Compared to today, the Earth of nine million years ago was relatively warm and dry. In Alaska, there were widespread forests of pine, spruce, and birch. There was little tundra as is the modern day, and the steppe biome which would dominate the Pleistocene period was yet to arrive. Mammoths and moose had not evolved yet. Even larger herbivores such as the 16 foot tall tusked dinothere and the strange four-tusked gompothere roamed the landscape in the company of camels, rhinos, giant sloths, and three-toed horses like Hipparion and Protohippus. Saber-toothed tigers stalked herds of antelope and trihorned deer. The cats faced competition from a variety of predators: the giant wolf Epicyon, 150 pounds of canine ferocity; bear-dogs; and the swift-running short-faced bears with their long legs and stubby snouts. Humans had not evolved yet and would not do so for another 8.8 million years, though apes and monkeys were common in the tropics.
Pelagornis, a seabird with a 20 foot wingspan (the wingspan of an F-15 is about 43 feet) ruled the skies, snapping up fish with its long beak. Below the water, the monster shark Megalodon hunted a variety of whales that is unmatched in our modern era. Otters swam in the recently evolved kelp forests, and seals frolicked on the beaches.
But only one creature spoke, and reasoned, and learned.
Starscream returned to the arctic that afternoon and searched for a spot to set up his base of operations. He eventually chose a dry, wooded valley on the coastal side of the mountains. A quick flight down the vale revealed that it offered plenty of open space to pitch a tent. The upper slopes were thick with blob spruce, but the narrow bottom was almost treeless save for some ankle high younglings.
After walking around the clearing until he was satisfied that the area was sheltered from the storm winds, he drew a square red block out of subspace. He set it down on a flat spot, stepped back a few paces and transmitted an order to the computer within. The block began to shift and sprout as subspace panels disgorged their contents. Lengths of tough, weather-resistant coverings unfurled and pulled tight. Finally, the framework was complete, and a domed tent stood on the ground assembled. It was bright red and easy to spot from the air.
He had just begun to get out the stakes when he discovered that he had left the rock back at the plains. Cursing, he mashed the stakes in with his foot. When he was finished, he limped back a few paces and examined his work.
It made him feel queer to see his tent there, standing alone against the stubbly trees. Somehow it seemed to drive home the fact that he was preparing for a long term stay—the exact opposite of what he hoped for. At the same time, he was grateful for the familiar sight. He unsealed the flap and ducked inside.
The interior was cramped, but Starscream was used to it. He seldom used the tent, preferring to work out of doors and come in only when the weather was particularly foul. But for now it would serve as a clean, dry place to store his gear.
He ejected the material meant for long-term survival and stacked it against the back wall. The difference in weight wasn't noticeable in his robot form, but when he shifted to jet mode the saved weight would make a significant difference in the range he could cover between refuelings. He kept only what he needed for a week of emergency operation: the square of solarsheet, a single energon cube, a full toolkit, and a converter that could turn energy-rich materials into fuel in case of cloudy weather. After a moment of hesitation, he decided not to include the backup communications system. If he got into trouble, there would be no one to call for help.
The thought was not comforting. He would just have to hope that he continued to fare as well as he had in the storm.
When he was done he sat down on the floor and opened his log.
"I need to come up with a real plan," he said. "All I've been doing over the past few weeks is expanding the search area around the storm zone. But since I came back from the plains, I've begun to think I'm doing this wrong. Either Skyfire crashed in the storm, or he didn't. And since I already searched there, he must have gone down somewhere else. It's only logical that he continued down the north-south transit line."
He paused, considering. "Considering the amount of area along the transit, I believe it would be best to focus on only the most dangerous areas—mountains, storm belts, and whatever else I may find along the way. I estimate that this task could take several..." His mind said months, but aloud he said firmly, "...weeks."
He rubbed his aching foot. "I also need a new hammer."
The hammer, at least, was easily dealt with.
He and Skyfire had discovered long ago that there was no telling what one might need or want on a decades-long journey across the universe. It was best to be flexible and manufacture objects on the fly rather than trying to haul around every conceivable object they might need.
In accordance with this philosophy, one of the items in Starscream's long-term survival gear was a compact microfactory. For its size, it was disproportionately powerful; reviewers agreed that it was the best model on the market. He and Skyfire had tested it throroughly before leaving Cybertron and found it was capable of working with 329 materials, from metal to plastic to parchment. With it came a library of almost eight billion blueprints for objects ranging from the complex (a new foot) to the mundane (a hammer). The only limitation on the microfactory's capabilities was the materials it used, and for that Starscream had a matching materials lab that could refine metals, assemble chemical bonds, fuse glass and "much, much more" (as the brochure boastfully put it).
He hauled out the scratched up box containing the microfactory and lifted the device out by its handle. It was a rugged cube with flaps on the sides that opened up to become part of the base. If needed, the entire box could expand enough that Starscream could fit his wing within its interior—self repair was its main purpose. But to make a hammer, the current configuration would suffice.
He opened up the blueprint library and quickly found a simple steel hammer with a hollow handle. Smiling wryly, he customized the head with the words "Don't lose this one, you idiot." Then he transmitted the blueprint to the microfactory's computer and received the list of required materials—a small amount of steel.
"Let's see, that should be easy," he said aloud. "I thought I had some here from before..." He opened one of the subspaces on the microfactory's box and found a hunk of steel left over from a replacement hinge he had made a few months back. "Ah, there you are." He popped the steel into the factory's subspace pocket. "Have fun. I'll be back in a couple minutes." (I'm talking to inanimate objects, he thought. Then, ruefully, It wouldn't be the first time.)
