The Last Droid
By
Geltab
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Copyright © 2015 by Geltab
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
The Last Droid
The Commander looked through the eyepiece of the Octoscopic lens. He adjusted the focus for his vision.
“It was a poison gas cloud with full coverage we saw, all right,” he said quickly. “Anyone who wants to look may look. But be warned, it’s not pretty.”
“Can I have a look?” Trevor the Geologist said. He bent down to look; he had to squint as he removed his glasses. “Oh my Gods,” he leaped back violently, knocking into Carl, the Celestial Navigator.
“Why did we travel all this way?” Carl asked, looking around at the others. “There’s no point in trying to land, we must go back immediately.”
“Maybe he’s right,” the ship’s Biologist mumbled. “Still, I’d like to have a look for myself.” Pushing past Trevor he bent down to see through the scope.
He saw a vast, endless green cloud, stretching to the edge of the planet. At first he thought it was a jungle of trees but after a moment he realized that it was poison, foggy poison, broken only by random mountain peaks jutting up at intervals. Nothing seemed to move except the green swirling clouds, everything was silent on the surface, dead.
“Yes, I see,” Randall the Biologist said, backing away from the Octoscope. “Well, I won’t find any wild apples down there.” He tried his best to smile, but his lips were frozen. Stepping further away he stood by himself, staring blankly at the ship’s hull.
“I wonder what the atmospheric analysis will reveal,” Trevor said.
“Not hard to guess,” the Commander answered. “Most of the atmosphere is now that poison gas. Weren’t we expecting this though? I don’t know why you all seem so surprised. A change in atmospheric color and density samples detectable from as far away as our planet must be a world ending event.”
He turned and walked off down the brightly lit corridor, all confidence on the outside. They watched him disappear into a command and control room.
As the door opened and closed behind the Commander a young woman manning the consoles turned to face him.
“What did the Octoscopic lens show? Any sign of life?”
“No life could possibly exist in that poison cloud of a planet. Even the water has been vaporized into that noxious gas.”
“Couldn’t they have survived underground?”
The Commander pressed a button and the floor of the room turned translucent revealing the surface of the planet under their feet. They stared down, disgusted at the sight. Mile after mile of unbroken green gas clouds was the only thing visible, with occasional ruins peeking through.
Suddenly Vicky jumped. “Look Commander! Over there under that overhang, do you see it?”
They stared together. Something was there, not rock, not a natural formation. It was square, a square of white lights, they looked like flowers on the surface of a green ocean. A ruined city? Government buildings of some kind?
“Commander let’s change course, we need to see what that is.”
The Commander agreed and the massive ship turned, changing its course. As they hovered over the white lights the Commander lowered the ship, dropping down only enough to get a better reading.
“Buildings, domes of white stone, it looks like the remains of a city.”
“Oh Gods,” Vicky murmured as she watched the ruins disappear behind them. In a square the broken ruins jutted in no particular direction now, like the giant broken bones of a long dead animal.
“There is nothing alive,” the Commander said breaking the silence. “I think it’s time to resume our previous course and head home. I know the crew wants this mission over. Tell Central Command what we have found, only ruins, and we---
He flew back into the opposite wall. A destroyed hull of a long dead ship in space had struck, sending them into a tailspin. The Commander fell to the floor hard, hitting his head. Papers, sparks and wires rained down on him. Trying to get to his feet a secondary explosion rippled through the ship. The ceiling opened, metal girders were revealed and bent in half. The ship shook violently, falling down as the engines failed, and then correcting itself as the automatic controls took over.
The Commander lay on the floor unconscious, smashed by a falling console. In the far corner Vicky was trapped under some debris, but mostly unhurt.
The repair crews were already hard at work in their suits sealing the cracked hull, through which life giving oxygen was leaking into the void of space.
“Help! Help!” Carl was shouting, “Fires over here, the console is melting through the floor!” Three of the repair crew came running. Trevor watched blindly, his eyeglasses were broken in the explosion.
“There is life here…how in the hell?” He said to himself, half in shock.
“We need a hand over here!” Randall said, running past.
“We have to land the ship now!”
The computer did its job landing without assistance and what was left of their timekeeping devices told them only that it was night. They were engulfed in the green poison that sweeps over the whole planet.
Carl looked outside, frowning miserably. “What a hellhole to be stuck in.” He continued his work trying to mechanically hammer the bent metal of the ship back into place. Everyone was wearing a protective suit; there were many leaks onboard, the poisoned atmosphere was still slowly finding its way onto the ship.
Vicky and Randall were sitting at a table in the medical control room, where they could review the ships inventory.
“Low on protein,” Randall said. “We can stretch our lipids but-“
“Don’t you wonder if anything is outside?” Vicky went to a window. “How hideously beautiful it all looks.” She paced relentlessly, her face creased with fatigue and worry. “Do you think an exploration party would find anything useful?”
Randall shrugged. “Nothing much. Maybe a few patches of cleared ruins, nothing of use. Anything able to adapt to this type of environment would be deadly to us.”
Vicky stood there, rubbing her forehead. There was a nasty gash there, red and swollen. “Then how do you explain…the lights? According to your theory anyone living here was gassed to death long ago. But why are the lights still on? Someone or something is still running a section of this ruined planet, maybe they sent that ship crashing into us? It could all be a trap!”
“They did knock us square,” the Commander said weakly from the corner MedBed. He grimaced as he turned towards them. “That worries me, the first impact put us out of service, and the secondary explosion almost destroyed the ship entirely. It seemed too well aimed, perfectly aimed actually. We’re a large ship with shields and collision detectors that warned us of nothing, we should not have been such an easy target.”
“True sir,” Randall nodded. “Perhaps we’ll learn the answer before we leave, if we leave. What a screwed up situation! All the facts tell us no life could exist;
the whole planet covered in a poison cloud, and no atmosphere.”
“Whoever sent that ship into us and keeps the lights on survived,” Vicky said. “Why not biological beings underground?”
“Now we’re talking apples and oranges. The metal of a ship doesn’t need air to breathe, the poison doesn’t get cancer from its own chemicals, and neither of those things needs food and water.”
There was silence.
“Our first paradox,” Vicky said. “When we’re rested I think we should send out a scouting party. While we explore the rest of the crew keep working on repairs to get out of here.”
“It will be days before we can leave,” Randall said glumly. “We need everyone here, working. Not out there lost in some poison soup of a planet. We can’t afford to send out a party now.”
Vicky smiled a little. “Why don’t you come along with me on the first team? Maybe you can discover what you were so interested in, what was