it again?”
“Apples, wild apples.”
“Perhaps you can find some.
“I think I should…” Randall was stammering.
“I’m just joking with you Randall. I won’t make you go on the scouting party, just be quick on the repairs. We were wrecked by someone without even knowing who we were or what we came for. Maybe all they understand is war. They might not be able to imagine anyone being a friend, under any situation. What an odd thing to do, interspecies warfare. Can you imagine physically fighting within your species?”
“We’ll learn in the morning,” Randall said. “Let’s get some sleep.”
The sun barely peeked through the thick poison grunge, menacing and gloomy green. Three people, two men and a woman, stepped through the exit, and dropped to the poisoned ground below.
“What a gorgeous day…green. Imagine that?” Carl said sarcastically grumpy.
“I always say how glad I’m going to be when I walk on solid ground again but this is ridiculous.”
“Oh come on, it’s not so bad, at least we can breathe” Vicky said. “Come here for a moment Carl, I want to speak with you. Will you excuse us please, Trevor?”
Trevor nodded sheepishly unsure, but he knew the chain of command. Carl walked up to Vicky. They walked together a few paces, their gravity boots crunching the green fused rock underfoot. Vicky glanced over to him seriously.
“Listen Carl, the Commander is dying. No one knows this except the two of us. By the end of this planet’s cycle he will be gone. The blow to his head was too much. He is almost seventy, you know.
Carl shook his head solemnly, mostly using his eyes. “This is awful. I have nothing but respect for him, he was an honorable Commander. You will be Commander in his place, of course since you’re second in command now.”
“I don’t want it. I prefer someone else lead, you or Randall. I have too much work to do to get bogged down in the red tape of leadership.”
They stopped walking, letting Trevor catch up. In front of them was some sort of ruined building. Carl stared at it curiously; it was a long way down causing a stir inside of his stomach.
“This whole place is a natural bowl, one giant valley. See how the rock formation rises up like that on every side, it looks like this area took a few deflected blasts, nothing directly.” Trevor spoke.
They walked and wandered through the ruins, picking up stones and examining fragments of buildings. “I think this was someone’s home or business,” Trevor said.
“Really? Interesting,” Vicky answered.
“Look,” Carl suddenly said. “Over there, way down in the valley. Isn’t that something different?” He pointed in the direction he was looking.
Vicky gasped. “The white lights we saw from orbit.”
“What?”
Vicky looked up at Carl. “The white lights surrounded by the great broken bones of buildings. The Commander and I saw this area from a control room before the collision. I think that whoever sent that wrecked ship into us lives within the square of white lights, underground of course. I didn’t think we landed so close to them. They are so bright.”
“What is it?” Trevor said, coming up to them from another area of the ruins. “I’m basically blind without my glasses, what can you see?”
“Change your visor to match your eye structure.”
Trevor forgot about that function, he did so and was back to perfect vision.
“The ruins, the lights, it has to be where that ship that hit us was directed from.”
“Oh.” All three of them stood there. “Let’s go,” Trevor said. “There’s no way of knowing what we’ll find there.” Carl frowned at him.
“We don’t know what we’re getting into. There must be patrols watching us.”
“Probably watching the ship,” Trevor said. “They most likely know where it is, and how to destroy it right now. So what difference does it make at this point?”
“That’s true,” Vicky said. “If they really want us dead, we have no chance. We have no weapons at all, you both know that.”
“I have my side phaser,” Carl nodded. “Let’s go on, then. I think you’re right Trevor.”
“Let’s be sure to stay together,” Trevor said nervously. “You guys are walking too fast.”
Vicky looked back and laughed. “If we want to get there and back before we burn through our air purifiers, we must go fast.”
They reached the outskirts of the ruined city within the square lights at the bottom of the valley in the middle of the night, but no one could tell. The sun, cold and green, unchangingly hung over them with barely a ray shining through the thick green death, though the area within the square lights was unusually clear of the poison cloud. Carl stopped at the top of a ridge overlooking the ruins and a few of the lights.
