"There's always a siren, singing you to shipwreck. Some of us may be more susceptible than others are, but there's always a siren. It may be with us all our lives, or it may be many years or decades before we find it or it finds us. But when it does find us, if we're lucky we're Odysseus tied up to the ship's mast, hearing the song with perfect clarity, but ferried to safety by a crew whose ears have been plugged with beeswax. If we're not at all lucky, we're another sort of sailor stepping off the deck to drown in the sea."
Caitlín R. Kiernan. The Drowning Girl.
October 20th, 2137. Earth Central Time, in orbit around Unknown planet in the HR683 system.
The planet's coloration changed from reddish to brown to purple and finally black as the ship orbited towards the night side. The dust ring surrounding the planet turned invisible but not for the infrared camera of the Anesidora, which showed it bright green in the CRT screens of the cabin. Marlow and his crew were at HR683 system, 1.89 light years from Zeta1 Reticuli.
The thin to non-existent atmosphere made the planet below unsuitable for a colony, whatever atmosphere created by terraformation will be blown to space by solar winds, but minerals could be extracted by automated refineries.
The ship maneuvered until was locked in a parking orbit just outside the debris ring. Then they scanned looking for any radio signal.
-"I have the beacon, Marlow" Lewis said, seated on the Comms console.
-"Good, give me its position so I can recover it with the Bedstead" Marlow opened the airlock and maneuvered the Bedstead towards the dust ring.
-"Have you covered Boss, there's nothing on radar coming to you." Heyst told him. He was monitoring radar and infrared.
-"Meeks, how's everything on engineering?" Foster, who was piloting the ship, asked to the technician, in engine's room.
-"Everything is right so far. Sub-light engines doing well but we need to get them checked as soon as possible." He responded.
-"OK. I' m approaching the beacon, five hundred meters ahead. Dust getting coarser but nothing to worry." Marlow informed through radio. Fine dust particles stuck on the helmet's visor; as far as there was dust he was safe. In orbit, even an object small as a screw can make a lot of damage.
-"Visual contact any second" Foster told him.
Through his visor, Marlow saw a dim light twinkle. When he was closer, he could see the light came from a red and black box floating among the debris.
-"See it! It's an old flight recorder. Looks intact, maybe battery is almost run off, that's why the signal is faint." Marlow continued. He used the robotic arm in the Bedstead to grab the red metallic box and secured it in the vehicle's tool cage. "I got it, returning to ship."
Once the airlock was closed and re-pressurized, Marlow took the flight recorder to the bridge, he put it on the table and checked registration number. The little screen showed:
U.S.C.S.S. NOSTROMO
REG NUMBER: 180924609
CREW: 7
DESTINATION: SOL
PROPERTY OF: WEYLAND YUTANI
-"Property of Weyland Yutani, Is anything about the Nostromo in the files, Foster?" Marlow said.
Every salvage vessel had an extended database about missing ships, spacecraft junkyards, outposts and stations. When a ship got lost, it was added to the database, so any salvage ship in the area could search for it. Perhaps the most famous shipwreck was the Prometheus, one of the first deep space exploration vessels, lost with all hands including CEO Meredith Vickers, the daughter of famous engineer and innovator, Sir Peter Weyland.
-"The ship disappeared in 2122; it was towing an ore refinery from Thedus back to Sol. All hands lost without a trace." Foster informed.
-"Well, maybe W-Y will pay a good fee for the flight recorder; they'll want to know what happened to their ship." Heyst commented.
-"It disappeared because they never found the recorder. Now there's a trace, we could follow it and find the wreckage by ourselves" Marlow suggested.
-"Marlow, tampering with flight recorder data nullifies any reward the company is offering." Meeks reminded him.
-"We don't gonna mess with data, we will only extrapolate the path and search near the last known location of the ship." Marlow explained. "See if we can find her."
-"Sounds like a good plan, Boss. Even if the ship was destroyed by a reactor explosion, the shockwave will not completely destroy the refinery. That's a lot of scrap." Lewis said.
