Sidereal Quest Read online

  According to Retho Capelsire’s calculations, the current planetary water crisis was obliterating millions of cycles of evolution. Life was on the brink. There had been a reprieve shortly after the demise of the planet’s ecosphere control network and subsequent firestorm the infused the world with renewed life. That all had begun to change in the last few months; it was yet still unexplainable – the planet’s atmosphere charged with volcanic pollutants snuffing out entire ecosystems. Mass extinctions were inevitable.

  Disenchanted, Retho left the roaming armored synapsids and their stalking saber-tooth shadows to their own ends. The hovercar jetted on a cushion of air across some grasslands of the plateau as Retho navigated a steady and familiar course toward the beach. Along the way, he past rivers running red with soil stripped from the barren hills after recent heavy rains. The swelling waterways had managed to cut a devastating swath through the quadrant's unique wildlife and plants. According to recent research, the scientists onboard the Pioneer Pod Four discovered that the native vegetation covered only ten percent of the quadrant. The majority of the central plateau was still a barren landscape; erosion in the quadrant was as serious as anywhere. Every time it rained, the waterways ran red with soil.

  Banking the 'Rover's Getabout away from the engorged riverways of the plateau, Retho guided the convertible aerofoil alongside a deep ravine carved into the western slope of one of the many mountains of the eastern sector. He cast longing glances at the approaching shadows. The prehistoric inhabitants who lived there also paid attention to solar orientation. The ship's environmental expert, a BioType Syntheform affectionately known as BeeTee, uncovered evidence that the long dead occupants of this alien planet had taken advantage of subtle alignments of the landscape for protection from the three suns that bombarded the surface at critical times of the planetary cycle. Realizing that a narrow ledge in the canyon wall faced north, they had dedicated the entire site to the construction of storage units, digging small pits in the dirt and debris fallen from the overhanging roof of the rock-shelter. They lined the pits with sandstone slabs bonded by mud mortar and roofed them with beehive constructions of sticks and mud. This enabled the aliens to store food (corn, beans, pine nuts, squash) for a long time in a cool, dry environment in the middle of a sandstone hotbox. The crew of the Pioneer 4 had considered this process as an alternate for foodstuff storage if the ship's food preservation system ever failed.

  The landscape unfolded around the hovercar as it skimmed further away from Base Camp. The meager tree cover to be found, consisting of lowlying junipers, pinon pines, and ponderosas, afforded little refuge from the black, jagged basaltic blanket. Not far below ground, however, were natural cavities that were oases of coolness. Lava tubes that had hardened around molten rivers of rock provided makeshift thoroughfares to those sanctums, into which the dense, cold air during the winter season settled and remained. While exploring these catacombs, Retho, Moela, and BeeTee had discovered ice that had formed, and depending on the cave size and shape and the location of its entrance hole, it could be preserved throughout a cycle.

  The Getabout glided onward into a topographical depression that was quite familiar to the young scientist. He had known this place, he thought, before the wild orchards had grown; when it had been part pseudo-jungle, part volcanic barrens around acrid mudflats. He remembered it when the only sign of life had been their little group at the crash site's base camp clustered up against the rising hillocks of land at the end of the narrow valley, truly little more than a fingernail gouge in the marble wastelands of eternal desert.

  Along the valley rim above a tributary of a local creek, Retho could see the results of his fossil prospecting. One of many sites he and the others had discovered was beginning to unlock this planet's history. In cuts and slopes, erosion had laid bare a bed of silvery gray volcanic ash -- the fossil-bearing formation -- sandwiched between layers of sandstone. It had been there he had discovered it, first of many gems.

  He had been doing a routine scanning of the quadrant, dropping down to the streambed to explore one more gullied escarpment when suddenly high above his head he saw the skull, gleaming white against the weathered ash of the ravine wall. Finding the bank too steep to climb, he backtracked to the rim and dropped to a narrow ledge for a closer look. It was a baby rhinoceros’s skull about a retem long, perfectly preserved, its big teeth glossily marbled with the dark chemicals of fossilization. Retho suddenly remembered how his hands had trembled with excitement as he lasered the soft ash away from the skull. To his joy he found it joined to a string of neck vertebrae running back under the hill. He had stumbled back to Base Camp with, for once, a good excuse for being late to supper. "I've never seen anything like it," he told the others. "The whole animal could be there."

