Chapter 2 - Touchdown
(in which a shocking discovery is made, and the away team lands on the glass planet)
> "Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still."
>
> --Carl Sagan
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Later that day, the five were in the cargo bay, the most spacious room of the Ežilekl. The lights cast trapezoidal beams of light upon the stacks of crates... which were perched right on the girders. Not a single panel of plating separated the inside from the outside.
That is, the 'bay' was little more than a cage of steel frames, fully exposed to space. The mottled surface of Hakošel took up most of the sky 'below', under the towers, under the perforated catwalks connecting them, and under the birdcage-like lattice supporting them. It all looked like a miniature megapolis, only instead of cars and flitters there scooted various maintenance drones that looked and acted like oversized jumping spiders with wheels, jumping between the crates in zero-gravity. The ship was in orbit of the glass planet now, above a rather flat area near the rim of a partially-eroded crater. A good if unremarkable spot for a first landing.
Every organic present, from Iraklijs to Tsip, was wearing a skintight, form-fitting evasuit, brightly colored for visibility reasons.
"Every time I put this thing on, from prebreathing to returning, I feel like a total dork. Whose idea was to paint this fluorescent orange with red and magenta highlights? And to put the antenna right on top of the helmet? Shit looks like a cartoon drawn by a clown on crack," Iraklijs muttered as he pushed downwards, exiting the ship through the 'floor'.
"I believe it was Dr. Vuekuesu," Ekut said. "They designed COMA's suits," she waved her bright green arm as she turned the vertical corner, almost reflexively leaning to attach her suit's backpack to the girders. Then she zipped forward, disappearing from sight.
"Ah, a relmai. All makes sense now," Iraklijs said as he did likewise. "So actually on crack. Or whatever their equivalent is."
The magnetic wheels on his pack clunked as they gripped the girder, carrying him forward like a faster version of a ski lift. The entire ship was 'above' him now. "Anyways, we told you Zkeh, that there are no soph-made structures there. The scans don't lie. This'll be routine."
Suddenly, he heard a distressed growl through the radio, interrupting the silence of space and the hum of the motors. Zkeh apparently failed to quite attach in the proper manner, and suffered the consequences. Altair blinked red and wailed like a siren in Iraklijs' pocket.
The blue-clad alien alligator tumbled away from the ship. "Use your jetpack!" Spots shouted.
"I tried! Lookss like the cord iss dissconnected!" Zkeh hissed, spinning uncontrollably without any source of thrust.
Ekut silently turned around and, with a lightning-fast motion, shot a grappling hook at the stranded chohjozra. Tugging like an angler wresting a massive fish out of water, she reeled him in. Iraklijs was reminded of his wife's occupation as an asteroid-tug captain.
Zkeh bonked his helmet against Ekut's, then pulled her into a tight hug. "You ssaved me. By the million godss, you saved me."
"No problem," she said and reholstered the pistol as she inspected his suit. No punctures from the hook; and even if there were any, it would have merely given Zkeh a space-hickey instead of explosive decompression, due to the suits' construction not giving air any room to escape. The cord connecting the emergency jetpack to the power supply was indeed unplugged. "Be more careful next time," she said as she fixed that issue. "You lot wouldn't last a day on Shaugna."
Zkeh growled as he somewhat tightened the hug. Ekut just barely wriggled out of it, and the group continued its transit towards the Star Tortoise, which was visible just over the inverted ledge, attached to the shiny aluminum-wrapped hull of the ship.
It looked somewhat like a six-legged turtle clinging to the ship's underside, with the legs being the stumpy nozzles of the landing engines. They were powered by the mini-reactor that occupied most of the inside of the reflective 'shell'. It was mini only by fusion engine standards, of course; after all it still had to contain a miniature sun, while having enough rad-insulation to not kill the entire crew. While a normal fusion reactor would need many meters of insulation, the Tortoise was adapted to use pure Helium-3 fuel, which severely reduced the amount of radiation... at the cost of making the lander cost nearly as much as a small starship (from the cost of the reactor itself, not 3He itself, which was relatively cheap).
While most of its scutes were shiny, like mirrors, some at the top were golden. These were the windows. Even though the Tortoise did not look large from a distance, up close its massive size was apparent: ten whole meters in diameter. The crew area was accessible through a broad circular airlock at the top, and was much smaller in circumference.
The inside was quite dim, but still bright enough to see. The five all went down the ladder and piled into the control room, which combined a cockpit with a scientific laboratory. All sorts of consoles and differently-colored seats (which, due to the need for multi-species accessibility, resembled beanbags more than chairs) surrounded the rim, while the center was taken up by various lockers and boxes of important equipment.
