‘New black mass forming around the icecap and covering a sector 500 kilometres wide directly in front of LifeSeeker-1. Depth of mass is approximately 1 kilometre.’
The astronauts could see the mass forming on the display screen. It seemed to be pushing the black slick away from the icepack.
‘Uh, oh! What’s happening now?’ Steve shouted. ‘Should we get ready to fire more missiles?’
‘We can’t risk it against this organised enemy,’ AJ countered. ‘They might be turned back on us again.’
‘Now what? Alison pointed at the icecap. ‘The new mass seems to have disappeared!’
Zec-C zoomed in on a section of it.
‘It’s still there but it’s emitting water vapour over the whole of its surface building up a dense layer which is already 10 metres high and continuing to grow.’
‘It’s like a wall of cloud!’ said Steve, ‘And look, it’s darkening as it’s rising. Why’s that Zec-C?’
‘The Black is rising in its own cloud and building the height as it gets higher. Cloud height 100 metres.’
‘But how?’ queried Alison.
‘We know that the bead-like structures can accelerate water through themselves at huge velocities. What they are doing now is atomising the water as it leaves the capillary, which is forming mist and cloud. We also know that they can travel in cloud. They are building up their own transport medium. Cloud height now 500 metres and widening over the icecap. Two kilometres in width across a sector arc of 600 kilometres.’
‘Command Zec-C! Have all non-nuclear missiles readied for firing. We don’t know what’s happening but we must be ready to defend ourselves.
‘Command Zec-2! Get lander into the air immediately and back away from the icecap,’ AJ ordered.
The astronauts watched as the collar of grey black cloud grew with astonishing speed. It was so big they could see it through the dome of the starship. It was as if a huge barrier was being erected between their position and the icecap.
Zec-C’s next announcement shocked them to the core!
‘The cylinders are moving upwards under the ice! They are rising around the whole perimeter of the icecap! They have reached a position just below the ice and started to push it up!’
The astronauts above and Olivia below watched the same scene in disbelief as the lander lifted from the sea and shook off the remnants of the black slick.
The icecap was cracking!
Huge splits and crevasses were radiating from a circular line around the icecap. Zec-C had zoomed in on a section to the right of the cloud barrier as they could not see through it directly in front of their position.
Grey cylinders pushed up and rose above the ice. Their connecting tubes seemed to support hundreds of them in mid air. Then the next layer of cylinders broke through the ice.
‘My God! The whole lattice is rising through the ice and into the air!’ gasped AJ, ‘And the black cloud collar is building with them!’
‘Is the cloud collar protecting them? We certainly can’t see the damaged section,’ said Steve, more in hope than conviction. ‘We couldn’t attack them anyway from this angle!’
‘Look! Black is spewing out from those upper cylinders and entering the cloud!’ Steve continued, ‘Building the barrier higher and higher!’
Now half of the lattice of objects had risen above the ice to a height of seven and a half kilometres. The astronauts could see the ring of cylinders right around the whole icecap. It was an unbelievable and terrifying sight. And still they continued to rise and spew black streams into the cloud collar they had created.
Then the interconnecting tubes between the cylinders at the top of the lattice started to fall away, crashing down to the ice, spewing black randomly.
Next thousands and thousands of the top cylinders started to rotate! The sunlight glinted on their multi-faceted surfaces.
Further tubes fell away and the second and third layers started rotating.
‘My God! My God! What’s about to happen?!’ Alison shook with fear and trepidation.
‘Look!.... some of the cylinders near the damaged section. They’re wobbling!’ Steve blurted. ‘Several of them are cracking!’
The damaged ones suddenly exploded in a deluge of black, which shot in all directions and the exploding mass tumbled back down onto the ice. Two other wobbling cylinders literally fell out of the sky and crashed through the ice below shooting up geysers of rain.
‘But one cylinder, which was hidden from view behind the cloud, was hardly clear of the ice when it toppled sideways on its connecting tube. It shattered the ice on impact, but remained on the surface. The object cracked open, like two halves of an egg, and Black shot into the air around it.
But what happens next leave the astronauts in the starship and Olivia in the lander absolutely speechless. It even causes Zec-C to repeat himself and question his own observation.’
Chapter 67
The Dicepteron Mothership
‘Centre of icecap rising! Centre of icecap rising?’ Zec-C queried.
They stared at the zoomed image of the icecap. Huge crevices started radiating away from the centre which bulged upwards. Then a grey white structure started to push through the ice.
It was rotating, light reflecting from facets in the upper surface. The astronauts were speechless. They could not register the scale of what was happening. But Zec-C continued. His usual analytical composure now recovered.
‘From the radius of the object pushing through the icecap, I conclude that we have a rotating disc whose diameter is approximately 140 kilometres!’
Silence in the starship.
