Planet of Graves

by Marc Everitt

  “Social worker?” Eli shook his head disdainfully and proposed an alternative of his own, “More likely a legal aide.”

  “Secretary?”

  “Lawyer.”

  “Clerk?”

  “I’m telling you, she’s important. Probably a diplomat or something.”

  “How can you tell? She doesn’t look that type to me.” Eli tried to vocalise the impressions she gave which caused his opinion.

  “Look, she’s well-dressed and manicured so obviously feels her appearance is important for her work. Her posture suggests someone who is used to the attention of the public and media. Besides, she exudes class. Could be a financial director of a conglomerate?”

  Taylor obviously did not agree, “You and your amateur psychology. I’m telling you, she doesn’t have a job as important as that.”

  “Go and ask her then,” said Eli indignantly.

  “Not my turn,” Taylor replied, “I asked that man in the foyer of the shuttle port who turned out to be a mountaineer.” Eli paused for a moment, about to dispute West’s claim and then thought better of it, rose from his seat and approached the woman. Taylor watched his friend speak to the woman and tried to recall the first time they had played this game, which was now a firm favourite of his. He couldn’t summon the memory, partly because of the small dog that had reappeared at his feet and seemed to be taking a dislike to his shoes. The owner recovered the animal marginally before this dislike turned into violence and for that Taylor thanked him profusely but with an underlying hint of irritation. Looking up, he saw that Eli was returning, looking not at all pleased with his lot. You’re lucky, thought Taylor; at least you haven’t got unpopular shoes. Taylor knew that this round of the game belonged to him and was merely waiting for final confirmation.

  “Well?”

  “Drives a bus,” moaned Eli abjectly.

  Such was the entertainment on a transport voyage to outer colonies.

  ***

  Things were infinitely worse before the invention of vessels that could breach the speed of light, as a simple interplanetary trip could take years and interstellar travel was unthinkable unless you wanted to join a bio-sphere ship; which was essentially a world all it’s own. Your ancestors would arrive at the destination, but would invariably have lost track of where they were going and why. More often then not when this type of space voyage was attempted in the pre stellar jump days the colonists would forget they were on a ship at all and consequently would fail to remember to keep a careful eye on the instruments which were housed in the minute control room. Therefore, when the ships approached their destination and the warning lights told the crew to activate the reverse thrust boosters and slow the craft down, they would invariably fail to do so. Many of the planets that had been targeted as possible new colonies for the human race had been destroyed by the collision of biosphere ships.

  Even the minority who did keep records to inform their ancestors of the situation fared little better. Despite knowing they were on a ship heading for a new colony, these colonists were so accustomed to life on a space craft that they decided to carry on travelling through space instead of landing the craft’s shuttles and colonising the worlds they had neared.

  In fact, only one of the thirty-seven biosphere ships sent from Earth in the days before the Stellar Jump was invented actually reached a new world and colonised it. However, this success story was short-lived as the planet’s indigenous population took offence to the sudden arrival of several hundred thousand humans and, being just over beasts over eighty metres tall, wasted to time in attacking and eating them.

  The early days of interstellar travel were not ranked high among mankind’s greatest achievements, but once the light barrier was breached man began to step bravely into the great reaches of space. The first man to travel via the Stellar Jump was its inventor; a scientist called Dr Philip Statham. He had theorised that it should be possible to traverse the great distances between stars by means of the gravitational forces of the stars themselves. He invented a drive that could absorb stellar radiation and channel it into a workable source of energy. Then he worked for years to perfect a shielding method for the ships so that the radiation would not kill the humans in it instantly, a difficult thing to achieve bearing in mind the colossal energies in question.

  This done, Statham explained to the watching scientific community that the prototype ship he had constructed would use the absorbed energy to propel itself across space by means of a process not unlike an ancient rocket, except for the distinction that no fuel was burned. The stellar radiation was to be expelled in a tight stream that would push the ship at phenomenal speeds. The demonstration of the prototype ship was met with mixed reactions. Exhilaration from the watching scientific community at the successful jump across almost five light years, observable by means of sophisticated tracking equipment watching Statham’s ship’s vapour trail.

  However, Statham’s family were less than pleased by the fact that the scientist had been so keen to show how fast his ship could go that he had ended up over twice as far from Earth as he had originally planned, and had no stellar energy left to return home. It was unfortunate that he ended up in a part of space with low star numbers, as this meant he was unable to refuel. It is estimated that his ship will return to Earth, by means of an automatic pilot system, around the fifth of March, 2967, almost four hundred and fifty years after it left. Whether the home fires in the Statham homestead will still be burning remains open to question.

  Many other races were not best pleased by mankind’s trip through the galaxy, but most were content to keep their heads and stay out of Mans way, shielding their presence from the lesser developed race. The only alien race that refused to do this was the Clancix. War with the Clancix was always a realistic possibility as border skirmishes between the two empires were frequent. Even the simple craft on which Eli and Taylor were travelling had been upgraded to feature weaponry as tensions continued to run high. In the thirty years since the Clancix first came into contact with the human race, humans had never seen them. The mystery that surrounded them was close to impenetrable. The tabloid sections of the C.I.N. (Computerised Information Network) offered huge credit sums to anyone who could offer proof of what the Clancix species looked like. Only the very foolhardy went close enough to the ships of the Clancix Empire to try to get this proof, and they usually became very dead.

