..[ JACY ]..
She stared at the behemoth of a tree in front her. Not really believing its size yet. From a far, the forest had appeared just like any other forest she had ever seen before. She had expected it to be like all the other hundreds of forests in hundreds of planets and moons they had been to. But this was different, very different. Maybe it was the higher carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, or maybe the lesser than Earth gravity of the planet. But the tree was tall, stretching so high that she had trouble telling the distance any longer as the trunk disappeared within the canopy of the other behemoth trees next to it.
Height aside, the trunk at the base was huge too. Add that to the brace roots stretching out in all directions, and running around the base of the tree for just one revolution would proof a good enough workout for the day.
The brace roots interlocked with those from the neighboring trees to leave little room for the soil to be seen. The heavy leaf cover on the ground made that venture entirely fruitless. It seemed they had arrived at what would be considered the dry season of that part of the planet. The lack of humidity in the forest proved that to be true.
The forest had the makings of a rainforest, with large swatches dominated by towering trees with areas that appeared to have had their trees cut down and the forest was trying to reclaim them with heavy foliage.
These regions had led them to believe that there could be a kind of civilization on the planet. But they had yet to meet any living thing they would consider intelligent enough to form a civilization. Most of the animals they had come across the planet were bugs. Huge bugs just like the trees themselves, but still bugs nonetheless.
Jacy thought they looked like the bugs found back on Earth, but she wasn’t much of an entomologist herself so it was hard to tell. She was sure she had seen beetles with horns on Earth, she was also sure they had been less than the size of her thumb. The ones she had seen on the forest so far were the size of goats. She was glad that they had been docile and appeared to be vegetarian.
The ants on the other hand hadn’t been so vegetarian. They had come across a group of hundreds making short work of one such beetles. The screeching should have been warning enough. The group had steered clear off their path.
Jacy had fast concluded that it was very likely that the ants, or their distant cousins the termites, had been responsible for the clearings. Maybe the both of them were involved. One harvested the leaves and branches from above while the other came up from down below eating away at the roots. If the ants were present, then the termites weren’t that much of a stretch. She just hoped that they wouldn’t come across any spider-like organisms. Those might be big enough to swallow a human whole. And she wasn’t that much of a human.
There didn’t seem to be any vertebrate on the lands of the planet. Maybe they were on another land mass covered by another part of the exploratory team. Or even maybe in the oceans. Though those were more seas than oceans. The exploratory teams for the current team were huge compared to the ones they had on the first expedition. The teams were divided into three categories: large, medium, and small. Each of the large teams was composed of over hundred people, some even numbering one-fifty. The teams were further divided into groups of six. The medium ones averaged around sixty people with the small ones being double the previous expedition size at twenty-four.
There current team was a humongous one; the planet had seemed pretty promising, and not just because of the presence of life but because of the activity seen on their planet searchers data. It was near the center of the concentric circle they were currently at, making it easier to discern a lot before the exploratory team was assembled.
They were currently five thousand light-Years from Earth, more or less. And they had yet to meet any civilization, not even a species evolved enough to be comparable in intelligence to humans. Habitable worlds were plenty. Both planets and moons. Most of them had life already. And the rest just needed a little human intervention and they would as good as Earth. Maybe even better.
There was little in terms of flying insects, and Jacy was glad for it. As far as she could tell, all flying insects back on Earth were bad news. Maybe not the butterflies, but their caterpillar stage was just as bad. Maybe the lack of flowers was the reason for the low representation of the flying insects.
They trudged onwards, moving from clearing to clearing, hoping that one of them would provide a clue as to where the clearings came from. And if they had trees before, where did they disappear to so fast. Even the youngest of clearings had shown no signs of there having been trees before.
As the star illuminating the planet slowly made its way down to the horizon, her party began making preparations for the place they would rest for the night. They searched for a stream for more than an hour before finding any that could provide them with enough water. Most streams had dried out. The water had been tested and found fit for human ingestion as long as they thoroughly boiled it enough to get kill off the macro and micro-organisms present. That had been before the groups had dispersed from the shuttle. There had been debate on whether the bugs could be edible. Not many people showed any interest in consuming them though. Everyone was carrying rations with them that could last them for days before having to head back to the shuttle.
