An ebony dune sea rolled unending beneath the craft’s lights, its shapeless terrain merging into the stormy night-sky. It was obvious that the undulating sands harboured no life or vegetation. This was not the world Petersen had seen back at the pre-launch briefing so long ago on Earth. There were no rivers, no lakes, no forests, no prairies, nothing. Instead it was a world seemingly as harsh and lifeless as the void of space. Clouds of dust hung over the mountainous dunes, drifting and coiling as wisps of powdery soil blew from the ridges to increase the clouds in size grain by grain. Petersen manoeuvred the probe lower towards the hellish desert, its hull barely above the shifting sands. Rocky outcrops poked their way through the bland sand, their surfaces distorted and mutated like demons by the abrasive environment. These freak-like landmarks appeared to glisten in the dim moonlight as their unconventional escarpments had been polished smooth over hundreds, perhaps, thousands of years by the desert’s scouring breath.
Petersen flipped on the microphone. ‘If you are seeing this, Odin, I hope you’re going to tell me that this desert is only a small section of the planet. But I’ve a terrible feeling that this is the entire world’s true appearance. Do you copy, Odin?’
A blast of screaming static reverberated in the astronaut’s helmet before a shuddering, incomplete voice faded back and forth. ‘Siegfr… repeat… desce… Petersen!’
In response, Petersen fiddled with the radio, but his efforts were only met with another explosion of static howls.
‘Odin, do you copy?’ the astronaut asked. ‘Please respond.’ There wasn’t a hint of panic in Petersen’s voice or manner, he was far too professional, but it wasn’t far from the surface.
He now had one of two choices to make. Either pull back and abandon his descent or continue on. Perhaps he was wrong, and this desolate region was only a small part of the surface and maybe, just maybe, if he continued on with his journey the lush, green world he had seen would appear below him to prove him wrong. The dilemma reminded Petersen of his childhood adventures he would have on Lünenburg Heath. Every summer he would travel there with his family, exploring the sprawling wilderness. During the day he would wander off alone, playing and each day his adventures would take the young Petersen deeper into the heath. One day he ended up deep within a thicket, an island of trees in the grass and brush. The dense foliage and the tall trees disoriented the youngster as he stood in the intimidating forest cathedral. He cried out for his family, but no-one came. Eventually a forester emerged like a wood spirit. To the young Petersen’s eyes the elderly man looked like he had been carved from the same wood he harvested. The kindly forester had looked after him until his family eventually arrived. But before Petersen left the forest, the elderly man hurriedly pressed into his hand a small medal. As he wrapped Petersen’s little fingers around it, the old man put a single finger to his lips and winked. The youngster obeyed the old man’s advice and refused to look at the medal in his hands while he was around his family, but once he was safely back at the camp and inside his own tent. Petersen opened up his hand and found that it was a Saint Christopher medal he now possessed. Saint Christopher was the saint who protected all travellers and Petersen smiled as he opened up a pouch in his pressure-suit and pulled out that very same medal. It now no longer shone brightly as a dull patina covered the figure of the saint carrying the infant Christ on his shoulders. He had never shown the medal to anyone and since his circumstances had changed since that day, namely his association with the Nazi cause, it was an even wiser policy to keep its ownership secret given the Party’s persecution of the Christians. He gazed down at the medal and made up his mind to open up the probe’s throttle and maintain his course.
As Petersen continued on into the night he switched to the probe’s radar-scanner. The invisible signals pierced the cloud and darkness to artificially illuminate the landscape. The appearance of the desert slowly changed. Great cracks and fissures emerged; small, at first, but growing in size the further the probe flew. The fractures multiplied and concentrated like the surface of dry lake-bed until they eventually merged together into several immense canyons which burrowed deep into the surface. Over tens of kilometres, these canyons opened out into one single caldera whose breadth and scale was beyond anything that Petersen could comprehend. Beyond the caldera’s outer ridge its walls dropped away steeply, apparently right into the very core of the planet. Its jagged walls hinted that the crater had been created by some unimaginable cataclysm.
The astronaut operated a series of switches before him and brought the probe to a halt, its positioning jets spitting fitfully to keep the vehicle high above the caldera’s treacherous lip. At that moment he felt like he was before the mouth of a god whose terrible beauty was ready to swallow him. He rubbed his Saint Christopher again before engaging the engines and directing the probe over the outer ridge of the giant crater and down into its depths. An altimeter ticked monotonously as the probe dropped hundreds of meters until an electronic chime indicated that the probe had descended over five kilometres. Petersen eyed the radar to see if there was indication of how far from the bottom of the crater he was, but the radar’s sweeping arc became erratic and distorted. He tapped the illuminated scope hoping that this would bring the malfunctioning device back into line, but it was to no avail as the distortion grew worse and more pronounced.
‘Time to leave, I think,’ Petersen said to himself.
Despite the protection provided by his pagan medal, he decided to escape from the mysterious caldera and head back to the safety of the Odin. If the link between the probe and its mother-ship had been broken, as he suspected, he would have to describe in person everything he had seen, and it would be up to him to break the devastating news that Vanaheim was-not the paradise they had hoped for. How could they have been so wrong about this world? The images and data Petersen had seen in the lecture hall at Pennemünde along with the rest of the crew had been so final and precise – a world comparable to home. A second Earth. Everything they had brought with them in regard to supplies – farm equipment, shelters, even the finite amount of food they had brought – were all based upon the assumption that the world was life-sustaining; not this hellish wasteland. The next logical question would be what Petersen and his comrades do now?
Suddenly his thoughts were broken as the probe was rocked from side to side. At that same moment, every monitor, scope, light and switch died and plunged the astronaut into an unnerving darkness.
‘What’s going on?’ Petersen said. All traces of professionalism were fast disappearing. ‘Odin, if you can hear me I’ve lost all my systems.’
It was plain that his message had failed to get through. In desperation, he then thumbed numerous buttons, pressed numerous resets – all to no avail. It was as if the craft had been hypnotised by the planet. Its senses were now inert, disabled by the toxic embrace of the strange atmosphere within the caldera. Petersen felt the sweat pooling above his top lip, while his breathing resounded thunderously inside his helmet as he looked impotently at the useless display in front of him. The only movement he saw were the ugly clouds which still enveloped his little ship.
He started to pray. ‘Lord God in heaven, protector of the Fatherland, send thy sword to protect me from thy enemies. Let the Überführer’s strength course through me; his will filling my spirit and my heart. With thy powers let me smite all who oppose thy holy swastika and all those who wish to pollute my people’s blood. Cast thy holy light to show me the way, always and forever. Amen.’