Ice Planet

by Nicole Stuart

  They walked around the structure, coming into sight of another one that seemed, at first glance, to match this one, although it was rectangular, rather than triangular. As they passed further around the rock, they saw yet another one, the spacing matching that of the first two, and the size and shape apparently the same as the second column.

  “Look down there, beyond the two that we can see from here. There seem to be several more, similar in size and shape, and spaced in the same way. These structures appear to be laid out in the form of an arrowhead. That’s not natural.” Cora hissed her comment to Savi in a low tone, but her astonishment was evident.

  “We need to get some ground-penetrating radar equipment in, to see whether the structures are solid. I don’t see any sign of an opening, but there may be something we can’t see. Possibly an entrance underground.” The thought gave rise to another. He turned to the head of the mining group, Listu. “Have you excavated around these structures? Is this the bottom of them that we can see, or do they go deeper into the earth?”

  “I got some of the men to excavate a hole near the edge of this one and of the third one back. It seems that they are part of the bedrock. Both holes went through compacted dirt and hit solid rock about two feet down, and there doesn’t seem to be any sign of a joint between the columns and the bedrock.” He smiled at the young scientists. “If you want my guess, these things were cut from a hill of this rock. Whatever was cut off has been removed. We haven’t yet found the rock dump, but no sensible mining engineer would move that amount of waste very far. In fact, no sensible mining engineer would cut these things from the rock. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “You’re saying that these are man-made?”

  “That’s what it seems to me. I’ve never seen anything like this before, whether natural or man-made, but I can see no purpose in them.”

  “Where do you plan to mine, then? Will your work destroy these structures?”

  “Our original plan was to create an open-cast quarry that would ultimately include this area, but, since we’ve had the chance to look more closely at this rock, we’ve more or less made up our minds to mine underground. The minerals we want are in a band about five feet thick at a depth of about a couple of hundred feet, just under this stratum of rock, and extending a couple of miles to the west. My bet is that the cost of removing this layer of rock over the whole deposit will cost more that it would to mine in from the side. Our recovery of the mineral will be lower than an open-cast quarry would give, but the cost would be a lot less, and the recovery will start at least a year sooner. I don’t think that the geologist who checked out the area realized how hard this rock is, or how thick the layer is above the ore.”

  “I would guess that you’re right. It’s a lot of rock to remove, and there doesn’t seem to be any real use for it, this far from the city. Could we look more closely at the structures, and then have a look at the geological survey?”

  *~*

  The initial evaluation of the structures revealed nothing more than that the guess made by Listu was probably correct. That created a huge question: if the structures were man-made, the work of cutting them from the solid rock and finishing them to an astonishing degree of accuracy and fineness must have consumed a huge amount of effort. Neither Cora nor Savi believed that the work could be done by the methods presently available, and, even if it could, the cost would be enormous. Simply the transport costs of removing the waste would be huge. And that left the questions of who had done it, and why.

  “As to who did it, the answer would imply that they had a much higher level of technological capability than we have now,” opined Cora. “I have no idea of what sort of technology could achieve this degree of accuracy and finish. There are no tool marks, no imperfections that I can see, other than those almost certainly caused by weathering at the top of the structures, where they were exposed to the elements. And that raises another question. This is very hard rock. It doesn’t degrade quickly in normal weather conditions, yet the signs of degradation that are visible at the top of the structures seems to suggest that they were exposed to weather for longer than the few thousand years since the ice was last at the level that would cover them. That would imply that they were here, complete, during at least the early years of the cold cycle before last.”

  “That would imply an age of over ten thousand years, Cora. Is there any evidence that humans had an advanced technology then?”

  “We had some technology then, Savi, but not as advanced as we have now. I believe that, although we lost a lot of what we had then, we have recovered most of it and taken it a little further. We were busy doing that when the new thinking of the State stepped in to slow our development down to the crawl we have now. The rate of advancement of technology seems to be tied, to a large extent, to the level of technology that already exists. It takes a lot longer to develop a new technology from scratch than to take a low level of technology to the next higher stage.”

  “On a different tack, Cora, it seems to me that the layout of these structures was deliberate, not simply convenient to fit them into the rock that was here. If you look at the plan of the area, it seems that there was a sheet of rock stretching from the mountain down to the valley to the south, decreasing in height as if neared the valley. I think that the valley was a natural watercourse for the run-off of the water as the ice thawed, promoted by the slope of the rock sheet towards it.” Savi smiled briefly. “It’s difficult to evaluate the shape and conditions of the valley under all the ice, but there is no doubt that it is there. Now, the rock has been removed to a point about half a mile from the structures, and a level floor was created, so that the structures are all sitting on a base at the same height. That floor extends to where it meets the natural slope of the rock sheet about a mile from here, towards the valley. The layout of the structures is in the form of a pointer, seeming to indicate a point of interest, and the tops of the structures seem to be an even slope, from the valley side up towards the mountain. I can’t think of any other reason for the layout.”

