Dominion
Page 16
They watched the planet rotating slowly beneath them while they discussed their future.
“Wait,” Light Bender said, rushing back to his station.
Hawke turned and watched the man tapping the panel excitedly. Kashuba leaned into Hawke as he remained propped against the window.
“What are you doing?” Sky Listener asked.
“The orbital icon,” Light Bender replied, still tapping at the screen, “It also offers a terrain scan. It measures the sea level, then gives measurements of the terrain based on this.”
“I don’t follow,” Hawke said.
“On Rain, we had this deep ravine that spanned the length of several cities. In some areas, like near my grandfather’s farm, it was so deep that it took my brother and I a half hour to get from the top all the way down to the creek at the bottom,” he replied, keeping his focus on his screen, “I got to thinking then, what if we landed this ship in a place where the center ring hung down into a ravine or some other form of gorge?”
Sky Listener nodded, rubbing his chin in thought, “That would be a perfect idea, but how could we land this thing with such precision?”
“I could do it,” Fire Dragon stated confidently, “I won’t need the thrusters while we’re high up in the atmosphere because we know now that they’re useless beyond a certain height, so that will save fuel. If you could find a place that would accommodate this ship, have Sky Listener target it, and then I’ll bring us into it.”
“Hawke?” Sky Listener asked, searching for his opinion.
“Find us a nice, deep ravine and see if you can lock onto it. Then once we have full power to the ion thrusters again, I’d say we give it a shot,” he said.
Twenty-nine
While the ion thrusters were charging, Hawke and Kashuba went to check on the others in the ship. They shared the plan with the others and warned everyone to beware of any jolts or vibrations that come with landing a ship this size.
“What do you think happened to Rain when we left?” Kashuba asked as they walked through the corridor, “You said you wanted us to get away from the zeppelins before we launched even though we were high above them.”
“Yeah,” he frowned, staring at the floor.
“You said it was dangerous to jump while that low,” she said, “Do you think we caused a hurricane or something?”
“Using all the figures I have on the gravitational-reflex engine, I have to believe that there was a good chance our departure was devastating,” he said, “I do my best however to hold onto the fact that I don’t know the results of our jump for certain and that in truth, a suborbital jump like that has never been tested to my knowledge. Who knows?”
“Devastating?” she asked, “How devastating?”
“I’d rather not think about it, Kashuba,” he muttered.
They located the stairs and took them to the next level. For the moment, they were just wandering the corridors aimlessly.
“So, what’s the survival plan for arriving on a virgin planet?” she asked, eager to change the subject.
“Virgin planet – I like that term,” he smiled, “Well, we’ve got some tools of our own that we brought with us. We’ve got plenty of bane down by the water tanks. We’ve got the shelter, the heat, and the safety of this ship, but we don’t want to plan on using it forever. Hmmm.
“I’d guess finding food and water would be the immediate task to conquer. Then would come necessary task of finding a sustainable source of food and water, which would entail farming and maybe the building of a pier or fishing boats. We’d probably end up building barns, silos, and wind or watermills before we ever got to the building of homes. Basically, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. You and I will finally get to take a proper honeymoon when we’re about seventy or eighty years old.”
She laughed, pushing him away playfully.
“Do you think this crew is up for such a hardworking schedule? It will probably take years before we can consider ourselves even slightly settled in,” she asked.
“Yes, I have a lot of confidence in them. And I think our shared goal of community survival will give us a lot to focus on so that our minds won’t drift back to Rain, to the Shomani, or in my case, to Earth,” he said, “I think it will be good for all of us.”
Thirty
The ship’s rapid descent was now slowing significantly as the ion thrusters burst forth at a full one hundred percent. Hawke couldn’t help but to be frightened though as the ship was still dropping through the clouds in spite of the thrusters. The ground rose quickly but never came to within three miles of the bottom of the ring before the thrusters forced gravity to release its hold on the ship.
Fire Dragon dropped the thrusters down to sixty percent while Sky Listener released control to the guidance systems. Light Bender had located a rocky gorge carved out by a river that flowed from the largest ocean on the continent’s east coast to a smaller sea far inland. Since there were many portions of the gorge deep enough to permit the ring to settle in, they decided on a spot that would give them access to a dense forest on the one side of the gorge and some grassy plains on the other side. It would also place them within four miles of two large freshwater lakes.
