The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books

by John Thornton

  “Yes, Khin. And that is the planet named Zalia,” Cammarry said as the shuttle banked and the planet became visible out a view port. “That is a whole different world.”

  “It is very green. My eyes bother me with this bright light. It looks so far away, but I know that is not possible,” Khin said. “Too much wizard light. I am closing my eyes now.”

  “Sandie, can you alter the filters on the view ports so Khin’s vision is not so troubled? Carter the Kidnapper changed the canopy into opaque when I was in that small shuttle.” Cammarry recalled that flight. She experienced again the anger and frustration she had felt.

  “Yes. I will adjust them now. Quadrichroic filtering in process,” Sandie replied.

  The view ports all shifted shades and the light in the cabin matched the dim light of the corridors in the needle ship. Except for the glow coming from the instrument panels of the cockpit, the light was what Khin was familiar with.

  “Your spirit-ghost has helped me. This looks normal,” Khin said.

  “The light in the habitat will not look normal to you, if it is like what we saw in Habitat Alpha. We will need to get you a set of goggles or some kind of eye protection,” Jerome stated.

  “Like the Fruit People used in that orchard,” Cammarry said. “Sandie, put some shaded eye covers on the list for things be need to have fabricated. Jerome, when I look out at space, even the unusual space we see here in orbit around this new world of Zalia, I think of how isolated and alone we really were in Dome 17.”

  Jerome too looked out at the blackness of space with its blanket of twinkling stars. The green of the planet was so different from the tan and dead world around Dome 17. “I once read someone who stated, ‘Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.’ I had to then look up a kite, and found it was a child’s toy which rode on the winds and flew through the skies. I could not really imagine running and playing in the outside winds. I spoke to John about it all, and he confirmed that billions of people once lived on the Earth before the Great Event and all the horrors that followed. Now I look at this world, Zalia, and I wonder, did we just exchange a tan world of death for a green one? I mean, it looked beautiful, but can we live here, or will I one day be sitting in some observation site inside another Dome 17-like structure? Will being trapped by deadly green be better or worse than trapped by deadly tan?”

  “Jerome, you surprise me. Pessimism? You remind me of Paul back on Earth,” Cammarry said. “May he be faring well wherever he and Gretchen went.” After a moment’s reflection she added, “Remember how pretty that Habitat Alpha’s biosphere was? We can always fly back there, even if everything else is a bust.”

  Jerome gave her a hearty smile. He adjusted a few controls and then nodded. “We will be entering the atmosphere momentarily. Sandie has the plotted course, and I am following it like…. What would be a good idiom for our new life? Like a rat down its tunnel?” Jerome smiled even broader. “Yes, like a rat down its tunnel. You and I, Cammarry, we will be rats down the tunnel to Beta and find out what is there.”

  “Rats are good at tunnels,” Khin agreed from the passenger seat.

  “Khin, make sure you are belted down. The next part of the quest will be rough and bouncy.”

  “You two wizards will shake the world again! You make the world shake. You make me have no weight. You let me fly! This is not a wizard’s quest, it is a wizard’s adventure!”

  “We are adventurers!” Cammarry and Jerome said together.

  For the next few minutes the model 14S descended down through the hazy green atmosphere of the planet Zalia. The blackness of space faded away as they were immersed into the upper layers. Some whitish clouds were reflecting the light from the sun, causing their irregular edges to be stained reddish and pink by the sunlight. The shuttle quickly passed those layers and journeyed into dark greens and hints of greenish yellow.

  “This is thicker than I recall,” Cammarry said. “But Carter the Kidnapper was playing games with the canopy tint.”

  “We are entered a different latitude and longitude of the planet from where you descended on the last trip,” Sandie stated. “The atmosphere of Zalia is less consistent than the toxic gasses of Earth. Here we will encounter a greater variety of density and pressure. I am taking measurements and making conjectures as we travel. I will have a far greater picture of the composition of Zalia’s atmosphere due to our mission. So far….” Sandie went through a long list of what had been learned, giving details and readings, and analysis.

  The shuttle slipped out from the dense strata of green air, and into where they could see the surface.

  “It is a complex place,” Jerome said. “You told us Zalia is bigger than Earth in diameter, and has higher gravity.”

  “That means it will have lower and wider mountain ranges, like that up ahead!” Cammarry pointed as she looked through the front viewports. “On Mars, in the old solar system, back when they tried terraforming there, that gravity was a third of Earth normal. Mars’ Olympic Mons was far higher than any Earth mountain range, because less gravity meant the rock was pressed down on the base with less force.”

  “Yes, too bad that failed,” Jerome said. “So how big are those Zalia mountains? Or should I call them Zalian mountains?”

  Sandie the AI replied, “I have added ‘Zalian’ to our dictionary of words. It will mean pertaining to or related to the planet Zalia. Readings on the mountain range you are seeing shows its highest peak to be slightly less than 4.5 kilometers high. I cannot estimate the range’s depth or width until we have more information.”