  Cora thought about it for a moment, smiling to herself. She had been so caught up in the technology that had created this group of structures that she had overlooked the obvious.

  “You’re right, Savi. It indicates something on a line between here and the peak of the mountain, or possibly even beyond. Let’s draw a line on the elevation of the structure tops to see where it reaches the mountain. Is there anything on the maps in that area?”

  “The only thing that stands out a little is the slight bend in the contour lines indicating altitude. It seems that there is an indentation in the rock face, possibly a cave set behind a small platform in the slope. There’s nothing on the scale of these structures, and nothing else obvious on this or the other side of the mountain.”

  “Then it’s clear. We need to look at that cave. Caves are often used as refuges or homes by early people. If the columns point to a cave, there may be clues in it about their origin and function.”

  “I agree, but I think we must be circumspect about what we tell others. It could be that these structures will lead to us some artefacts that stem from the time that we suspect the columns do, before humans and the rest of the universe were created. If that is the case, and the State gets to hear about it, which they certainly will, there’s a good chance that our work will be closed off and all our records confiscated. I have no doubt that the State will not want news of this sort of capability predating our existence to leak out. If they suspect that we will be able to show a well-founded suspicion of that age extending before the date of creation, they will probably take steps to avoid us being in a position to spread the news. We saw what happened to the Professor.”

  “How will we explain what we’re doing? Getting up there will take at least a full day.”

  “That’s easy. Some of the people here go skiing on their free days. We can too. That’s the day after tomorrow. We can get up there and back within two days. Climbing the m
ountain will be the hard part. Getting back is just a question of skiing down that run of snow. It’s been snowing hard the last couple of days and the cold has intensified, so the chances are that the skiing conditions will be good. The good thing is that the free days of the others here will come up only in five days, so we won’t have people watching us, to see what we’re doing.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  Chapter 6

  “We’ve almost completed the initial phase of our work here, Listu. We need some further equipment from the university to undertake some detailed analysis of rock of the structures, and that will take a couple of days to get here, so we thought we might take a short break for a walk up the mountain. The weather forecast indicates good weather for at least three or four days, so it seems like a good idea. It will also give us a chance to collect some rock samples from different levels of the mountain, which we’ll need for our report.”

  “Have you come to any conclusions yet? My team will be ready to start the mining within a month.”

  “I don’t think that we’ve found anything that will prevent you mining as you suggested, going underground, as long as you don’t plan to sink a shaft within the area of the structures. We think they should be preserved as a natural wonder. Who knows, it might be possible to develop this as a tourist attraction.”

  Listu laughed at that.

  “I doubt that, at least until the planet warms up. The skiing is good, but there are many slopes just as good closer to the city, and I can’t imagine that the State will be willing to run a nuclear generator simply to keep this area clear of ice for a few tourists. We’ll be shutting down our base here within a couple of weeks, so that we can concentrate on the area where the shaft will be located. That will be on the edge of the rock slab, where we won’t have to penetrate so much hard rock. We’ve already constructed the foundations for the crushers and concentrators there, and we’re waiting for the equipment to be delivered. That area also has the advantage that we can dump the waste from the mining into the valley.”

  “Have you checked the valley below for signs of settlement?”

  “We’ve done a seismic survey through the ice and found nothing. The ice in the valley is a glacier which is moving fairly fast, so it would have destroyed any signs of settlement in the valley anyway.”

  “OK, we’ll be heading out early tomorrow, and be back in a couple of days.”

  “Enjoy the skiing. I don’t think that I would climb all that way just so that I could ski back in a few hours. It’s a long way to the top of the slope.”

  “It is, but we’re hoping that the samples we will collect will make the effort worthwhile.”

  Cora and Savi returned to their accommodation to make the preparations. Although the climb would be hard, they were looking forward to the exercise, and the break from their daily routine. The part that they would least enjoy would be camping out on the ice at high altitude. Getting a flyer to take them to the top would make it easier and quicker, and save them the need to camp overnight, but that was well beyond their budget.

  *~*

  They left the base early the next morning, setting out in the dark. They drove their car to the point nearest the slope and started the long climb. The ice made it difficult, with long sections where the surface snow had melted during the day, leaving behind a thin layer of water that had frozen hard during the night, providing a very slick surface. In several places, the surface ice was thin, so they would break through it and land in soft snow up to their chests. Climbing out of those holes was exhausting. Their boots, shod with a spike sole, made it possible for them to progress, and after a couple of hours they reached the level where the slope was too steep for the snow to settle. Now the real work would begin. Often the slope was too steep to walk, but not steep enough to use climbing methods, forcing them to resort to an animal-like stance, using their hands to support their upper bodies and their heavy backpacks. The going was difficult, and they were exhausted by the time they stopped for lunch.

