Mara, “We’ve discovered an entire eco-system that may be unique. We need to find out more. Benoit, take Stephens and head out to the hot-side and see what else you can find, Liuzzi, you and Handley are with me. We’re going over to the dark side.”
They’d landed one kilometer from the terminator, and as they faced the dark side of the planet, their long but barely-visible shadows were broken up by the maze of rocks and debris that littered the surface of the small world. They took their time picking their way through the jumble of jagged rocks, scanning this way and that as they went, making notes and recording data of each thing that caught their attention.
O’Mara discovered the largest life form they’d found yet, a boulder like colony of bacteria that was topped with a delicate filigree of fronds, which somehow stood firm in the face of the strong prevailing winds. They billowed like a sail, moving, almost breathing as the strong winds stirred them. They spent five minutes examining it in more detail and discovered it was some kind of filter feeder, trapping loose bacteria and organic material drifting in the winds.
It took them forty minutes to cover the distance and their arrival was only noted by the fact that the shadows cast in the dim light became unending. Rather than being able to note where a shadows end-point was, the far point of the shadows never reached the ground as the curve of the planet dropped away from the terminator.
Already dim, the light ceased as they crested a small rill and they found themselves plunged into darkness. The external lighting mounted on the helmets of their environmental suits had already turned on automatically, and now wound up to maximum brightness as they headed deeper and deeper into the darkness.
Casting around with a tricorder, Liuzzi quickly picked up more of the filter feeders. “There are thousands of them, probably millions, all arranged in this belt around the planet, all facing the wind.”
“I wonder what they’re filtering for?” asked O’Mara, and held up her own tricorder to examine the steady wind blowing in their faces. “Hmm. Lots and lots of organic molecules. None of it actually alive as far as I can tell, but definitely organic in origin.” She paused and took more readings. “Y’know, I think these are definitely the remains of LOAVES. I think that the LOAVES that get too close the star die and they get sucked down into the planet’s gravity well. These creatures are living off manna from heaven”
She was still pondering this when ASBeau called from the bridge of Tiger. There was a note of alarm in his voice as he opened the channel to all of the away team. “O’Mara, you’ve got incoming! There’s a small asteroid on a collision course with the planet, it’s going to strike in about ..….. sixty seconds. Take cover wherever you can!”
“Oh CRAP!! Where’s it going to hit??”
“Not enough data to be definitive, Ensign David reckons …….. about here.”
ASBeau transmitted the co-ordinates, which popped up on a small display on the arm of O’Mara’s suit. It showed a small red cross further into the dark side than their own blue crosses. “Christ that’s only a hundred clicks away!! Take cover everyone, it’s going to hit near us on the dark side. Find shelter from that direction.”
Before any of them had a chance to move, there was a shout from Benoit over the open local comm-link: “Look!!!”
Everyone looked up, even O’Mara, three kilometers too far away to see which direction Benoit was actually looking in.
On the bridge, ASBeau was desperately trying to get Chief Carstairs to lock on for an emergency transport, but knew he was struggling as the five man team was spread out over nearly four kilometers, and something on the planet’s surface was playing havoc with the accuracy of the ship’s sensors.
Down on the tiny world, a bright star shone like a beacon above the horizon. The away team couldn’t help but stare. Used to voyaging through space they’d grown accustomed to the constant and comforting presence of stars, but none of them had come to realise what an endless source of wonder stars were until they couldn’t see them.
The bright star sparkled in the sky, and as her mind switched back on, O’Mara realised it was only glowing because it was a meteor that had already entered the atmosphere. To generate enough heat to glow like that obviously meant it was travelling very, very fast. This was odd because it seemed that the star was hardly moving at all. O’Mara pondered this. Maybe the meteor had some kind of natural fluorescence? Could it possibly even be bio-luminescence? It was drifting very slowly and lazily downwards, but seemed to be visibly growing as it did so. Maybe something in its make-up was reacting with the methane in the atmosphere? Or ……. perhaps …… it was just heading directly towards them?
“OH CRAP!!!!!! TAKE COVER!!!!!” she screamed.
Her voice made every other member of the away team jump, and Handley and Liuzzi turned to see what she was doing. O’Mara had already begun scrambling away towards the largest rock she could find, and a fraction of a second later, Liuzzi and Handley realised what her warning meant and dived for cover themselves.
The meteor very suddenly became an obvious, deadly threat and a fraction of a second later it blasted overhead, silently illuminating everything in a harsh glaring white light for a few seconds. It sailed away and they all breathed a sigh of relief until the hypersonic boom of its passage through the atmosphere struck them like a thunderbolt.