Silence in the lander.
There was stunned utter silence as they watched this goliath of structures which rose slowly from the very centre of the icepack. It was surrounded by its lattice of about 48,000 rotating grey black cylinders!
AJ broke the silence. ‘How can something so big come up through the icecap?’
‘I conclude that the rotation is generating heat and melting the ice – a process not too different to regelation. If you recall, the thinner ice at the centre was also 140 kilometres diameter and this huge disc is probably the reason. Also there are 2 kilometre diameter darker shapes in the vertical surface of this structure – I estimate about 50 around the circumference – and they are hexagonal in shape.’
‘This must be the mothership!’ Steve guessed. ‘I think the surrounding cylinders and the cloud barrier have been protecting it.’
‘It’s nearly out of the ice!’ Alison shrieked. ‘What’s it going to do!’
By way of answer, the grey white behemoth accelerated in both rotation and vertical velocity until it was completely clear of the ice. It had left a perfectly circular crater at the centre of the icecap.
‘The disc is approximately 20 kilometres thick and its upper and lower surfaces are slightly concave. I cannot be more specific because the surrounding cylinders and clouds are masking my instruments.’
Then it rose to a point half way up the lattice of surrounding cylinders. It was truly a magnificent and utterly threatening spectacle.
No one moved, they hardly breathed as the 140 kilometre disc, glistening with reflected light, and its 48,000 surrounding darker objects rotated faster and faster until they were one continuous blur.
The whole mass then rose into the sky and dominated the vista over the decimated icecap. For the first time the astronauts could see the breach in the cylinders where the nuclear warheads had wreaked their havoc. Many were still wobbling and they fell back to the icecap in enormous explosions of black.
It seemed such a small breach in the massive structure.
Then the surrounding cylinders seemed to swirl around the massive mother-disc and, in the blink of an eye, disappeared into the perimeter of the giant. Suddenly the whole assembly accelerated upwards........
........ and vanished!
‘Zec-C! Where have they gone?’ said a perplexed AJ.
All the astro
nauts in the starship leaned forward, totally dumbstruck, and stared at the space above the icecap.
In the lander, Olivia craned her neck upwards at the emptiness where, fractions of a second earlier, the sky had been filled with the enormousness of the rotating masses.
She and the astronauts above her could only sit and listen to Zec-C and his mind blowing commentary.
‘I have absolutely zero signal now. But from the point where they started to accelerate to the last measured signal just nanoseconds later.....
...... I estimate that they left the vicinity of Cloud Planet .......
...... faster than the speed of light!!’
BOOK EIGHT
SAVE THE PLANET
Chapter 68
The Reunion
‘Impossible!’ was the common cry of all the astronauts.
‘You can’t travel at the speed of light, let alone faster!’ cried a disbelieving Steve. ‘Why, we’ve only just learned to travel at half-light speed!’
‘You are correct in our galaxy and obeying our laws of physics. However, from the moment the spinning objects accelerated I tracked their signal over a distance of 1 kilometre. Then the signal disappeared. To travel that distance took less than one, three hundred thousandth’s of a second, the limit of my measurement capability.’
‘But maybe it’s still out there!’ shouted Alison, the alarm in her voice was very obvious, ‘But we just can’t see it!’
That statement made the astronauts stare out of the command dome again but all they could see was the decimated icecap, the cloud barrier now collapsing and a 140 kilometre wide crater at its centre.
‘It may be possible that the objects have moved a distance of 1 kilometre, stopped and become undetectable. However, there is insufficient evidence to support or detract from that observation. My calculation of the minimum speed achieved before they disappeared is correct!’
‘Thank you, Zec-C,’ AJ summarised, ‘we don’t doubt your measurements or conclusions, but we’ve been dealing with an intelligence that we can’t begin to understand or comprehend. Something which we have to assume came to Cloud Planet from another galaxy but has now moved away. Where it has gone, we cannot possibly know!’
‘There is more, Commander, but my measurements are at such an error level that I would need a second or third set of data to corroborate my findings before presenting the results to you.’
‘Come on Zec-C,’ Steve encouraged, ‘you’re not normally so reticent. You can hardly shock us anymore!’
‘My single measurement suggests that the rotational velocity of the mother-disc increased during that infinitesimally small time interval to........... in excess of 1 million revolutions per minute........... subject to an error of plus or minus 10 per cent.’
No-one moved. Faces were etched in shock, bewilderment and total disbelief.
‘Oh! You’ve really lost your marbles this time, Zec-C!’ Steve scoffed, ‘faster than light and now a million rpm! That thing’s 140 kilometres wide by 20 k’s deep! Do me a favour!’
‘From what I’ve seen so far,’ added Pete analytically, ‘nothing would surprise me anymore! God knows what’s inside that mother-disc?’
