Chapter 4: Communication Error

On the condition that they'd stay to the river, Peter and Alma went on to fly the spacecraft, keeping it low to the ground. The landscapes were intriguing, the hills turned to plains, and the plains turned back to hills. Every now and then Peter would look on the monitor to see the geological map they were creating, and it became more and more familiar. Eventually they landed, a small bank next to the river - surrounded by 60 feet cliffs.

"Wow, look at this. I've never seen anything so... natural." Alma expressed "I swear you were giving something in your database that's natural." Peter responded, before Alma snapped back "I meant personally, of course." The water flowed so smoothly, a few rapids both upstream and downstream, and the sun was low enough that the river was in shadow. Peter and Alma then took their time to get some more readings. Noting things down about the layers in the rocks and everything - for research. After about an hour or so they decided to head back to the mountains. Going back, they noticed more things than they did before, stopping here and there to get some more things noted down. When they got back, it was time to compare the data with the present world geology.

"Okay here Alma, all the stuff in digital form. Hopefully we should get a match fairly quickly..." Peter said, waiting to see if it could find a match. Eventually it did, linking the place that they did with none other than: The Grand Teton Mountains, Wyoming. It was a clear match, with the only difference being the movement of Yellowstone from directly north to north-east. Everything else was fine, even the Snake River looked very similar.

"Finally, a decent location. Now that we have that we can get that apatosaur back to where it... belong?" Peter opened the side door to find that where the dinosaur used to be was no longer there. Looking around the area, the also couldn't see it nearby.

"That must mean it's back at the place we first stopped, since we took so long there. We should go back." Alma suggested lightly. "Agreed, we just made things worse for it."

Getting back on the shuttle, the sun was going down and wasn't long before they'd have to go back. However they found no one at the location, or anywhere near. And things only got worse when the fuel went to critical, forcing them to land on uneven ground. Problem with this is that the ship would make multiple weird grinding noises when it touched down - like really loud noises, enough for anyone nearby to hear.

"Just great, can't get back for tonight, any ideas Alma?"

"We do have solar panels, but for them to work properly it's going to take all of tomorrow to fill up. It's not going to be a fun day tomorrow." Alma responded. And with that, Peter slept the night while Alma went around the area - a low-dense forest, in search of food. Tomorrow came soon enough, but with no where interesting to go there was not a lot they could do. At one point both Peter and Alma could hear something, but unfortunately they weren't able to catch up to whatever it was.

Night fell upon once more, and then day came up again. It was time for them to get back, but not before doing an experiment along the way. They stopped on top of a hill just south of the river, with a thunderstorm approaching near. Peter had the bright idea of using this weather to communicate back, figuring that the energy potential would be enough for it to do so.

The storm draped over them like a blanket, lightning drew out as usual, with rain following. Alma deployed the communications device as Peter started the fusion engines. At the exact moment an eye similar to the one before developed, only this time a massive downdraft of wind followed. It became clear that this one wasn't as stable as the one on the mountains, mainly because of the landscape. However it was on long enough for them to be able to send a message, saying that they were all right. Problem was it look so long they weren't able to send another message out before the eye collapsed.

"Well then, that's something then. Looks like it's possible to get things going. However we should probably do this back at the mountains. If there's a storm there then we can be high enough to use it properly, perhaps long enough to get a full on message through about what we found. However Peter I must say that if it's this unstable then we can't open it enough for the shuttle to go through, unless we use most of the energy in one go - but that's too risky." Alma analyzed. Peter knew it was right, and it wasn't long before the storm completely disappeared.

Another night went on, and then another day, and then another night, and then the final day. In that time Peter and Alma was setting up the main communications on top of the mountain, ready for anything to come over. They waited for three hours before anything could come over, and finally, a storm came along. When it came over Peter set the engines to 5% capacity, creating a storm similar to last time, albeit much more stable. "Seems good so far, try pushing it to 20%" Alma suggested, Peter did just that and the storm grew. But then all of a sudden the controls snapped and locked at 100%. This created a storm much more powerful than before.

Peter went out of the shuttle, and up to the mountain. Since the engines couldn't be turned off the only option would be to disconnect from the main device, at the top of the mountain. Normally it would be easy to go up this, but the storm, wind and rain made things much worse than it should've been. Eventually he got to the top, and managed to disconnect. But not before something fell through, nearly hitting Peter.

"Alma, you seeing this?"

"Seeing what?" Alma said as it rolled down, as the rain poured it hit the side of the river and created a landslide into the river. Peter couldn't make out everything, but swore he saw something bright for a second as the wave streamed down the river valley.

"Never mind. Thought I saw something for a second, I'm coming back down."

A/N: I know I'm late, and I know it's a short chapter, but a lot of things happened yesterday that made me unable to post. Don't worry though I have a lot planned for next chapter. Fun fact, the Clawtooth mountains were directly inspired by the Grand Teton mountains in Wyoming. When I found this out I had no idea that my previous story was going to be relatively true: there's an eclipse in August this year that's going over the Tetons, so that's something to enjoy if any of you live there! I found more stuff about the film too, but I won't reveal that for now.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter - and more importantly the story so far, there's much more to come. Let me know what you think so far, and as always... see you, in the next chapter. Bye for now!

Next Chapter: First Contact