Three kilometers back, Benoit and Stephens could only watch in horror as the meteor sailed past them, heading straight towards the other three members of the away team. It passed them still high in the sky but the shockwave of its flight through the atmosphere had thrown them to the ground, too.
Rolling o
ver, Benoit saw the meteor seem to skim the rocky terrain before there was a huge flash. Instinctively he got up and started running in the direction of O’Mara and her team, but had only managed a twenty meters before the shockwave of the impact hit him.
It was like being struck by a sledgehammer, and he was physically lifted off his feet and thrown back half the distance he’d just covered. Stephens had stayed on the ground a few seconds longer and hadn’t been hit by the blast as hard. She scrambled over to the Benoit on her hands and knees, struggling against hurricane-force winds generated by the explosion of the impact. She reached him and shook him hard “Chief!! Are you ok???”
“Ug. Did you get the number of the lorry that just hit me?” he groaned gently.
“Can you move??” asked Stephens.
“Yeah, I think so.” He tried to sit up and froze as his chest felt like it exploded “AAAHHHH! ............ Maybe not. I must have cracked a bunch of ribs.”
“Stephens to Tiger, EMERGENCY MEDICAL TRANSPORT NOW!!!”
“Roger that Stephens” replied Carstairs, “I’m moving Benoit straight to Sick-bay. I can’t locate O’Mara and her team, do you have a fix on them?”
Stephens stood back as Benoit de-materialised “Negative, we were heading in opposite directions. They must have been three, maybe four clicks closer to the impact then we were. They could be in real trouble. Can you shift me about three clicks longitudinally?”
She felt the familiar tingle of the transporter beam as Carstairs said “Already on it. Brace yourself.”
Her world disappeared in a swirl of energy patterns, and seconds later she found herself in darkness, being buffeted by gusting winds. Momentarily disoriented, she stumbled as her weight came to rest on the uneven rocky surface. Her helmet lights came on automatically, and she looked around not knowing where to start. She pulled her tricorder out and cast around, looking for signs of life. She found a faint reading off to one side of her and turned and scrambled over a field of rocky debris as quickly as she could.
She realised the rocks had a high iron content which was affecting her tricorder readings. She followed the inconsistent reading as best she could, and after a hundred meters or so was relieved to find a second signal too. She called Tiger “Bridge, can you get a lock on me?”
“ASBeau here, your signature is poor, I’m not sure we can get a decent Transporter lock.”
“I’m getting readings of two life signs, can you get anything from up there?”
“Negative, Stephens, getting a lot of interference from the geology, I’ll keep trying”
“And I’ll keep looking” she said as she stumbled forward. She was so intent trying to get a reading from her tricorder she literally stood on poor Liuzzi.
“Ow!!”
“Liuzzi! Thank god you’re ok!” she knelt down and found her crewmate half buried beneath a thin covering of dust and gravel.
“Yeah, I’m good, apart from where you just stood on my arm!” he grumbled.
Stephens leant forward to try to help him out, but she overbalanced on the uneven ground and landed on his chest
“Arrrhh!!!”
“Sorry! I was just trying to help!”
“Please don’t help me again. It hurts.”
“I’m really sorry!! Can you move?”
“Yeah, ow!! No. I think my leg is broken.”
“Stay still.” She used her tricorder to mark his position. “Chief Carstairs, one to beam up direct to Sick-bay, possible broken leg. Can you find him?”
“Yep, locking on”
Before he disappeared, Stephens asked “Do you know where O’Mara and Handley are?”
“Handley was right beside me. O’Mara went towards that big rock over there.”
She glanced in that direction but could see nothing. She turned back to ask Liuzzi if he could add anything, but he’d already gone.
Sighing she called back to the ship “No sign of O’Mara or Handley sir, any chance of some help?”
ASBeau’s voice came back to her. “A back-up team are prepping now. They’ll be down in two minutes.”
Stephens was about to reply when she heard a soft groan from her comm-set. “Handley? Is that you?” She cast around with her tricorder, trying to make sense of the fragmented readings. She stepped forward and heard another groan, louder this time. She froze but the groan continued. “Handley?? Where are you??”
“Stephens? I don’t know. I think I’m pinned down by a rock or something. I’m face down and I can feel a big weight on my shoulder.”
Stephens moved to try and get a reading on her crew mate, and heard a groan. “The boulder moved, I think I’m free now”
Looking down, Stephens could see something moving beneath the loose surface by her feet and took a step back before kneeling and digging with her hands. She quickly found the fabric of an environmental suit and uncovered the dazed security crewman.
