Sidereal Quest

by E Robert Dunn

  "Why...What happened to all of you?" Moela mumbled, straining for contact, touching the whale beneath its eye. She was trembling, in a frenzy of instant pain. She emptied out her field kit, got to the tide pools, filled the case with water and rushed back to the only whale still breathing. She poured the remaining two quarts-worth of ocean over the skyward-side of its face. The eye responded, closing, and then reopening.

  "I'm so sorry...I don't understand..." she said, sitting down before the creature, openly in tears. With genuine remorse, Moela stroke her melon-shaped abdomen that carried within its womb the seed of her race. It just seemed wickedly unfair the way life worked. Before her lay a dying creature, while within her grew new life.

  Suddenly, the whale's breathing became faint. Its ribcage pressed against its flesh. Moela rose to stare at the forty-five-retem-long masterpiece. Checking her biocoder once again, she worked the controls by rote. As the tiny monitor lit up, automatically compensating for the coral-hue lighting of the suns-set and suns-rise, she played the device along much of its body. Symbols and numbers flashed on the screen, which to a nonprofessional would have meant nothing. Nevertheless, to her they meant a great deal.

  It confirmed her initial fears. The mammal was dying, quickly and painfully, and it was beyond her power to save it. All she could do was watch; agonize with the creature through its suffering.

  "You're starving!" Moela voiced softly. Wiping away tears that streaked her face, the Aidennian got hold of herself and studied the biocoder's screen as readings changed and new data presented itself. "Brevetoxin..."

  The mammal went silent, jarring Moela's attention away from the instrument in her palm. The whale had died; its eyes remained open like its companions. Moela's free hand went into a fist as she reluctantly turned away from the huge corpse. A faint whine in the distance down the beach tickled her ears, and she looked up to see a familiar funnel cloud racing toward her small science camp. With anticipation, Moela swallowed her sorrow, packed up her gear, and jogged toward the reflective light fronting the sandy plume.

  CHAPTER TWO:

  Beside Moela's bright orange mylarine tent were positioned various technical equipment, everything from optical range finders, data-lock compasses, to microwave transponders. As the hovercar approached, the gentle hum of its air propulsion jets stirred in Moela's ears and she stepped from inside the tent and gave Retho a welcoming wave.

  "You've been busy," Retho called out friendly as he allowed his bitter recollections to fade; cutting the Getabout's motor, he slipped from the driver's seat. Standing tall and trim in his purple-black short-sleeved, cargo-pant fatigue, his long-limbed athletic form walked across the gap between vehicle and tent within moments.

  Moela grinned and accepted her brother's hug, the bulge of her pregnant abdomen no longer making the gesture awkward. Parting, she said, "Very busy. I spent the morning collecting plant samples. I found a few insects and grew more excited over them than about the shrubbery. Six whales beached themselves during the night just north of here. It seems their immune systems were shot."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I'm not sure. There were many dead algae in their gut. Could have been a plankton kill. There were some benzene, ethylbenzene, xylene, and toluene residues -- but that is typical in cases like this."

  "Did you do a photobiological exam on that odd plankton?"

  "I will when we get back to the Pioneer. I've got all the readings right here in my biocoder," Moela said, giving the device clipped to her utility belt a reassuring hand pat. "They starved to death and were sick, Retho. Their systems screwed up and they had traveled a long way to die according the amounts of lactic acid built up in their muscles. They even took in food they normally would not touch. I have to confess, I've never seen anything like it."

  "You're scaring me."

  "Don't be, for now at least. The cause of death still needs investigation. I should have something a little more definite to report by the end of the rotate. Anyway, clues to the planet's behavior are in this region. I have found large quantities of iridium and other core material on the surface. I cannot wait to piece it all together back at the Pioneer. How about you?"

  Nodding, Retho contained his excitement. "I've found some very interesting rock samples. Their specific gravity is well below normal, and I will need labcomp to assist me as to finding out why. I would like to stop by the geologic station on the way back to the Pioneer."