  Such was the situation concerning mankind’s position in the galaxy and the reason for all transport vessels to be armed. Although safe from assault when travelling at the incomprehensible speeds of the Stellar Jump, the ships could still be attacked on arrival. Only two people in the Illiana were unconcerned by the threat of meeting a Clancix warship at one of the scheduled stops on their journey. One of these was unconcerned because she had passed away peacefully in her sleep shortly after leaving the moon station, and the other was Taylor West. Never one to who worry excessively about anything, West was particularly lucid at that moment as he was distracted by what was probably his favourite hobby and couldn’t spare a thought let alone concern for anything else.

  “Taylor?” asked Eli quietly. The elderly woman sat just behind and to the right of them had seemed to be sleeping peacefully for a considerable length of time now and Jackson did not want to wake her by speaking too loudly. Of course he couldn’t have known that it would have taken a medium to arouse the woman now. Taylor West had for some time been engrossed in an old word search book, which he had, purchased from a museum for a large sum of money. Although he knew that by completing the ancient word puzzle, he was ruining what was undoubtedly a valuable antique, he did not care. The pleasure he gained from finding the words in the puzzle more than made up for the credits lost. This was not a view shared by Elijah Jackson who constantly berated Taylor for the expensive nature of his hobby and started to do so now.

  “I know what you are going to say, Eli, don’t,” muttered West as he tried to find a 20th and 21st century British prime mini
ster who had left office to host their own chat show, with five letters in their name beginning with a B.

  “Why don’t you just burn the credits? It’d be quicker,” whispered Eli, with a quick look over his shoulder at the old woman. Satisfied she was still asleep he turned back and studied the puzzle from the past with curiosity. “I mean, what’s the fascination with this old thing? You can’t possibly find all the old clues. And if you do? What’s the point? Why do it?” he persisted, intent on getting a reaction from his friend and companion, something most people failed to do.

  “It’s challenging. Expands my mind. Something you should…. hang on…. five letters? I’ve thought I had it then,” replied Taylor as his attention swung back from the momentary distraction Eli offered, into the word search puzzle once again.

  The light years between Earth and Graves’ World continued to fall away and the Illiana ploughed through space.

  Earth research station Graves’ World

  The small, dark planet orbited its sun at approximately three times the distance between the Earth and its sun. It had been discovered by the human race almost twenty years earlier and had been a constant enigma ever since. The section of space that it occupied was already a hotbed for inquiry and debate, as several of the outlying worlds seemed to contain evidence of an ancient civilisation buried therein. Curiosity concerning the area of space around this small, dark planet paled into insignificance compared to the puzzle that the planet itself posed.

  Alan Johnson stood in his quarters and admired the view afforded to him by the clear aluminium window panel. His quarters lay on the west side of the scientific research station and out of his window he could see the courtyard, then the perimeter fence surrounding it and, beyond that, he could see the yellow sands of Graves’ World stretching out as far as the eye could see. There were no mountains to be seen on the planet. Just part of the geological puzzles the world posed.

  The first survey team which had landed on the world had been led by a woman called Jano Graves and it was from her that the planet had acquired its name. She had strode purposefully from the ship, keen to discover a brave new frontier and had been very disappointed to discover a monotonous landscape with nothing in the way of flora and fauna to allow for any indigenous life. She had left the planet in a hurry and went on to invent the automatic dog stroker.

  Over the years that followed, a station was built to allow research into the peculiar geology of the planet to be conducted. It was for this reason that Alan Johnson was stationed on Graves’ World. On occasions such as this, he often wished he were not, even though his professional curiosity was piqued by the puzzle the planet constituted. Johnson could see the sun setting and burning the sands of Graves’ World a deep red as it did so. Such a beautiful sight, but one which filled him with foreboding. He did not like this world when nightfall came. He imagined he saw movement out in the desert plains beyond the perimeter fence, sometimes very near.

  After the horrible death of Hanley, it was a kind of unspoken agreement that there were life forms on the planet other than the six members of the research team, and this made sunset even worse for Johnson. Although he was sure the perimeter fence was capable of keeping out any creatures which did happen to live in the desert and had managed to elude all the remote seeker drones which the team had sent out to scan the surrounding area; the death of Hanley had occurred inside the fence.

  A thorough search of the compound had led to no sign of anything unusual, but the open thermo-lock at the final checkpoint indicated the creature had left the way that it had got in. This did not explain how the lock had come to be left unlocked in the first place but this was a matter that Johnson did not want to think too hard about. The faulty thermo-lock had been replaced immediately and the days since then had been relatively uneventful. “Good,” thought Johnson. Although he didn’t know it, his life was about to become very eventful indeed

  Major Hastings sat in his room, studying small screens showing him images of his team as they, unknowingly went about their business. He paid special attention to the bedroom of Chris and Lana Maxwell, as he always did. He hoped he was going to see what he wanted.