  The mountains were a deep rusty color with variations of magenta, scarlet, and mahogany mixed into their overall color. Off to one side they could see where a taupe colored ribbon was winding down out of the mountains.

  “That is a river!” Cammarry said. “Not like the Loop River in Alpha, but I am sure that is some kind of liquid flowing there.”

  “I am running analysis on the composition, but you are correct, that is flowing liquid,” Sandie replied.

  “It possibly serves as this alien world’s equivalent of water.”

  Jerome interjected, “Since we are coining phrases, call it Zalian hydrology.”

  Sandie replied, “That will be an imprecise phrase, as we are not sure of the composition of the liquids involved. Until we can make meticulousness chemical analysis of a sample, we will not know for sure.”

  “We can be adventurous in our phrases, right?” Jerome grinned.

  “Right Jerome! We need to use terrestrial phrases as modified to fit this planet Zalia. I remember John’s biology lessons, and I thought none of that would ever be needed, but now we do have a landscape that is more than just dry, toxic dust. We will need to compare it to the old records of the Earth prior to the Great Event,” Cammarry’s voice was excited. “Sandie, is there life down there?”

  “That remains to be conclusively revealed. My initial conjectures are that life does exist on Zalia. However, it will be life vastly different from what we know of now,” the AI reported.

  “So those old scientific fictional novels, like the three we just found might have been onto something,” Jerome said as he patted the place he had stored the book.

  Sandie replied, “The contracted phrase often used for that genre was sci-fi, and yes, it did often speculate on potentials especially regarding technological breakthroughs. Many of those engineering potentials came to become realities some decades after publication. Other subjects common to that genre were extraterrestrial life, time-travel, and robotics.”

  “So basically most of the things we do now,” Cammarry commented. “Except for the time-travel parts, right?”

  “I believe Brink was running calculations on time-travel,” Sandie replied. “He did not have breakthroughs like he did in faster-than-light travel and in teleportation.”

  The shuttle continued to approach the mountain range. As t
hey got closer more and more details were revealed about the complexity and diversity seen beneath them. It was an alien world with a myriad of things mysterious and unknown.

  “The habitat should be located in a valley just coming up. The tracking will display the location. At our current speed it will be visible for only a short period, but you can circle the location,” Sandie stated.

  The valley was deep but the permalloy of Habitat Beta was visible as it stuck up from the valley and was nearly as tall as the mountains around it. The permalloy glowed oddly in the red light. It stood out against the rest of the landscape vividly. The habitat’s grayish, blue-casted color was just so different from the world around it. The shuttle swung in an arc to bring it around again. The light from the sun shone in through the view ports as the shuttle turned. Cammarry looked up and saw that, even with the filers on the view ports, the sun was a reddish fuzzy globe in the thick green sky.

  “That is certainly making planet-fall,” Jerome said.

  The areas around the grounded habitat were charred and blackened in a wide swath that was pretty much the same distance out on all sides of the giant cylinder as it lay in the valley.

  “Tight fit. Looks like they used a lot of heat, energy, and brute force with landing rockets,” Cammarry commented. “That valley is barely large enough to contain the habitat. I think they must have excavated the ground out of the surface, maybe down into the planet’s crust.”

  “The scans show the valley is about eighty seven kilometers long, and eighteen wide. That habitat snuggled down into there fairly nicely. Someone did some expert piloting and navigation, not to mention the burrowing down into the mountains. Sandie, can you confirm that is not a natural valley they settled into?”

  “Jerome, I cannot absolutely confirm much about Zalia yet. It is difficult to say what the condition was prior to the habitat making planet-fall. Both you and Cammarry make the hypothesis about that habitat settling down into a manufactured location. That is a valid theory, supported by what we are observing. However, there may have been an existing valley, depression, or body of liquid of some kind in that location prior to landing. It is also possible the crew landing the habitat used explosives or other methods to blast out the landing site. Nuclear detonations are not beyond the possibilities.”

  “Radiation?” Cammarry asked quickly. “They would not use fission bombs would they?”

  “I have detected no spikes in radiation levels here,” Sandie answered. “We have yet to determine the geology of the liquids, ground, crust, mountains, or other sediments. It is obvious some excavation took place, I cannot estimate the full extend as of yet. I can see how landing in a mountain range would facilitate establishing the colony.”

  “So they dug a foundation, and then planted their habitat. Looks very much like an accurately controlled landing, or grounding to me. Are we able to detect any further transmissions?” Jerome adjusted the controls.

  “I have not picked up any form of transmission since the last one,” Sandie answered. “Your overlay displays will show the location from which we received those previous signals. I have it labeled as Dardanella 5600.”

  “I will slow the shuttle down more and nearly hover along as we assess the exterior hull of that habitat. It looks like better than half of it is nestled down into that valley, or foundation,” Cammarry stated as she also modified the flight of the shuttle.