Iraklijs doffed his helmet, then took off his spacesuit, or rather peeled it off. "We won't need these on the planet, the pressure is alright but we need something warmer than space tights. Also, where's Yangchen?"
While skintight spacesuits were convenient, they were awful at protecting from cold temperatures. Space, contrary to popular perception, was not freezing. Its temperature, for all intents and purposes, was undefined. Vacuum did not transfer heat, and thus a suit did not need to be warm per se.
Spots rummaged through one of the lockers. "He said to Spots, and Spots quotes, 'soon after you guys, give me a minute'," they hummed as they put on the bquaa version of a winter coat, which was essentially a sleeping bag. It was colored much more tastefully: dull orange, with day-glow green blotches.
A man in a suit like theirs, white with an orange dragon emblazoned on its chest, entered through the airlock. Yangchen took off the helmet. He looked rather surprised and somewhat excited, and his cheek-lights pulsated. "So you know Lu's scan? How he said there's nothing unusual on the surface? There was apparently some interference with the scan! They ran it again, and, and..."
The doctor-driver breathed in deeply and slicked back his hair, trying his best to strike a dramatic pose in zero-g. Iraklijs raised an eyebrow.
"There's some weird metal... thing in the rim of that crater. Looks almost like a gate."
"WHAT?!" Iraklijs, Ekut, Spots, and even Tsip blurted out all at once. Zkeh just opened his beak and roared triumphantly.
Spots absolutely lost it for a few moments. "Spots... What? Cannot. Believe. We must see it. Spots takes back what they said about equipment yesterday."
Tsip already donned a gray coat with subtly-shining white stripes, as featureless and undecorated as their body. "Do we need to wait any more. To line up."
Iraklijs shrugged and pushed himself towards the pilot's seat, then spun towards one of the consoles. His trained fingers worked to navigate the UI at a blazing speed. Before long, a data screen was open. A wireframe green 3D globe on a black background, surrounded by streams of numbers, letters, and charts.
"Nope, it's within tolerances of our planned trajectory. Still got a few minutes until we have to."
Zkeh, too, clothed his scaly form in winter gear. Unlike the coats of the others, it was much thinner. Beneath its black velvet, embroidered with beautiful and varied gold lace, were strands of heating elements, fit for keeping a cold-blooded being warm.
Iraklijs squinted as he looked at the three cold-bloods. "Well me and Ekut would just bake if we did this so early. I'm staying in my jacket till we land. I just... I can't believe there are precursors here."
Ekut spent some time staring at the wall, processing the situation. "Did we end up packing weapons or not? What about the other supplies?"
"Yeah, thank Yangchen for this. Normally it's my job but he says he owed me a favor after the Nyu-Chukotka incident."
Dorji nodded and gave a thumbs up. "I threw in a blaster for everyone. Not much but it should be enough in case anything silly is there. I also checked the lander while I was at it, all good and the bay opened fine."
Ekut sighed. "Better than nothing. Just think about what our loved ones would think if we simply disappeared. As soon as the news reached them... imagine the wave of bad news rippling through the Oval, carried by courier drones, and when the wave hits someone familiar to us, they weep. We are not invincible. Even you, Zkeh, with your bulk. Even you, Iraklijs, with your bravado and experience."
"Well," Yangchen said, lowering his head, "wouldn't take long at all to reach my dear Kuam..."
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
"Right, and some of us have them on the ship itself."
Spots tilted their head. "Why are you so fixated on this, Karo? Spots wouldn't think your species values family to such a level..."
Ekut squinted. "Because I know that none of you would be dissuaded by 'you are likely to die'."
Altair rang like an alarm clock inside Iraklijs' jacket. "Two minutes left until optimal departure time," the crystal informed.
"Right, right," Iraklijs opened another window, quickly scrolling over the automatically-updated inventory. Digging and scanning tools, extra oxygen tanks, the aforementioned light self-defense weapons, spare tires for the rover (called the SandRunner III; I fell into a kilometer-deep ravine on Pellumawida, while II was carried away by a tornado on Nyu-Chukotka), all sorts of containers for samples... and some Terran food from Iraklijs' locker, including a precious can of rollmops. "Departing in one minute. Send your byes to your friends on the ship."
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Soon, the docking ports of the Star Tortoise made an audible clunk that conducted through the hull, and the lander began thrusting retrograde. As its orbit shrunk, it began 'falling' both backwards and down, thus gradually drawing the surface of Hakošel closer and closer. The grey haze of its atmosphere started enveloping the lander as it fell like a badminton shuttlecock, its dome facing forward.