  "Well, then I guess we'd better head back. I just have to finish packing these few things," she gestured at the equipment still opened around the tent.

  "Happy to help," Retho said, moving to close a portable bioscanner assembly.

  * * *

  The geologic station was in a crater basin midway between Base Camp and the seashore and was little more than a prefabricated tent beside a portable drilling rig. The tent domed over a foldout table covered in scientific equipment, a few chairs, some storage lockers and crates, and some recording hardware. Retho Capelsire stared into a miniaturized viewing screen, trying not to let the geo-microreader slip out of his sweaty hands. Outside, the desert wind shook the tiny mobile lab. He would wait long for these precious dirt cores. The story they had to tell was urgent, maybe very urgent. And, now as last, he was looking back along the cycles, back past season after season, layer after layer of earth.

  Laid out on the geo-microreader’s screen, images swept through time. Back through the eons telling a tale of the basin’s awesome birth. An impact had occurred about three and a half billion cycles before the present, when the planet’s lithosphere had been thinner, and its interior hotter. Energies released by the impact were hard to imagine. The total energy created by terrankind through all history was as nothing to it. Therefore, the resulting planetary volcanic activity had been considerable. Surrounding the geologic station site were several ancient volcanoes, which just postdated the impact, including the Pylon Crater to the southwest, the desert’s plateau region to the south, and two other major ranges to the northeast. Liquid water aquifers found near all these volcanic regions. For the marooned Aidennians, knowing where water reserves were could mean the difference between life and death, if an emergency should drain the podship’s cisterns.

  The earthen sample was thick; the layer was complex, full of particles, irregular. To Retho’s expert eye, it told the story of a monster that had marched through the planet back then, a storm beyond the wildest limit of the imagination. He would read the fossil report, of course. He even knew the time of cycle the impact had taken place. It had happened in the planet’s summer. The northern pole’s temperatures had spiked to over eighty noches Heit. The fossil record revealed that a herd of pachyderms had been placidly feeding on daisies not far from a blooming apple tree when, literally as they chewed their food, they had been charred to ash and the world around them transformed into a roaring hell.

  There was no earth in the desert deep enough or pure enough to confirm the fossil record – but the core sample Retho was examining was the touchstone he needed. He looked up from his observation and gazed out the transparent portal of the lab tent. As far as he could see, there stretched the amazing, twisted, sweeping dunes of the desert shelf, sand that had been drifting over the continent for thousands of cycles. Overhead, the deep blue desert sky spoke eloquently of profound, absolute heat. He laughed a little to himself. The truth was that it was not as hot as it could be. Not nearly according to the earth core sample.

  “Find what you needed?” asked Moela, opening other core sample containment cylinders, preparing them for clean transfer to the tent’s storage locker.

  “I think …”

  At that moment, there was a sort of shudder. It was not much, but it should not have been there at all.

  “-- What the wraiths is happening?”

  Then a high-pitched screaming sound came from outside. Followed by what sounded like a ragged, endless volley of weapons shots. Both disturbances shattered the profound desert silence.
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br />   “I didn’t do anything,” Moela screamed above the explosive cracking sounds as she gingerly placed the core cylinders in the storage locker.

  Retho darted outside the tent to see what was happening. In the distance, he could see a zigzagging line in the ground. A gaping crack. It was rapidly approaching the geologic station. On the volcanic slopes, great rocks rumbled and tumbled down, piling up along the bottom of the basin’s rim.

  “Come on!” Retho ran back inside the lab tent and gathered up the geo-microreader and other portable equipment into a specimen case. Bursting out of the tent, he began to sprint across the desert toward the parked Getabout.

  As Moela raced after her sibling, there was a crash just outside the tent and what felt like an earth temblor. The ground was giving way; the solid chunk of sandy continental shelf had just become a hole between the lab tent and the drilling rig. As she ran, she peered down into the black earth. The drill shifted, it swung toward the hole.

  “Let’s go!” Retho called as he began stowing gear into the aerofoil.

