The Land

Of The
Dream
Casters

By

John Baxter
Chapter One
The sun was setting, dropping down out of view over the horizon,
a long way away, which could be seen over the tops of the trees
which sloped down to the meadows below, the fading sunlight
giving everything an almost autumnal glow as the golden orb
seemed to grow in size the lower it came down in the sky, and the
half still remaining in view seemed almost as large as the whole
circle had been a short while ago before it would eventually sink
away out of sight.
Stillness seemed to fill the air as the many creatures of the land
and sky settled themselves down for the coming darkness and cold
that was the night in these higher altitudes, almost like an air of
expectation of the cold and darkness that was about to descend on
the land.
Tolly sat, watching this daily spectacle from his specially selected
sitting stone, his one special place where he could sit and watch the
last of the suns rays vanish from sight.
He always liked to allow himself this short interlude of bonding
with nature after he had brought in all the animals from the land to
their pens, and closed up the barns for the night. It was like having a
reward for the work done during the day.
He liked to spend those last few moments before going into the
cottage admiring the wonders of nature as he felt he was at one
with the world around him, he was able to feel that he was at one
with the land.
As the last rays from the setting sun started to disappear below
the horizon, he stood up and walked over to the door of the cottage
that was, and had been his home, since he was born.
He was now ready to eat his evening meal with the rest of his
family, spending a too short a time enjoying the company of his
parents and siblings, before they were all off to their beds, all of
them well wrapped up in their animal skins against any chills the
night at this high altitude may bring, the skins being topped off with
even more fur blankets, as it can be very chilly up here in the
mountains even on a summer night.
Tolly was 11, almost a man when it came to his work on the
farmstead, and he had spent all of his life, from as far back as he
could remember, learning from his father and his grandfather when

he was alive, so that some day he would be able to support a family

of his own, take a wife, and possible have children of his own.
There was very little he did not know about the farm life, even for
one so young. He knew about crops and rotation, he knew about
livestock and the best stock mating to get the better breeds, but
there were also parts of the farming life he did not like to do, but did
them because they had to be done to survive. He hated bleeding a
piglet for market, or slaughter of a young calf for veal, but these
were necessary parts of his life, and gradually as he was growing
older, he started to accept it more and more as part of the ritual of
living.
Only one of the little jobs he really hated to do at any time, and
that was to collect honey from the hives, always managing to get
stung, so he always set it up by doing something more demanding
of his skills, so his sister who was sent to collect it, she never
seemed to get stung by the bees either.
Tolly always believed that the bees hated him, on a personal
level.
His younger sister, a real junior herself, said that they could sense
his hostility and reacted accordingly, whereas she sang quietly to
them as she puffed the smoke into the combs of the hives.
That night they all sat around their table eating the rewards of
their own labours, and musing about the many chores they had for
the next day, and possibly into the day after that, though in the
farming world it was unwise to plan more than a couple of days
ahead with any surety, and many alternatives were always planned
at the same time, just in case the weather changed, which it
constantly did in these parts without warning on these high
altitudes, and without any remorse too.
The snow in the winter could be up to the height of the roof of
their home in a matter of hours, and even in summer it could leave
a thick covering if the clouds came from the correct direction.
This is why the household always retained a good supply of food,
stored deep within the house, not for just the family, but for their
livestock too, all stored within easy reach should the weather turn
for the worse, which autumn or early spring often did.
It was late that night when snow, huge white flakes of it, started
to fall and kept falling, and falling.

Chapter Two
Tolly was woken by the voice of his father, seemingly discussing
something with his mother, though the conversation was too muted
to hear or understand.
It was still dark outside, so he began to wonder why they were up
so early in the day. Nothing had been mentioned at the table last

night of anything that required an early start, in fact quite the

opposite.
Tolly decided to get out of bed and see what they were talking
about, he felt refreshed anyway, and he could catch up his sleep by
napping later in the day.
But, its dangerous to go out there yet, said Tollys mother, Axin.
So, when do you think I should give it try it then? replied Gorun,
Tollys father.
I dont know, but I would at least wait until the sun had melted
some of it away first
We cannot wait any longer. The sun should be at its highest
now, and if I do not shift the snow above while its still soft, it will
refreeze into ice, and I will never be able to break through it if it is
too thick!
Axins face was sullen, as was Goruns.
Tolly was trying to make sense from what he had heard so far.
How could the sun be at its peak when it was still dark outside, and
why were his parents so stressed?
He entered the room as his father spoke again,
We still have no idea how much is above us, I mean, the barn
annex at the end of the house is over 26 feet high, and it seems to
be buried too.
Buried? thought Tolly.
He was starting to see why his parents were getting concerned.
The snow must have piled up in a sort of snowdrift against the roof
in the night, and his father would now have to dig through the snow
to clear the doorway, so they could get out.
He glanced in the direction of the door, and in the candlelight, he
could make out that it was already standing open, and a sort of a
tunnel had been started. Perhaps if he got dressed, he could help his
father finish the job.
Axin turned and saw Tolly standing there. She motioned for him to
come to her, which he did. She wrapped her arm around his
shoulders and gave him a slight squeeze,
Tolly, we may have to change some of the plans today. Your
father has tried to free up the entrance to the house, even gone into
the roof of the barn annex to see how deep the snow is, and its
deeper than the annex itself. It looks like we are having a stay at
home day till the sun melts some of it away.
Tolly shrugged his shoulders. It was not unusual to be snowed in
when the winter weather was particularly harsh, though he had
never known it cover the barn annex before, as that was three
storeys high, with an attic above that which housed all of the lifting
tackle connected to the main support beams for winching up the
bails of hay, straw, and bags of grain collected during the summer
months to their storage places.
It wasnt winter.

Gorun had tried three times to light the fire in the hearth, but it
kept going out, and the room was constantly being filled with
smoke.
Looks like the flue is blocked up too, he said, rubbing his chin,
So, well have to see if we can clear it from the outside.
Tolly, eager to please as usual, spoke up,
I can do that. I can go out through the top of the barn and over
to the top of the chimney, and clear it.
Axin looked at him as if he were mad. He replied,
Im the lightest, and strongest for my size, so I should be able to
crawl across the snow or ice, to free up the chimney blockage
without putting myself in any real danger
Axin still wasnt convinced. She still stared at Tolly as if he were
mad. Gorun looked thoughtful for a moment then he spoke,
The boy is right. He is the perfect person to do the job, and we
have to get that pipe clear or we stand a chance of all freezing to
death
They set to, and carried the climbing equipment taken from the
storeroom below to the attic of the annexe of their house that was
their barn, and opened the small loading doors at the very top. As
expected, the opening was blocked with a wall of snow, so they
knew they had to set about digging upwards, letting the removed
snow fall into the barn and onto the floor, to get to the sunlight and
the open air.
The snow fell steadily to the floor of this third level of the barn as
they tunnelled their passage upwards.
After two hours of hard work they had a tube cut out of over
fifteen feet high in the snow, straight up, and there was still no sign
of daylight, no sign of the top of the snowdrift.
By the time of what they gathered to be evening, they had
extended this tube to over 60 feet, and still the snow and ice went
on, and on, still ice, still hard, and compressed too, losing the soft
quality of snow.
The tube sides were melting at their contact, and then hardening
as ice around the shaft, so they were now using crampons to help
them climb up the sides of the chimney they had cut, working by
only the illumination of flickering candlelight.
They were exhausted, and hungry, and still no breakthrough.
They had to call it a day. They ached all over, and the cold was
biting into them too.
They climbed back down into the barn annex, and then down into
the cottage.
Axin had been able to make some food for them and the younger
ones in the family, using a sort of makeshift fire in the hearth. As
long as the melt water from above was kept away from the burning
wood, the chimney could hold the soot and dirt up in the ice above
till the thaw. It would be messy, but it would work.
There were two things they didnt know while they were under
this snow.

First was the effect that the carbon monoxide produced from the
wood burning would be having on them. They went to bed that
night, or what they assumed was night, feeling great, but tired, and
slept, and their metabolisms becoming considerably slowed.
Secondly, they didnt know that the snow and ice above them
was by now over 200 metres thick and piling up in tens of metres by
the hour.
It was as if it were the start of a blast freeze new ice age.
It came very fast, almost instantaneous as if in a blast freezer
where the moisture in the air was instantly turned to ice, and the
carbon dioxide was starting to become a liquid too, which caught
every one the occupants of the planet by surprise.
Temperatures plummeted. Life stood still.
The family below froze almost solid, very quickly, but they were
still alive. Barely. The carbon monoxide had slowed their metabolism
already, so the freeze merely slowed them down to almost zero.
The whole planet went cryogenic in under two hours, and
everything stood still.

Chapter Three
The autopilot display on the monitor desk started to show the
disengage command had been executed as requested by the lone
pilot on the bridge of the ship. This being the late shift, the whole
operations on board the craft were done by a minimal crew
The inertial dampers automatically engaged as the autopilot
disengaged, smoothing out the transition from light speed to
interplanetary drive, something that you could still feel in the pit of
your stomach as it happened, and made you feel a little queasy.
They were nearing their destination sector, and that meant they
could think about starting to get on with their real work, and not sit
about looking at each other having ran out of meaningful
conversation with each other eons ago.
The ship, a Trailblazer class Explorer I used to be a flagship class
for finding new areas of the Universe, but was now, in effect, a
mapping ship, looking for anything that could cause the many fleets
of shipping that may come along this way from colliding at light
speed with anything in the way, from super massive stars right
down to a one millimetre asteroid by pinpointing their position
exactly as held on the current star charts at that time, then tracking
the orbits, movements, direction changes, and gravitational effect of
these varied sized bodies for changes, the data being sent

continuously as a data stream to Central Navigation Control, from

where the star charts of all of the countless space traffic would be
updated automatically after the data had been verified.
It was a complicated business, and required great skill by the
mapmakers. The constant movement of the targets, and the
calculations and predictions of where they would be in at any given
time, while working within ridiculously accurate timescales
demanded not only great skill, but patience as well.
Where will a piece of rock the size of a tennis ball be, within the
local solar system, in six years, two months, eighteen days, at
12.55.18, standard time?
To have to repeat these predictions with near perfect accuracy on
thousands of targets took a great deal of computer analysis, and
readings. The whole mapping system in the known universe has to
be checked and updated periodically, which is why the predicted
paths needed to be accurate till the next update, which could be up
to twenty year.
This was what the crew of this ship were here to do on this
occasion.
They had to verify the data taken in this region from about 20
years before, and then have to confirm the accuracy of all of the
trajectories that had been predicted back then were still correct. Any
slight variations found would be logged, and the alterations,
however tiny, input. The system at the mapping centre would then
take an average if the movement were constant and predictable, or
allow for and predict any wobbles that might be found.
There are countless millions of possibilities and anomalies, each
one could be totally different from any of the others, but in the
majority of cases the larger bodies, like planets, suns, comets etc.
tended to abide by the laws of gravity, and therefore their paths
could be accurately predictable for most of the time
Certain celestial bodies were notoriously difficult to track and map
with any degree of accuracy, so the areas around where these
targets were had to have speed restrictions placed upon them, or
use of manual navigation only. The mapmakers were not miracle
workers.
The system itself was highly complicated, but it worked. As long
as these survey ships kept the data of the movements up to date at
any given time, and also adding new regions to the maps after
extensive exploration, then there was no reason to change a
working system.
The crew on board had all been briefed about this tour, and
expected the three months or so it would take to verify the positions
of all of the targets would be routine in its execution, minor
discrepancies noted, checked, then verification sent to Control for
Universal Update.
A routine mission, in a well explored area which this was, and the
data having been checked four times in the last hundred years or
so, with little or no variations to report back, it was unlikely that