Nearly the whole crew was on the bridge, watching as they moved over the treetops at nearly two hundred miles per hour. Gazing out across the beautiful world, they again found no signs of any human presence. They did see plenty of wildlife, causing Hawke to wonder just how “dead” the planet was when mankind gave up on this world. He had to believe that they’d already transplanted enough wildlife, sea life, and plant life onto this failing planet that even when the humans abandoned them to die, they found a way to survive.
“Coming in on the spot we chose. I’m bringing us down,” Fire Dragon stated.
They watched the ship slow down and begin turning as the guidance system and Fire Dragon began aligning the “key” with the “keyhole”. They could already see portions of the turbulent river beneath them as the ship continued its assisted descent.
“I hate to ruin all the fun, but I just realized that the hole in the gymnasium wall would lead us right out over the gorge,” Ocean Song said, staring out the window, “So we still need to cut a new exit to get off this thing.”
“No, we had only cut that opening because it was where the ice tunnel ended. This ship has several exterior hatches, two of which are at the very front of the ship and probably only a few feet off the ground once we land,” Hawke stated.
“This is it, people,” Fire Dragon hollered, “If we lined it up properly, we should just be going straight down from here.”
From their spot on the bridge, it appeared as though they were only fifty feet above the top of the gorge. The ship continued its slow descent, shuddering mildly as some of the unavoidable trees were starting to crush beneath the forward and aft portions of the ship. The wide trunks of these trees started to splinter before them under the immense weight of the ship. Moments later, the front windows on the bridge had come face-to-face with the cliff wall. The crew’s view was obstructed now by either the cliffs face a mere fifteen feet before them or the rapids several hundred feet below. The ship had settled onto both sides of the ravine, the gravitational-reflex ring hovering barely five feet above the raging water below.
“I think Fire Dragon deserves an award for that one,” Sky Listener said, patting the man on the back.
“Indeed,” Hawke added, “Looks like we’re home.”
“Home,” Night Whisper repeated, “Can we go outside?”
Someone hollered a chant, insisting upon a race to the forward hatches. People were grabbing their tool kits and duffel bags as they rushed from the bridge. Kashuba tossed the strap of the survival kit over her shoulder and then offered her hand to Hawke. He took her proffered hand in his and joined her, as they became the last to leave the bridge.
They walked down the long corridor in silence, hearing the cheers and chants of those far ahead of them. They continued to the
forward hatch, discovering it open to a properly secured bridge across the chasm between the hulls. The outer hull hatch was left open before them, allowing a bright ray of sunlight into the dreary and musty home they had shared these past few days.
They walked across the bridge to the open door to discover that the thick green grass was only a two-foot leap from where they stood. They stepped down together. Light Bender and one of the other engineers whose name Hawke didn’t recall were already climbing an apple tree about fifty yards away. Sky Listener was only smiling childlike as he stared toward the mountains in the distance. Ocean Song and Night Whisper where knelt near the edge of the ship where several splintered limbs of a peach tree had reached out.
“What is this?” Ocean Song called, holding a plump peach high in the air.
“A peach. They’re sweet and safe to eat. You just simply bite into it,” Hawke replied.
“What are those two going after?” Kashuba asked, pointing toward Light Bender.
“Looks like an apple tree. Actually, I think there are a couple apple trees out that way,” he replied.
Winter Grass called from the splintered peach tree limbs where she had joined some of the others. They were all knelt around the bounty eating hungrily.
“In spite of my hunger, I just want to stand here and cry right now,” Kashuba said, still maintaining her grasp on Hawke’s hand.
“If it’s a happy cry, then I totally understand,” he replied, noticing Fire Dragon for the first time, lying face-up on the lush grass with an apple core in his hand.
“Definitely a happy cry,” she replied, resting her head on his shoulder.
The End
Sci-Fi Note From the Author
All my stories spring up from a small and often obscure question. Then after days of that question floating around in my head, it starts to become a story. I even let the story float around for a while, adding bits and pieces to it long before I ever type a single word. Out of all the stories I’ve ever written, I’d have to say that this one deals with a question that almost never gets tackled in the science fiction community and I think we all can understand why. It’s a question that we don’t like to pose, but in my case and in this story, I embrace the question because I believe the answer to that question shows how important our role is in this universe.
So here it is – a question posed without a question mark: We’ve been listening to the stars for many decades now and we’ve been gazing upon them for even longer, but in spite of these efforts, we’ve found nothing. I believe there’s a reason and it has nothing to do with the fact that there isn’t life out there. I think there’s plenty of life out there but for reasons I’ll explain, the life hasn’t had much of an opportunity to become as advanced as we’d all love to believe.