A BCI helm covered Iraklijs' head, its opaque green-glossy visor blocking all eyesight. Instead, it directly connected his brain to the lander's systems. The human was limp in the seat, as he was no longer his arms, legs, and torso; he was now the engines, the steering fins, and the reflective thermoplating hull.
The other five, strapped tightly into the beanbag-seats, watched through the windows that covered the top of the lander. The surface drew closer, and the irregularity of its splotches became apparent. Hills, mountains, valleys, craters, all in various shades of orange and green. But from this close, more colors were visible: grays, browns, blues, and even magentas. Parts of it almost looked like a cathedral's stained window.
Iraklijs was recording the whole thing from an outside view, but Tsip took out their datapad and began filming a video of the interior. Ekut noted down various readings of sensors, while Spots, Zkeh, and Yangchen simply watched in awe. The latter two began quietly praying to their respective higher powers.
Soon, streaks of red flames began to lash against the windows, telltale signs of reentry. These were not actual fire, of course, but rather ionized and thus plasmafied air that appeared as a kaleidoscope of translucent reds and yellows, overlaying the view of the surface. The experience resembled looking up at a waterfall of lava, if the lava was transparent. Gradually, a roar filled the cabin, as the Tortoise reached the denser layers of the atmosphere.
Accompanied by this sound of an ongoing explosion outside the thermoreinforced windows, the gravity appeared to come back in a way. Air resistance led to deceleration, pressing everyone into their seats.
"When iss the rotation?" Zkeh said.
"The atmo here is denser than Earth actually," Iraklijs said. "So very soon. Just gotta slow down a bit more to not blow off the engines or go into a spin."
Some more time passed, and Iraklijs turned an invisible, mental 'lever'. With a clunk, the airbrakes deployed, and the lander whipped into a right-side-up position. Even though everyone experienced this maneuver many times beforehand, it still made their hearts, especially Yangchen's, skip a beat.
As soon as it did so, the deceleration became much stronger. Looking upwards, the passengers could see the grayish-blue-orange-pink sky above, layered and twisted in many intricate shapes.
"Do you know what causes this," Tsip said.
"Nope!" Ekut shrugged. "According to the atmospheric measures, the atmo should be grayish-blue. I suspect there are glass microshards, essentially colored sand, way up in the atmo."
"You ssaid 'nope', and then you told uss the reasson?" Zkeh tilted his head.
"I don't know for sure. So I don't know," Ekut leaned further back and tented her fingers.
"If you have a sstrong... hunch... about ssomething... might ass well..." Zkeh said. "Look how I wass correct, Ekut, about there being ruinss... I wass also correct about that tornado," he hissed and clicked his beak several times. "And you people ssay we are foolissh for believing in our godss, and talking to the idolss every day..."
Ekut was about to make a snide reply when the whole lander suddenly jerked, accompanied by a sound that resembled a blanket being unfolded, except louder. Parachutes. The gravity was now stable at around 0.6g, and there was no real noise besides the subtle howl of wind.
Iraklijs took off his helmet for a moment. "All good here? Touching down in twenty minutes," he then donned it again before the BCI-image in his mind could fade.
Ekut nodded, while Zkeh placed a taloned hand on her shoulder and hissed again. Tsip was looking out of the window at the jagged and almost fractal glass-mountains that comprised the rim of the crater below. Spots was being held up by Yangchen, allowing the slug-alien to see the landscape despite their short stature. The bquaa noted something down via their own integrated BCI.
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Swaying in the winds and gently spinning, the Star Tortoise approached the cold, hard ground right outside the crater. As Iraklijs explained, the crater bottom itself was actually too rough for a safe landing, so in the last kilometer or so he tilted the craft to guide it to a very flat patch of glassy rock near the cliff-face. In the final few meters, the auxiliary chemical rockets, which lived in the shadow of the fusion nozzles, helped soften the landing.
CLANG!
Was the sound the landing legs made as they contacted the hardness below. Iraklijs removed the helm for good and stretched as applause resounded from the cabin. "Alright. What now, Spots?" he gestured with his metallic hand.
The bquaa coiled up. "Driver-doctor Yangchen, prepare the rover and wait for further orders. Pilot-researcher Iraklijs, Scout-surveyor Ekut, Guard-excavator Zkeh, follow me outside for preliminary surveys. Equip yourselves, of course."
Dorji bowed and climbed down the ladder into the depths of the lander.