anything major would need to be reported with any special tracking

calculations or predictions.
This mission however, was going to be anything but routine.
The ship was placed in its parking position, at known distances
and angles from known stable bodies. This practice allowed for the
accurate measurements to be taken in any direction over 360
degrees.
The crew got themselves into their working positions on day one
of the sweep, once the navigation crew had confirmed their actual
real time position of the ship, those crew people now working to
maintain that fixed position throughout while the readings were
being taken, acting as a sort of root position, and then the other
sections of the crew would then set about watching the overlays of
the then and now images shown on the huge banks and rows of
monitoring screens, simultaneously showing the current incoming
signals from the scope sensors which were highly sensitive
monitoring equipment, and then overlaid with the older data from
the mapping records to compare the old data from the maps and
new data streams coming in from the area around them, as they ran
in synchronisation of both position and time frame, with each other,
forming these overlays on huge internal screens for the analysts to,
basically analyse. They could scan huge patches of target areas in
minutes, and have results in an hour. Thats it in a nutshell.
Unfortunately, the Universal Laws of Nature tended to ignore
nutshells, and occasionally would present an anomaly that had
unexplained movements or discoveries detected that would warrant
further investigation.
Comets, with their extremely large elliptical orbits were notorious
for being picked up where nothing had been for hundreds of years.
The ship had been fitted with special filters on the scanners that
could detect and identify a wandering comet, so the crew would
take the action necessary to adjust the updates the comet trail on a
temporary basis till it passed through the sector. The data would
then be projected to the next sector where it would be visible, and
so on.
Other than mapping their movement, and updating their
presence, that was all they needed to do. It was not in the remit of
the mapping ships to take any action; their job was to report them,
map them, and move on. A different ship and crew would be sent to
the location of any anomaly if it needed to be investigated further.
A crew that specialised in these kinds of investigations would
then be despatched to the location of this anomaly to investigate
It was on day sixteen of the standard sweep by the current crew,
one of these anomalies appeared, distant, but still inside of the grid
pattern being mapped by the ship, so it had to be monitored.
It didnt show on the original mapping scans from 20 years
before, or any of the earlier, or at any point near to or even within
the vicinity of where it was now detected.

On the first scans, it appeared large, possibly about planet size,

and it was orbiting a sun in a regular pattern, except it wasnt shown
there before on the previous scanned or updated maps. It did not
scan as a comet as the orbit was too small.
This could have been an oversight by the previous mapping crew
all those years ago; the planet could have hidden behind its star
while the scans were made, then slowly reappeared after the
mapping ship had left, it having a very slow orbit around the host
star.
The captain decided to check on the orbit speed of this appearing
planetary body around the star, its sun basically, as it should have
been detected on the previous mapping expeditions, all of them. Its
orbit was predicted as about a year, point to point.
This planetary body would have been highly visible to the visiting
mapping ships for well over the hundred years that this area had
been mapped and checked.
As per the protocol of the mapping company vessels, these
findings were reported to the mapping centre as requiring further
investigation.

Chapter Four
Bruce sat back in his chair in his small office, thinking of the
lengthy journey away from home that he knew he was about to
embark upon. The call had just come in from their Head Office that
in one of the relatively quiet sectors out there the mapping ship had
detected a strange anomaly; something that should have been
detected at least four times in the past, and only now had it shown
up on the scanners.
Bruce loved a mystery, he felt thats what he lived for, to solve
problems, and with his expansive knowledge of the Universe we live
in, as well as his superior knowledge of astrophysics, this challenge
would be the same as all the others. Sorted in a flash.
The Head Office had sent out some sketchy details for their
mission, a planet sized object that had remained hidden from the
map scanners for four scans, over one hundred years.
Bruce knew that these modern map scanners were powerful
enough to detect an ant on something as small as a tennis ball, half
a light year away, so, it couldnt be a malfunction of the equipment,
and it had something interestingly different, something they hadnt
come across before, making it even more intriguing for his
department to get their collective teeth into.
The reports showed that this anomaly orbited the local star in a
regular pattern, a predictable pattern and speed of orbit, and should
not have avoided detection from the previous mapping scans. It was
tested and proved it was not a comet.

Its size, though only estimated quickly by the mapping equipment

from a great distance, appeared to be slightly smaller than our
Earth, though its chemical makeup was similar.
It was however, and this was what intrigued the whole team, was
that it was very, very cold. Just above absolute zero to be exact.
This was where things didnt add up and the evidence didnt
match the reality.
The distance of this planetoid from its sun star was considerably
less than the distance it needed to be to be at this extreme low
temperature that it was.
Lots of questions, and not a lot of possible answers coming
forward, so Bruce had applied personally to head up any
investigation on this anomaly as it seemed intriguing, taking with
him his team of his experts, with perhaps some experts in other
disciplines something like terraforming, atmospherics, those kind of
people as they would look at things from a different perspective to
him, so maybe we should take a ship out there to have a proper
look.
The lists of possibilities were almost endless, and the people at
the top were reluctant to commit to whether such a venture would
be worth it. Perhaps the mapping ship should map it, predict the
orbit, and leave. It wasnt a danger to navigation, so was it really
worth the bother? It might be passing through, and by the time that
was discovered as a migrant, it could be two hundred years away in
a future quadrant.
The mapping ship had worked out the predictions of orbit, and
there seemed to be a solid, steady pattern. It was further away from
its sun than Earth is from ours, but the sun/star was a lot bigger
than ours. However, it was still too close to the star for it to be a
frozen waste, which is what it appeared to be.
This anomaly, once solved, could possibly rewrite the textbook, or
at least a chapter, and this is what interested Bruce.
Was it worth the bother? Did he think the long journey out there
was worth the effort, and would their findings make little or no
difference to the mapping people?
A gentle knock was heard at the office door, and a young girl
entered, holding a file of papers. She approached Bruce, and
handed him the file.
The latest information we have on this rogue planet Sir, It was
Kira, from statistics, Just in from the radio room.
Bruce took the file, but didnt look at it. Instead, he turned to the
girl,
I know that you read all of the messages that come into this
facility, as you have to make sense out of it. This time you could
save me a lot of reading, Im going to ask what you think we should
do?
Sir, I am just an office junior, who compiles the data into readable
paperwork and passes it on.
Bruce held up his hand,

That was not my question Bruce interrupted, My question is,

do you think we should go, or not?
The young girl, now put on the spot had to think for a moment.
The Head of Operations was asking for her advice! Wow.
Sir, I think you should go. Planets that appear from nowhere like
magic, well, it isnt normal.
Bruce motioned her to continue,
And the way I see it, and read it, there are only three ways this
could have happened.
Either this planet hid behind something, or a series of
somethings over time to avoid our detection, or, its a ghost
holographic type of projection from somewhere else, bouncing off
something behind it, fooling the scanners into detecting a solid
object that isnt really there, or, and this is the most unlikely but the
best answer, is that it was never there in the first place.
Bruce looked up at her,
Thats how I read it too. Who was it in your department who
compiled and verified the data shown in the main folder, the one
you just brought me the update for?
That was me, Sir, she replied,
I ran the data figures sent from the mapping ships showing all of
the updates, over layered them, and then looked at all of the
possibilities, and probabilities, took the compiled results, narrowing
it down by removing what it could not possibly be, then detailed the
positive possibilities, and finally arrived at the report you have in
your hand Sir
Was it fully checked by the supervisors?
Yes Sir, including the very last possibility. They did not agree with
this final theory but left it in the report so they could possibly
debunk me for the whole thing.
Bruce opened the folder, and went to the back pages, reading the
last entries.
Do you think it is at all possible for this to be one of the possible
answers?
Yes Sir, I think so because all of the variations in the data would
fully fit the circumstances, so therefore become a possibility, and as
a possibility, it had to be included in the report.
Bruce smiled, and thought for a moment. She had refused to edit
out any of the possibilities even though the last one was perhaps a
little irregular. The key here was, she didnt edit.
He looked at her, and spoke, with authority in his voice,
I think you should also come along with us on this mission, you
have shown you are talented at data compilation, and you can think
outside the box, which to us is a good sign. You left something in
your report that others would have edited out as too far fetched. In
these investigations, there is nothing that can be too far fetched, or
should ever be edited out. We need all of the full facts
I also need someone I can rely on to go with us on the ship,
someone who can interpret the masses of incoming data streams on

the spot, and giving me genuine answers straight away, to save us

the endless waiting for the interpretation from back here at Head
Office, more than likely compiled by you anyway.
Miss, I need you on my team, and, sorry but I dont know your
name so could you leave it with my secretary as you leave
She left the office blushing, and flustered. She was only a junior,
not one of the bigwigs, and here was one of the top-flight chief
investigators wanting her along on a real mission so as to save time.
He didnt even know her name, but he still wanted her on a real
mission! Wonder what her supervisor was going to say when he
found out.
When her department found out about her sudden, almost
meteoric promotion, which they did before she had had the time to
return to the office, there were gasps of disbelief
She knew by the silence that greeted her that they knew.

Chapter Five
The last data had been received from the mapping ships, as the
Science Class Ship was making ready to leave their current position,
the data still indicated that the anomaly was followed a predictable
orbit around its star, and that it still seemed to be extremely cold for
the position it held within its own solar system. Other than that,
there was nothing new to take note of.
Bruce had gathered his team, handpicked for their knowledge of
the many scientific disciplines of space exploration, from biological
terraforming specialists to solar physicists, astrophysicists with a
few botanists thrown in. They only ever took a couple of zoologists,
as up to now, on any of their extensive travels, they had never
found life anywhere yet, well, not still alive anyway.
Astrophysicists made up about half of the scientific part of the
crew, all highly qualified in their specialist fields, but they could be
hugely boring as people though, as conversations on subjects other
than astrophysics were very rare indeed. They were the real geeks.
Their saving grace was that they were all very good at what they
did, taking masses of information and working on it to come up with
accurate results, first time. They were a very good team
scientifically, just not good general conversationalists, unless, of
course the subject was astrophysics.
This mission however, had a new team member, lifted from the
ranks of office junior in a data extrapolation office to the Head of
Data Interpretation on board the ship, reporting only to Bruce.
At first the scientists though Bruce must have had some kind of
mental breakdown, bringing along a novice, and a pretty distraction
she could be too, but, as they got to speak to, and interact with her,
the more they realised he had almost played a masterstroke.

Kira was brought into the team, not because of her academic
physics expertise, but her lack of it. She did numbers.
She had no axe to grind, no ego to feed, which, along with her
uncanny ability to see patterns emerge in the data from different
angles all at the same time, made her perfect as the mission
analyst.
Scientists are notorious at this high level for continuously trying
to boost their theories along with their egos, sometimes to the
expense of rational thinking, and sometimes at the expense of the
project itself, which would be extremely counterproductive to these
missions.
None of Bruces academics team was of this type, and always
made a point to work together, in tandem if necessary, even with
other ship crew if needed. It was quite normal to see the Head of
Astrophysics with the regular engineering crew keeping busy by
moving spare parts about for them on the lower decks, as he loved
driving a forklift, or the Head of Microbiology helping to flush
through the fuel cooling system with the maintenance crew as he
had this thing about pumps, any pumps. These were the guys they
were. No pretences, just team players.
Thats the way Bruce liked it.
The ride out to the district where the anomaly had been sighted
would take less than two weeks, as these Science Class Ships were
faster than the mapping ones.
These Science ships needed to be where they were going as fast
as possible, to investigate things that could be dangerous or
threatening to crews in space, whereas the map ships needed to be
able to hold their current position for long periods of time and this
required better use of manoeuvrability than need for speed.
It was on the sixth day out of the Home Space Dock they started
to approach the location of the mapping ships, picking up their
beacons on the ships monitors
The pilot dropped the ship out of light speed to interplanetary
speed gradually as they started to get closer to the location of the
space anchored mapping ships. They knew they had to go in slowly
as the engine thrust could easily push a mapping ship from its fixed
location, and for that they would not be popular.
By day eight, they were almost alongside the map ship, and the
latest data on this anomaly had been transferred to them to update
their computers. The usual pleasantries were exchanged over the
communication screens, but it was deemed unnecessary to board
each others ships because it would make no difference to the
mission.
Saying their goodbyes, Bruce ordered the Science ship to proceed
to the projected coordinates of the anomaly planet, which could take
up to a couple of days at this reduced speed. It did however; give
them all time to observe the anomaly using light telescopes instead
of radio ones as the planet grew is size, seeing what they could
glean in information, as they got nearer.