  Moela’s face peered back, eyes huge, skin as pale as the death that was clawing at her. Retho raced back and gripped his sister’s tunic. As the portable drilling rig fell away, he manhandled his terrified sister up onto the stable part of ground surrounding the fissure. It did not stay stable for long. An instant later, the two of them had to jump a widening gap just to prevent themselves from joining the lost rig.

  The hole yawned before them, easily a couple of hundred retems deep, sudden death waiting a handbreadth from the least slip. Then the weapons retorts changed to a deeper roar, crunching, and echoing booms. The entire desert shelf was disintegrating right under their feet. Retho watched as the lab tent started to move away from them, carrying all it contained with it.

  The gap was widening fast, pieces of its ledge crumbling away. Deep down in the newly formed chasm the two Aidennians saw the dark, shadowy presence of an aquifer. Retho stared, almost hypnotized by the impossible, unbelievable sight.

  The aquifer’s currents were already going haywire. Even as the two astounded Aidennians watched, the waters were welling up, chewing the fissure’s sides away as they rose quickly, steeply, threateningly.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Moela gasped.

  Retho just shot her an obvious glare and bolted for the trembling Getabout. This time, Moela was not tardy and buckled herself firming into her seat as Retho brought the small aircar to life.

  “What is happening?” Moela asked in ragged breaths.

  Retho dropped a paternal hand down on hers. “The whole basin shelf is breaking off, that what’s happening. The continental plates are shifting.”

  From behind the hurrying aircar, the aquifer burst onto the surface, leaving on the crater basin’s eastern slop sinuous water-carved valleys. Its waters ran down the long enclosed canyons, to outlets on the basin floor, creating big new watery additions to the habitable surface. In the distance, volcanoes roared and bellowed smoke and brimstone.

  CHAPTER THREE:

  The podship Pioneer 4 had crash-landed on a pockmarked and multiple peaked volcanic plateau boarding the planet’s small sea on the edge of a supercontinent. Most of the landscape was uplifted high well-defined pyramidal and eroded as well as old and crumbling rock pinnacles overlaid by glaciers and snow. Like two cupped hands of stone and ice, the podship lay cradled in an arid caldera depression of sand dunes and mega-lichen flora; a period between two parentheses drawn on worn sandpaper.

  Housed securely within the podship’s apex blister technological array were three receiving dishes that continually turned their detector arrays toward the open sky. The faintest whispers from the empty heavens is what they were listening. Optical telescopes studied the stars at night, while longer-wavelength sensors combed the community of Space during the day.

  The streams of data shunted directly into the podship central computer’s main memory blades. The crew devoted their ‘off-duty’ time to studying the breathtaking new images of Space: pools of ionized gas coalescing into fresh stars, pseudo-hue plumes of cosmic jets squirting into the vacuum, globular clusters, the whirlpools of distant galaxies, the planet’s sister stars and their satellites.

  The most sensitive radio dish in the blister array picked up a constant stream of static punctuated by pops, brief whistles, and indecipherable clicks. Commander Capel always left the speakers on in the auxiliary control room, white noise in the background. Though the Aidennians knew that Space was peppered with inhabited solar groups and unusual civilizations, this benighted planet’s neighborhood seemed empty and quiet.

  Repair and replacement of the Pioneer 4’s vital hardware seemed to be an endless task; however, as the crew’s stint on their unnamed, uncharted platform in Space continued, slowly the ship’s operating systems, including those just for leisure and relaxation became operational. For the ship’s personnel, it was a welcome rotate when the computer files housing the holo-cinema were reclaimed. Utilized even though they had seen every one in the library a dozen times already.

  As life relaxed, the daily routine became almost boring, and long weeks without incident slipped by. Social events began to re-assert their importance in the Aidennians’ personnel life. Traditional celebrations scheduled to help things along.

  Moela joined Commander Dara Lidasiress in her stateroom in the afternoon. She replaced her purple-black regulation uniform by dressing in a shimmering rainbow-colored gown draped to the floor. Her hair was up in an elaborate baroque of curls and knots and tinted a rich ash brown.

