Chapter No.57. Shock and Awe.

We had just come out of hyperspace at a safe distance from a supposed Earth-like planet orbiting a K-class main sequence star that had been the destination for human colonization.

"This star is a K2-V class young star relative to our Sun and is only roughly a third of the Sun's luminosity," Janet said. "A planet at about 0.5 AU would be okay as far as radiation and UV light is concerned."

"I would think that a planet orbiting a young star would be subjected to more radiation as the star ages. Wouldn't that preclude it as a safe choice for colonization."

She shrugged. "I'm not sure why they chose it. Maybe it's because a K-class star ages slower than our Sun."

"Yeah, that make sense."

There wasn't much else to discuss until we got closer, but before we did, we found something that alarmed us.

"There is a sizable apace ship in orbit around the planet," Janet said.

"How soon to orbit insertion?" I asked.

"We should be there in two hours, sir."

"Scan it for possible weapons," I ordered.

After several minutes, I had a response. "I'm not detecting any signs of power generation or activity on that ship."

"I'm not detecting any sort of signals from the planet or the ship, sir," Natale said.

"Good but keep monitoring. We don't want to run into a surprise.

When we achieved a high orbit around an obviously wonderful looking planet with plenty of blue water and swirling clouds over land that was green with vegetation, Janet and Sharon went to work scanning for intelligent species or signs of humans.

"This planet is like an advertisement for a vacation location," Sharon said. "There is an ideal twenty one percent oxygen in its atmosphere with a low 0.02 percent carbon dioxide concentration. Its average temperature is in the high twenties centigrade, the weather appears to be stable, and there is lots of vegetation. I'm not picking up any signs of volcanic activity, but it's obvious that there was some because of there's lots of islands.

"What's the catch?" I said sarcastically.

"I found what appears to be one of those huts that we found on the first planet we visited."

"That would mean that the mission actually got here and sent a crew down to check the planet out."

"I don't see any activity down there, sir," Sharon said.

"How about the ship in orbit?"

"Nothing, sir," Janet reported.

"I think we'll go over to the ship first."

They didn't object to my idea. I chose Kali and Bridget to accompany me, but during our preparations for an away mission, Kali added a new wrinkle.

"By the way, I found a new weapon in the weapons' locker."

"Oh, really?"

"It's a plasma ball rifle. I'm surprised you haven't used it."

"I didn't think it would be necessary. That's a superior assault weapon. I never considered it as being needed on a planetary expedition."

"I think we had better take it on this mission," she said, her eyes exhibiting determination.

I thought about it and decided to accept her intuition, which has saved my life. "Okay, take it. I'll take a laser rifle."

She smiled, the kind of smile that signaled approval of my desire to be safe rather than sorry.

After we boarded the shuttle, I slowly maneuvered it on a course to a very large space vessel. Our shuttle was like a fly trying to land on an elephant that was running. The trick was not all that difficult, but it gave me an ominous feeling of insignificance.

Our main problem would be finding a way into the vessel, which was complicated by the fact that we had no idea where such an entry was.

When we circled around to the other side of the huge cigar-shaped vessel, we found a hanger door open.

"How convenient," I quipped. "They left the barn door open."

It was easy to move our shuttle into the big opening and set it down inside a large cavernous hanger. Several unused shuttles, which were larger than ours, sat silently in neat rows.

We had to get into space suits so that we could exit our shuttle and attempt to enter the ship proper. Getting out of our shuttle was easy, even in zero gravity, but finding how to enter the ship was problematic.

"Unless this ship still has power, getting inside will be difficult," Kali said.

"Even if it does have power, it's hard to know what we'll be faced with."

Kali floated over to what appeared to be an entrance. "There's a key entry unit here, but I don't know if we can get in."

Bridget floated over to her. "Let me see if I can scan it." She held a handheld unit up against the keypad, and after several minutes the door popped open.

I floated over to them. "Neat device you have there. Have you ever considered bank robbery as a profession?"

She giggled.

Once we were in the ship, we were able to slowly make our way to the main compartment of the ship, a cavernous chamber with hundreds of hibernation units positioned neatly around the oval chamber.

"Damn!" I reacted. "I've never seen this many hibernation pods in one place."

"Their status lights are blinking red, sir," Bridget said.

"According to COMA, that means they're terminal."

"I don't understand," Kali said. "If an exploration team went down to the planet's surface, why didn't they transfer all of these people down there?"

"I don't think we really want to know the reason, but we will go down and find out."

I didn't get a reaction to that. We spent time checking out all of the pods to make sure they were all blinking red. Next on the agenda was to find the command station and determine if it contained any data that would explain what happened here.

