Discovery (standard:science fiction, 1985 words) [5/8] show all parts
Author: Goreripper	Added: Nov 22 2000	Views/Reads: 2912/2004	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The 'Discovery' crew begin exploring the surface of Arcana in a search for evidence of life past or present.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

still teeming with life, and if nothing else we would discover a wealth 
of hitherto unknown lifeforms. 

Over the course of the next few days, our team began searching for dig
locations. 'Discovery' had identified several possible fossil-bearing 
sites close to our base, but even with our most sophisticated scanning 
equipment it was still a matter of hit and miss. Computers could 
pinpoint potential areas of investigation based on their geological 
makeup, but there was no way to tell if they were profitable short of 
excavation. Fortunately for us, although our mission had not been quite 
prepared for the possibility of extensive palaeontology, we had 
sufficient equipment for the task and it was quickly deployed, 
examining every level of strata by sonic mapping and the occasional 
sample drilling. As I watched these machines moving around on the 
plain, carefully doing their analysis, I remember thinking that at 
least we had the advantage of knowing what manner of creature we were 
we searching for. Previous experience with alien intelligence had 
taught us that, in general, such life-forms were upright, well-evolved 
man-like beings, much like the ones we had seen in the video data 
collected from this planet. But of course also there were plenty of 
exceptions, such as the people of Cyndarial, whom we perceive as being 
squid-like and the rarely visited Stone Age tribes of Heliope, whose 
physical forms are uncomfortable and distasteful to our eyes. For us to 
be successful in our quest, we had to hope that the creatures who had 
once sent their voices and images across so vast a distance had left 
behind some physical remains, even if it were only a skeleton or two. 

Along with that was the realisation that this was a very old planet, and
most likely one with a vast abundance of organisms with a history 
stretching back to far beyond the dawn of our own time. We were likely 
to uncover the fossilised remains of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of 
individual species. It might well be years-or never-before we correctly 
identified the creatures we had come so far to find. 

The invertebrates we collected over the course of these first few days
displayed insect-like characteristics, having hard carapaces, three 
pairs of legs, eye clusters and the like, although others were arachnid 
in construction and still more were utterly unlike anything we had ever 
seen before. 

On the fifth of this planet's days, which were not dissimilar in length
to our own, we spied from afar a considerable herd of some quite 
graceful-looking large animals which appeared from our observations to 
be either mammalian or some highly developed reptilian form. Up until 
this time the only visitors to our area of operations had been the 
insect-like creatures and some small, fast-moving but inordinately 
curious mammals, several of which we had captured for further study. We 
had also seen evidence of avian lifeforms, but these animals were 
obviously more cautious of us, for none came near enough to be taken 
into captivity. So our exobiologists were constantly busy, capturing 
specimens, recording findings and studying and in a few days another 
explorer landed carrying more equipment and staff for them. By this 
time too I was becoming quite adept in moving around inside my biosuit, 
although by the end of each long, frustrating day as our excavation 
machines continued to find nothing I longed to be free of the bulky 
gear and lie unencumbered on my pallet at base. 

At last, however, there was a breakthrough. Some ninety spans from base
one of our machines found evidence of a relatively recent landslide in 
a high-sided canyon where the river dropped far below the level of the 
surrounding plains. The robot sent back images which appeared to be a 
skeletal form embedded in the stone. As I was the one member of the 
surface team with fairly extensive palaeontological experience, 
Professor Neffergi assigned me a small taskforce and with high 
expectations we set off to the canyon to investigate further. 

My team was rewarded almost immediately on arrival at the location, for
as we scaled down the rugged and steep canyon wall we found where the 
landslide had torn free, revealing what was quite evidently part of the 
fossil remnants of exactly the advanced animal lifeform we so much 
wanted to find. To discover such an artifact without having to dig for 
it is a deliriously happy event which occurs very rarely, and we were 
quite beside ourselves to think that this one had leapt out at us after 
so many fruitless days of searching. I sent a report back to the 
professor on the instant, and set my team to work. 

The day after that the stellar explorer landed nearby with the rest of
the original landing party and several members of the second group. By 
that time we had removed the fossil remnant from its burial place and 
laid it out on the plain. It was an extraordinarily complete skeleton. 
The porous rock in which it was set had evidently once formed part of a 
mud flat or river bed, perhaps an earlier coursing of that same river 
which now tore through the canyon where we had found it, and had served 
to preserve it brilliantly. 

To see this ancient relic of a forgotten civilisation stretched out
before me generated a sense of wonder and awe the likes of which I had 
never imagined. Here was the fossilised skeleton of a creature so like 
us, and yet so infinitely prehistoric that its connection to the vast 
and advanced culture we had seen on our computer screens seemed almost 
incongruous. 100,000 years had passed since this creature had last 
drawn breath, more than 60,000 years since the earliest known specimens 
of our own species, and yet it had existed in a society whose 
technological achievements matched those of our own only a few 
centuries ago. Spaceflight was known to these people, and there was 
evidence of the beginnings of interplanetary colonisation, but all of a 
sudden it had simply come to an end, as if it had never been. 

We were to find many more examples of these beings as our research teams
spread slowly over the planet in the years to follow, slowly 
re-settling and re-discovering this fascinating and distant world in 
the process. By the time the relief research vessel 'Far Traveler', a 
much faster and smaller ship than 'Discovery', arrived two years later 
there were seven permanent scientific settlements established on the 
surface and another on the ringed, rocky planet--now known as 
Daktar--that Guillamo Cathariat had so earnestly wished to explore all 
that time ago. 

It was on that tiny, ringed desert world that Guillamo and her team were
to uncover the most significant of all the remnants of the system's 
lost culture, and naturally when the Professor and I learned of that 
possibility at our dig site, which had proved to be considerably rich 
in artifacts in itself, we were on the first explorer to meet her. 

END OF PART FIVE 


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