‘One other small point,’ the team leader added, ‘some enterprising crew member managed to bring some of their native food aboard, and we have begun analysing it so that we can provide them with a synthetic version.’ The Captain nodded his approval of the action.
The reply from Home Base came back as the Great Ship was approaching a dense ribbon of stars and their accompanying planets. The Navigation Officer brought the message up to the bridge and presented it to the Captain.
‘They suggest we find a suitable planet which will support them and not interfere with any other life forms present, and leave it at that.’
‘That may not be as easy as it sounds, but I’ll have a search pattern set up right away.’ The Captain didn’t sound too hopeful of achieving this, as most planets which were capable of supporting life, already had it well established, and the introduction of a new variety would be bound to have some effect on the indigenous species.
Several suns where checked out for attending planets of a suitable nature, but nothing was found during the first sweep.
The Great Ship had by now reduced speed considerably to navigate safely between the closely packed stars and their planets.
Although she was fitted with the latest type of deflector shields, the crew always felt that little bit more vulnerable when journeying in such densely packed areas, the main reason being the danger of strikes from stray meteorites, which seemed to abound in such places.
At long last they found what they thought might be a suitable planet, and a vision probe was sent down to check the suitability for colonizing.
‘As you can see it is mainly water covered, but there is a long strip of land mass with mountains and a high plateau.
A section of desert with a green belt next to the ocean looks promising, so send the probe down there so that we can see if it is habitable.’ the Captain was pleased to have at last found somewhere to place his charges, and because of the size of the land mass, it probably wouldn’t contain too many advanced life forms.
The probe skimmed along a few metres above the surface of the planet, sending back pictures of its journey in real time, its sensors looking for any warm blooded creatures as it went.
‘The only life forms detected so far are fairly primitive, and our guests should be able to cope with them.’ the team leader stated. ‘Also there are plenty of trees, of a sort, which bear fruit and berries, and some strange looking bushes with pods which look very much like some of the pods brought up from our guest’s home world.’
‘That looks a suitable place then,’ the Captain said, pointing out a small plateau beneath a high cliff, ‘and it contains some caves by the look of it, so they can make their homes there, that’s if they don’t live out in the open. Was there any sign of habitable constructions back on their home world?’ he asked, wanting to make sure he had set up the correct conditions for the small people.
‘The only constructions we saw were those left over from the previous race, and they were mainly ruins. I suppose the small people could have lived in what was left of them, but as far as I can tell, they made no effort to build of their own accord.’
‘All right, set them down and we’ll keep an eye on them for a while. As long as there are no predators and they can find food, they should survive. While you’re at it, have a few of the crew build a small enclosing wall from those rocks, and if necessary open up some of the caves, it may give them an idea of what to do for themselves when we’re gone.’ There was something the Captain wasn’t happy about, but he couldn’t think what it was.
The little group were herded back into the planetary shuttle, the ports being blanked over to save them from the terror of space flight, and the journey down to their new home began.
The Navigation Officer burst into the bridge with little ceremony, and rushed up to the Captain.
‘After you approved the landing site for our guests, we sent the probe on to see what else we could find, and I don’t quite know what to make of the results.’
‘Well, what happened.’ asked the Captain, wondering if this was something to do with the unease he had felt earlier and a search for another planet would be needed.
‘We ran the probe up over the plateau just beneath the mountain range on the far eastern edge of the land mass, and found the remains of what looks like a mining operation.
‘It may not have been, but there were several large buildings and a fair amount of equipment left scattered about in various states of decay. I would think it had been abandoned in a bit of a hurry by the way things were left about, and probably some time ago by the degree of corrosion on some of the equipment.
‘But that shouldn’t affect our friends because of the intervening desert area, I don’t think they would be able to cross that.’ The look of relief on the Captain’s face was plain for all to see.
‘I agree with that,’ said the Navigation Officer, ‘but something else happened. The probe was detecting a series of low level heat sources from the ground in the area near the buildings, so we lowered it almost to ground level, finally landing it to pick up some samples of the sand and small stones to check for radiation as a possible cause. The next thing we knew, the probe had been tossed up into the air, caught in something, and then we assume, crushed flat. It was certainly the end of the signals from it.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ the Captain exclaimed, ‘it was just ordinary looking flat sand and
