“Petra, how long until sunset?”

“Three hours, 22 minutes.”

The aliens are going to transmit again, hopefully, in about five hours. Nick wanted to be elsewhere in Rockhunter for first contact, with an option of visiting. He loaded up with food, water, a med bot, a war bot, a good display and Petra herself. At the last minute, he also gathered up some hexagonal ingots of different elements and loaded them as well. Who knows, maybe they will want to trade for something?

Time to take my new ride out for a spin.

“Petra, can you control the dungeon from Rockhunter?”

“Yes.”

“Good. All right, let's do this.”

Nick climbed in and closed the door behind him. It was pitch dark inside, but he pulled a lamp out of his pocket and turned it on. He had Petra open the “garage door”, settled himself in the chair, and called up the controls. They still looked like a video game, which always amused him. Rockhunter didn't actually have windows, so he might as well be in a gaming pod back home. It was a little claustrophobic, but he reminded himself that he had checked with Petra that the vehicle would protect him from the environment, including temperature and air quality.

Holding his breath, he nudged the controls to move Rockhunter out of the garage. The ride was almost completely smooth—not surprising since Petra used levitation instead of wheels. Built in cameras gave him good visibility in any direction, including up and down. Petra was kind of democratic when it came to orientation, Nick had learned from some of his lessons.

He switched on the elements scanner, the comm system, and the mapping function. All right, let's get this show on the road. He aimed at a heading of 114 degrees, and moved the speed control forward a little.

The acceleration was more than he expected but still reasonable. Glad I didn't floor it. Rockhunter has pretty good pickup. He watched with interest as the map started to fill in, displaying in three dimensions. The resources were getting detected and labeled at high speed, too.

Nick increased the speed slowly, bit by bit. “Petra, any problems?”

“I don't understand that, Nick.”

He sighed.

As they traveled, Nick kept modifying the display, subtracting out materials that were common in Bare Hill, and putting a special alert out for certain elements, including 90 and 92. He explained to Petra that he wanted to be notified if they passed a deposit of anything that they didn't have a supply of. That done, he made sure Petra was recording everything, and settled himself to enjoy the ride.

Petra's dungeon was in a fairly mountainous region. He had been calling them hills, but they were on the big side for that. Huh. I wonder what the difference is between a mountain and a hill? How tall do you have to be, to be called a mountain? Man, I have like five bajillion questions for the search engine when I get back.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Nick could only imagine what might have happened if he had had a dictionary and a science book downloaded to his e-reader. I bet Petra would understand almost all of English. I'd just have to explain things like...cats, and bananas, and other things she's never seen. And maybe that periodic table wouldn't look so damned weird. I don't know how it's supposed to look, but I know it's not supposed to look like Petra's. We don't draw things in spirals on Earth.

Hills or mountains, there were a lot of them. Rockhunter stayed slightly above the ground; apparently it couldn't actually fly. So he got treated to the feel of a roller-coaster as they zipped up and down. He felt a little bit of g-forces on some of those swoops.

Something caught his eye on the scanner. He'd almost missed it, but slowed the vehicle and brought it around. Whatever it was, was sticking out of the ground, kind of like trees. In fact, those almost look...like...walls.

Nick's throat felt dry. As he approached, it became obvious that he had found ruins. Holy shit. BigBall was inhabited after all.

Petra's scanner showed that the buildings were made mostly of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. But that could mean almost anything, Nick knew from brutal chemistry lessons with Petra. It could be a fucking gingerbread house and it would show up like that. But I bet wood is made of those...

Nick couldn't get out to inspect the ruins in person because the Death Star was still up and would be for a while. He had Petra note the location, and then went back to his old heading, feeling significantly more grim.

If those were wood houses, they probably didn't have spaceships. And if they were native here, and everywhere is getting as bleached as Bare Hill...these people are dead or dying.

So, is the transmission coming from the natives? Or is someone else visiting BigBall?

Nick wanted to ask Petra how fancy a technology you would need to build whatever was transmitting, but didn't know how to get that across. He looked at the ingredients list for Petra's communicator, and it was fairly long. But Petra's comm was probably super-advanced.

Nick went back to the communications menu and started looking for the simplest models he could find. He spent a while swiping through options, then wised up and asked Petra to sort them in increasing order of ingredients list. The start of the list had items with only three elements, including copper.

Yeah, but I don't know what kind of signal this is. Are we talking about AM radio or hyperspace communicators or what?

“Petra, in this order, find me the first three communicators capable of generating the transmissions we received.” He was actually pretty proud of himself for thinking of that, and felt even better when it worked.

The ingredients lists were very short. They might actually be using radio. Wild that I don't even know what kind of signal I'm getting.

Nick's imagination started to run wild. He wasn't sure when radio was invented but he thought it was somewhere around 1900 or so. They could be like Wild West level. Or World War 2. Or the same as Earth. Or even more advanced, maybe.

He thought back to the day he arrived, and all those seemingly random portals. It wouldn't be a good escape system if it opened onto dead planets. If there wasn't any air on the other side, a portal would be like a hurricane sucking your atmosphere through.

Were all those portals opening onto habitable worlds? Or inhabited ones? Nick thought about what he had seen of BigBall. I think their catalog of planets needs an update.

Nick wondered what he would find at his destination. Visitors? Or natives? Rescue?

Or people who need rescuing?