In the 1800’s, H.G. Wells introduced us to the idea of an advanced civilization out there just waiting to annihilate all of mankind. Since then, we’ve been blessed with a plethora of novels, movies, and television shows that always put forth the same concept – that there are others out there who are much more advanced than us and they will either share their technologies with us or they will use their advanced technology to force us into submission. But I put forth this possibility – that the universe is much too young for any civilization to have advanced much further than we here on Earth have. Don’t check out just yet - I’m going somewhere with this arrogant assumption.
Although the number 14,000,000,000 sounds like a lot when referring to the age of the universe, you must keep in mind that the universe began with an explosion that mostly formed only hydrogen, deuterium, and a miniscule amount of larger elements. The abundance of hydrogen was drawn together by gravity into clouds of gas. Inside these gaseous clouds, gravity continued to rule as it still does today and stars were formed. I won’t drown you in a basic physics course here because sci-fi readers are usually quite intelligent and well versed in science. Basically, stars are the furnaces that create the heavier elements and it took the first and second generations of these stars to create enough matter to bring forth the universe we gaze upon today.
In order for life to come about as we know it, there obviously has to be at least as much carbon, oxygen, etc available as we see today. No less. So even if a full generation of stars formed after the big bang, lived out their starry lives, then exploded, there wouldn’t be enough of the heavier elements. At least not as much as we see today. It took two or more generations of stars to get to the universe we see today. What if the Earth is one of the few dozen life-sustaining planets right now in our galaxy and what if humanity is one of the few forms of intelligent life that has come about so far?
Now, I’ll grant you that we’ve been somewhat slow in our progress at times in the past, so I’m not saying we are awesome and no one could be better. I’m posing this question in the novella you just read – what if WE are the advanced civilization who will eventually be visiting other planets in the universe? Someone obviously has to be first. Someone has to wake up in a quiet universe before all the civilizations fill the stars with radio waves and interstellar traffic. What if WE are the ones who will share technology, dominate other worlds, and be the aliens who abduct other species to learn about them?
While I pose this question in a fictional story, I must say that I believe in this possibility quite strongly. I find it very odd that our universe is silent and I think there will come a day, perhaps a million years from now, when the universe will be beautifully noisy in all directions. You would be able listen to communications coming from various stars and galaxies not even meant for you to hear. There will be advanced civilizations everywhere and some of those will have been altered by own technologies – because we were the ones who woke up in a silent universe and started exploring the galaxy first.
I know I’m not the first to suggest this, but it does sometimes feel that way in the novels I read. I offer this suggestion to others in the hopes that they will share in the concept and the dream that humanity may one day be the ambassadors to the galaxy. If taxes aren’t going to go to the advancement of our space programs, then we need to make a conscious decision to donate our own resources to the growing private endeavors. If NASA isn’t the way to go, then let us all focus on the private companies pursuing this. Either way, I think we need to consider where we will be in a thousand or in a million years. If we abandon all the space programs, we limit the future generations. I’m looking into donating what little I have to a couple private companies even now because if I get stuck in a cryo-tube and wake up some thousands of years in the future, I’d like to discover that we’re the ones making Death Stars and not the Empire.
Please feel free to contact me at scottmcelhaney@sbcglobal.net or www.facebook.com/curtisfiction . I love to hear your opinions and feel free to offer constructive criticism. I know I’m not perfect and I have plenty of room for improvement, so I promise I won’t get upset. I’d like to believe I’ve improved greatly from where I was a few years ago and it’s because of people and their kind and not-so-kind words. It all helps and I appreciate it. I write for you as much as I write for me, so I truly hope that I didn’t disappoint.
Kindest regards,
Scott McElhaney
September 2013
Check out these other affordable books available
for your Kindle by Scott McElhaney:
Indentured (Mystic 1)
Legacy (Mystic 2)
Violation (Mystic 3)
Judgment (Mystic 4)
Convergence (Mystic 5)
The Mystic Saga Omnibus (all 5 books)
Erinyes
Ghosts of Ophidian
Alastair (Ghosts of Ophidian)
Daylight in Blossom
One Crazy Summer
Mommy’s Choice
Elusive December
Time Travel Books:
Beyond the Event Horizon
Talking to the Moon
Saving Brooksie
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Scott McElhaney, Dominion