Arkroid too had noticed a lot of uniformed people. He could not tell from this distance if they were all police, but there certainly were more than he had expected to see. They were everywhere!
»I’ll bet that has something to do with McCord,« he remarked, »which would also explain the invasive inspections on our arrival … and the grouchy captain.«
Fosset didn’t like this at all. He frowned.
»If I get my hands on McCord in the hotel, I’m going to strangle that bastard!« he muttered angrily.
»Control yourself, Fosset!« Arkroid warned. »We have other plans. Come on, I’ll tell you more in the hotel.«
That was a joke
It was a few hours into the flight that Sedna appeared on the long-range scanners. The Blue Moon decelerated as it approached. The frontal diffusers spewed light-blue plasma bundles into space, braking the ship’s speed.
»We’ll reach optimum distance from Sedna in four minutes. Maintain a far orbit, « Nemov directed. »It’ll cost us more fuel and energy that way, but it’s safer. «
»We can spare the fuel!« Petrow replied. »Better safe than sorry.«
Petrow swiveled around in his seat and looked at the central holo. Sedna appeared as a small object that came rapidly closer.
»That’s interesting!« he commented after a quick observation. »Sedna is red, like Mars!«
»Not from iron-oxide, though,« Natasha announced. »I’m reading different, organic compounds.«
»Organics … out here?« Nemov asked in surprise.
»Organic compounds aren’t all that rare in the cosmos. Spectral analysis of planetary nebulae have detected several types of alcohol alone. Even Oort Cloud comets carry organics. Sedna was probably once part of the Oort Cloud … look at its wide orbit around the sun. I t must’ve been deflected somehow and ended up on a path into the Kuiper Belt, closer to the sun.«
»What are you talking about, Natasha?« Nemov inquired. »Out here … so remote from the big planets?«
»What if another fixed star came close to our sun, disturbed the gravitational field of our system?« Natasha speculated. »Remember, Quaoar’s soil samples proved that it didn’t originate in our solar system …«
»… or the Globs diverted Sedna onto its current orbit. We know they can do that. No thing’s impossible anymore!« Nemov muttered .
»Blue Moon 1 is ready for remote start and reconnaissance, Sir!« the hangar chief announced via intercom.
»Roger,« Natasha acknowledged. »We’ll fly the Hawk to 10,000 kilometers off Sedna, orbit once and return to the ship.«
»Roger that!« the chief acknowledged.
»Why a Hawk?« Nemov asked Petrow. »A drone would work. A Hawk’s pretty expensive for a test flight, isn’t it? What about mechanical failures, or the Globs shooting down the ship before it can even take a picture?«
»That’s exactly the point, Anatoli!« Petrow replied, leaving Nemov staring, his face a mask of confusion.
»C’mon, Anatoli,« Petrow sighed. »What’s important is that there’s no crew on the Hawk. True, a Hawk makes a larger target echo than a drone … but the Hawk has better scanning and optical equipment and a full array of sensors on board. We’d need a handful of different drones to get the same results … and …,« Petrow stretched the word “and”, »… we can bring the Blue Moon closer to Sedna when the Hawk returns intact.«
»What if it doesn’t?« Nemov complained.
»Then we’re screwed, along with our mission! I can replace equipment, but I’m not willing to risk a life! We find Globs active on Sedna, we cut and run!«
Petrow looked into his friend’s eyes.
»Like I said … we’re not here to fight. Just gathering information.«
A loud announcement interrupted them.
»Attention: the scanners have detected structures on Sedna’s surface!«
Everybody in the command central looked over to the scanner section.
»We found …,« the scanner officer’s voice cracked, »several buildings in the North Polar Region – as well as along the equator!«
The officer paused for a moment.
»There is a large, six sided object on which smaller objects are located. The smaller ones look like spaceships!«
»Are you talking about a landing field in the northern region?« Petrow inquired, louder than he’d intended.
»No, Sir – a complete spaceport!« the officer replied.
Petrow swallowed hard.