They settled at the edge of one such clearing and put up their tents. The amount of gear they carried on their selves was a huge burden, but after four years out in the universe, they had gotten used to it. It was still tiring though. And Jacy felt that she would soon collapse in a dreamless sleep. She pitied the poor souls that had picked first watch.
She woke up more than fifteen minutes to her watch. She relieved herself in her portable toilet before taking it to the dehydration unit. Some had relieved themselves in the forest itself, but she wasn’t keen on some alien bug creeping its way into her. One couldn’t tell what methods of attack and infiltration the bugs employed.
By the time she was done with her wake up routine, Michael, her watch partner, had already woken up too. She sat by the fire at the center of the camp, opposite Michael, and started in on her breakfast. They kept watch in silence; Michael was a quiet guy and she didn’t feel in the mood for a conversation either.
The days on the planet were shorter than they were on Earth, each lasting on average twenty hours. By the middle of their watch, the host star was already announcing its arrival and the darkness slowly receded away. The four small moons the planet called its own offered no enough light to properly illuminate the night. That was when she heard the crack, like the sound of dry wood breaking. Looking at Michael showed that he had heard it too. But the sleepers didn’t wake. Either they were too tired, or it hadn’t been as loud as she had thought. What with all the insect sounds; maybe it being a different kind of sound had been what made it stand out to her.
“What do you think that was?” Michael asked in a somewhat whisper as the insect noises started again after they had gone silent with the cracking sound.
Jacy thought of it for a while before answering, “A tree falling I guess.” She turned to stare at the direction she thought the sound had come from. “An old rotten dried up tree by the sound of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was only the crack. Nothing else.” She said as she turned back to the fire. “No breaking of branches as the tree fell down. No thud when it met the ground. Just the crack.”
Michael was silent for a moment. She could see him at the top of her vision staring at where the crack had sounded. “It could have been something else,” he finally said, shifting a little on his log-seat.
“Yes, it could have been,” she agreed with him, keeping to the fire.
She didn’t need to look at him to know that he was staring at her. Was he that scared? She wondered. Their sensors had picked nothing unusual coming their way. There was no need to panic, at least not yet. The watches had been selected to ease people’s minds, not because they had been needed. The sensors could do a much better job than they could ever do. But humans had a hard time trusting technology. Especially when they thought they could do a much better job of it. Jacy didn’t think she was immune to that way of thinking; but she liked to believe that she tried.
“Shouldn’t we wake the others?” Michael asked.
“What for? An hour or so, and it would be time to wake anyway. Let them have their sleep.”
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“But…” he started to argue before giving up altogether. The watch continued in silence until the rest of the group began to rise from their sleep.
…
They arrived at what she thought had been the source of the cracking sound an Hour after they started the trek for the day. It was hard to tell at first. There were no clear signs of anything having fallen through the clearing. But on closer inspection, they found that the juvenility of the plants in the clearing allowed them to bounce back into their previous position a few Hours after the log had fallen. There were a few broken twigs here and there, but those were hardly discernable.
“At least we now know who is the culprit for the clearings,” Maeve said as she used a long sturdy stick to clear up some of the fresh looking mounds of soil under the vegetation of the clearing. Weak sticks had proven ineffective.
“It could be just one of the culprits.” Someone else argued as Jacy moved closer to get a much clear view of the termites. She was cautious of course, but given they had come geared up in their combat suit, she was more than sure she could easily take care of any termite that decide to make a meal of her.
The termites were a meter or so in length, and about a third that in height. They had sturdy looking brown-black legs, with hairs that looked a little too stiff to be considered hair. Spikes maybe. Considering what ants did to termites, that was to be expected. Their heads were black and their mandibles a blood red. They had white bodies, made brown by the wood they had already consumed.