At about a day or so, the scanners, and the telescopes both

revealed a frozen planet, with a complete covering of blue white
colour, with no distinct features showing through the covering of the
ice.
The astrophysicists were expounding theories galore as they each
kept on second-guessing every new piece of observation or data
flowing in as they approached.
The facts that could be confirmed as facts so far was that this
planet was slightly smaller than Earth, but not by much, but slightly
larger than Mars. There was a solid core under the ice, which
indicated landmasses existed somewhere down there.
By the time the Science Class ship was slipping into orbit around
it, the preliminary studies were well under way.

Chapter Six
The first series of scans were taken over the first twenty four
hours, this planet rotating on a speed not unlike that of our earth, so
that the both hemispheres would be covered by the scans to allow
an overlap at each end to join up the information.
The ship was made to travel in the opposite direction from the
rotation, and the whole planet was competed in the twenty-four
hour cycle.
This information would then be used to plot the targets for the
planetary probes, which were of high accuracy to make sure they
were sent to an optimal position
The astrophysics people were like children with new toys,
checking every reading they could get from the various different
kinds of scanners being used.
The surface temperature was about minus 170 degrees C, which
was slightly warmer than when it was first detected. This sun must
be doing its work, slowly but surely.
The super depth penetration radar results were a little unusual for
normal layers of ice and snow on the surface. The rocks and solid
land underneath showed signs of erosion, both water and glacial,
with valleys, deep trenches, and what was possibly landmasses
having edges like cliffs.
A series of computer simulations were tried by the terraforming
people to get some idea of the best target sites for the probes to be
launched into, to find the best possibility of landmass, ocean,
mountain, and any other terrain that would help them establish
what this was and where it came from.
With the ships scanners working on a second sweep, the physics
scientists were able to start to analyse the first set of data from the
first sweep.
Gradually, they were to agree that it was a solid planet, covered
in ice, though it was not all water ice on the outside, but carbon

dioxide and methane, the latter of which could be seen as small

wisps of gas floating around its perimeter.
This planet at one time had had an atmosphere, though of what
constitution had yet to be determined.
There were some discrepancies about the core. The planet was
spinning at a regular speed, so as the surface temperature was
rising, the magnetic field inside the planet seemed to get stronger,
proving that the electrons in the core were moving, but it was
impossible to predict any more at this time. At these temperatures,
they wouldnt be moving very fast.
Without samples taken and analysed by the probes, it would be
difficult to determine the makeup of the ice, as in water or gas and
in what proportions. They were not allowed to probe and sample
until the scans in one of the hemispheres was complete. The
chemists would just had to wait.
Bruce allowed the scientists to take their time with their analysis,
as he wanted accurate results, first time.
Kira sat in her workstation pod, in a large wheeled chair behind
the desk. She had a keyboard and a track pad built in to the surface
of the desk, and her monitor was a huge screen, which filled almost
the entire domed wall in front of her. It was like sitting inside a huge
black pool ball, with a circular opening at the back. Sitting inside her
darkened black dome, she could concentrate on the screen, moving
from pixel to pixel, looking for any hint of a pattern other than that
of the background. Up to now she had found nothing at all. It was
white, and it was uniform.
In truth, she hadnt really expected to find anything yet, as the
probes had not been launched into the planet to establish its
makeup, and they would give the good hard evidence in the data
she was really waiting for. She had hoped that in the meantime she
might have found something that could affect a decision later.
By the end of the fourth full day, the preliminary scans had all
been taken, and the first three had all been analysed, all showing
roughly the same thing. A frozen planet.
There were very little differences from pole to pole in the
temperature, which indicated that the heat it was receiving from the
sun had not been acting on it for long, no more than about a month.
This was an impossible scenario, so, perhaps there was some
unseen and as yet undetected anomaly just under the surface of the
ice affecting absorption of heat. The suns heat was affecting the
surface as gas could be detected swirling above the vapour.
The questions kept piling up, and since the final surface and deep
scans were now complete, the scientists could decide exactly where,
and how deep to place the probes to get the information they
needed.
Each probe case was like a mini spaceship within itself. The outer
casing would house and then release the probes at given intervals
as it descended, usually a few feet apart until they were all

deployed. The second probe case would then carry on from where
the first left off, and so on.
On this occasion, they had decided that the probes would be sent
into three different distinct layers, and spread out within those
layers to be able to provide readings hopefully all the way down to
anything solid. Layer one would take in the upper atmospheric
regions, looking for gasses, and what percentage of which gas
detected made up the overall mix, the second to lower atmospheric,
for the heavier gasses, and possibly any pollution, and finally the
third, deepest layer, the solid land, from mountain tops down to
many metres below mean level, burrowing as far as possible
towards the core.
This would in effect put a small orbiting probe, albeit supported
by ice, every three metres from the top of the atmospheric ice to
static ones about five hundred metres into the ground of the land
mass.
It was like drawing a line on a map, from the top to the bottom,
and into the planet a little.
That kind of data collection would be highly accurate, and would
generate masses of information, which was why the general scans
had to be taken first, to select optimum target areas for these probe
spreads to give the correct, accurate, picture.
Six potential sites were originally picked, though one was
eliminated due to a slight doubt in part of the data which seemed to
indicate some very deep chasm, so that left five sets of probe cases,
fifteen in all, to be fired at the planet as each target came around
under the ship.
There was an air of expectancy as the first three modules of
probes was launched towards the first potential site, travelling at
ever increasing speed, seeding the ice with probes as it went,
further and further towards the hidden planet lying beneath.

Chapter Seven
As they expected, the raw data started to flood back into the
control room almost immediately, and at an ever increasing rate, as
the probes themselves were deploying, one every three metres of so
for something like six miles or so.
The upper atmosphere probes were now sending back the full
analysis of the components of the ice from the outer layer to
somewhere just under halfway down to the surface.
All of this data would take time to study, the chemistry and the
make up of the ice, some of which should be what was expected to
be atmospheric gases.
Kira sat in her pod alone, isolated from distractions, slowly
checking the probe data mathematically as it came in, searching the
streams of numbers and figures, looking to put a marker on

something of interest for her to go back to later after all of the

probes each had delivered their first analysis.
She had found nothing at all, ice and more ice. Mathematically,
the ice weighed more as the probe went down, but no real items to
trigger the curiosity.
The data from the second set of probes were now coming on
stream, and this more or less gave the same results as the first,
though the ice was of a greater density. She scanned, and scanned
the information for patterns. There were none. It was ice. The
chemists would do the breakdown figures of what was in the ice.
The third packs of probes had now been deployed, and had
reached the surface and the solid rock, and were still burrowing in.
Results were still streaming in, and the scientists were mulling
over every little detail they could find.
It appears that this planet, at some time had had vegetation on it,
the soil showing traces of what looked like a root system in the
samples.
It was something different however that caught Kiras eye as she
looked at the incoming analysis. Not sure, so look again.
Something was not quite right. It wasnt a huge mind-numbing
discovery, but it all seems wrong somehow. Something was hiding,
in plain sight.
She made notes from the data, and then proceeded to work out
the mathematical and logistical possibilities and probabilities,
coming to a conclusion that she needed to speak with the science
people as soon as possible so she could confirm her findings with
the additional technical information she needed, something they
would be more than willing to give to her, even if it was just to show
off their knowledge. She asked the questions, they answered.
By the time she had completed her consultations, what she had
now was more like evidence than data.
She returned to her pod, placing the new information received
from the experts into her framework, checked, and double-checked
it before sending for Bruce to join her.
When he eventually arrived, she explained what she had seen in
the data, how she had worked it out, and the conclusions she had
reached.
Her findings were certainly not of anything that could be
described as normal, but at the same time, using logic and the
gathered evidence, were impossible to refute. The possibilities said
they were wrong but the evidence said they were right.
Bruce suggested that she should make up a presentation of her
findings and bring it to the evening meetings that were held in the
ships auditorium after dinner every day. Tonight would be the first
meeting with the real facts about the probes findings, so this would
be a good time.
She started to compile a full presentation, with slides, pie charts,
graphs and diagrams taken from todays data, together with the
information she had been able to glean from the boffins, then

prepared the accompanying notes for Bruce to deliver to the

scientists as part of their report section of the meeting.
That night, after the evening meal, the science community from
the ship gathered to hear a presentation of a new concept.
Some kind of new evidence had been found, so they patiently
waited for the guest speaker to arrive. Information had been leaked,
and it was something big.
Kira positioned herself at the back, behind the scientific experts,
more or less in with the press people, and waited for Bruce to
deliver her findings to the experts, feeling a little out of place among
these true geniuses that surrounded her. Not the press of course.
The usual business of findings were outlined by the various
departments of the scientific community, the atmospheric gasses,
their makeup, all neatly checked and double-checked.
As the last of the spokespersons left the stage, the lights dimmed
and the overhead projectors came on. Bruce walked in from the
side, and onto the podium.
Ladies and Gentlemen. Today we started to work on the real data
that has been streaming in to us all day from the planet below us.
We can tell, with one hundred percent accuracy, to the microgram,
the composition of just about everything that makes up the planet
below.
There is, however, a small flaw in our method of analysis.
A gasp went up from the assembled community,
Oh, our spectral and gas analysis is perfect, but narrow in its
field of view. We can tell you what is wrong with your cow, but not
what colour it is
A ripple of laughter ran through the room,
To that end, some information was given to me today which I
think is extremely relevant, and we should act upon this
information.
To tell you all about this, I call upon the person who discovered
this fault to come up and explain to you all. I call upon Kira, my
assistant, to take the podium.
It felt like the whole place had turned to look at her. She was by
now terrified. Then they started to applaud, and two of the press
crew either side of her were pushing her to her feet, with a get
going gesture.
She walked slowly to the front, and stepped onto the dais, feeling
the whole world was looking at her. As this would be recorded for
space broadcast, I suppose they were.
Bruce smiled, and handed her back the prepared notes and
memory stick of slides.
Knock em dead girl!