»Say again?«
The officer paused while the data was verified, then spoke again: »The spaceport is located at the equator, Sir. About 400 square kilometers, surrounded by pyramid-like buildings with a large object in its center.«
»Where’s our Hawk?« Petrow cleared his throat, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse. »Is it a way?«
»Acknowledged!« the hangar chief announced. The Hawk will reach the 10,000 kilometer orbit in ten minutes, Sir!«
Natasha followed the events closely. She was in her domain as chief navigation officer. She kept a weather eye on the Hawk. If the enemy had any defense systems installed on Sedna she’d have to be quick with her remote controlled maneuvers. She bit her lip, fully expecting the Hawk to be attacked at any second.
Petrow and Nemov kept their eyes on the scanners . No peaks in energy detection, meaning that the Globs had not launched their typical plasma sphere weapons. Everybody in the command central held their breath while the Hawk swooped into surveillance orbit.
»Blue Moon 1 is on course! So far no reaction from the Globs … no interference, no intercept!« Natasha announced. The smallest deviation from the calculated path would sound an alarm in the control central.
Petrow signaled Nemov to come closer.
»As soon as the Hawk returns, I’m going to Sedna with a three man landing team!«
Nemov choked for a moment.
»What? You’re the ship’s commander … leading the landing team is my job!«
Petrow shook his head.
»No, Anatoli. You keep the Blue Moon at Battle Stations. We may need you! I’ll take Blue Moon 1 with the first team. Blue Moon 2 will follow after 4 hours with a scientific team. We don’t need number 2 yet, but we need to take a look at these surface structures on Sedna. We can’t pass up the opportunity !«
Nemov didn’t like this approach at all, but he knew when Petrow had made up his mind.
»Blue Moon 1 has finished the surface scan and is on its return leg!« Natasha announced.
Petrow had hand-picked the two teams. They were made up mostly of technicians, familiar with Globuster technology and well able to defend themselves.
»Sedna only measures 1,700 kilometers in diameter and has weak gravity. We need to stay aware that any sudden erratic movement can be treacherous! Use your suits’ backpacks when you can,« Natasha advised the teams. »Oh, and by the way: it’s about 30 degrees Kelvin down there, a little bit cooler than on Pluto.«
»If we open our helmets down there, we’ll never notice the difference, I’ll bet you a hundred SU units!« mocked Petrow to the horrified looks of both teams. He glanced at their pale faces. »That was a joke … a joke … okay? Taking your helmet off in space?« he mimicked a choking face and an exploding head .
The team members nodded lamely, not believing their eyes and ears.
Let’s move
The marble obelisk towered a hundred meters above the ground, almost touching the zenith of the large central dome. The memorial obelisk marked the landing site of the first colonist ship as well as the center of the Mars colony complex. Several hundred smaller domes of varying sizes and shapes surrounded the central dome, housing about ninety million colonists, according to the census of 2113. The colonization of Mars, partially funded by the Solar Union Development Department, had led to increasing streams of new settlers who wanted to make Mars their new home. Mars Town was one of the fastest growing cities in the System, already rivaling the Moon colony. People had a lot of reasons to settle her
e. Some just wanted to live on another planet, others were adventurers and prospectors. People who’d had to postpone their dreams came in now that the money from the government was available. Some times the rush on Mars was so great that a lottery had to be held to randomly select settlers. It reminded some people of how t he former USA had to regulate their immigration policies, until after the 1990s. Everybody who made it through the selection and lottery was welcome on Mars.
Newcomers needed time to get used to wearing protective suits whenever they left the domes.
Mars’s atmosphere, even in the summer months, was ice-cold; mostly carbon dioxide. Free oxygen was only present in traces, mostly trapped inside the iron oxides that lent the planet its reddish-brown color. Terraforming projects began with the first colonists. Robust mosses and lichens had been introduced, which grew rapidly and adapted to the climatic conditions. These green, expanding islands were intended to enrich the atmosphere with oxygen by photo synthesis and bring on slow climatic changes, but it would take decades, if not hundreds of years, to come to fruition.