What would be considered soldiers were slightly longer than the workers, with their mandibles twice as long as those of the workers. The mandibles, and spikes, were a screaming red. They didn’t appear friendly at all. One of the soldiers cleanly cut through Maeve’s stick as it got a little too close for the soldier’s comfort. She didn’t want to think what the males and queen looked like if they had any.
Jacy noticed that the wood inside the mounds was already more than half eaten away. “The insects of this planet might spell doom for the plant life. And themselves.”
“Maybe something else is keeping them in check.” She gave Maeve a dubious look for that comment, making her add, “Or maybe they don’t eat all trees.”
The others seemed to have spread out through the clearing. It appeared to be a more recent one than they had seen before. Maybe it could offer answers to some of the questions they had about the clearings.
“All these clearings could have termite-hives beneath them,” she said as she watched the termites fastidiously close up the cleared space in the mound.
“Are termite nests called hives?” Maeve asked as she opened up another section of the mound. This time closer to the ground beneath where the base of the tree would have been.
“I don’t really know.” Jacy was sure that Michael was busy running a subsurface scan of the clearing by now. She moved closer, taking pictures of the newly exposed termites.
Each member of the expedition was equipped with a camera and a biological material collection kit. They would collect as much data as they could while also making sure they don’t collect the same biological material. The satellites inserted in orbit before descending to the planet surface helped them stay in touch with each other no matter where they were on the planet. New satellites were built as they left the ship. Keeping track of worlds with plenty sources of raw materials was a high priority of the whole expedition. They were going through raw materials faster than they had thought. Few shuttles had been relegated to purely cargo hurlers of refined raw materials. The partnership with Sylvia had made the utilization of discovered precious raw materials that much easier.
They spend several more Hours gathering more data on the termites. Jacy had come to accept that they had been reduced to mere data collection teams. Most of the explorations had started to feel dull. Doing something new once, twice or maybe ten times was enjoyable. But doing it hundreds of times was not fun. Somewhere it started to feel more like a chore than anything else.
But every once in a while, things took an interesting turn.
It began when they tried to collect a biological sample of one of the workers. If the subject had the potential to pose a threat to the group, collection of the biological sample always happened at the end of the exploration. When all other data had been collected.
Michael had tried to cut off one of the spikes on its leg when a soldier intercepted. Attacking the cutter itself. The force wasn’t enough to cut the metal, but the soldier was strong enough to pull Michael from his feet. As he went down, the other soldiers moved in on him. And some of the workers too. The group had been forced to use their pulse guns to shoot them off as Michael scurried back to his feet and away from the approaching termites.
When several of their own died and Michael was no longer within reach, they retreated to their mound. Leaving behind the carcasses of their comrades. They quickly collected their sample and made their way towards the shuttle, not wanting to stay long enough to meet the scavengers of the planet. It was more than a Day’s march from their current location if they didn’t go in circles. There was still two Days before the shuttle was scheduled to leave the planet and begin the long journey back to the main ship. For them, it would be a Week. But the longest ones could take as much as three Months on their return journey. Spending six Months on the whole exploration.
..[ ANDREW ]..
Andrew couldn’t believe how awful his luck had been to be assigned to the exploration of a toxic planet. That was what it was. It had no breathable atmosphere, just a combination of the most toxic gases known to human. How the atmosphere had come to possess such gases, he didn’t know. Even their resident astrogeologists couldn’t come up with a reason why the planet had been turned so toxic.
Add that to the fact that they were on the fridges of the explorable part of the concentric circle, five hundred light-Years from the main ship. So yes, Andrew had been awfully unlucky for the exploration. Even if they decided not to do anything, it would still take them close to three Months to get back to the main ship. But Andrew knew that there was no way they were going back without doing extensive exploration of the planet.
Other than the atmosphere which had been inconclusive, and they now knew why, the planet had been promising. The whole stellar system had been promising. A G5V star; approximately three billion Years old, with six planets. A gas giant and an ice giant on the outside, with four rocky planets on the inside.
The inside one was too close to the star. But the other three where smack-dab in the star’s habitable zone. The second planet from the star was on the edges of conservative habitable zone, but sadly was what astronomers called a hot Venus. There was Venus, and then there was a hot Venus. With temperatures in the excess of a thousand degrees Celsius. It could be worked with, but it would take a lot of resources and time.