Chapter Eight

Kira stood on the podium, physically shaking from her sudden

unexpected rise to fame. She inserted the memory stick into the
opening provided, and the heading for the presentation lit up the
screen behind her.
She had given presentations before, but nothing anywhere near
as big, or as important as this one.
The auditorium settled down, and waited for her to start. Bruce
nodded.
I am honoured to be standing here talking to you all
She was working on the idea that if she bulled them up a bit, they
may not come down too hard on her if her theory was destroyed
sometime later. She continued,
As the least qualified person in the room, in fact on the whole
ship, I need a little guidance from the experts, and here I am with a
room full of them.
A murmur of laughter rippled through the assembled crowd,
Today, like everyone else in the room, was spent working on the
data coming in from the first set of probes launched at the planet.
Most of it was predictable, and the chemistry people will sort that
out Im sure, but,
The room fell silent.
In the results of one of the probes, there was a small signal, an
analysis of a compound, at ground level that, well, under the
circumstances, was out of place. Under the circumstances, it should
not have been there
The sample contained the compound chlorophyll. Nothing
unusual there, as this compound is common and found all over the
place quite a lot.
However, this sample was different. This was fresh chlorophyll.
A murmur went around the room. She had their attention now.
The botanists in the room will tell you, as I asked them earlier
today myself, that this compound degrades quite quickly, and plants
that shed the leaves in the cold weather have already stopped
making this compound. Some known planets have all round
summer, and the green remains, and others have only a short
summer, and the green dies back very quickly.
So when we found this well known compound on the surface of
the planet, that would indicate that at some time, there must have
been some kind of plant life, like for examples grasses and other low
level flora.
To find fresh, frozen chlorophyll, contained in fresh frozen plants
on the top of the fresh frozen soil would indicate that these plants
had still been alive right up to some kind of event. An event of
cataclysmic proportions.
The indications are, up to now, that somehow this planet
suffered an instant blast freeze, down to absolute zero in a short
space of time. This was not a steady climate change, so the
remnants of the vegetation didnt have time to rot away when the
cold spell hit, and this is where it gets a bit more complicated,

The room still remained silent, the boffins listening to the

reasoning that was being given, though not all agreed,
This in itself can be easily proved, by taking another vegetation
sample from the surface again, and this would prove, one way or the
other if this part of the theory holds up. If it doesnt, it doesnt
matter, because it still makes no difference to the next theory, as
this part was the effect, not the cause
Its the second part of the findings today that also make no
sense, and will be the hardest to prove.
She continued,
The topography of the planet beneath us, taken in the first scans
of the planet indicates that at one time this planet had oceans,
rivers, and quite possibly polar ice caps. We now know that if the
first theory is correct, that there was vegetation on its surface.
If you calculate using the areas around the landmasses of what
we can determine to be the volume of water needed to fill the
oceans, rivers, and make the frozen ice caps, that would give an
estimate of the total volume of water that should be on the planet.
If however, you calculate the volume of water contained as ice
covering the whole planet, and at the depth that it is, rather than
the depth it was at some previous time or should have been, these
calculations show that there are now many millions of times more
water here, currently frozen as ice, than the water we have proved
with our studies, existed here originally.
My first question is where did this massive amount of additional
water/ice come from?
My second is, as chlorophyll is a chemical, and therefore
deteriorates over time, as do the bacterial soil dwellers, such as soil
mites and others that exist at ground level, what we could find
traces of appear to be frozen solid in almost an instant, as if to be
trapped in time. To me, this must indicate that this planet had life on
it as some time, in its recent past.
My third question is, with all of this evidence, why have we not,
since we frequent this sector of space quite often, met up with this
planet or its inhabitants?
I am not, and never will be, as clever as the community who sit
here now, but my findings are solid, and Im sure the experts will
take a look at the evidence.
Thank you.
Kira closed her notebook, and started to leave the podium.
There was total silence in the auditorium, but not for long.
She expected to be barricaded with questions from the
assembled experts, but instead received a round of applause, a loud
one.
Bruce put his arms around her and whispered.
The one thing that boffins hate is to be proved wrong on the
most basic of basics, as they always look for the most complicated
way out.
You just brought them down to earth with a bump!

Chapter Nine
For the next couple of weeks, the continuing stream of
information from the relays of probes sent out to the selected sites
were analysed, checked, verified, and added to the results in the
investigation file, and more than once they had to edit as new
findings were proved.
This time, the fast freeze factor theory from Kira was put into the
equation, and the results came through as proven in all of the cases.
This planet had been a living planet some time recently, but had
picked up from somewhere, many trillions of gallons of water. At this
distance from its sun why had it frozen solid when it should have
become a water world?
The sun around which it orbited gave off sufficient heat and light
to support a planet of this type, and any life that had been on it.
So, why had the sun failed to stop it almost instantly freezing with
water coming from somewhere else?
The questions were being created faster than the answers were
being found. The whole science community on the ship were sure on
a number of points, but there were many investigations yet to be
done. This case was complicated.
The findings and proven conclusions they had reached so far had
been sent to their Head Office, and they in return had authorised
the investigation to stay there a little longer, and investigate more,
so hopefully they would solve the riddle of a frozen planet that
should technically speaking, have been a part desert.
With all of the data now in from all of the probes scattered across
the different locations on the planet, the scientists were now able to
determine that a similar picture emerged from anywhere on the
globe.
The equatorial regions were indeed of a desert nature, with signs
of vegetation increasing towards the poles, vanishing almost at the
poles themselves. The types of vegetation were varied and plentiful,
and the flora was not unlike that of Earth. It was difficult without
direct samples being taken and studied, to establish how tall or how
wide the plants were, or the genus they could be catalogued into, or
if they were new to us.
The probes also detected certain evidence of insect activity,
though this could take many years to catalogue the full extent of
any insect population, just on sheer numbers alone.
At one of the senior consultants meetings, held on a regular
basis, a lot of the onboard zoologists were puzzled by the lack of
animal evidence in the samples analysed by the probes so far. The
terrain was deemed to be ideal for animal life, and yet none had
been found. They felt that a sampler ship should be sent to the

surface, and return real working samples for them to analyse in the
laboratory, rather than take the evidence of an automatic probe.
Some of the botanists also said they would like to look at real
samples, here in the labs on the ship. The terraformers just smiled,
and let the others argue it out.
Engineering said it would be very hard to get a sampler through
the ice, to the surface, but then try to move it about under those
many tons of frozen water. It just could not be done.
The constructive arguments went on for a few days while the final
evidence from the probes was sifted, sorted, and added to the
knowledge in the ships computer.
This planet did not fit into any of the patterns of any known
planet found so far.
It had too much water; it had fast frozen vegetation, though as
yet undetermined of what type of vegetation it was.
It was close enough to the sun to be temperate climate, like
Earth, and still it was frozen solid.
This was an enigma.
Head office had authorised the sending of a sampler to the
surface, even though these were very expensive.
A sampler was a special machine which, when deployed, would
travel across the landscape, on a predetermined path, and collect
samples of soil, air, or in this case ice.
The sampler also carried laser guns, normally used to cut
samples, which could be used to cut a way through the ice if
needed.
It would parcel up the samples in sealed sterile containers, which
would then be attached to mini rockets and fired back up to the ship
when a dozen or so samples had been taken.
In the case of the ice, the sampler would have to return to the
hole made by its entry to fire the rockets back up to the ship. At
these temperatures, the hole would remain open.
The beauty of using a sampler was that it was fitted with real
time cameras, and the operator could drive it around using the
camera for steering, not a great deal of help on a solid environment,
and there was no guarantee of a signal through all this frozen water.
The search was on for a suitable site to send the sampler.
Caverns, chasms, caves, all were looked at. These were ideal for the
sampler to be able to move about, but would be devoid of the
surface flora, and so they were ruled out.
They did however find a small surface gap in the overall ice cover.
It was small, but should enable the machine to move to do its work.
It was in the vegetation belt, and higher that the surrounding land.
Any lasered ice melt water would run downwards, away from the
sampler machine, melting more of the ice on the vegetation, making
the sampling easier.
After much discussion, and a few days planning, the sampler was
fired at the planet, and the operators reported that it hit the target
that had been assigned to it

As they had feared, there was insufficient signal for live video
streaming, so digital information was also stored on the mini
rockets, so the experts could look at the pictures stored on the
rockets on their return from the planet.
Good news however was that the sampler was able to move
around a little, and to go about its business without any direct
instructions from the ship.
There would be little information otherwise for about six hours,
since there was no live stream from the cameras, so samples were
being taken overnight, and the rockets returning with the samples
sent to the ship in a steady stream.
The samples had to be carefully, and slowly unpacked in the labs
before the scientists could start to unpick the mystery.
Bruce had just risen, and was having his first coffee of his day
when his intercom went off.
Sir, we think you had better come to Lab 18. One of the samples
taken overnight isnt quite right. We have a major anomaly that
needs your attention
Bruce muttered to himself, thinking that he was about to be
shown some tiny seashell from some long extinct bi-valve creature,
so he finished his coffee before going to laboratory 18. No rush.
When he arrived, the place was buzzing with excitement, the
scientists doing what scientists do, go into full details of how they
arrived at their conclusions instead of giving the result first, then
how it was worked out, and, for another scientific annoyance, all
talking at once.
Bruce shouted.
Ladies and Gentlemen, would you please, in an orderly fashion,
and in laymans terms, explain to me why you have asked me here.
The place became noisy again with chatter.
I said, would one of you explain why I have been summoned
here. He was getting annoyed.
Of course, Sir, The head of the chemical analysis division
stepped forward.
Its about a sample collected by the remote sampler during the
night. It was at coordinates
Bruce cut him off.
Not the details, we will look at that later, just the result, please,
Well, Sir, its this one here,
He motioned to the table in the centre of the room. Bruce
followed,
This, Sir, was sent back by the sampler to our lab. We have
analysed its makeup, composition.
Once again, Bruce stopped him,
Bottom line, what is it?
I know this seems inconceivable, but the sampler sent back a
pack containing a sample piece of woven and dyed wool blanket!

Chapter Ten
Bruce thought for a moment,
Is there any way this sample could have been tampered with, or
contaminated?
No Sir, the container from the sampler was sealed by that
machine down there on the planet, and could only be opened with
the electronic audio key, while inside the quarantine chamber.
And, was this the only sample inside that particular sample pod
sent from below?
Yes Sir, this sample came from that planet, in the pod, by itself.
Have any other samples from these coordinates been analysed
yet?
No Sir, this was the first one opened from that location, and by
the time we had completed the necessary quarantine procedure, we
found this, so summoned you as we thought you would need to
know immediately.
Bruce nodded in approval, a grim expression on his face. He
turned to the lab crew,
Can you begin to analyse all of the samples we have that were
taken at this location, and instruct the sampler to return to this
location, and half the distance between its samples, sweeping the
location again.
I will be in my office, trying to make sense out of all this.
Any finds, I want to know immediately.
The whole ship was by now aware of the find from the surface,
and a great deal of speculation was taking place.
Could there have been a civilisation here at one time?
If so, what was the culture, what did they look like, and how did
they live?
Bruce sat back thinking of the implications of the find.
The Science Class ship was designed to investigate anomalies in
space, wrong coloured planets where the hue didnt match the
makeup of the gasses, magnetic fields where there should be none,
and these sorts of anomalies.
It was not equipped to do archaeology. They had their own ships,
parked up all over the place while they dug up things for years at a
time, staying in the same spot. Their work was painfully slow; the
science ships however were designed for fast results in problem
solving.
Bruce was still mulling over what he should send in the report to
Head Office, when Kira walked in.
Youve heard the news? he asked her as she entered.
Yes, I have. came the reply,
And this is going to cause a lot of problems too.
Bruce looked at her bemused,
Oh, how so?

Well, for a start, this mission was to establish where this planet
came from, and why it is here now.
Only now the whole mission has changed. With the discovery of
dormant but alive flora cells, seeds etc, and now some item of what
is unmistakably clothing, this could be turning into a rescue
mission!
Bruce shook his head. Shes at it again.
How on earth did you come to that conclusion?
Its plain sight Sir. We have proved that this planet once lived. All
the evidence has been checked, double checked, and verified. We
have proved there was flora living on here, and now possibly life as
we know it
Bruce nodded. The evidence did show the planet had at
sometime had flora.
We have also proved the ice is not native to this planet, yes?
Again, Bruce nodded. That was also now a matter of record.
So, if we leave things at status quo, go away for a few years
while the powers that be work out some plan of action, or inaction
as the case may be.
The ice will melt, and whatever is down there, over the whole
globe, will drown under miles of water. We will have discovered
nothing.
Once again, her unusual logic impressed Bruce.
Everything she said was correct, and, in a way, in plain sight.
Bruce started to write up his report to Head Office, including all of
the known facts so far, and then the possibilities, ones that were still
being worked on, possibilities, though yet unproven, were pretty
good estimates, the results taken from the evidence presented so
far.
He included the full evidence from the find of the woollen sample
in the report, knowing that this could be a game changer where
their presence here was concerned.
It wasnt long before the other results of the samples taken and
the new smaller area sampled from.
It found charcoal and ash. It found pieces of iron and copper, and
a little tin. It found animal bone, and grain seeds.
Kira had poured over the finds of the samples, mapping
mathematically where each individual sample had come from.
I know what this is! Its a kitchen!
Bruce looked at her, but on the evidence she presented to him,
he had to agree.
Well, young lady, it looks like we are in for a real game changer
now
His report to Head Office that night was perhaps the lengthiest he
had written on any mission so far, and it including every detail he
could glean from all of the information gathered.
The data sent from the planet, the same that the ship personnel
worked on for their results was also automatically sent to Head
Office as part of the mission, but Bruce wanted to make positively

sure that they would interpret it correctly when it got there. Kira was
here on this ship and not there at the Office, so it was possible that
they could misinterpret it, hence the need for an accurate and
lengthy report.
He had an idea what was coming, and as a science ship, not
impossible, but not a prospect to look forward to.