‘I agree with Pete and AJ,’ said Olivia from the lander, ‘we’re up against something we can’t possibly understand.’
Further discussion was terminated by Zec-C’s urgent intervention.
‘Attention! Sorry to interrupt, Commander, but contact with Zec-1 re-established, contact with ROL-1 on Cloud Planet re-established!’
There were looks of surprise and delight on the astronauts’ faces as Zec-C continued,
‘Zec-1 reports that all the black masses outside the dwellings suddenly collapsed to the ground. I have checked the timing with Zec-1 and that occurred the instant the mother-disc disappeared from view.’
‘They must have lost their wireless control! So they might have really gone?’ Olivia cried in hope. ‘Can we get in touch with Scott? Have we contacted him?’
‘It is night time at both ROL-1 and the dwelling at the equator where Scott is presumed to be. He usually turns on his palmtop 2 hours before the dwelling lights up. We can contact him in one and a half hours’ time. But we need to move LifeSeeker-1 away from this icecap with its high radiation and back to its original geostationary position.’
‘Command Zec-C! Move starship as recommended.’ Said AJ and all the astronauts confirmed the decision in the usual way.
‘But what about the other icecap?’ Steve brought them back to reality. ‘We can’t assume that the discs have gone from there as well!’
‘Olivia, can you take the lander and have a look?’ AJ instructed, ‘But don’t go too close, just enough for Zec-2 to scan the area.’
‘We’re on the case, but I’d like your permission to take the lander down to Scott’s position as soon as possible.’
‘Let’s see what’s at the other icecap before making that decision.’
‘Of course.’
In the pitch black of the sleeping chamber under the huge pyramid, Scott’s wrist alarm pinged and he was instantly awake. He turned his palmtop on, dreading the news from Zec-1. The previous morning, Zec-1 had informed him that dozens more black masses had appeared outside the dwellings in the lines adjacent to his position. They had to stop the farming groups from leaving their dwellings. However, if this continued, the threat to their food supply would become critical.
Scott could not believe his eyes as the first words he saw on the screen were,
‘Olivia safe and well’
He whooped with delight and then saw,
‘Contact with LifeSeeker-1 re-established’
‘Zec-1, what has happened?’
‘Black masses outside dwellings have collapsed to the ground, no longer a barrier and, it seems, no further threat to us.’
‘But how? What’s happened to the Black?’
‘AJ conference call coming through in 10 minutes to brief you before we lose contact due to light sheaths’
Olivia instructed Zec-2 to take the lander to an altitude of 500 kilometres and then proceeded at maximum speed towards the other icecap. Travelling at 2000 kilometres per hour they passed over the dark cloud collar after 5 hours during the night. They then carried on out to sea to a position midway between Cloud collar and the other icecap just as dawn was breaking.
Zec-2 zoomed in on the icecap and put the picture on the dome screen in front of Olivia.
‘Look!’ she said to no one in particular, ‘The ice has cracked open around the perimeter, just like the other icecap.’
Zec-2 zoomed in further,
‘There is an approximately 140 kilometre diameter crater at the centre of the icecap and I can detect no objects underneath.’
‘We can see your pictures, Olivia!’ said AJ from the starship, ‘It looks as if the same exodus has occurred at both icecaps!’
‘Can we really believe that they’ve gone?’ Olivia asked hopefully, ‘And left us for good?’
‘We can’t be sure of anything,’ replied AJ, ‘but we’ve contacted Scott and briefed him with the barest of details and told him that you will land at his dwelling tonight.’
‘OK, good, we’ll be able to brief each other in person and then set up a conference call for the following night to discuss plans.’ Olivia concluded.
Scott could hardly wait for the Serenities to warm up and feed but knew that he would have to be patient. He caught Seren’s eye and gestured towards the huge triangular structure where Hotenka and his elders sat.
Seren’s eyes blazed,
>> you have good news > i can tell from your positive feelings>>
Seren inclined her head and the Serenite leader looked up and beckoned them to join him.
>> come > we must tell hotenka >>
Scott found it difficult to explain that the black masses had collapsed and were no longer a threat to the blue farmers. Even with Seren’s help, the message was not getting through and Scott was not sure th
at she fully understood what had happened. Her eyes blazed,
>> how can you be sure that our blue workers will not die if they go out to farm >>
‘Trust me! I will show you. Come out with me in one of your farming groups!’
>> yes > i do trust you >and our leader will come too >>
One hour later, Scott, Seren and Hotenka walked out of the huge pyramid into the heat and humidity of the near midday sun. Scott marvelled, once again, at the incredible sight of the 500 hundred metre light shaft as it shot, shimmering, into the clouds. The whole area in front of the pyramid thronged with Serenites and blue workers who inclined their heads as their leader passed by.
The Blue People of Cloud Planet Page 33
