A subsurface scan showed even more similarities to the old world they’d grown to hate.
“We’ve found a good second home for that worm, though,” Randi noted. Lots of caverns, vast openings beneath the surface. You could get lost in there fast.”
“Yeah, but not much water in them, interestingly enough,” Nagel pointed out. “Most of the interior caverns, some of which seem to go way down, appear to be relatively dry, and those figures there just might indicate some running water even at this point. That’s how you survive the cold cycle. Ten to one the caves maintain an above-freezing temperature that’s either constant or nearly so. The surface is only comfortable half the year. Odd, though.”
“Huh? What?” Queson responded.
“Well, caverns of that signature tend to be sedimentary rock, easily eroded away over time by the underground rivers and streams, and certainly all the makings are there for a classic setup. Note, though, that there are no such caverns within a hundred or more kilometers of the coastlines. They’re away from the oceans and in the highlands no matter where you look. There doesn’t seem to be a major change in bedrock composition in most of those cases that would explain it. The planet’s got a heavy but mostly solid core that’s maintained the gravity and kept the atmosphere, but a lot of the underground water doesn’t seem to obey the laws all that well. It’s probably scrambled data from all this interference, but on the face of it it seems like as many of those deep rivers are flowing upward as down slope.”
“Water does not run uphill. Even I know that,” An Li commented.
“Precisely my point. Either these readings are wrong, or the signals are being distorted before sending back, or we have here a good example of the repeal of the law of gravity.”
“Water in pipes or under pressure can flow up, down, or anywhere at all,” An Li pointed out.
“Plumbing for a race driven from the surface? Interesting idea, but we’re getting heavy organics but nothing that would suggest a civilization or even a big colony that would justify building works like that. If your aliens are down there, then they’re probably long dead or reduced to a primitive existence. This is a planet you can survive on, it’s not one you ever want to try and live and work on if you don’t have to.”
An Li settled back in her chair and looked at the passing parade of the dismal, cold world below. Suddenly she sat bolt upright. “What the hell was that?” she almost shouted. “Go back! Go back!”
“What? What did you see?” Nagel and Queson both prompted her.
“A structure! I’d swear it wasn’t natural! Cap, can you back up the video ten seconds at a time?”
“Will do,” the captain’s voice responded, and the visual segment began the backing up. An Li was almost ready to admit that she’d been hallucinating when, suddenly, it showed up again, and this time they all saw it.
“There! Freeze that!”
It did look very much like an artificial structure, but not for humans. It also gave off virtually no power signatures, meaning either that it used a power system unknown to them and therefore unmeasurable or, more likely, that it was a derelict from times long past, covered and then uncovered by the shifting sands.
It was a huge ball shape, perhaps 300 meters across, sticking out of the sand. It was light gray in color, and all over its surface it had short probelike protrusions. A closeup didn’t reveal much more about it, but it did reveal at least one clear breach of the hull or exterior or whatever it was. A jagged hole, half in the sand and possibly anchoring it there.
“It’s nothing natural, that’s for sure,” Nagel agreed. “And I doubt that it’s much of anything from any kind of ancient Kasparian civilization. That leaves the obvious, boys and girls. We’ve just discovered our first-in-history, honest-to-goodness alien spacecraft.”
“Yeah. Too bad we ain’t in the salvage business any more,” Sark growled, tongue a bit in cheek.
“He’s right,” Queson noted, not echoing the humor. “There’s a lot of potential down there, but it’s not what we’re here for. If you look at the size of that thing, even the Stanley isn’t big enough to handle it whole, and we don’t have aboard all the equipment to break it up even if we knew how to do it properly and save what’s valuable. If, that is, we could figure out what was valuable. No, we have to plot it, mark it, and go on, I think. When we can stabilize that wild hole and turn it into a genhole, if that’s possible, then it’s possibly the most valuable thing here. Until then, it’s more valuable if others come to it.”
“Man! Goes against all my instincts, though!” Nagel sighed. “Damn! Even I would love to go down there and look through that ship.”
Queson wasn’t so enthusiastic. “Yeah, that’s right. None of you have ever talked to an alien close up, have you? Still, you got to wonder.”
“Huh? What?” Nagel asked.
“That’s been down there a while, You can smell it as a long-term derelict, an ancient shipwreck. Sure, you wonder if any of ’em survived, and, if so, did they manage to set up something permanent down there, but it’s a long shot. More telling is that it’s there at all, and that there’s good evidence it’s been buried by the sands and winds several times, and maybe baked and thawed as well on the sunward side. How many more might be down there, I wonder?”
“What? You think they were a colony or a military squadron or something?” Lucky Cross asked. “Don’t see that. Not out here.”
“No, no, I don’t mean that. I suspect they were scouts, explorers, maybe even some commercial vessel or a lone military one. I don’t mean how many other ships like that one might be down there someplace, hidden for now. Just the idea that we’ve seen the wreck of even one on the surface of the first world we looked at makes me wonder just how many ships from how many different races have come through here and not left. Remember how Li kept thinking of this region as some kind of trap? Maybe it is, either planned or just naturally one. Either way, it’s not a trap set for us, I don’t think. If the former, it’s set long ago for somebody or something very different than us; if the latter, it’s effective against just about anyone that comes here regardless of shape, size, or racial origins.”
“You want to go down there and have a look around?” Lucky Cross asked them.
“Not me,” Nagel replied, and, one by one, Sark, An Li, and most emphatically Doctor Queson also shook their heads “No.” With that weather and those caverns, their experience with the unexpected worm kept coming up as well.
“We could send Eyegor down,” An Li suggested. “That would solve a lot of problems at once.”
“Not a bad idea,” Nagel replied, only to see the hovering robot in the back area of the command and control center.
“I am not programmed to become an explorer,” it said, sounding no more enthused about going down there than the humans had.
“Ah, but what about your primary mission?” An Li pressed. “Look at the pictures down there! The first close-ups of the exterior and perhaps the interior of a truly advanced alien spacecraft. And who knows what else might be valuable?”