Iraklijs and Ekut finally suited up in the appropriate coats; the former's coat was beige with fluorescent yellow stripes, and the latter's was fluorescent blue with black stripes. Both were fluffy. At least the garishness had a reason here; being visible even in the dimmest of conditions while being, for example, buried under rubble.
The five explorers climbed out to the top of the Tortoise's shiny shell. Their magnetic boots kept them firmly planted even on the smooth surface of the lander. Everyone was wearing respirator masks covered by scarfs over their mouths and snouts, leaving only their eyes uncovered... with the sole exception of Tsip, who did not even put on the hood.
"...by the sspirits, how are you not ssuffocating...?" Zkeh tilted his head.
"We kseldani don't need to breathe. The CO2 feels nice."
The three suns were high in the sky. The points of this triangular asterism cast rays of bright light through the frigid atmosphere that reflected from every translucent rock and every slit-like crevice. This scintillation of distorted light shifted ever-so-gradually, dancing across the reflective plating under their feet. The ground itself, at least in the immediate area, was smooth, as if melted by intense heat or perhaps polished by millions of years of wind. Some minute cracks disrupted its uniformity. In the distance to the east, an intricately-shaped mountain range jutted out of the glass. The peaks seemed to split into smaller peaks, which split in turn. The north and south were merely a plain of the same kind as the landing location, while ten meters away to the west was a sheer cliffside. An incessant wind howled through their ears. The same wind as on Nyu-Chukotka or even the Gobi on Earth. Gas is gas.
Iraklijs actually held out Altair high above his head, letting it see the world in many more colors than the cyber-eye could. Blue blinking. "Curious..."
The drop was actually fairly smooth by crater standards, more of a steep slope than anything. Beyond it, the bottom of the crater stretched out to beyond the hazy horizon like the bed of a dried-out sea. And indeed, even from the vantage point it seemed too rough and cragged to make a landing there not a total suicide mission.
After recording visual and textual observations alongside instrument readings, they stood there, taking in the view. Tsip and Zkeh even sat down and began relaxing when Spots cleared their throat (sounding like an asthmatic elephant in the process). "The anomalous site is somewhere below. Get down."
Right as they said so, the whir of the lander's lower bay doors briefly interrupted the shrill howl of the winds, followed by the clunk of the rover deploying.
The SandRunner rode out from under the Tortoise. It had an even simpler design, essentially appearing as a pickup truck with four broad treads for wheels and an egg-shaped cabin. Above the translucent visor of its windshield were 'eyebrows' of headlights, currently turned off. The bed in the back was covered with a cloth roof.
Everyone climbed down the ladder to the ground and entered the rover through an airlock. Yangchen waved from the driver's seat. "Where to?"
"Just ride across the rim until you find somewhere we can go down safely," Spots chirped.
The SandRunner silently treaded over the smooth glass. It did not leave noticeable markings, and actually slid somewhat with every turn.
"...please ride a bit further from the cliff," Ekut said.
"I won't see any kind of pass then," Yangchen said. "Trust my skills."
They mostly looked out of the windows, leaning back on the comfy faux-leather seats.
"This place is even prettier than I expected," Iraklijs said. "A shame nobody can really settle it... actually, maybe that's for the best. It'll stay this way, untouched in its beauty..."
Meanwhile, a storm was building outside the shell of the rover. Debris began bouncing and rolling across the plain, ranging in size from baseball-sized natural marbles to round boulders half the size of the rover. Yangchen swerved to avoid larger ones, while crushing the smaller ones under treads on purpose.
The rover screeched to a stop. "Looks like a shallower slope," the driver said. "Kind of a weird almost buttress-like outcropping thing. Spots, what do you think?"
Everyone turned their heads to the left. Indeed, there was a broad ramp of glassy rock that sloped downwards at a roughly 45-degree angle, as opposed to the 75-degree angle of the rest of the rim. It looked almost like a children's slide in a playground, except its surface was pitted with holes and shards, facilitating an easy grip. "...what even caused this?" Iraklijs asked.
"Who knowss," Zkeh said. "But perhapss the godss ssmiled on uss."
Spots waited, making sure nobody else had anything to say. "Go down."
Yangchen gently pressed down the gas pedal, looking straight ahead as he steered the rover towards the entrance-slope. The treads were perhaps a meter away from the ramp, when...
"BEEP! BEEP! IMMINENT COLLISION FROM RIGHT! BEEP! BEEP!" echoed the rover computer's voice.
The archeologists had just enough time to see the car-sized boulder hurtling at them, likely launched off some unseen hill. Just enough time to scream and have their lives flash before their eyes. Altair blared like an air-raid siren.
WHAM!!