Chapter Eleven
It was three days before a reply would be received from Head
Office. In the meantime, the scientists had been able to establish
even more of the types of flora in the area of the sampler.
It found straw, and with the video feed recordings now being
enhanced back at the ship to correct the most minute differences in
contrast, as the sampler was still operating in pitch black, the small
camera light casting shadows which made it difficult to differentiate
what was solid and what was shadow at first. However, this
chamber had some height, and judging by what was found in it,
using highly sensitive radar and sonar, found hanging equipment for
lifting, so it seemed to be something like a barn.
Up to now, no life forms had been discovered.
Bruce had ordered the sampler to return to the coordinates where
the woollen material had been found, and to sweep, visually, from
that spot for 360 degrees, slowly, changing the focal length at each
small turn, so as to act as a zoom, in and out.
As the sampler only received its instructions when it returned to
the hole to fire a mini rocket, this meant an almost 24 hour delay
before the instructions would be carried out, and another eight or so
till it was loaded and sent up to the ship.
This crew were used to having to wait for results, another science
problem. Experiments took time, and diligence with attention to
detail almost paramount, as it was almost impossible to duplicate
the sample if the first test failed.
Things were now moving a pace. The plotters had been able to do
3D holographic images of the space the sampler was working in,
and putting any finds into their correct position.
Up to now it appeared to be a large, high structure, connected to
a smaller one through an opening in a wall. In the large one, floor to
ceiling was about thirty feet, though partitions, which could be
floors, were detected.
The sampler then started to execute the order to video the
smaller space, from a given point, and rotate slowly zooming in and
out slowly too. This data was placed on a memory chip, and sent by
mini rocket up to the ship.
The sampler itself was now starting to lose its power, and running
out of mini rockets to fire. This might indeed be its last task before
being abandoned.

The video chip arrived, and went through the quarantine

procedures as laid down in the ships manual. Safety is paramount.
The data was then transferred through a sort of video
enhancement program to help increase the contrast at extremely
low light settings.
Thats when the analysts moved in, taking each small section of
the scan, piece by piece to see what they could determine was
there.
In one section, the ghostly images on the screen looked like
crisscrossed beams, which may or may not be furniture legs, difficult
to tell.
As the camera moved to the left, and started to zoom in, another
ghostly image came into view, and slowly went out of focus, as the
machine carried on zooming.
Kira, watching from a feed to her pod, yelled down the intercom
to the operator to stop.
Back that up a bit, she said, and the operator slowly moved the
recording in reverse. Everyone was trying to see what she could see.
There! Hold it there!
Can you not see it! she exclaimed, Tilt your head to the right.
The whole monitoring crew tilted their heads to the right.
There, in the centre of the picture and upwards to the right!
That is the face of a small child!!

Chapter Twelve
The whole ship started to look at the image, and, it could be true,
but, it was too grainy and badly lit to confirm if it was indeed a face
of a child, or just shadows making the human brain think it was a
face.
Bruce had to squint to see the image, but it was there.
Can we order the sampler to return to these coordinates, and
increase the light?
The technician who was currently operating the sampler by delay
remote answered,
No Sir. The power on the sampler is about to give out. I dont
think I could get it to move from the hole it is currently at the
bottom of. We have its last mini rocket too.
Is it worth sending another sampler?
No Sir, the results would be the same, as they are not equipped
to carry large lighting rigs, only the sampling tools and the mini
rockets.
Damn, thought Bruce. This one would be hard to explain away to
the Head Office people bearing in mind they received the same data
as the ship, though two days later. All he could expect from them
would be, is it, or isnt it. Dont know. Find out.
This mission might be full of headaches, but it never gets boring.

He dispatched his new report, explaining what they thought of the

pictures, and sat back. It was going to be a waiting game now. Let
the people with the power make the decisions.
Kira entered his office,
I have just checked the temperature monitoring system for the
ice on the planet, and its starting to melt at an accelerated rate, as
the heat of the sun is starting to take effect
Bruce looked at her,
Pity we didnt have anywhere to shovel it to.
Kira looked at him, and a strange expression came over her face.
She left.
That night, Bruce and his crew had a lot to think about. The
possibilities were endless, as were the combinations for the next
move. Bets were being placed by the crew as to the content of the
orders that will come from Head Office in the next couple of days.
Bruce wasnt willing to sit and wait for those offices bound boffins
to cogitate the next move. He was a man of action, and he needed
to do something. Waiting was not an option.
He couldnt sleep, he kept thinking of idea after idea, and action
after action, but none of these were of any use until he could
establish whether that was a child or not. Everything hinged on that
one question, and he had no answer. He was backed into the corner,
and no way out.
He tossed and turned till the early hours, his mind alive with
thoughts of the mission. His mind ran scenarios one after the other,
but the one key piece of information that was still missing was, is
that a child or not?
By now sleep had left him, and he sat on the edge of the bed, his
body in need of rest, but his brain working overtime. Was it a child?
What if it is, it would still be long dead by now, or what if it isnt, and
he would make a fool of himself?
He had to know, and the only way he could know for sure was to
go there, personally, himself, see with his own eyes.
Was that possible? Could it be done?
This train of thought set off even more loops of questions. His
brain moved up a gear to think of that as a possibility, but gave up.
By four in the morning, he felt he had thought through every
scenario possible, and still with no answers. He got up.
Perhaps a little walk around the ship might give his mind time to
slow down. It was the night crew that were running things, so the
corridors would be virtually empty of people, and only the essential
operation crew would be on duty.
He wandered around for a while, finding the physical exercise was
calming him down a little, his brain focussing on his walk for a
change.
He heard voices and general conversation from up ahead, and
caught the smell of coffee in the air. He was approaching the crew
mess. That coffee smell was just what he needed.

He entered the mess, and the whole room stood to attention.

They dont usually get the big brass in here, and not at this time on
a morning.
Bruce waved them to sit, and relax.
Is there any chance of a cup of that lovely smelling coffee, he
asked,
Within seconds, a cup of the steaming black liquid was placed in
front of him, and he took a gulp or two.
I needed that, and that is very good coffee. How come we dont
get this good stuff in our mess?
The crew in the mess smiled, and relaxed.
Excuse me Sir, but what brings you to our humble mess at this
hour of the morning?
Your coffee, for one, replied Bruce, And a late night wander to
clear the head.
The same crewman spoke,
Must have a lot to think about if sleep wont come and you end
up down here with us lot.
Not really. I find the ships crew are usually very good at what
they do, and are helpful too.
Well Sir, can we be of help now?
Only if you can get me down to the planet to take a look at the
chambers personally.
Is that all? Yeah, we can do that.
Bruce looked at the crewman, who was speaking, his eyes
widening,
And how would you set about doing that?
Sir, we have landing craft that can go anywhere, we have
spacesuits that can protect from the cold, we have power packs that
can last for years. Put them all together and Im sure we could rig up
one of the craft with a heat laser gun or two to cut a hole through
the ice large enough to take the landing craft with a crew.
Bruce, for the first time in over twelve hours, felt he had been
given the answer he was looking for
Gentlemen, I think you may have come up with the solution I am
seeking. It is late, and suddenly I feel tired.
Can you draw up the plans or any modifications needed to make
this happen and send them directly to me?
Of course Sir. Well get right on it.
Bruce slowly made his way back to his quarters. With a possible
answer in his grasp, he was now ready for sleep. As a souvenir from
the mess, he had the label from the coffee grounds used by the
crew. It was about to be introduced into the machines in the top
offices too, for Bruce.

Chapter Thirteen

It was midday before Bruce rose from his bed. He had slept well,
and felt at peace with the world, for now.
Numerous messages and communications were waiting for him to
attend to, and one by one he sorted them out, including installation
of the new brand of coffee for his office.
A good P.A. could have handled well over three quarters of the
work that had come in, but Bruce didnt have one, or want one. He
preferred to be in touch with everything personally. Too many people
editing too important information.
Nothing had come in yet from Head Office, though nothing was
expected, and the 3D holographic model of the space that the
sampler occupied was almost complete.
Everything was complete, but incomplete.
There were hard facts and evidence on the table, but not the
whole picture. The whole thing felt plastic, not solid, not real, just
projections based on supposition from incomplete data.
He was in the middle of working out the possibilities from the
probabilities when his intercom went off.
The guys he had had coffee with last night, or early this morning,
wanted him to pop down again, they had something to show him.
Now this felt like progress.
Completing his normal workload by mid afternoon, he walked the
same path he had walked some twelve hours before, working his
way further below decks, and let the coffee nose do the rest.
Instead of meeting in the mess room, he was shown to one of the
launch bays, the fleet of gleaming craft all parked in a row, waiting
to be called upon at any time into active duty.
Bruce spotted the technician he had spoken to in the mess, and
walked over.
Ah, Sir. Glad you could make it.
Bruce felt he had just received an invitation to a party,
We looked at what you wanted to do, and taken from the
conversation earlier today, I have to admit, it really fired me up, so
me and some of the lads have been working on this project most of
the day, and we think we might have the answer.
These guys were the nightshift. They should have been in bed,
not working to solve hypothetical questions.
We had a look at the problem of getting a landing craft in
where the sampler currently is, bearing in mind that the landing
craft is many times larger than that of the size of a sampler.
Its not the getting the landing craft to the surface, thats easy,
its trying to cause as little damage as possible to get it there.
It would be better if it could be parked up, and move the last bit
on foot.
Unfortunately, a landing craft is bigger than the space available
inside the larger of the rooms, so it would have to destroy some of
the surrounding materials to fit in, and we didnt want that

To this end, we came up with the idea to modify one of our small
Hoppers, the small maintenance craft we use to repair the outer hull
of the ship if there is a problem with the skin, and turn it into a sort
of mini landing craft.
Unfortunately it would have two seat cabin only, but it would
have full searchlight capability, and full on board video recording,
both from the Hopper itself, and as a relay from remote body
cameras if in line of sight to the ship. Unfortunately, we cannot
produce a live stream due to the ice at this time.
From the landing point, you could disembark and search on foot
without bringing the ice roof in on top of you.
Bruce was happy with that.
At last, the answers would come from real time exploration, real
objects, real places, and real people.
Bruce could wait for official instructions from Head Office, or he
could try a little bit of experimentation on the side, under the
pretence of trying something else.
He ordered the modifications to be done.

Chapter Fourteen
You are going to do what!
Kira stood facing Bruce in his office, her body language betraying
the fact that she was not happy at all,
Are you mad?
Do you know all of the risks involved?
Bruce smiled at her concern for his safety,
I have checked and double checked the safety margins, and I will
be fine.
The crew of expert technicians say the modified Hopper would
be ideal because of the very small space it takes up, and lets face it,
we dont need to carry a dozen troops for security, and a crew of
four using a landing craft.
Kira still looked angry,
I still think you should send someone else, as you are way too
important to the success of this mission than to go off on a wild
scatterbrained little side mission because you feel you have to.
Once again, Bruce smiled at her concern for his safety,
Kira, I know where you are coming from, and I appreciate your
concern, but this is something I must see for myself.
Her mood lightened a little. She spoke,
I know you feel obligated to get to the bottom of all of this, and
you want to cover your backside in case of any flack from Head
Office, but you have very well trained staff who could do this for
you.