Eventually, Handley managed to roll over, groaning as she did "Thanks Stephens, that rock was killing me."
"Er ........ no problem. Are you hurt? Can you move?"
"I hurt ..... everywhere ...... but I think I can move." She sat up and gingerly rose, first onto her knees and then upright, swaying in the gusting winds.
Stephens helped her to balance and said "I can't find O'Mara. Did you see where she took cover?"
Handley slowly looked around. The landscape had changed, the impact of the meteor blasting rock and debris from the impact zone tens of kilometers in every direction, and the high winds were still pushing gravel, sand and dust into drifts of grey wherever there was an obstruction. She eventually spotted a large obelisk of rock, away down a gentle slope but barely visible in the poor light and said "I think she headed for a big rock, but I thought it was a tall thin one. It must have been tipped-over by the blast"
"Ok, we'll get you up to Tiger and I'll check it out" said Stephens.
As Handley was transported, Stephens had a second of near-panic as she realised she was alone now on an alien planet. Steeling herself, she set out for the rock, desperately hoping the Science Officer was still alive.
She half-walked, half-crawled towards the big slab of rock as the ground under her feet became an increasingly treacherous ski-slope of loose sand, gravel and ice.
It was further than it had looked in the dim light of her suits head-lamps, and as she approached it a tiny warning sign came on inside her helmet;
"Warning, suit power source down to ten per-cent capacity"
She used the controls on the outside of the suit’s sleeve to turn down the heating circuit in an attempt to eke out her meager power reserves, and upped her pace as best she could on the uncertain surface.
She reached the rock and opened the local comm-link to the rest of the away team. "Lieutenant-Commander O'Mara? Can you hear me? Aisling?"
Silence.
Risking the power drain, Stephens turned her suit lights up to full and began searching in the vicinity of the rock. Aware she'd literally stumbled upon crewman Handley, she checked carefully under her feet in case the Science Officer had been covered by loose debris too.
She was about to give up and spread her search further afield when she spotted the tips of gloved fingers protruding from under the side of the slab.
"Oh no. Stephens to Tiger. Come in Tiger. I need help and I need it now!!"
Lieutenant Chen arrived seconds later with Nurse Benjani, Orderly Weiss, PO Benelli and Crewman Vincent from security. Stephens was on her hands and knees beside a tilted slab of rock, franticly digging with her hands. She'd already uncovered the Science Officer's arm and was following that back under the boulder trying to find the rest of her. Chen bounded over and scanned O’Mara with his medical tricorder.
"She's still alive, but she's in trouble. Poor breathing, the rock must be pressing directly on her rib-cage. I can’t get much else at the moment. We need to get closer to her." He stood back and picked up Stephens tricorder, which she’d left abandoned on the ground. "Carstairs,
emergency transport, can you shift this boulder for us?"
The Chiefs voice came back "Negative, it's too big. Masses around 8 tonnes, I can't shift it in a single transport. I can override the safety protocols and try to shift it in two halves, but if I take half of the rock suddenly, will the rest of it topple? I might crush her if the bit I leave behind moves?"
"Damn" said Chen softly.
The orderlies and security team had begun hand-digging around the rock too, and Stephens eventually gave way, gasping for air. Chen pulled her to one side and noticed that a warning light outside her suit was flashing too. "Stephens, your power supplies are marginal, you need to get back to the ship."
"But Aisling ......"
"No buts, we'll look after O'Mara. Go. Now."
Reluctantly Stephens called Carstairs and requested transport, but as Chen watched her being spirited away, something struck the face plate of his environmental suit, shattering as it did so and covering him in fine white powder.
“What the….. “ he stared at the white dust as it slid down across his visor “Did someone just throw a snowball at me??” He looked around at the rest of his away team, but they were all busy burrowing away around O’Mara.
He was about to repeat his question when another, larger snow-ball hit Nurse Benjani’s not-inconsiderable rear-end as it stuck up in the air. She yelped and sprang up, rubbing her behind and Chen was looking around for a hidden assailant when the ground next to him exploded, throwing him sideways. “What the ….. ASBeau, are we under attack??” screamed Chen over his communicator.
Up on the ship, ASBeau scanned for other vessels, and for sources of energy. Nothing. Had more meteorites peppered the surface of the planet? In a flash of inspiration, he spotted the truth and called back to Chen.
“Get everyone to take cover, there’s a load of crap from the meteor impact flying through the atmosphere, big chunks of ice and rock are starting to fall back to the surface. Most of it’s probably going to be too small for the sensors to detect, and there’s too much of it for us to track the bigger bits individually.”