The command station was in an upper room above the hibernation chamber. It was a typical set up with seats around computer screens. Bridget was able to coax life from one of the stations and extract data from the main computer.

With that completed, we made our way back to our shuttle and returned to our ship.

Once we got back to the crew deck, Bridget wasted no time in getting her data block unit connected to our computer system.

While she was doing that, Kali and I spent time preparing for a mission to the planet's surface.

"I don't think we need to go in bio suits," I said. "We're not going to drink the water."

"What about the air?" Kali asked.

"Bridget can analyze that before we get out of the shuttle. It's not like we're going to camp out down there."

"The data from that vessel indicates that there was three hundred and twenty people in hibernation. The vessel didn't use antimatter to run the plasma fusion engines, so they never went into hyperspace."

"That means that they knew the problems associated with hyperspace."

"Yeah, after they wasted the crews of three missions," Kali said.

"No use crying over spilt milk," I said. "I have a bad feeling about this."

No one refuted my warning.

The time came for going down to the surface. Janet and Sharon had not found anything that would suggest a threat, so Kali, Bridget and I boarded the shuttle and prepared for the surface mission.

The trip down was difficult because of buffeting winds, but I managed to land the shuttle near the hut in a clearing, which was obviously cleared by the large ship's crew members.

Bridget used a handheld analyzer to test the air. "Oxygen is at 21 percent. There is no evidence of any bacteria or viruses. There is a trace of hydrogen sulfide, but it's not at the toxic level."

"Yeah, I thought I smelled rotten eggs."

We entered the hut, which looked a bit weathered, but found nobody home. I picked up a log and read it.

"I don't like this," I said.

"What?" Kali reacted.

"Their last entry mentioned some sort of monsters that came out of the forest. Nothing follows that post."

Just then we heard what sounded like a low growl. It caused Kali to power up her plasma ball weapon and for me to turn on my laser rifle. Even Bridget powered her laser pistol.

I peeked out of the hut and saw what looked like three large ape-like creatures, and they didn't look happy. The bad news is that they were effectively blocking our path to our shuttle.

"Looks like we have to shoot our way out of here." I turned to Bridget. "We're going to lay down a fire force for you to get back to the shuttle."

Bridget looked at me with wide eyes and nodded.

Kali and I came out of the hut with our weapons at ready. The beasts' growls grew more threatening. When they charged, Kali shot a plasma ball at the lead ape creature, literally exploding its head. I fired laser beams into two other beasts, causing them to fall.

Bridget made a run to the shuttle past the fallen monsters. Kali and I faced the problem of killing a bunch of them coming out of the forest. Running and shooting was the only way, but even though we cleared a path to the shuttle, I was afraid that more of them would attack the shuttle, preventing us from taking off.

The only answer was to set fire to the forest, which wasn't that hard considering the slightly higher atmospheric oxygen level. It effectively stopped the monster onslaught long enough for Kali and I to get to the shuttle.

Once aboard, Kali activated the laser system on the shuttle to blast more of the monsters coming out of the burning forest while I fired up the engines to ascend into the air. More of monsters slung what appeared to be spears at us, but as we gained altitude their primitive weapons were ineffective.

"Well, now we know what happened to the crew that came down here."

"Why wasn't it possible to spot them from the ship?" Bridget asked.

"My guess is that those creatures hid well in the thick forest."

"It's possible the crew that came down here were not armed with heavy weapons like we were," Kali said.

"Yes, and thanks to your premonition, we were able to get away unscathed."

"It's better to be go over prepared than not," she said.

"I totally agree."

When we got back to the ship, we checked in at the command station.

"What happened down there?"

"Not all that much," I said with a grin. "Kali and I had to fight a war with ape creatures, but otherwise it was not that bad."

"Ape creatures?"

"Yes, it's the reason the crew never got back to their ship, which ended up killing all of the people in hibernation. It's the reason that superhabitable Earth-like planets are not a good choice for colonization."

"We have as yet to find a suitable planet for that, sir," Janet said.

"Isn't that the truth!" I exclaimed. "We're batting zero, especially in trying to find out what happened to the billions of people on Earth."

"Does it really matter if we determine what happened to them?" Kali asked.

"Maybe not in the long run, but if it is an alien cause, we should be aware of it. Besides, we need more combat practice."

Kali smiled. She knew I was just kidding her. The others were not so sure."

"What's next, sir?" Janet asked.

"Let's go back to Earth. I have a feeling that the answer is there."

They were not as convinced, but it didn't matter. The answer was soon to be revealed.