“There it is. What’s left of it anyway.”
Not much was left. The huge concrete foundations which they noticed were completely destroyed old buildings. Nothing else remained, only the square of white lights, maybe two miles in diameter.
Carl wanted to spit in disgust at the destruction. “What a wasted hike a skeleton of a city, nothing else.”
“But it was from here someone sent that ship into us, and keeps these damned lights on,” Trevor mumbled. “Never forget that, remember the Commander.”
They walked in between ruined buildings, no one spoke a word. They walked in silence, listening to their own breath within their suits.
“It’s chilling,” Carl spoke angrily. “I’ve seen war and ruined cities before but they were decayed, and died of old age. This city was killed, it didn’t die, this place was murdered.”
“I wonder what the name of this place was,” Vicky asked. She began going up the remains of a stairway in one of the ruins. “Maybe there’s a sign? Some plaque or marker?”
“No there’s nothing here,” Carl said with his usual impatience. They didn’t call him the old man for nothing. “Come on.”
“Hold on.” Vicky bent down, touching a large stone.
“There’s an inscription on this.”
“What does it say?” Trevor asked. He squatted in the green dust, running his gloved hand over the stone. “Yes, these are letters, all right.” He took a translation module from a pocket in his suit and pressed the action button. Carl glanced over his shoulder. The module finished and holographically projected the translation over the inscription.
Maple Tree Retirement Village
“That was this city’s name,” Vicky said softly as the other two nodded.
Trevor put the module away and they moved on. After some time Carl said, “Vicky I think we’re being watched. Don’t look around.”
Vicky stiffened. “Why do you say that? Do you see something?”
“No, I feel it. Don’t you?”
Vicky tried to smile, “I feel nothing,” she turned her head. “Oh!” Vicky exclaimed as Carl reached for his side phaser in shock.
“What is it? What do you see?” Trevor asked with his mouth dry from fear.
“The droid,” Vicky said. “Look at that droid over there.”
“Look at the size of it. How is it that large?” Carl unfastened his phaser slowly. “That’s the control, all right.”
The droid was enormous. Pitiless and immense with six giant arms pointed out to the side and up at an angle. A mass of metal and blinking lights set in a huge slab of concrete and liquid metal. Even as they were watching the droid it swirled on its base, whirring loudly under the machine. For a few seconds the same poison gas in the atmosphere came from all six metal arms as it rotated position.
“It’s alive,” Vicky managed to whisper. “It’s watching us, listening to us.”
The droid moved again, this time counterclockwise as if performing a test. It was mounted so it could turn a full three hundred and sixty degrees on its base. The six arms spun a moment, and then went back to their default angle upwards.
“Who controls it?” Trevor asked.<
br />
Carl laughed. “No one, no one controls it.”
They stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“It controls itself, it also spews that poison everywhere on its own, probably timed.”
They couldn’t believe it. Vicky came close, frowning. “What do you mean it controls itself?”
“I think aggressive movement can trigger poison to release. I’ll show you, don’t move.” Carl picked up a stone and tossed it high in the air passing in front of the droid. Instantly its six arms twirled as the droid rotated in the direction of the noise.
The stone fell to the ground. The droid stopped, and then resumed a counterclockwise swivel while dropping its six arms.
“You see,” Carl said. “It’s alert to anything that flies or moves above ground level. It detected us as soon as we entered this planet’s gravitational field. I think that base it swivels on is a giant magnet allowing it to control all the flying debris around the planet, and the tubes around the base there control poison output across this sector of the planet, we don’t have a chance. It knows about the ship, it’s just waiting for us to take off.”
“I understand about the rock,” Vicky said to Carl. “The droid noticed it, but not us, we’re on the ground, not above. It is designed to combat flying objects. The ship is safe until we try to take off, then our end will come.”
“But what is the droid for?” Trevor asked them. “There’s no one alive here. Everyone is dead!”
“It’s a machine,” Carl said. “A machine programmed to do a job. And it is performing that job. How it survived the blasts and all this time, who knows? But on and on it goes spewing gas everywhere