Wouldnt be the same. I want to be there, I need to be here, and

Im going to be there.
I want to be able to give first hand information to those boffins at
Head Office when they try to interrogate me about whatever is
found.
She gave up, for now.
In the newly formed special mission control, just for this jaunt, the
planners had been busy.
They calculated that the science ship could laser a wide shaft
through the ice, which would be wide enough for the hopper to go in
horizontally rather than vertically, cutting the bottom of the shaft to
ground level, no more than a couple of metres away from the
detected opening into the larger space, still thought to be a
building, though yet not proven.
The Hopper would then use its own lasers to melt the passage
ahead of them, and hopefully be able to fly slowly into the detected
space without causing damage or structure weakness.
From there, the two crew members could walk, with their helmet
lights and cameras on, to any point inside this space.
Another small modification that had just been experimented on
was for the crew of the Hopper to set up and leave a relay ball at
the bottom of the shaft, and this would enable live feed on video
and radio contact with the science ship directly. This would not
cause any damage to the site either, as the ball was Omni
directional and could receive and send signals from or to any
direction through the cut out tubes in the ice.
The technicians worked on the modifications to the Hopper, and
removed the grappling and deployment arms, the drills and riveters
used to repair the hull, and the other built in tools that were used
normally from their place in a storage bay under the Hopper to
lighten it and increase its manoeuvrability, which meant they could
fit extra lighting to the front of the cab, and the laser guns just
under the bowed window of the cab without making it too heavy.
Within a day of the idea being discussed in the crew mess, a
modified Hopper stood ready to go on a totally different kind of
mission.
Bruce sat in his office, sorting out his final preparations to crew
the Hopper. He had his spacesuit on but not the helmet as the
helmet would not needed until he left the safety of the Hopper cab
to plant the relay ball, and on from there.
While in his office, he went over the operating instructions of the
modified Hopper, and the controls for actually driving it. This
needed a light touch.
Maybe his co-pilot could do that. He will ask.
Kira entered his office with the last of the scans taken for the
target location, her face saying more than any words could.
She placed the papers on the desk and turned to leave.
Kira, how do you fancy a little trip out down to the planet?
She stopped in her tracks, and slowly turned to face him,

Why me?
Because I think you would look at things from a different
perspective, you would keep me under control, but most of all, I
think you know how to drive a Hopper.

Chapter Fifteen
Bruce and Kira both stood suited up in full regalia, on the flight
deck beside the modified Hopper.
The guys had done a great job with the engineering, and the
modifications made it look like it had been designed and built that
way instead of being modified to fit.
The fuel cell capacity had been almost quadrupled, and the
chargers had boosted it to the max. The cells would last a lot longer
as there were no hydraulic arm or rams to power, and it all
appeared positive.
Kira was still very apprehensive about the whole thing. She had
never ever dreamed of doing anything like this, and in a moment of
madness had agreed to go down to the surface with Bruce.
As she stood there, while the pre-flight checks were being carried
out, she still wondered why.
She had been, up until this mission, a face in a room of faces,
spending her working life behind computers, number crunching to
order. Delivering data analysis to whoever had requested it.
Here she was now, today, going with the Head of Astro Science
Investigation, in an experimental untested modified pod, to a place
that currently exists only on a virtual holographic map, to find
something that a photographic image had shown up, but was like
that of a ghost at best, and all this to be done safely.
All ready Sir, said the senior technician, descending the ladder
from the bridge of the Hopper, Shes ready to go.
Bruce looked at Kira, and Kira looked at Bruce. They both gave a
little nod.
Once into their seats inside the bubble of glass, which housed the
helm of the Hopper, it became obvious that there had been some
major modifications made.
New indicator panel names had been taped over the old ones,
and some dials had been blanked out completely. While they waited
for clearance, they peeled some of the new panel names back to
see what the old one had been, just in case one of them might have
been important.
These technicians had extensively rewired the existing systems to
accommodate all of the many new requirements, extended fuel
cells, additional outside lights and of course a hot laser gun, without
compromising any of the normal dashboard layouts.
Clearance was given.

The Science Ship began to fire its powerful lasers at the planet
and had succeeded in producing a fifty feet wide circular shaft in the
ice, all the way down to the ground level, the super high
temperatures melting and evaporating it with ease to stop flooding
at the bottom, the targeted shaft being cut all the way to the exact
and expected coordinates.
It was now time to insert the ship, or in this case, the Hopper, into
the hole.
The two of the crew inside the Hopper, Bruce and Kira, sat looking
at the two miles or so of drop down the shaft directly below them
out of the lower viewing window at their feet. This lower window
would have been used on normal Hopper operations to enable the
pilot to see, close up, what he was working on.
The vertical drives were engaged, and the docking clamps
removed. The Hopper maintained it position momentarily, and then
slowly seemed to drift away from the ship, moving ever closer to the
planet, the gravity being counteracted by the vertical drives so as to
allow the Hopper to descend slowly.
As the Hopper arrived at the shaft into the ice, Bruce looked at
Kira,
Here we go.
The light vanished as they started to make their way down this
white shaft, what little light there was refracting from the walls
giving it an eerie feel.
The Hopper automatically turned on some small exterior lights as
it descended, as using the large ones would only dazzle the crew of
two, and it carried on, down and down, into what seemed like an
abyss.
The whole journey would only take about ten minutes, but the
anxious crew of the ship kept up banter with the Hopper to make
sure everything was working correctly, and the modifications were
doing what they were supposed to do. This new type of craft, a
modified Hopper could be used again in other explorations
sometime in some future. A new type of craft had been born out of
necessity.
The decent slowed, as the Hopper decelerated to the bottom of
the reamed out shaft, coming into landing position very slowly so as
not to disturb what lay some six feet away from their position, and
directly ahead.
The feet touched down, possibly the first craft ever to do so, and
the drive cut back to an only slightly audible hum.
Bruce looked at Kira,
We are here, possibly the first humans to ever set foot on this
planet. Doesnt that make you feel a little bit of pride?
Not so much pride as apprehension, she replied.
The auto targeting lasers could be heard moving into position
under their cockpit, and the exterior lights on the Hopper also
dimmed down a little. When these lasers did fire, there would not be
huge flashes of light or massive illumination in the shaft, only a

slight increase of the light levels in general, hence the Hopper lights
dimming down, so the progress of the lasers could be seen.
A small button on the control panel of the Hopper started to blink
red. The lasers were ready to fire, but the regulations stated that no
heat laser could be fired automatically at any time. A real person
had to press the button. Health and Safety stuff.
Bruce motioned Kira to press it, which she did, and the Hopper
lasers started to demolish the wall of ice straight ahead of them.

Chapter Sixteen
The laser stopped firing.
From their cockpit on the Hopper, they could see a horizontal
shaft they had cleared for a couple of metres of so, and then a black
chasm.
The Hopper main exterior lights started to illuminate the scene,
and this chasm became a building, of what appeared to be made
out of wood.
Are you getting these pictures? Bruce tried to confirm with the
orbiting ship.
Yes Sir, crystal clear reception. Looks very good.
We are going to exit the Hopper now to set up the
communications ball, somewhere just behind us, and from there it
should work.
Bruce and Kira donned the rest of the suits, complete with
helmets.
The Hopper was depressurised, and the centre window opened.
They climbed out, down the folded out ladder, and onto the ice,
their suits protecting them from this extremely harsh environment.
This feels so strange, said Bruce, Almost eerie.
Kira nodded, but was still having difficulty absorbing the fact of
where she was and what she was about to do.
They both knew that, in these, or similar circumstances, it was
better to take small steps, so they set up the communication ball
and switched it on.
This meant that whatever their head cams picked up, or voice
conversations they had would be relayed to the ship above, in real
time, and instructions could be sent back to them, even when inside
this building or structure.
In front of them, a couple of metres away, were what the scans
and sampler had defined as a tall space, possibly barn like, with the
contents that would be found in a barn, though using scans and not
photographs.
Bruce began to walk into the little tunnel they had made.
Arent we supposed to drive into this black space ahead of us?
asked Kira, searching through the visor on the helmet of Bruce for
some sign of emotion.

Naw, its only a couple of steps anyway. Well leave the Hopper
here and walk in.
Slowly they stepped through the very short tunnel through the
ice, and into the building on the other side, their helmet lights
coming on to light up the way.
The scans had been correct, it was some kind of barn, and the
video operators on the ship were issuing instructions continually, to
look up, left, right, and all parts in between so they could get very
high definition pictures and video of this unexpected find under the
ice.
Bruce and Kira checked out the three floors of the barn, and both
concluded it was Earth like, but stuck in a time warp. The equipment
in there was basic, and all manually operated.
After the original sweep, to make sure there was no danger, they
moved into the smaller building attached to this barn.
It became obvious as soon as they entered that this had been a
dwelling, with a solid fuel metal, possibly iron, stove, and a table,
some chairs, rugs on the hard earthen floor. The rest of the analysis
would be carried out later from the video sent back.
Was there any record of a colonised planet anywhere in this solar
system?
The technicians on board the ship asked him to stand by till they
checked.
While waiting, Bruce and Kira checked out the design of the
furnishings, for size, load bearing strength, and method of making,
all of which could give clues to the size, body shape, and dexterity
of the previous occupiers, whoever they were.
The technicians came back with another conundrum. There were
no habitable planets in this solar system, or ever had been.
This mysterious list gets longer and longer, Bruce commented
to Kira,
We have a frozen planet, where it should be warm enough for
liquid water, covered with ice that doesnt belong to it, and a
historic civilisation that has not been here. Ever.
Kira smiled through her visor. She had to admit this was getting
interesting, though she still wanted to check out the image picked
up by the sampler, just to verify or debunk, the theory of a child
being there.
This would have to wait a little while longer, as Bruce was
carrying an emergency power pack for the sampler, and found it
parked over in the corner of the living area of the room, at the
opposite side to the stove.
He could see where it had sampled the ash in the grate, having
crushed the charcoal to do it.
It only took seconds to place the power pack into the sampler,
and because of the radio and video link from the ball, the ship could
now drive it back home via the shaft the Hopper had descended
through. A lot of samplers had been abandoned in the past, and it
would make things easier with Head Office if they could explain that

this mission was to retrieve the sampler, and not check out the
accuracy of its work.
They ascended up some wooden stairs, complete with safety
handrail, to the first floor, above the normal living area, and found a
small corridor down the centre.
To each side of this central corridor, doors opened out into small
rooms, and they knew that these were bedrooms, as they still had
wooden beds in them, covered with coarse cloth blankets.
Underneath these coarse blankets in these beds were people!
Frozen solid!