The third one was in the middle of the habitable zone, but sadly on the small side. Not enough gravity to hold onto its atmosphere or keep its core warm for long to maintain a stable magnetic field. It was doomed from the start that one.
The fourth one from the star had been the target from the start. Earth size, Earth magnetic field, Earth day length, near Earth gravity at 0.98G… Though the year was on the long side, taking on average four eighty-five days to complete a single revolution. But that didn’t affect habitability much. At least Andrew didn’t think so. It had been primed to be what was called Earth 2.0.
But sadly that was not to be. But knowing Mativo, it would be turned habitable soon enough. Maybe all three rocky planets in the habitable zone would be. They would spend three Weeks on the stellar system, exploring all three habitable zone rocky planets and paying a short visit to the others.
“What do you think this stellar system will be called?” Renato, one of the physicians for the exploration, asked.
“Something Latin for reclamation.” Bronwyn offered her view.
“What?” Mũsango asked, “Why?”
“If there will ever be a habitable planet here, it would have to be reclaimed from the current state of things.” Bronwyn explained her point. “None of these planets are exactly paradise. Far from it.”
“I don’t think it will be Latin.” Renato said, with that Australian accent of his.
“Yeah.” Mũsango agreed with him. “Remember the Ũsumbĩ System. That isn’t Latin at all.”
“Mativo isn’t the one naming the stellar systems. The colonizing parties are.” Bronwyn still stood by her argument. “He only named that one.”
“They are not using Latin either.” Andrew said, “A lot of languages, but not Latin.” He had been keeping up with the progress of the colonies as much as he could. The Mũtindas were fast making use of every habitable planet they came across. Even the ones that had habitability potential were being reclaimed. They would soon run out of people to populate the colonies. Andrew was sure of it.
“Why?” Mũkanzi asked as she joined the conversation. “Shouldn’t they be using it? It is more commonly accepted in the scientific community.”
“I heard it’s because it’s a dead language.” Renato answered. “Besides, the people who will be living on these planets will not be scientists but the general public.”
“Yeah, what is a common human got to do with Latin.” Mũsango said.
“But they are not the ones discovering them either.” Mũkanzi argued.
“Yeah, that would be us.” Mũsango was silent for a while before perking as if she had had the greatest idea ever. “What if we named them?”
“What would you call it then?” Renato asked her.
“The Mũsangoni System!”
“That isn’t Latin at all,” Bronwyn complained.
“I never said I wanted to name it in Latin. Only that I wanted to name it.”
“What would that even mean?”
“How would I know?” Mũsango asked her in return.
“You don’t even know what your name means?” Bronwyn asked, surprised.
“Do you know what your name means?” Mũsango shot back.
“No. But I thought your names had meaning.”
“All names have meaning. Most of us have just forgotten what those meanings are.”
Renato broke the silence that had settled after Bronwyn and Mũsango’s back and forth. “But this stellar system really sucks. How did it manage to fuck up three rocky planets?”
“One or two might be understandable. But all three? What went wrong here?” Andrew asked.
“That is what we are here to find out.” Scott, their Exploratory Commander, said.
“Given our current level of technology, I would give us a Decade at most to make the fourth one habitable.” Mũkanzi said.
“A Century for the second one.” Mũsango added.
“What?” Renato was surprised by Mũsango’s estimate. “You are being too optimistic. Maybe five Centuries.”
“Have you not being keeping up with what is happening at Venus? I was being too generous with a Century. Mativo could do it in fifty Years.”
“Venus is a hotbed.”
“Yeah. Meaning he won’t have to go through all those hurdles he went through for Venus here.”
“We are approaching Mũsangoni IV, the groups for that planet start preparing.” Scott interrupted them before their argument got heated.
“Yes! We are naming it after me.”
They laughed as they got busy preparing for the coming exploration. Andrew was part of the team heading for Mũsangoni IV. Quite a mouthful, but who knew, it might be made official.