Discovery (Part Three) (standard:science fiction, 1113 words) [3/8] show all parts
Author: Goreripper	Added: Nov 06 2000	Views/Reads: 2957/1903	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The spaceship Discovery finally arrives at its destination, and the people aboard are amazed at what they find there.

We came upon it at last, and a mighty cheer went up from all the 1900
research staff and crew who remained aboard Discovery. As we drew even 
nearer and the ship began to prepare itself for orbit, our cheers 
became amazed, awed silence. Hanging in space before us like a magical, 
living and huge bauble, glowing brightly so the stars beyond it were 
humbled into darkness by the glory of its vision, we beheld a jewel of 
deep blue and darkest green, frosted with wisps of stunning white which 
swirled and sprawled across its magnificent orb. 

"By god..." gasped a crew member near me, who seemed to have
rediscovered reli-gion in the sanctity of the moment. "It's beautiful." 


It was, but it was so much more. My mind reeled at the sight,
incalculable odds streaming through my awestruck brain at the speed of 
light. Not even in our most bizarre imaginings had any conceived such a 
possibility. It was as if some vast ga-lactic presence was holding a 
mirror up to our own world before us and we were looking at our home 
from far, far above. Some of us had seen this in the images captured by 
our research equipment, but most had rebuffed them as transmission 
errors. Now we were seeing proof that they weren't errors at all. Of 
all the strange and alien planets we have discovered, explored and 
colonised in the past three hundred years, never again shall we find 
such a gem as this. 

After long minutes, Professor Neffergi turned to those of us assembled
in the for-ward viewing area and spoke for us all the words which were 
so obviously at the forefront of all our minds, yet words which hardly 
needed be said. 

"This," he said in a voice which trembled under the power of what was
before us, "is the single greatest discovery in the history of 
mankind." 

* 

Not a single person was idle now. Discovery was moving into orbit and
there was real work to do. Probes and robots to be primed and launched, 
masses of data to be collected and analysed, and landing parties to be 
prepared. It would be three or four days before we would be 
sufficiently knowledgeable about the world below to send people there, 
but it was no longer just a waiting game. Professor Neffergi led my 
team. We would be the first to descend and step onto this alien place. 
Before this trip I had never been to another planet--or even into 
space--and again my excite-ment knew few boundaries. What an incredible 
honour this was to be for me, and what a paragon moment in my life. 

As we slowly completed an arc, the Professor launched a message probe
back along the path we had taken to arrive. Unmanned, these probes 
travel faster than any other vessel, and within a few years the 
announcement that we had reached our destination would be proclaimed 
throughout the galaxy back home. Some readers may even remember that 
announcement when it was broadcast on all channels almost the moment 
the probe arrived, and the sound of Neffergi's awestruck voice as he 
told of our incredible discovery. 

Late in the day we heard from the team which had gone to the small dead
world with the rocky ring. The team had landed, and found a desolate 
and harsh landscape of bitter dust and ancient rock and a thin and cold 
atmosphere of carbon dioxide. The stellar explorer had settled on a 
plain dominated by a sheer and immense cliff skirt-ing the foot of an 
improbably high mountain, so tall it was estimated it reached more than 
halfway into space. A more accurate measurement would be made soon, 
they said. For the moment they were examining the surface structure 
itself and the make up of the dark rocky ring which circled the planet 
surprisingly closely. The astrophysicist who led the mission, Dr. 
Cathariat, guessed it had been created when a low-orbiting moon had at 
last come too low and been destroyed by the forces of the planet. The 
ring appeared to be high in iron content, which is extraordinary. 

No sooner had her message reached us and been evaluated when images came
in from one of the other teams--images of a gigantic gas planet almost 
as large as such a thing could be. Thick bands of brightly coloured 
clouds raced over its torrid surface in definite stripes, and two 
highly distinct circular storms swirled across the face. It too 


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