The Incident at Kruger 60, Part 1 Read online

The thirty three days were over. It was reentry day. I prepped the computer programs so we could assume manual control after the reentry. Laura strapped into the co-pilots seat. Not that she could fly the thing if I had a problem but it was safe as any place. The computer took us through shutdown of the Alcumberie drive. The space outside the ship distorted itself, went thru a rainbow of color changes and then appeared normal, black, with thousands of twinkling stars. We had arrived. A small dot in the distance was our goal, Planet Kruger 60B-3. The third rock from the sun as it were. And one of the best sources of Ununpentium in the open regions. But a very long way from home, so not many miners came out this direction. You needed a solid ship, good spacefaring skills and a pretty solid ability to accept risk.

  “OK, that's it, we are out of the bubble. Time to kick in the main engines and bring us in.”

  “How long will that take?” Asked Laura.

  “About two days to reach the planet. Then less than half an hour to get to the surface. We'll put down on the edge of the day line, I know some good sites there for mining. Also its isolated, and we shouldn't be bothered by intruders...”

  “Like pirates?”

  “Yea, or worse.”

  “Sounds reasonable.” She looked out the forward cabin window. Our goal was a planet directly ahead. “So, two more days then of not much to do? Correct?”

  “Hopefully. There aren’t any asteroid belts in the area, but the computers will track and monitor incoming objects. We might have to make a course deviation or two. Other than that no, it's going to be another two days like the last four and half weeks.”

  “OK”. She picked up the light tablet, and went back to the book she had been reading for the last week. Shelton's History of the 21st Century, a classic work, if you wanted to understand how we got to where we are today.

  I released the safety straps and headed to the galley for coffee. A few minutes later I returned to the captain's chair. I tuned in the the tones.

  “So, what do you think those things are anyway?” She asked me, putting the light tablet down.

  “Hmm, good question. I'd say they are probably some kind of main communications channel. Maybe. Or who knows, maybe they are listening to music, or movies or who knows what.”

  “Yea, why is it no one can figure out anything about them?”

  “Another good question, sadly I have no good answer. Whatever they are about, it's a completely different way of organizing your thought process. So far we haven't had any luck really figuring out what they mean. Actually I want you to show me what you were doing in those notes about matching sounds to colors. That was pretty interesting. Maybe later on after we eat you can show me that stuff in more detail.”

  “Sure thing.” She smiled, and I noticed how red her hair was. Sometimes she really looked like Goldilocks with glasses. It amused me, really, simply not what you would expect traveling thru space.

  She went back to reading her book, and I dozed off. In fact I dozed on and off for quite a while. The time went by slowly, and after two weeks of storytelling and talking we were both ready for a break. Like I mentioned, space travel is basically boring. When it's good, that is. When it's bad it's far too exciting, usually in the wrong way. The interesting thing was I still felt comfortable around her. It can get really claustrophobic having another human this close for this long in space, but we seemed pretty compatible for this. That was a definite plus.

  As usual she cooked the meals, something she seemed to really enjoy doing, and we both did a lot of reading. Finally the warning beacon came on. We were entering the planets orbit. The ship fired its directional thrusters, to reverse our direction, and then the main engines to stabilize our position. We were now in orbit.

  “OK, little one, ready to go down for a visit?”

  She sat up and looked out the main window. In front of us was the planet, simply number 3 in the Kruger 60B star system. Grey and rocky, with tinges of red all over the surface. Terribly uninviting. Not a sign of water anywhere on the rock. Just a big gray mass hanging in space. “Yes, let's do it.”

  I locked in the new program, and we started our decent. The ride down was always a bit rocky, going thru the atmosphere. Not a really good atmosphere here, just methane gas, and some trace elements, but enough to cause us to pass thru a black out zone. The windows glowed orange and red for a couple of minutes and then we were in the thin atmosphere. I had the auto pilot set for a canyon on the edge of the night-day line. I'd been there before, and knew it offered a real treasure trove of the UUP I wanted. The ship adjusted itself on its flight path, and you could hear the dull roar of the pulse jets. Gradually the canyon came into view and our ship headed for the left side. At this point I took manual control, and guided her in. I Found a large boulder, about the size of a large building and put down behind it. From outside the canyon it would impossible to see us here. In fact unless you were right above us it was unlikely you would be able to pick up any signal of our presence at all. Especially, after I shut down all the comm equipment, and went into hide out mode. There simply wouldn’t be much telemetry to let anyone know we were there. I liked it that way, you didn’t run into people out here that often anyway, but usually it was just as well not to run into anyone at all, this far out.

  I switched the engines off, and started shutting down the comm gear. Then I put the ship into low power mode. Just the basics, life support, some electricity for general use, that's it.

  “So, I'd say we get a few hours sleep, then we can start with the mining.”

  “OK.” She answered. She put the light tablet up and climbed off to the bunk she was using.

  I followed her and climbed in the one below.

  The First Excursion.