He stepped outside and examined the sky. It seemed that he had brought a little good weather from the south with him, for things were clearing up. The low cloud bank that had snowed on him all week was receding towards the west, leaving behind a few wisps of icy cirrus cloud—it would be cold and windy up there. The sun was already drooping behind the white mountains that towered above the valley. Shadows were filling up the footprints he had left in the snow.
From nearby there was a long, chittering cry. He turned and found a minute orange-brown creature perched on the branch of a blob spruce near the edge of the clearing. Without moving, he magnified his vision and looked closer. It was an arboreal tree rodent with a long fuzzy tail and a thin coat of fur. He smiled.
"I hope you intend to be a good neighbor," he said. "We'll get along fine as long as you don't like gnawing scientific equipment." He watched the squirrel as it bounded around the branches, cheeping watchfully to itself. Suddenly the valley felt a little less lonely. It felt good to have another living creature nearby, even a little organic tree dweller.
He went back inside and removed the finished hammer from the microfactory. It was still warm in his hand, and he smiled at the inscription on the head.
"One less problem." He tossed it towards the box that housed the subspace cartridges. With any luck his plan to search the transit line would be just as successful.
At the time, it seemed to Starscream that his plan was perfectly logical. He would have vouched for the fact that he was feeling calm and reasonable.
In retrospect he would come to view the months that followed as an episode of madness. Perhaps it was because he wasn't ready to face the size of the task that lay ahead. Or maybe it was a way to express the bottled panic that was growing inside him. One thing was for certain: it smacked of a desperate desire for a quick fix.
He tore across the landscape, flitting here and there along the transit line, hunting for danger. In his mind, he was Skyfire, a unsuspecting shuttle curiously exploring a deadly obstacle course. He tried to envision where his friend would have gone, which features of the landscape would have intrigued him, what had gone amiss. Could Skyfire have gone to look at the wild goats that leapt among the rocks and slammed into the side of a mountain in a great red bloom of fire? What if he had fallen victim to a rockslide? Or could he have gone down in the trees, spinning out of control until his hull plating was torn off his frame like the skin of a flayed animal? Starscream played dozens of grim simulations over in his mind, and each one fed his sense of urgency.
Careless in his haste, he raced up and down through the mountains, trying deliberately to provoke hidden hazards. He let downdrafts grab him—and almost shattered himself at the bottom of a cliff. He flew through passes where the wind roared like a mad beast. When another storm struck, he flew in it for almost an hour, trying to understand what would have happened to Skyfire—all to no avail. The more dangerous the area, the more he sought it out and the harder he scanned it.
As he went south, he found other hazards to fling himself at—monster thunderstorms; volcanoes that spewed engine-clogging ash; blinding blizzards; and even a great tropical storm that swept in from the ocean and whirled inland before expending itself in torrential rains. He found that he derived an odd satisfaction from his near-death escapes. By risking his life to save Skyfire, he felt as if he were making up in some small way for how he had let Skyfire fly off into the storm alone.
Slowly the winter grew deeper. The darkness closed in tight around his little valley camp. For an entire month the sun did not rise, and "day" consisted of an anemic twilight that lasted a few hours before fading away slowly away into a melancholy blue darkness. Yet despite the lack of light, it was seldom truly dark. When the sky was clear and the moon was out, the snow caught the soft lunar light and seemed to glow blue. On those nights the aurora would light up the sky, a dancing green banner that unfurled itself like a supersized screensaver. Usually it would be green, but when S-Ds-58976 threw a solar tantrum it would writhe like a snake, and the green would dance with pink, white, red, and blue.
One day, when he was flying back from the plains to his valley camp, he tried to send a query to the tent about the local weather. There was no response. Puzzled, he assumed something must have malfunctioned in the tent's transmitter—only to discover that it worked fine when he arrived. It was only after a few days of bafflling testing that he discovered the answer to his difficulties: the brilliant red aurora roiling across the sky was muddling the signal.
Here was a new clue to the puzzle of Skyfire's missed call. One of their main planetary communication channels relied on skipping electromagnetic waves against the surface of the planet's ionosphere, allowing for communications beyond mere line of sight transmissions. But when the aurora was active, it muddled the ionosphere. Starscream remembered the crown of red aurora that had been pulsing around 283's pole the day they had arrived. Their communications wouldn't have been affected as long as they were transmitting directly to each other on a line of sight, but when the storm hit, Skyfire might have switched bands to compensate. The aurora would have thwarted any subsequent attempt at communication.
The theory still didn't explain the missing emergency beacon, but it did make Starscream feel like he had accomplished something. It was a small victory, and his thoughts constantly returned to it for reassurance.
As the winter wore on, his spirits sunk lower and lower. He grew tired of the arctic; tired of the snow and the dead, empty landscape and the foul weather and the constant darkness. It would have been easy to move his camp south, but perversely he stayed. It was a matter of loyalty, somehow, to remain near the spot where he had seen Skyfire last. "Anyway," he assured himself, "Spring will be here soon."
He held tightly to the thought. Somehow spring would make everything all right. When the snow melted, Skyfire's red and white hull would show up against the green and brown landscape like a beacon. It would be easy to scan huge swaths of ground from orbit and entirely new methods of search would open up. He would find Skyfire when spring came.
If he had guessed what spring would actually bring, he might have wished winter to last a little longer.