  When Chris Maxwell returned to his bedroom after a few minutes in the bathroom he found his wife as voracious as ever, but pushed her away. “Give it a rest will you,” he snarled and turned on his side in the bed. Lana sighed heavily and wished for the hundredth time that she could have got a posting away from her husband, then she could have a free hand to do as she wished. Which she usually did anyway, but her husband was becoming an annoyance to her with his denials. She consoled herself with the thought that two engineers were arriving in the morning and hopefully they would be men. It was important to her to replace her dead lover as quickly as possible. Sleep did not come to her for a long time after that.

  Will Shanks, on the other hand, had been asleep as soon as his head had hit the pillow; it had been a tiring day for him. He hadn’t had even had time to finish the comic he had been readingbefore his eyelids drooped and his consciousness slipped away; such as it was.

  A bout of insomnia caused Sara Crick to take a sleeping draft and she slept soundly in her quarters. The automatic alarms and robotic defences had been activated to safeguard the research station and another night on Graves’ World began. Alan Johnson looked up from his bed as he thought he heard an animal noise, far away in the desert plains to the north of the camp. He soothed himself with the thought that it was probably the wind, but knew that this wasn’t so. He would be very glad when he was reassigned, and could get off Graves’ World. Mere scientific curiosity was beginning to lose its hold on him and fear was just beginning to take its place. Despite its superstitious nature, Alan had taken to saying a prayer before he went to bed. He couldn’t possibly have known he would be needing all the help he could get over the coming days.

  Chapter Three

  First Impressions

  Out in the bleak sands that surrounded the outer perimeter fence of the Graves’ World colony something stirred. Uncoiling a clawed hand it stretched the musculature of its animal frame, and looked with hate-filled, uncomprehending eyes towards the dim lights of the research station. It had been some time since the creature had been fed and it was starting to become ravenous. It was confused by its surroundings, as it was every time it awoke. They were not the swamp lands of its home-world.

  The creature wondered if it would have food brought to it as it had every night for months until four nights ago. Hunger had driven the creature out of its lair, a burrow dug into the granite that lay under the sand of the desert world, and forced it to approach the research station. The human it had found just inside the fence had been easily killed and the best of the meat had been devoured in a matter of seconds; but the hunger had returned all too easily. The creature’s primitive mind tried to work out why its benefactor had ceased the food packages, but such deductive skills were beyond it. All it knew was hunger, hate for the animals inside the fence, and a longing for its home-world. A home-world it somehow knew it would never see again.

  The small ship hailed the vessel as it picked up its heat signature. The young pilot of the company scout ship 521-A listened for signals from the ship that was racing towards her position, still without identifying itself. It was most irregular, the pilot thought, for a ship of unknown classification or design. She had checked it through her on-board computer twice already to be sure. The young woman, on only her second scout trip into deep space, was worried by the silence which came from the other vessel.

  The thought occurred to her that it could be a Clancix ship, and did nothing to cheer her up. Reports of sightings of Clancix vessels had always described much larger ships then the perfectly spherical object that was speeding towards her position. It was possible it was a new type of Clancix ship, she supposed and she felt infinitely grateful that her sensor readings were being transmitted to the closest colonial world, and help was on its way.

  In the other ship, the
on-board computer spoke to the ship’s lone occupant in a harsh mechanical tone, “Object appears to be a manned craft of some kind. Species of occupant unknown. Course of action?” The genetically engineered warrior focussed its single eye on the computer screen and its colour, continually shifting, deepened visibly. Nothing would prevent it from fulfilling what it had been created all those long aeons ago to do. The appendage rooted at its lower back began to glow as its internal energy started to coagulate.

  The same energy that affected its release from its cryo chamber some twenty hours earlier shot forth from the limb and into a specially designed outlet which the computer had opened in the hull of the craft. The beam rocketed out into space, where the unfortunate young pilot had barely enough time to distinguish the red colouring of the energy before her ship was destroyed in a blaze of light. The explosion left the smallest of particles, which shimmered in the void of space for a few seconds and then were seen no more. The T’suk creation’s ship continued its journey unopposed; but not, at least, not unnoticed.

  “What in God’s name is that?” cried the duty watch officer. Space relay station Beta was in a state of utter mayhem. Junior officers ran to their superiors like first year cadets seeking cover on a training exercise. The superior officers were little better and simply barked orders to compensate for their stupefaction. Vid-units buzzed, tele-screens flashed and people all over the station thought the same thing – Clancix.

  The cause of all the pandemonium was the remote replay of company scout ship 521-A’s destruction, beamed via remote relay to the nearest station, that being Beta. With the message being a priority signal it was not viewed prior to its broadcast over the main screen at Beta’s central communications network, a move which would have prevented the panic which was now I evidence. The duty watch officer, having been called down from his office to view the transmission, had never seen anything like it.