The crew connected the flight recorder to the NAV computer and downloaded flight path data.
The computer showed a line from point of origin in Epsilon Reticuli (Thedus) to Sol system, as the old flight path was, before the construction of Wright-Aberra fuel depot, 16 light years distance, and LV-44-40 at Zeta Doradus which was the new route. But the ship diverted towards Z2 Reticuli, and then turned again towards Sol, about a day in the new flight path, the ship disappeared.
-"Well, looks like it was under our noses all this time, let's start looking from the last location, there." Marlow pointed somewhere one light year Z2 on the screen.
The journey took them through interstellar space bound following the opposite direction of the Nostromo, there was no star, or dust, nothing, only darkness. They turned on all sensors: infrared, ultraviolet, radio, mass spectrograph, x-ray, even neutrino and tachyon detectors.
-"Radar and infrared shows no objects, no rogue planets either." Catherine said.
-"Spectrometer didn't detect any metallic body, only residual hydrogen and helium. The refinery is not here." Heyst informed.
-"Marlow, Neutrino detector shows an additional source from Zeta 2 sector." Lewis told him.
-"Run a scan of the peak energy and see if it's artificial. A damaged reactor from the wreckage could be the source." Marlow ordered.
Lewis typed orders to the computer and few seconds later, the results popped on screen.
-"Got it, the source is artificial. Possible sources matched those of fusion or antimatter reactor."
-"Let's find that wreckage" Foster exclaimed.
The ship headed towards the neutrino source, and when they were inside the solar wind influence sphere, they detected a new signal. This time was on radio.
-"We have an acoustic beacon, repeating every twelve seconds." Meeks informed.
-"Put it on." Marlow ordered. A pitching noise filled the PA, it sounded like a high pitch scream. "What the hell was that? It sounds like someone screaming in panic"
-"Seems like the dust ring and solar winds prevented that radio signal from being detected beyond the system. That's why even Sevastopol can't hear it." Marlow explained. "And as for the neutrino signal; well, our ships use tachyon leap-waves for superluminal communications, neutrinos are less efficient."
-"Okey, we'll approach the system at sub-light speed. It will take us a few days, there's a lot of debris here and we don't want get hit in something critical" Foster said.
- o -
October 24th, 2137. Earth Central Time. Somewhere inside the Zeta2 Reticuli system.
They reached destination about four days later. They were in orbit of a brown reddish gas giant, surrounded by a debris ring and three moons. Scanning showed two of the moons were earth-like sized, dense atmosphere, almost primordial, lot of dust. The signal was being sent from the one with deep blue clouds which obscured the surface. The other one had a clearer atmosphere, grey brown terrain, almost right mix of gases but lethal levels of carbon monoxide.
-"Zeta2 Reticuli, this system was discovered in 2039, when scout probes were looking for Earth like planets and moons. This planet's radiation belt forms a habitable zone on its own, and these moons, LV-223 and LV-426 are in the middle of it." Foster read the files.
-"The signal comes from LV-426, that moon covered in clouds, we can't see the surface."
-"Doppler shows rough terrain, Marlow" Lewis informed. "Signal's coming from a mountain range near equator."
-"Spectrometer data reads lots of CO2 and methane, Sulphur anhydride. It seems like volcanic activity." Heyst told the others. "Maybe it's not a good idea."
-"Anesidora can resist winds over 500 km/hour, that's a five class hurricane, but I'm not sure about the dust and corrosion." Foster replied.
-"Take us down as near as possible. There… that lava plateau seems enough flat for landing." Marlow ordered.
The Anesidora initiated descent, as there wasn't enough oxygen, the thermal shield didn't burned on reentry, but the bridge's temperature rose. The ship landed over its three retractable landing legs. Silica dust and volcanic ash hit the duro-plastic windshield.
-"Signal source is about hundred meters ahead." Meeks told them.
-"Everyone, gear up. Lewis, you stay here on the ship." Marlow continued. "We find that signal and the wreckage."
They headed for the ship's hangar.
- o -
