The Wastrel Planet

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George S. Larson

 

         The ship did not land so much as fall. Roger One slammed into the sand with a force that drove a metallic groan through every bulkhead, the kind of sound no crew ever wanted to hear in open space—or on the surface of an unknown world. Warning lights pulsed red across the command deck. The equilibrium stabilizers had slipped out of sync, and somewhere deep inside the vessel, the Magna Overdrive System was dying by degrees. This was the nearest planet within range. Their only chance. Of all the worlds scattered across the galaxy, survival had led them here—to a silent ocean of sand beneath a pitiless sun.

         Roger One had departed Earth as a triumph, sent beyond the mapped corridors of space to survey the outer reaches of the galaxy. Its mission was simple in theory: capture high-resolution images of unknown planetary surfaces, gather soil and atmospheric samples, and send every discovery home. Bode’s Galaxy, in the constellation Ursa Major, waited as the ultimate destination, chosen from among billions for study. But now that distant objective seemed impossibly far away, separated from them by a damaged engine, broken communications, and a planet that appeared to be watching without eyes.

         Thirteen months in space had thinned the crew’s patience and sharpened every fear. Much of the voyage had passed in induced stasis, their bodies sleeping while the ship carried them through the black. During waking cycles, they clung to transmissions from home: Christmas greetings, birthday messages, ordinary voices saying ordinary things. Those fragments of Earth were more than comfort. They were proof that Earth still existed. When the signal faded, silence filled the ship like another crew member, patient and unwelcome.

***

         The telemetry swept the planet again and again, searching for movement, heat signatures, biological traces—anything. It found nothing. Only silica dunes rolled endlessly beneath the sun, rising and collapsing under winds that sculpted the landscape and erased it moments later. The atmosphere held oxygen and thin traces of carbon dioxide, enough to tempt hope and not enough to comfort anyone. The planet looked dead. Somehow, that made it worse.

          Then there was the silence from above. A solar storm had torn through the uplink communications array a week earlier, leaving COMMS dead and the crew cut off from Earth. Their findings sat trapped in compact memory cells, pristine and useless. No distress call. No status update. No proof that Roger One still existed. If they vanished here, headquarters would only know that the signal had stopped.

The engine failure was the true knife at their throats. If the Magna Overdrive System could not be restored, Roger One would never rise from the sand. The mission would end in failure, not with an explosion in the stars, but with dwindling supplies, rising heat, and the slow realization that no rescue could possibly arrive in time.

***

         Roger One had been designed by the finest minds of its age, assembled by hands that knew both artistry and mathematics. No vessel matched its promise. The Magna Overdrive System, powered by a hydrogen design whose fuel cells replenished themselves, had made deep-space travel practical at last. It had defeated distance or seemed to. Now, one small failure has reduced the grandest machine humanity had ever built to a wounded shell in the sand, proving the old warning true: for want of a nail...

          Commander Arkadus ordered the fault to be located and corrected. Operating manuals flashed across the screens while the engineers traced diagrams, cross-checked failures, and listened to the ship tick and settle around them. The system was complicated, but not unknowable. They had trained for this. Somewhere in the circuitry, behind a panel or beneath a shielded casing, was the answer. It had to be.

          The engine failure had never occurred before, not on the maiden voyage and not on any mission since. Arkadus himself had flown Roger One on its first flight, a voyage so smooth it had become legend among the program’s crews. He was concerned now, but not yet alarmed. He wanted the ship repaired quickly so they could leave this miserable planet behind and continue toward the journey of a lifetime.

It was the main thruster control module that was out of sync. Not a serious problem but fixing it could be dangerous. It required one of his men to leave the safety of the ship. The outside temperature reached 121 degrees Fahrenheit, hot yes but not too dissimilar to Earth. The spacesuit would keep him cool and comfortable.

            The crewman deftly hooked his tether line to the hatch opening and stretched out a length of safety cord. Despite the clunky boots, he easily maneuvered his way through the sand to the module control box and deftly removed the cover. He next replaced the faulty circuit board with a new unit. It turned out to be a simple job. The atmospheric pressure and gravity pull were quite like that of his own planet. Easy-peasy. Hopefully repairing the COMMs would prove to be a simple task as well.

          As he returned to the capsule, something caught his eye, something unexpected. The sunlight was now diminished; something was blocking the light from the searing sun. Before he could warn the rest of his crew, it happened in a split second. He watched in horror as a large pink shape came into focus bearing down on the ship. Getting closer until there was nothing left but darkness.

          The Commander and crew noticed the same phenomenon from inside the ship. A flesh covered blob was descending on the craft, turning day into night. A loud tearing, ripping sound emanated from the titanium outer shell. It was being crushed, scrunched into nothingness. The crew was tossed around, attempting to snug into their safety harnesses, but it was too late. The sound of the implosion was the last anyone heard, except for the silence of death. Everyone on board died instantly as the pressure inside the ship burst open at its seams.

        Roger One was gone along with Commander Arkadus’s dreams of seeing the wonders of the universe.

***

          “Look mama at what I have found,” the young girl squealed with sheer delight. “It’s a toy spaceship! Some kid must have lost it”, squeezing the tiny object in her hand.

        “Be careful honey, there are scorpions and other nasty critters out here. Don’t stray again into the desert. Watch your step,” her mother casually replied.

        It was the family’s first trip to the Mohave National Preserve, and they were immensely enjoying the visit, even with the hot sun bearing down.

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       George Larson is a retired special agent with the US Department of State, Diplomatic Security Service. He has written eight novels (DICK AVERY ADVENTURE STORIES) and sixteen short horror stories, many which have appeared in print or have been podcasted. He holds a BA in English.

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        Cynthia Fawcett has been writing for fun or money since she was able to hold a pen. A Jersey Girl at heart, she got her journalism degree at Marquette University in Milwaukee and now writes mostly technical articles about hydraulics and an occasional short story or poem on any other subject.