Another project was aimed at heating Mars’s atmosphere by spraying a dark powder over the Southern polar ice cap’s frozen carbon dioxide. The dark powder reduced the reflection of sunlight from the ice cap, trapping more heat in the atmosphere. The Northern Polar ice cap was mostly frozen water that the colonies used as drinking water.
Toiber Arkroid – alias Inspector Nemo – looked around with interest as they arrived at Elysium Place. The colonists had created a new world for themselves … their world! It wasn’t paradise, but they’d achieved a high standard of living.
Vasina didn’t seem impressed at all.
»Something wrong?« Arkroid asked guardedly while he watched the activity .
»How can Humans live like this? No energy shields to keep a constant climate, no gravitational equalization – they’ll get weaker and weaker over generations, lose their muscle strength! Look … they’re already beginning to change their appearance … and no space shields – one good meteor and your colony is history! Why don’t you use more advanced technology to enrich the atmosphere with oxygen? Your photo synthesis takes hundreds of years, with very doubtful results.«
Arkroid felt her comments like a knife between his shoulder blades.
»We don’t have any other technologies! Not yet!« he argued. »We’re proud of our achievements. Generations of settlers, technicians and engineers worked hard to realize their dreams of Mars.«
Vasina looked at Arkroid briefly, then turned away.
They were standing on an elevated sightseeing platform, overseeing Elysium Place with a good view over the barren landscape outside the dome. The windows’ bubble design skewed the picture outside a bit, but took nothing away from the view, as the dome engineers had intended. Olympus Mons’ majestic silhouette rose over the desert landscape 200 kilometers from the dome. It was the largest volcano in the solar system; it gave Mars’s most expensive hotel its name.
»Let’s get back to the mission,« Fosset intervened. Arkroid thought that he looked uncomfortable under his disguise. »Where’s Paafnas?«
»You can address me directly. I’m standing behind you, and I also have a comm-device, remember? I must admit, this planet is a bit too dry and cold for my taste,« Paafnas added, »I’d establish a few wet regions.«
»A coalition of extraterrestrials!« Arkroid laughed and looked at Vasina with a sidelong glance. Fosset chuckled, then grew serious.
»I don’t know how I’ll react when I see McCord again,« he stated frankly. »I’m very disappointed in him. Did he really choose the Olympus Mons?«
»Definitely,« Arkroid replied. »I trust Nok’s informants. The Princess should arrive soon. We should get checked in. There’ll be a lot of excitement in the hotel when McCord arrives. They’re as hyped as if the Solar Union Government is coming for a visit, and remember Hugh … this isn’t the McCord you knew. Keep your calm when we meet him. If we make a mistake Paaf might not be able to unmask him.«
»We’re wasting our time! Let’s move!« Vasina barked, then turned around and left the platform. Arkroid sighed and followed her. A couple of minutes later, they arrived at the hotel. They were greeted and welcomed at the door. The security captain at Mars Port had kept his word.
Touchdown
The Hawk banked left and swooped into orbit around Sedna. Hardly anyone had said a word since they left the Blue Moon, everybody fully concentrated on the job before them. Petrow piloted the Hawk personally, and watched the scanner and sensor screens, accompanied by three specialists, a woman and two men. He was prepared to swiftly maneuver the Hawk out of the line of any attack. The specialists were not only scientists, but trained in space combat as well. They had to be, because as combatants they must be familiar with Globuster technologies and behaviors as much as it was possible at this stage.
»The radio shield is active over Sedna … as expected! Most terrestrial carrier frequencies have disappeared from my radio systems,« Nadja Bulkin, a 28 year old Russian communications specialist, broke the silence in the cockpit. Her specialties were trigital radio and the effects of the Globuster Matrix. She was cool, analytical and precise with her research.
»Confirming surface structures, as detected,« Mark Meyer, a New Yorker, added. He had only recently moved to the Moon Colony and landed a job, more by accident than anything else, in Toiber Arkroid’s department, where he’d received his specialized training. His experience on Maya Ivanova’s Shenzhou mission predestined him to join Petrow’s crew on the Blue Moon.