  The next rotate's digging had uncovered a bonanza: Not only was the baby rhinoceros intact, but the articulated skeletons of three more rhinos, including a full-grown adult, also extended back in to the hill. There was a bone hunter's dream come true. In river-deposited layers, such as the sandstone above and below the ash, whole skulls are a rarity and full skeletons almost unheard of. Further testing of the ash bed yielded twelve more skeletons from an area no larger than average living quarters.

  Although the fossil mammals, which consisted of rhinos, equines, cameloids, and others, all apparently belonged to previously named species, the new skeletons were by far the most complete remains of those creatures ever unearthed. Rarely found parts such as tongue bones, cartilages, tendons, and tiny bones in the middle ear all survived in exquisite detail and in their correct positions. Such small and fragile parts, as the tendons of a turkey leg, only partly calcified in life, and survived primarily because no action of water, wind, or earth movement ever shifted them after burial. Fragments of fossil birds were rare in rocks of this age, so it was likely that the skeletons represented totally new forms from the ash bed.

  Retho mused to himself as he drove through the small valley at the cardinal joy of paleontology being the thrill of discovery -- being the first to see a new fossil. He found it funny because of the irony -- being the first to tell whom? Still, he remembered how Moela, Capel, Dara, and he had savored that special moment. Relished the time finding fossil feather impressions, finding a bird skeleton complete with small polished pebbles in its gizzard, porous bones of an unborn calf inside an adult rhino skeleton, extracting fossil grass seeds from a rhino's throat cavity, and unearthing the giant tusk of an elephant-like Gomphotherium.

  The fossil quarry had been abominably dusty. Whenever a slight breeze lifted the powdery volcanic ash, they had to put on dust masks. Ash permeated everything. It was prickly and irritating to the skin and it ruined scanning equipment and surveying instruments. Most of the rhino skeletons were crouched with legs either tucked under their bodies or lying on their sides. A few had the ribs scattered where the gases of decomposition had caused bloating and explosion. Yet the overall impression was of a large herd of animals peacefully at rest.

  So, what had caused this massive death? It had to have been something quite sudden and without notice. That was what frightened the Aidennians. This planet was known to excel in producing such phenomenon that ultimately led to being life-threatening. The first encounter with this bizarre, alien planet had been immediately after Retho's life had been shattered forever.

  In the System Star Cycle of 6752 A.T., on planetary rotate .0719, the probeship Aidennian-System Transporter Saarien had been launched from Orbiter Spacedock Aidennia One bound for the Outer-System world of Mira-IV with orders to proceed with colonization. The Saarien ambushed less than ten rotates out by a Tauron Death Squad.

  Retho and his family had been in stasis when the attack on the probeship had commenced. Awakened amid the Saarien's demise by the mission pilot Major Nicraan Matasire. Retho's eyes opened from suspended animation onto a surrealistic vision of hell. Even now, as he sped across the receding boundaries of the alien desert in the hovercar, Retho could still imagine seeing
the Hibernation Center's air filled with smoke and hearing the cacophony of despair: the wails of klaxons, the crash of imploding sections, muffled weeping from his awakened family.

  All that Retho recalled in those desperate moments of fleeing from the burning probeship's bowels in the Pioneer Pod Four were two thoughts that played across his sanity: Do not think, do not feel...

  As Retho reviewed the memory, those two connected thoughts surfaced again; and, with some sadness, he found that he still could not think nor feel in reflection to his emotional status on the incident. To Retho it was meaningless. Irrelevant. All destroyed. Feelings were the most irrelevant of all; Retho was beyond emotion. In his mind, he lay dead beside all of his comrades, especially the Elders. He missed them the most -- for, they raised the offspring, nurtured the offspring, trained the offspring, and passed on to the offspring the wisdom of their kind. It was in trying times like this that Retho thought about them. They would know what to do, and he wished that he could go to them for council now.