Chapter Seventeen
My God! exclaimed Kira, The image of the childs face was
real!
I have that child, here in the bed in front of me! A boy, a little
boy!
The crew in the ship above went into frenzy of activity with this
latest information. They crowded to the monitors showing the live
feeds from the helmets of Bruce and Kira.
Ive found another! Said Bruce, Over this side, this ones a girl
I think
The medical team on the ship convened for a very hasty meeting
while Bruce and Kira carried on searching this floor of the dwelling.
Ive found two more, these look like adults, in the next room.
These could be parents
Bruce looked at the bodies, so well preserved because of the
extremely low temperatures, and total lack of moisture in the air.
The male body was wearing what can only be described as thick
pyjamas, and the female, a sort of animal skin teddy.
Turning around to inspect the room further, he found a wooden
crib on the woman side of the bed, with a baby still in it, couldnt
have been more than three to four months old before it was frozen.
All of the features were clearly visible. The frosts had had no
direct contact with the skin of these people, so there were no frost
burns; the ambient freezing temperatures had preserved them in
their current state.
The radio burst into life
The medical team are asking, is it possible for you to load these
bodies into the available space under the hopper where the working
arms and other equipment used to be. It should be big enough for
all of them.
We know it sounds a little ghoulish, but we feel we could do a
much better post mortem on them up here on the ship rather than
down there on the planet?
Bruce looked at Kira,
I suppose we could. We could carry them one at a time

If you can bring them up to the ship, we can analyse them

physically, sample their DNA, find out who, or what they are or
should we say were, and this could boost our findings.
Bloody ghouls, thought Bruce, Cant let them rest in peace.
In a way, he knew that they were right. The information gleaned
from these bodies, and their habitat could be invaluable in helping
to understand the history of our Universe.
Even though a little annoyed, they did as they were asked to do,
wrapping each body in a ships insulation blanket, loads of them on
the Hopper, more as a mark of respect that trying to keep them
warm. The real temperature down here was still only about 100
degrees C above absolute zero, their spacesuits being difficult to
move sometimes because of this extreme cold, but on the ship it
would be to them like entering a furnace turned full on. How did it
get this cold?
Bruce and Kira spent the rest of their time there on the planet
loading up these very well preserved bodies, and mapping the
layout of the dwelling so the modellers could do their work to
recreate it for Head Office information.
This place was eerie and it somehow wasnt natural. Too many
anomalies, but the investigations would be best sorted out in the
comfort of the office rather than this giant deep freeze.
The ship radioed for them to leave the communication ball where
it was at the bottom of the shaft, as, if permission was granted,
there would be a team of archaeologists there on site in a couple of
weeks, and using the modified Hopper.
Bruce and Kira returned to the Hopper, closed the centre windows
hatch, pressurised the cockpit, and set the temperature before
activating the return protocol.
As it lifted from the solid ground and began the ascent, Bruce
mused that this was the first time their hold occupants would have
ever left their planet.
The additional weight of their unusual cargo did little to slow the
Hopper down; it rose from the planet at ease, tracking the distance
from the walls of the shaft till they emerged into free space.
The airlock doors on the ship were open ready for them to enter,
and Kira guided it into the docking bay, putting it down exactly on
the marked area for it. The outer bay doors closed, and the bay was
pressurised, and the heat returned.
There was such a rush of people into the bay, lots of white-coated
people with quarantine pods on stretcher trolleys, wheeling their
way to the Hopper. These medical people can see only medical
matters in front of them. The skin of the Hopper was still well below
a safe working temperature without protection, and if they tried to
open the hold
They had to use cryogenic handling tools to transfer the bodies
from the Hopper hold to the pods as the temperature was still so
low; to get near would have killed the skin immediately.

The pods had been set at the same temperature as the planet,
and once the bodies were sealed in, their condition should remain
the same, for the time being.
This still puzzled Bruce. Most of the whole Universe is warmer
than this planet, so how did it get so cold?
The debriefings were quite short, as the live feed had allowed the
experts on the ship to track every event that occurred while they
were down below, and were watching replay after replay, to glean
what they could
As all of the evidence was now in the hands of the experts, and
Head Office time lapsed communicate due in sometime tomorrow,
Bruce decided it was time for a little leisure, and some relaxation.
He needed to get the image of finding those bodies from out of
his head.
They could have been frozen down there from last year, last
decade, last century, or last millennium or maybe even longer.
Perfectly preserved by the extremely low temperatures.
Now, they were in the hands of real investigators, but even they
couldnt start to do tests till the bodies had been warmed up a bit.
This became the job of the cryogenics department. These guys
were real specialists at temperatures so low we have never heard of
them, and the temperature scales are divided into bands of minus
degrees that even have names.
If these bodies were warmed too quickly the cells would most
certainly be destroyed, all of them, by the frost inside each and
every one of them. This would turn the bodies to mush, and would
be of little, or no use to the medical people.
However, using certain inert chemicals could inhibit this, but
could only be used sparingly, and to try to apply this to every cell in
the body by injection is a tall order.
If however, the process is done very gradually, the chemicals
being introduced to the currently stationary circulatory system, and
then by mechanical means, artificially and gently pumped to more
and more areas of the body as the defrosting action of the
chemicals clears more and more of the bodys blood vessels. The
body cells would have time to defrost themselves using the bodys
own circulatory system to deliver the chemicals to help to maintain
the structure of each cell, the cell walls would have time to adjust,
so the cell itself wouldnt burst out through its own walls. This
however, is not an easy option, and would take a long time to
complete.
These medical people are not known for their patience.
Bruce decided it was time to go to sleep. He knew that Head
Office would be in touch with their stupid questions sometime early
tomorrow, and he needed to think.

Chapter Eighteen

As expected, the messages came in from Head Office, advising of

what they thought should be the next move. This was before the
body discovery on the planet. That wont hit the fan for another day
or two.
Their recommendation was as it always is, monitor, monitor, and
monitor.
However, one of the mail bytes was in answer to an enquiry from
Kira about desert planets in the regions near to their location, and a
number of planets had been identified.
This puzzled Bruce, but hell find out when she reports in later
today. He had learned to trust her judgement, and no doubt she will
be thinking outside of the box again.
The cryogenic people had reported that things were going well,
the temperature of the bodies was being steadily raised, and the
blend of chemicals, nicknamed human antifreeze was being
deployed as agreed, and they wanted permission to board up the
doors to their labs to stop the medical people from interfering with
the timescales.
The medical people wanted samples, from anywhere, to start
testing, but the temperatures were still too low. Samples taken at
this time would turn to mush before they could be analysed.
Bruce made a suggestion that the medical people should go down
with the modified Hopper, and seek out inanimate objects that could
contain DNA, like shoes, clothes, which could be brought up to
temperature faster, and enable them to get to work.
They actually did!!
Kira called into his office late in the afternoon, and, as normal for
her, she was carrying lots of paper. Shed been busy again.
Ive been running some calculations and number crunching
exercises about what you said the other day, about getting rid of the
ice.
We both know that his planet is warming up, the gases and
water slowly returning to normal state on the outside layers.
We also know that deep within this ice covering there was a
civilisation from whenever, as yet we have no information to a date
or time.
This warming will accelerate as time goes on, and, it is possible
that this planet will become a water world before we have a chance
to study it properly. It wasnt and still isnt a water world, but it will
be if we dont act.
Bruce had an idea where this was going,
I asked Head Office to locate some desert planets in our area
that could do with a few mega tonnes of ice or a few trillion gallons
of water. They have found some.
I think we should take away the ice that does not belong here,
and take it to somewhere that needs it.
Bruce looked at Kira and thought

This girl has such a simple approach to problems, and yet, shes
right
So, how do you think you will be able to move these vast
quantities of water ice from here to wherever it needs to go, bearing
in mind that the planets atmosphere is also a frozen part of the ice
covering, and would need to remain
I think I have that covered Sir, she placed some papers in front
of him,
If the ice extraction is done above ground level, the gasses will
evaporate, and the water can be drawn into big water tankers, and
taken to where its most needed.
I was thinking that a collection ship would more or less hover in
one position and allow the planet to turn underneath it, and it would
skim a thick layer from the ice into its processing plant, it could
collect the water out and vent out the gasses.
Bruce thought for a moment,
I like the idea, however, there are flaws in the plan.
First the number of tankers needed to carry the water from here
to wherever would be huge, way more ships than we have in our
entire fleet, and secondly, we dont have a collection ship like you
describe in our fleet.
We didnt have a landing craft before the modified Hopper
either, but we have one now.
He knew hed walked into that one.
Kira turned to leave,
And, Im sure we will have a collection ship soon after you design
one, with your friends.
She left.

Chapter Nineteen
Head Office had the information about the bodies and their
subsequent retrieval, and they were not well pleased of Bruce going
down to bring them up without clearance first.
He tried to defend himself by saying part of the truth that they
didnt know the bodies were there till they saw them in the dwelling
from an image taken by the sampler, and for medical purposes, they
needed to find, and isolate any infections that may be down there
that could do harm to the archaeology teams which were on their

way to study these dwellings. It calmed the moment, but not for
long.
During this breathing space, the crew were able to carry on doing
their duty; the medical people had DNA samples on hairbrushes,
clothing, and footwear they had collected, and could defrost at their
leisure.
The Cryogenic people were reporting that the slow warming of
the bodies was progressing well.
Much to the annoyance of the medical team, they had been able
to draw a little intact blood from a site where the chemical
defrosting was taking place, with all the cells in perfect condition,
and these were now with the otherwise redundant zoology people
for analysis for classification of species.
Bruce sometimes though he was in charge of a ship full of
children.
They were very good at what they did, which is why he kept them
on his crew, but sometimes the departments went into competitive
mode, and though it yielded results, the flack produced in the
process was sometimes laughable.
Kira kept busy trying to work out how to get rid of the excess ice
on the planet, and what craft or types of craft would be needed.
Bruce could see that she was spending every waking minute
working on this problem, and she seemed to be tired all of the time.
In this sort of state, she could make a mistake, and it might cost
lives, so, it was time to make a problem shared in a problem halved.
Plus he wanted to see her again. He could not deny he did have
feelings for her, a little, but feelings nevertheless.
He walked along to her work pod, and found her number
crunching over and over, using different scenarios.
Hows it going Kira?
She looked up, her eyes betraying her lack of sleep,
I keep thinking I may have the answer, but it all doesnt work.
She slumped back in the chair.
Bruce checked the calculations, those he could understand, and
he agreed. The answer was eluding them. This much liquid would be
difficult to load, and discharge.
What if? Bruce had had an idea,
What if we raise the temperature of large sections of the ice to
the temperature that will boil off the gasses, for example, the lowest
boiling point being Nitrogen at minus 195C, then Oxygen at minus
183C, Methane at minus 161.5 the released gasses would then rise
higher or fall lower, depending on which gas in the atmosphere,
then let the planet refreeze the water, leaving just water ice?
The problem would be the Ozone, and to protect the atmosphere
and the planet, would need to be boiled at a much higher
temperature of minus 112C.
Kira looked at him, awaiting the next part of his theory.
I was thinking that, in nature, the water to, say, Earth, came
from chunks of ice, as meteors and comet tails colliding with it.

What if we take huge, man made comets, and tow them to the
planet that needs them, shatter them so they fall onto this new
home, and, well, basically, seed it.
Kira stared in amazement.
Do you think we could do that?
Can you crunch the numbers and see if it would be possible to
tow, or push, or guide these massive ice blocks through space to
their destination. Liaise with the terraforming people.
Its a bit like a refinery, we take out the gas, which belongs here,
and then remove and ship out the ice that doesnt. Would that
work?
He left an invigorated Kira working on the new proposals.
Only time will tell.

Chapter Twenty
The next couple of days were hectic to say the least.
Head Office had sent a team of archaeologists directly to their
location and they would be arriving in the next week or so, and
Bruce had received orders to make sure the modified Hopper was
made available to them when they needed it. The full construction
plans for the modified Hopper were sent to Head Office, and they
were discussing the possibility of producing them on a large scale,
then adding them to the fleet of ships available to use for their
explorations
Bruce fought hard, and won, to have the modified Hopper named
a Radley Insertion Craft, Radley being the name of his engineer who
designed it. He decided not to have a coffee machine installed in
every one.
The press and media had picked up on the story, but, as yet,
because of their current distance from Earth, not a reporter in sight,
but the wolves were gathering.
Kira continued to work on the feasibility of getting rid of this ice,
and was optimistic that one of the three plans drawn up would work.
It was just a case of running each one in the lab to find the best one.
The terraformers were working on both sides of the equation. The
current planet and how it would begin again to evolve once this
frozen stranglehold was finally released, and how the desert planets
would begin to evolve when water was delivered to the surface.
These desert planets had been checked for life signs, but none of
any consequence found. Fossils and remains only. Nothing else,
except barren sand.
Did this current planet have a metal core? Would the rotation
allow the magma below the surface to rotate, friction heating it up,
and creating, by the spin, a magnetic field strong enough to protect
it from the suns radiation when the atmosphere was returned to it?