  “Dardanella is an odd name,” Jerome remarked. “Not the first odd thing we have heard since coming to the Conestoga. Sandie, if I recall correctly, Dardanella was a geographical location on Earth for some ancient war, also called Hell’s Point.”

  The shuttle continued to creep along moving over the habitat about three hundred meters above it.

  “Dardanella may or may not be the word or name that was used,” Sandie relied, “I have analyzed the audio recording we have. The accent of the speakers does leave some room for doubt as to the exact word that was spoken. My best conjecture is that the word was Dardanella. Therefore, your assertion is not quite accurate, as you are referring to the name Dardanelles, which is also recorded in our records as being called, Hellespont, not Hell’s point. It was a major battle in a war circa 1915 old calendar. Although I do admit our records of things before the Great Event are limited, as is the interpretation of the exact word that was used by the speaker in Beta. My only reference to the word Dardanella is a single mention about it being a song title. It is interesting that both the Dardanella song title, and the Dardanelles battle originate from the same general time frame. That might mean the information source was faulty.”

  “A song or a battle?” Cammarry asked. “I wonder what one it was?”

  “Maybe both!” Khin chimed in from the passenger seat. “The Old One uses music to teach us about things, so maybe the big fight had a song written about it?”

  “Khin, that is an excellent contribution,” Jerome said. “Well, we will find out soon. We are just about over that spot on the habitat’s hull.”

  The shuttle flew right over the end of the giant cylinder. There was a furrow in the ground at that end, but not much was visible along the blunt end of the habitat.

  “The signal appears to have originated at this location, however, there is now some doubt about its actual location. There is unknown interference here which makes my previous computations suspect,” Sandie stated. “There is more electro-neutrino activity at this end of the habitat than over the rest of it. That may have caused a localized skipping or bouncing effect on the signal. I apologize for not being more precise. The effect is not acting exactly as known physics would dictate, possibly due to unknown elements in the Zalian atmosphere.”

  “Well, you did bring us right to a habitat, so you are doing great,” Jerome said. “Do you see anywhere on the vertical end of the habitat where there might be a hanger bay?”

  “Unfortunately, no. The interference is making readings from this area inconsistent.”

  “So we will just fly over the rest and keep looking for a door. There must be an entry somewhere where that Ferryman’s shuttle docked.” Cammarry smiled over at Jerome. “We will find this.”

  They turned around and proceeded to fly along the surface of the habitat again. It was covered in projections, tubes, boxes, and other engineering paraphernalia. There were occasional lights that were on, but those were rare and far between.

  “I detect a possible target for a hanger bay door, but it is a low potential conjecture,” Sandie stated. “It does roughly correspond to my best conjecture on the bounce of the transmission, but I apologize for being less than confident on these conjectures.”

  “Sandie, that is fine. We are all doing the best we can. So do you think is a hanger bay door?” Jerome asked. “I see that long flat area, but I am not sure if that is it or not. The mechanical systems here look different than on the needle ship.”

  “It also looks different from what I saw as that runabout took me into Habitat Alpha. I imagine that both habitats would have similar construction patterns and designs, but I might be wrong,” Cammarry said. “And most of that time the crazed synthetic brain was blocking out the canopy.”

  “I was there and can describe it for you,” Shadow said unexpectedly.

  Cammarry bit her lip and tried to ignore Shadow’s voice. She looked at Jerome and he obviously had not heard it. She swiveled around and looked intensely at Khin. She wondered if perhaps with his better hearing he had heard Shadow? Khin showed no sign of hearing anything and only grinned widely as she looked at him. “I liked the flying!”

  “So how do we enter?” Jerome asked. “If we try a transmission, it might get picked up by the people here.”

  “Sandie, can you send a covert message in some manner? Is there a way to access the controls systems and open a hanger bay door?” Cammarry asked.

  “I have conjectured a possible method of signaling, using the code words from Machine Maintenance, along a tight beam by laser, neutrintonic or possibly a microwave. I
t is not a perfect potential, as we have very little knowledge of who, if anyone, will detect this message. I can masquerade it as a routine survey of the systems. Machine Maintenance has a priority level to its codes and signals. Using the lowest possible priority, it might slip by unnoticed, or be thought of as an involuntarily processed message.” Sandie paused for a moment, the continued. “I have located a possible array that might be receptive to the signal. Assessment from this distance shows it is powered, and does not have too much damage. Surface damage to the hull of this habitat is more extensive than I expected. There appears to be some chemical or elemental process which has coated the permalloy. I believe that is the source of some of the interference and the bouncing of transmissions.”

  “A Zalian growth medium?” Jerome asked.

  “We had enough of coated things on the needle ship,” Cammarry answered. “It would surprise me if there was not some kind of interaction between the atmosphere here and the Conestoga. But we can debate the chemical interactions between Earth-based machinery, and the gases of Zalia at another time. Our prime focus is getting inside here safely. If you think sending the message will open the door, I say you should do it Sandie. That might be the only way to confirm it actually is a hanger bay.”