  The Elders were to have guided the Pioneer Pod colonists in their first cycles of their isolation away from The System. They had been familiar and loved figures, but now they were dead, killed in the Saarien explosion, and could offer their advice no more. The Elders and fellow Aidennians that had been massacred in the Tauron ambush, their bodies consumed by flame, still echoed hauntingly in Retho’s mind.

  The bitter clarity of the Saarien's end filled his mind just then. The mammoth supership had exploded module by module like a small sun. Retho remembered allowing himself to be blinded by the light.

  That kind of blinding light filled Retho's vision again as the flatlands gave way to the buckled, cracked surface of a lava field. Sulfurous smoke and fumes boiled into the air as the lieutenant snapped back from his reverie. Bubbling pools simmered around him. Retho let the hot breezes blow his au-burn hair into a ragged mane around his aquiline face. His eyes stung reddened and smoke and grit stained his cheeks.

  The ground shook as a distant geyser of scarlet lava shot up and looped back down like the mating plumage of a flamebird; to burble beneath the planet’s crust. As an air displacement shock wave bubbled out across the plain, a plume of smoke rose like a towering anvil into the sky. The volcanic soot powdered the speeder’s windshield and dulled the reflective alloy of the fuselage, reducing the energy-absorbing abilities; yet Retho pressed forward, stinging eyes intent, gritty brow furrowed. The ash and smoke would color the suns-sets with flaring oranges and reds.

  From his slightly elevated position in the hovering Getabout, he studied the mottled terrain with its black rocks freshly formed by cooling lava, orange-and-brown smears that indicated oozing sulfur compounds. He circled the raw blast crater and was amazed to note the extent of the destruction. The titanic explosion had knocked down countless monolithic rock formations, flattening them like crushed pebbles for a kiloretem around.

  The overall ecological impact was incalculable.

  Retho reduced the hovercraft’s speed and landed on a small patch of level ground outside the active lava area. Magma continued to percolate from beneath the scabs on the terrain, flowing out like hot pudding. Steam plumes rocketed into the sky whenever the viscous ooze encountered surrounded pools of standing water.

  In one swift movement, Retho climbed out of the convertible speeder and gathered his pack containing needed equipment. The chaos around him seemed to exhilarate the scientist within.

  The air was oven-hot on his face; each breath dried his mouth and seemed to sear his lungs. Drawing in pursed-lipped breaths, he trudged across the sharp rocks that were still hot; testing the resiliency of his boot soles. The sound envelope was a background roar around him. To one side, a bright splash of fresh lava flowed like spilled blood across the blackened earth.

  Undeterred, he reached the edge of the molten river. Staring directly into the fury for a long moment, mesmerized by the awesomeness before him before he got to work. Unshouldering his pack, Retho opened it and removed a piece of stowed equipment. The device was a probe that resembled a small toy rocket with miniaturized fins at its base that mimicked bent legs, sharpened to points; balanced atop its slender shaft was an elongated gold ellipsoid filled with technology.

  He switched on the probe’s remote scanner and recording hardware. After activating its force-field generator, which projected a shimmering protective sheath around the mechanical device, he gently tossed the probe into the air. It arced up and then plunged into the hot, scarlet current; then it dove downward.

  From his pack, Retho removed a contact screen and activated it. Picking up the signal from the probe-device, he monitored its progress through magma as it proceeded deeper into molten chemical constituents. The probe’s integrated analyzers allowed it to follow the intense thermal currents even deeper.

  While he continued to track the probe’s progress, Retho could feel the ground beneath trembling. All around him, the barren environment seemed to be shivering. On the hand-held contact screen, alarming indications of rising pressures in the planet’s core flickered in graphic glyphs. Each display reading revealed an inexplicable radioactive shift was occurring far beneath the crust. Elements were converting, creating strange mineral instabilities.

