by Jen Cole
Chapter 5
“Less than a quarter of the planet has been scanned so far,” Harvey finally said. “However there is already evidence to back up your hypothesis, Nick.”
He projected a running stream of photos onto the wall and stopped at one. “Can you see the outline of a half buried ship there?” He continued the stream before halting it once more. “And here?”
Before he could start again I asked, “How many ships have you found?”
“So far, eleven,” said Harvey. “All in different stages of decay. Some appear to be many hundreds of years old. One looks new.”
“The faun’s ship,” Sienna said.
I was jumping from one foot to the other. “So where are the crew, the passengers? Did you find any signs of habitation – houses, walled encampments?”
“Nothing,” said Harvey.
Sienna and I looked at each other. There was a tight churning in my stomach.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said.
Harvey spoke quickly. “Agreed, Nick. We must inform the scientists immediately.”
I was lucky they were all in one dome together, but I can tell you, even with Harvey to back me up it wasn’t easy at first to get them to listen. It was all: “What, you left the compound? You know the rules!”
When I began describing our adventure in the spider forest I heard my mother give a little scream, but at the Saah, everyone went quiet – till the end that is, and then they bombarded us with questions. I think Harvey and I fielded them pretty well.
After the scientists had squeezed all the information they could from us, they turned to each other and the volume got pretty loud until Dr Lizberg, the head of our group, finally calmed things down.
“It’s clear we are in danger here,” he said. “Though we don’t know the extent of what the Saah can do to our minds, we have Harvey’s evidence that those from other ships never got away. We must leave before the Saah discover that we know of their existence. Harvey, send a message to the ship to expect the flyer. Say samples are being sent up, but nothing more.”
He turned to the group. “Act calmly. Carry only what you have with you and walk straight to the flyer. We take off in three minutes.”
The scientists filed out and Sienna turned to me. “Time I disappeared.” She smiled. “There’s more to you than I’d realized, Nick. When they finally do wake everyone up, you should drop around … and don’t take any of my nonsense. The real me is going to want to get to know you.”
She vanished and Harvey and I followed the scientists. Our flyer reached the ship safely, but as we came onboard, the automated systems sent off a message to the Saah before we could stop them.
A strange prickling began in my head, like a colony of ants was making a home under my scalp. Then the prickling turned into a thousand bright explosions and as I gasped, I noticed others clutching their heads. I was vaguely aware of people dropping all around me and only realised that I too was on the floor when I found myself writhing under searing waves of pain.
Luckily for us, Harvey acted quickly. He overrode the ship’s systems and flew us away at full speed. Even so, it was thirty agonizing minutes before we were far enough out of range for the headaches to subside.
We counted ourselves lucky when our neural scans showed no permanent damage had been done. The rest of the ship, in cold sleep, had been unaffected by the Saah’s mind blast.
At a safe distance, Dr Lizberg called a meeting. Are you expecting to hear how he praised me for saving everyone? I guess he kind of did. This was how he put it.
“Nick, you broke our rules today and as a consequence nearly died in the forest. I hope you now appreciate why we have these rules. On this occasion I have decided to overlook your infraction since your quick thinking and actions may well have saved the colony, but there must be no further disobedience.”
Glad I wasn’t expecting a medal! Anyway, in the discussion that followed, the scientists came up with what they called a ‘working hypothesis’ about the Test 01 beings who had come so close to bringing an end to the first human colony ship. Their theory was that the Saah had gained the ability to link to intelligent minds and act upon them in a way that slowly destroyed brain cells.
Any thinking species evolving on Test 01 would not have got far before the Saah destroyed their brains. What a great way of staying at the top of your planet’s evolutionary tree! It explained why the highest animal intelligence we’d found on the planet had been little greater than the hive mentality of insects.
After destroying all intelligent competition on their home ground, the Saah had at some stage turned their efforts to the stars and begun luring in travellers. How delighted they must have been to discover the thousands of colonists on our ship and then how disappointed to find they couldn’t access minds in cold sleep. Still they’d been patient – prepared to wait for a year until our advance party declared the planet safe and woke the colony, releasing the ship’s banquet of brains.
The Saahs’ most recent prey had been the crew and passengers on the faun creature’s ship. With their brain cells slowly deteriorating, the poor aliens had ended up wandering the planet in a zombie-like state until the local wildlife had claimed them.
So, you’re asking, what did we decide to do about the situation? Well, to give you a hint, I’m in one of the preparation rooms now dictating this to my journal, as I get ready for cold sleep. That’s right, the scientists’ decision was to classify Test 01 as ‘unsuitable’ and move on in search of a new planet.
Hey, I know what you’re thinking – they should have dealt with the Saah! I agree. I’d have been happy to drop a couple of nukes on those brain suckers, but their subterranean living arrangements make it impossible to know where around the planet they’re located or how many there are. We’re basically a colony ship. We have a few weapons for self-defense but nothing that could destroy a whole planet, and even if we had such weapons, the scientists wouldn’t use them. They wouldn’t even consider bombing the cave group. My mother summed it up.
“These are sentient beings. We’re not going to start humanity’s foray into the universe with mass murders.”
“But they would have killed us!” I said. “It’s obvious they’ve killed other intelligent travellers.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “They’ve set up a clever trap, but they aren’t sending out invasion forces. Their threat is confined to their planet. Travellers who keep clear are safe. Who are we to say the Saah should die because their survival necessitates luring in prey?
“How do we know they’re doing it for survival?” I said. “Maybe sucking brains for them is like taking drugs – their way of getting a high.”
The scientists conceded my point but weren’t swayed. However they did agree we should try to warn other travellers about Test 01. Unfortunately, no one could think of a foolproof way of doing so.
I suggested setting up an orbiting beacon broadcasting a warning message, but we couldn’t work out how to ensure our message would come across as a warning. What if alien travellers interpreted our broadcast as an invitation? The beacon might end up actually helping the Saah by drawing in victims for them.
Even if we figured out some way of making our warning clear, how long would it last? The Saah had the technology to send a radio signal many light years out into space and to communicate with the ships they lured in. Jamming our broadcast would surely be a piece of cake for them. They might even end up using our beacon to extend the range of their own message.
Our best option, the scientists decided, was to personally pass on our information to any intelligent species we encountered in our search for a suitable planet.
What do you think? Did we make the right decision? Don’t answer that before I tell you this – cold sleep has a use-by date. After fifteen hundred years, human cells begin breaking down and the sleepers start to die. Our travels so far have taken a thousand years and Test 01 is the first decent planet we’ve come acro
ss. Unless we find something suitable in the next five hundred, we’re all toast.
I envy the others in cold sleep with no worries or cares. They happily entered their sleep pods a thousand years ago assuming they’d wake to a wonderful new world. I can tell you I’m not so happy about going back into mine knowing there’s a good chance we’ll never wake again.
The only thing that keeps me working through the preparation procedures is the knowledge of those eleven spaceships on Test 01. Yes some of them were hundreds of years old, but the fact there were so many on the quarter of the planet we scanned, must surely indicate there are habitable planets in this part of the universe.
I’ll say goodnight now and hope I’m able to greet you in the morning.
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About the Author
Currently Jen is working on a YA science fiction trilogy.