»The Globs have quite an extensive base on Sedna. I’m seeing a belt of buildings and plants along the entire equator region. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Fascinating! I’d like to know what the purpose of it all might be.«
Although he operated the close range scanners and sensors onboard the Hawk, Meyer’s field was biology. He was one of a handful of experts concerning the Globusters’ digestive system and their metabolism – and the Blue Moon needed as much knowledge of the Globs as they could get!
»Sedna’s surface is relatively flat without mountains and hills, but littered with impact craters. Hold it … the spaceport is coming onto the screen.«
»Good Heavens! That port is larger than the whole Mars Colony!« commented Alexander Drustev, a Russian cosmo-physicist.
»Listen up, people,« Meyer announced, »something is standing on the landing field … and it’s very, very big!«
A holo established itself over the scanner console, displaying the strange looking object from different angles.
Petrow observed it attentively.
»Hmm … looks like a star fish!«
»… but with four instead of five arms – and it’s, from point to point, 800 meters long!« interrupted Bulkin. »What is that … a spaceship, perhaps?«
Drustev cleared his throat.
»Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d say you’re probably right. The object is roughly 80 meters high and hovering about 20 meters above the ground. I can see that with my photo-sensors without any problem!«
»How can such a heavy object hover in space that way?« Bulkin inquired perplexedly.
»The Globs must use a force field as a landing cushion, so there’s no need for landing gear on that big bucket,« Petrow guessed. »Seems practical … we should copy this technology.«
Drustev chuckled.
»Due respect, Sir, but in your dreams. Our stone-age technology doesn’t even come close. The energy it must take to maintain that kind of field … hmm … you know, it could be a variation of our new gravitron generator – the one we want to integrate into our ships. Maybe an artificial gravitational force field keeps the ship from falling onto the tarmac …« He seemed lost in speculation.
»Smaller objects are placed around the star fish. Some of them are located in between the arms!« Meyer announced via the intercom. »They look like those lens-spacers we encountered on Quaoar. There’re about a hundred of them down there.�
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He swallowed hard.
»I know what you must be thinking, Mark,« Petrow tried to calm the specialist. »We’re dealing with a force that could destroy us and the Earth with a gesture. Nevertheless, the Globs haven’t done so yet! The star fish is most likely a mother ship. The lens-spacers, as you call them, are toys next to that monster down there.«
»We couldn’t do anything to those ‘toys.’ I don’t really want to know what the mother ship is capable of,« Drustev remarked glumly
Petrow clenched his teeth until his jaws hurt. It was painfully clear that his crew’s morale was evaporating in the face of such overwhelming opponents.
»We will catalogue the star fish as a Globuster Tender. Remember that as superior as they seem, we were able to beat them at their game. Don’t forget that … even if it does seem that we’ve been lucky, judging by their potential! I’m landing the Hawk!« Petrow announced calmly. The team members nodded and began to check their gear. Their confidence seemed re instated.
»Where do you want to land?« Nadja Bulkin inquired.
Petrow grinned at her.
»Since the Globs went to all the trouble of building a space port down there, let’s use it!« he declared bluntly. »I’ll set her down right next to their Glob Tender.«
Petrow, certain that he wasn’t in the crosshairs of a plasma weapon, went straight for the tender. If they had been, they’d be an expanding cloud of gas already! He touched a sensor on the pad in front of him and activated the tactical holo.
»I’ll land at the edge of the field close to the octagon building. It looks important. That wide ramp is leading downward, just in front of the building, probably leads to subterranean levels. We’ll keep the Hawk’s propulsion system on standby and warmed up. We may have to run on a moment’s notice! Leave the ship, seal it and march down that ramp!«
The Hawk descended onto the landing field. The closer they came to the surface, the more overwhelming the Globuster Tender appeared. It s hull towered like a huge wall before the ship.
NEBULAR Collection 3 - Morgotradon: Episodes 12 - 16 Page 17