  But, how? He had to know…

  Another convulsive upheaval churned the lava river. Magma levels dropped, then bubbled up again in a fresh burst. Retho was astonished when the molten rock abruptly changed color, as if a vat of dye had spilled into it. Instead of an intense orange and scarlet, a gush of some new mineral compound appeared – a bright neon blue seeping into the flow like a spreading stain of pus. Retho was a novice geologist, but he knew he had never seen or learned of anything like it. Then the thermal currents swallowed up the blue, and the lava ran red again.

  The dutiful probe swam deeper and deeper, into hotter and hotter territory. On the contact screen, the readings became even more damning. The situation in the mantle was worse than he had feared.

  With determined touches, Retho gave the probe further instructions to extend its analyzers to their limits. Just as he had input the commands, the contact screen flashed with static as the signal vanished. The probe programmed to continue until the extreme temperatures terminated it.

  Retho had known he had sent it on a suicide mission.

  There was a moment of remorse for the device’s sacrifice, but it had served well. The vital, yet baffling information it had gathered showed that something unimaginably powerful but inexplicable was shifting deep beneath his feet. The larger question was to determine whether this was a fascinating curiosity or an impending planetary disaster.

  Just from the preliminary glimpse of the probe’s transmitted data, Retho guessed that this problem was too large to ignore. He knew he more than likely would have to pull his sister, sire, and even the podship’s environmental specialist cybernaut into the effort of discovery beyond himself if the scale was as great as he imagined. Even though Retho was more of an environmental scientist than a geologist, more theoretician than engineer, his insights would be vital to the investigation.

  Fumaroles and geysers continued to hiss around him, blurring his vision. All served to remind him of the changing face of the area; all more reason for him to get on with the rotate’s itinerary and get back to Pioneer 4.

  Storing the probe’s data into the contact screen’s memory core, Retho closed the tablet and returned it to his pack. Shouldering the bag, he turned quickly and retraced his steps back to the parked hovercraft.

  Once secured in the car’s driver seat, he powered up the levitation engines. It lifted into the lava field’s buffeting thermal currents. As the craft hovered away from the stark and dangerous plain, he saw another bright flash of blue; the new form of mineral magma burbling up from the planet’s depths.

  It only took a few rote turns before he could see the dunes of the beach. Rounding over the beachhead’s crest, the sea spread to the farther horizon, cool and blue, with long gentle swells that steep
ened into surf as they ran up toward the land. Beyond the beach, the land was green here; shrubs and mossy-looking plants patchily sprinkled around. The primary yellow star and its twin rose high in the sky, flooding the ocean with reflective brightness. The red supergiant, companion star was low on the horizon behind Retho as it continued its course toward the ‘night’-side of the planet; the three suns gave the ebony-sanded beach a pinkish tint.

  The hills cliffing the beach descended only slightly into a rolling plateau that went on until they reached the bluffs that overlooked the sea. A few hundred retems down was a narrow strip of beach, with the breakers surging in, it was there that Retho immediately spotted Moela's makeshift camp.

  With a wince, Lieutenant Commander Moela Darasiress squinted her dark brown eyes, held her nose with a free hand, and gasped for air. While the planet lost it oceans, it still maintained a sea. Stumbling over the kelp-strewn beach, she quickly undid her field kit; preparing to take biocoder readings for a liver and stomach scan. Eight whales lay dead or stranded up ahead of her on the blackened sands.

  Glancing at the biocoder's miniature screen as the small hand-held device's warble changed, Moela said, "One is still alive." It was almost a sigh of relief than mere observation.

  Having no fear, the scientist moved to the face of water mammal. Its eyes were cloudy, milky blue, enormous. According to Moela's biocoder readings, the mammal had all of a few nodes left. Sympathetically, she stroked the flesh, divining some meaning. The animal breathed with a forced respiratory inflection, mucilaginous air grating through its blowhole. It was struggling against the gravity that was causing its asphyxiation. The creature's tens of thousands of kilograms not meant to languish on a rocky beach, crushing its internal organs. Moela stood before the mute and winsome eye -- the size of her own hand -- trembling for lack of any remedies.