  “Tell me, Siress,” Moela asked as she swept through the door, “what do you think?”

  Dara took in the magnificent effect. Evidently, the dress and hairstyle were in special preparations in honor of the dinner party held that evening.

  “You look marvelous. But why the rush? Kwanzaa doesn’t officially begin until sunsdown.”

  Moela shrugged. “I guess it has been so long since we’ve actually paused in our repair routines to remember our traditions, that I feel giddy and like a child again. I want to start celebrating immediately.”

  Dara laughed at the thought, and nodded in agreement, saying, “Plus it will be good to end the fast and begin the feast; and do self-examination.”

  Moela remained silent and only nodded. Kwanzaa was one of her favorite celebrations of all the Systemite holidays. A time of the cycle that offered a pause in life for reflection and self-affirmation. The Nguzo Saba or Seven Principles guided the celebration of Kwanzaa. Each rotate of the weeklong festival was devoted to the celebration of one of those building blocks of self-awareness. This night focused and praised Unity. Moela enjoyed reaffirming family ties and community. The later made her frown for a moment as she reflected on the loss since the invasion of the Tauron Empire and the subsequent annihilation of her race. This Kwanzaa would have special meaning.

  “May I help with the preparations?” the science officer found her voice.

  Dara smiled once again as she turned casually for her stateroom’s door. “But of course. I was just about to fabricate the candles.”

  Without pause or reply, Moela followed her parent into the main accessway of the Pod 4’s lower utility deck and toward the galley.

  The Conestoga-class Pioneer Pod 4 internal distribution infrastructure included a number of related systems whose purpose was the distribution of vital commodities varying widely in the nature of distribution hardware, all requiring complex interconnections throughout the volume of the spacecraft, and nearly all were of sufficient criticality to require one or more redundant backup distribution networks. One of the major utilities networks was located in the system of access tunnels and subcorridors that carried much of the various utilities conduits and waveguides located just beneath the Pod's lower utility deck; this network covered the entire volume of the ship, providing access to utilities trunks and circuitry. Major Nicraan Matasire situated himself purposefully on his back within one of these tubes at a maintenance
and testing point that allowed him to perform needed repairs to utilities’ networks primary junctional cluster.

  Due to the forced landing of the Pioneer Pod 4, misalignment of one of the many microwave power waveguides’ transmitters compromised the onboard systems power transmission. Nicraan was now attempting to re-align the waveguides of the electro-plasmic transmitter exposed before him. Using a portable techcoder, the pilot activated the device's sensing mode and scanned its concealed diagnostic antenna over the 1 r x 1 r waveguide pallet. The display screen began showing real-time, stored, and computed imagery. At a touch, Nicraan selected an area of the present image and it enlarged to show the transmitter's encryption circuit assembly. Brushing a finger across the command transmission control's POOL contact point linked the techcoder immediately to the ship's network of data links employing multiple high-capacity channels to help compare pre-crash alignment to present situation status. Seeing where the fault was, Nicraan instructed the library drive of the techcoder to load the previous settings into the device's main memory and transmit the appropriate alignment sequence at the pallet.

  A standard engineering equipment kit hung on his hip. Retracting an electronic circuit tester, Nicraan attempted to determine the direction of current, the type of flow, amperage, and voltage of the pallet. Feeding the information into the techcoder, Nicraan replaced the tester and took out a magnetic field resonator to give the techcoder data on the location, strength, field density, and pattern lines of the pallet's magnetic and electromagnetic fields. Adding this sensor sweep into the techcoder's library, Nicraan returned the resonator and withdrew an oscillation alignment sensor. With the assistance of the techcoder, Nicraan began re-aligning the transmitter waveguides with the hand-held, deployable high-resolution sensor.

  To say the task was boring was a little of an overstatement. A milk-run for the pilot; but, nonetheless a type of boredom that replaced others. The confines of the maintenance access tunnel for that of the ship at large, but any action to a male of his temperament was better than none. As the moments passed, he settled deeper into the fabric of the tunnel’s carpet upon which he laid, thinking, remembering.