  “I need more exercise,” declared Cora. “I thought that I was reasonably fit, but it’s clear that I’m not.”

  “Too much desk-work,” responded Savi, stretching his muscles. “Carrying the backpack makes it much harder. It’s heavy, and it throws me off-balance, and the skis strapped to it make it even more ungainly. I’m glad that we don’t have to carry rock samples up the mountain.”

  “I think that we will have to start collecting our samples quite soon. If we plan to ski down, there won’t be time to gather the samples. Or the place. Up towards the top of the mountain, the slope becomes more gentle, and the snow has built up to quite a depth.”

  “I hope that it hasn’t covered that platform we saw on the map. I'd hate to have to dig through several feet of snow and ice to find it.”

  “I suspect that we will have to do just that.” Cora looked around at the scene below them. The level ground was covered in snow, but the angle of the sun created a range of shades of white. The huge tent covering the structures stood out clearly, with the residual heat of the melting process ensuring that the snow that landed on it was melted on contact. The darker shapes of the structures showed vaguely in the translucent field of off-white tent. “We’re almost on the line of the pointer.”

  Savi saw what Cora was describing. He turned to look up the mountain.

  “There’s the platform, about fifteen hundred feet above us. It seems to be protected in some way from the snow. The rock is visible, both on the cliff face behind the platform and above it.”

  They carried on climbing, moving in a zigzag[N1] line to ease the steepness of the climb, but that carried the disadvantage that it used up more time. The sun dropped slowly in the west, warning them that they would have to find a place for the night soon. That would be difficult on this slope.

  “I think that we have to reach that platform before dark, Savi. That’s the nearest possible camping spot. I'd hate to be blundering about on the mountainside in the dark.”

  “The elevation is in our favor, Cora. Although it’s starting to become dark down at the base, the sun is still shining up here.” What Savi said was true. The base was settling into a quickly-ascending night, with the lights of the buildings, showing through the translucent tent, giving an impression of settled warmth. The contrast with the conditions on the slope of the mountain was stark. Where Cora and Savi were, the gentle breeze caused by the cooling of the land was much stronger than on the flat land, and the air was much colder.

  The two redoubled their efforts and chose a more direct, and more strenuous, route to the platform that was now tantalizingly close. They managed to reach the edge of the flat section as the shadow of the planet slid upwards past them, leaving them in semidarkness. They hurried over the flat platform to the cliff that jutted out a short distance over it. As Savi had noted, the shape of the cliff protected them from the snow that was now falling more heavily, and the wind seemed to be deflected past them, providing a pocket of comparative warmth and shelter. They hurried to set up their tent, and to cook a warm meal. They needed it!

  “Here’s your bowl, Cora. I hope there’s enough. That climb was harder than I expected.”

  “And longer. Come and sit next to me. The view from here is wonderful.”

  The view was spectacular, with the base below them providing a lighted point of reference, and the early light of the first of the two moons sliding over the snow-scape below them. The second sun had risen, a large star rivaling the moons in brightness.

  “It feels as though we’re detached from the rest of Humanity, Cora. The base below seems to be a strange and distant place, almost as though it has no connection with us, and there’s no sign of any human existence apart from that.” Savi paused to gather his thoughts, taking a spoonful of warm stew as he did so. “It would be strange if you and I were the only two people left on the planet. I wonder what it was like before it became so cold.”

  “The ancients spoke of a wonderful planet, on
ce the ice receded, a planet that was warm and fruitful. They even used the word ‘paradise’. I imagine it must have been beautiful.”

  “One ancient text I have seen spoke of how the original decision to settle the planet failed to take into account the gravitational effect on the orbit of the planet of the second sun. That and our sun rotate about each other in elliptical orbits. When they are closest to each other, our planet is drawn further from the sun. You can see that the sun is coming closer every year. Not all that long ago, it was like most of the other bright stars. Now it is almost overpoweringly bright.” Savi gestured to the bright star, now almost above the peak of the mountain. “Fortunately, that effect is fairly short-lived, and our planet recovers its original orbit over a few hundred years, but the effect of the cold lasts much longer, until the melting of the snow allows the sun to warm the ground. That seems to explain the warm-cold cycles, and, I imagine, it would not be too difficult for the astronomers to confirm the essence of the story. Unfortunately, astronomy is a science that is badly affected by the frequent changes, as well as by the cloudy skies that prevail during the cold cycles.”