Bruce liked this mission. It had the various departments and

specialities working around restrictive current positions with the
view to end the restrictions.
In effect, the answers were there, just had to work out where to
look.
On the third, and what became the last, day of calm, there was
much excitement in two of the departments.
The results were in from the medical peoples experiments that
the DNA found at the site was definite humanoid, matching our own
markers by over 99%. These people were human, and very close
cousins!
There were no records to be found anywhere in the Head Office
archives, of a humanoid colony on any planet anywhere near this
star system, as none of the planets here were in the habitable zone
of the sun. The habitable zone was completely empty of any
planets, even lumps of rock, or had been up to now. The next planet
out from the sun was a gas giant, and could not support this kind of
life.
The blood, harvested by the cryogenics people and passed on to
the zoologists came back with a similar result, humanoid, and very
close to us, but these DNA markers belonged to sets of colonies a
long, long way from here. Light years away.
The DNA markers from the tiny blood sample that was taken from
the boy showed that this body in their Cryo-chamber in the lab was
from the other side of the arm in the spiral of the galaxy.
He bore the markers of early colonisation people, thousands of
years ago, sent to the outer rim as part of an experimental
colonisation, which evolved and stayed there. Their descendants still
thrive over in that part of space, and it could be possible to match
this childs body markers with direct relatives of people still alive
over in that region of space.
This now added even more evidence to the original conundrum
that this planet did not belong here, and that it had never belonged
here.
It was somehow instantly super frozen in a cocoon of ice that had
buried a living planet like a fast freeze blast in a refrigerator, and
somehow ended up here, in this part of space, where it had never
been until now. Lots of the word somehow keeps coming up and
these would need an answer.
All of this information had been really very difficult to take in, but
the real game changer came with a discovery inside one of the cryo
labs.
Bruce was sitting, compiling his somewhat sketchy report for
Head Office, when his intercom went off.
Sir, its Cryo 2. Could you come to the lab as soon as possible?
There is something we feel you need to see for yourself.
Bruce was intrigued, and as he needed to get away from all of
this paperwork, even for a moment or two, would be a welcome
break. He decided to go down to Cryo 2 and listen to the waffle from

the experts, all explain the melting process in great detail, as they
had done so many times before, and how the process has now been
shortened by a few milliseconds from, say, last week.
He arrived at the lab, to find the place in almost darkness.
Over in one corner, lit by one angle poise light, the two night
technicians were huddled over the computer screen, and being
quite voluble with each other, almost excited. These fellas got
excited at a snowflake!
They were pouring over lists of findings on the screen before
them. They looked up as Bruce entered.
Sir, we think we may have found something that we know will be
of great interest to you.
Bruce waited for the punch line. It didnt come,
So what have you found that will be of great interest to me
then?
Bruce was getting a little short on humour. Its a long walk from
his room to Cryo 2, and especially at this time of night, so no time
for guessing games.
As you know Sir, we are slowly returning these bodies brought up
from the planet to a temperature we can work with and study, trying
not to damage any of the cells in the process
Bruce nodded. This was the protocol that they were ordered to
follow.
Well, Sir, we have been following the protocols to the letter, but
the latest results are, well, to put it bluntly, most unusual.
We diligently monitored the cell temperature all of the way
through the procedure, allowing the chemical additives introduced
to the blood stream to do their job and the results are, well not quite
what we expected.
Bottom line guys please!
Bruce knew they liked to waffle a lot,
Well Sir, as we have just stated, we are slowly returning the cells
of the bodies to somewhere near normal workable temperatures so
we can work on them, but we are finding that the cells we are
looking at are still alive!
What?
The cells we are working on, and there are more and more as we
go through the defrosting procedure, are all still alive, after God
knows how many years.
This means that Sir, if no brain damage has occurred in these
bodies, then these bodies will become people, and I hate to say this
Sir, but, on paper, it would be possible to bring these people back to
their original self!

Chapter Twenty-One

When the news got out about this discovery, the medical people
were furious; the cryo people were just sort of smug.
Back in his office, Bruce was trying to understand the implications
of this latest development, and it wasnt easy.
The chemical compounds used in the thawing procedure were
inert, and had no direct effect on the body itself. They would work at
really low temperatures to act like antifreeze to the circulatory
system without any harmful side effects.
This was the first time they had been used on any subject, or
human from this low in temperature; these bodies were at
temperatures starting at about minus 200C, well below the
chemicals normal working parameters, though with the gentle
thawing process, the bodies, and the chemicals were now about
minus 50C or so.
This was also the first time any cells released from the frost using
these chemicals were still found working, in effect still alive.
The medical people wanted to move in to take over the study, the
cryo people wanted things to take their course gradually, and to
make matters worse the archaeologists sent from Head Office were
due to arrive in the next couple of days, and poor Bruce was caught
up in all the crossfire.
Kira, on the other hand, was quite cool and calm.
Her job was to number crunch the numerous possibilities of how
to rid this planet of this huge amount of ice, while restoring the
gaseous nature of the atmosphere, and to try to keep all of its
protection from the sun, a job that was getting more and more
difficult as time went on with the natural warming of the sun, and
now more so since it appears the native occupants of this planet
were coming back to life!
The outer layers of the ice on the planet were much warmer than
the inner ones, the sun heating the outer layers enough to boil off
some of the gasses in the atmosphere, but, the water ice was also
beginning to melt too, and all this water, should it all melt where it
was, would be catastrophic to the planet underneath it.
Something had to be done, and quickly.
Bruce had his hands full with trying to coordinate the huge
interest the discovery had made, finding bodies on a frozen waste.
Head Office wanted to know everything about the bodies, the house,
everything.
No one had asked anything about the planet, for example, why it
was frozen, where did it come from, why did it have trillions of
gallons of water ice that should not have been there, and why it had
suddenly appeared in the solar system it now was? Finally, how did
the bodies recovered on the planet below belong to some tribe that
lived many light years away?
Over the next day or so, things seemed to move in parallel with
each other.

New discoveries about the make up of the ice were being added
to the data base collection, the bodies in Cryo were still slowly
thawing, internally, with the chemical antifreeze, and Kira was
totally absorbed in her work, trying to work out a method of
removing the water, and then the ice safely, and moving it
elsewhere.
To top it all, the archaeologists arrived, full of themselves as
usual, and promptly started making strong requests to be taken to
the planet immediately, and to the home where the humanoids had
been found.
They were told, politely, if they wanted to go down to the planet,
they would have to do their own driving, as this crew were space
ship operations crew, not chauffeurs, and the modified Hopper was
in the bay, and ready for them to take and to go.
None of them could pilot a Hopper, never mind a modified one, so
one of the engineering crew volunteered to take them down,
warning them that because of the extreme cold, they would not be
able to remain there longer than two hours, which also didnt please
them either.
They also werent too happy about the fact that some of them
would have to travel in the empty underside storage bay, as this
Hopper only had two seats in the cockpit. Surely Head Office must
have explained all of this to them before they left Earth, but
knowing scientists like this crew did, even if they were told, if it
didnt fit in their pattern, it didnt exist so was ignored.
The Hopper departed, and slowly dropped away and down the
shaft, the walls of which were still frozen solid, all the way to the
bottom, and landed next to the relay dish.
Off the team of scientist went, along the short tunnel, and into
the remains of this house, their head lighting equipment almost
dazzling them with the refection from the ice after the journey in the
dimly lit storage bay.
The crew on the science ship just left them to it, leaving only one
crew member on monitors to record their progress, knowing that in
the two hours there was not be a lot they could do down there, and
would more than likely bring samples back to study on the ship.
However, the Hopper was on its way back to the ship within fortyfive minutes, and the lead archaeologist was not happy about
something that had been discovered. All that Bruce could
understand was something about their being here was a total waste
of time. He would know soon enough. Perhaps the temperatures
were too low to find anything.
The Hopper landed in its normal bay, outer doors closed and the
deck was pressurised. The team disembarked in a hurry, and
headed with their samples to their allocated laboratory to confirm
some results of preliminary tests they had carried out at the
dwelling while on the planet.

It didnt take long for them to confirm the first findings as correct,
and Bruce was almost summoned to appear before their
archaeological court. He hated boffins!
He entered their laboratory, waiting for some kind of explanation
as to why these guys in here were not happy.
The Lead Archaeologist spoke,
We were sent here by Head Office to examine a dwelling, found
by your crew, on a frozen planet, and we were given the task of
trying to establish some kind of dating evidence about the age, and
possibly the origin of the dwelling. We were to take samples to
establish and to prove our findings when all of the testing was
complete.
From the photographs taken by your exploratory party, we
expected to find old materials, and old equipment, from which we
could work out the age of the dwelling itself, expecting some of the
sample materials, based on the evidence of what we had seen so far
in the way the dwelling was furnished in the photographs, to be a
couple of centuries old at least, perhaps more.
We realise that the ice covering would stop a lot of material
degeneration from occurring, so we expected the dwelling to appear
to be recent, even when its not, so we were not shocked when we
entered it.
We did the usual samples, cloth, wood, including the ash in the
hearth, floor surface, and the cereal seeds in the bags.
We knew that something didnt seem right, so we did the
standard test on the wood that makes up the walls, the results of
which gave us a totally ridiculous reading, given the circumstances,
so, we brought some samples up here to the lab.
This time in controlled conditions inside the lab, we repeated
these tests, only to get the same results as before. We cannot use
dendrochronology, as we have no database of any of this type of
wood rings to compare with, but it is identifiable as wood.
I know that you believe these remains from this dwelling have
been in a frozen state for hundreds, possibly thousands of years, but
Im afraid that this is not so.
The materials used in that dwelling are proven to be much more
recent, and the wood used in the construction of the dwelling is no
more than thirty years old.

Chapter Twenty-Two
Bruce stood there, looking at these people, in shock.
Are you telling me that the remains down below the ice are less
than thirty years old?
The Head of Archaeology nodded.

So, that could mean the wood used in the buildings might be
thirty years old, but it might not have been used to build that
dwelling or barn till some time after that?
Once again, the professor nodded.
Bruce thought for a moment. If this planet has only been in its
current condition for less than twenty-five years, how did it get like
this so quickly, and how did it get to this location without detection?
There has been planetary monitoring and mapping in all of the
colonised regions for over two hundred years, give or take, so, if an
inhabited planet suddenly vanished without a trace, surely
someone, somewhere would have noticed and checked up and
reported it to Head Office.
Bruce needed to enter these new time parameters into his ship
database for any information on planets that had gone missing
within the last forty years or so, which would narrow down the
search tremendously.
The Head of Archaeology turned to leave, but spoke first,
So you see, it has been a waste of time for me and my team.
These remains are just too young for us to study.
However it has been an experience to stand inside that barn
dwelling, and no pun intended, frozen in time, and to see the
occupants as they were, and not skeletal remains
He turned and left.
They all left for Earth later that day without another word.
Their discovery, however, stayed with the science crew on the
ship.
It had always been assumed that this ice had built up over time,
possibly thousands of years, but this theory was now proven
incorrect. This planetary disaster had happened recently and
rapidly, which still begged the question, how did it get so cold?
There are very few places that exist in the cosmos where
temperatures near to absolute zero can be found, as it would take
close to those temperatures to freeze this complete planet so
quickly so as to preserve everything, in an instant.
Something, somehow, had moved this planet from its temperate
position, where these bodies would have lived and worked, where all
of the forms of life as we understand lived their lives on this planet.
The evidence proved they were definitely not local as these
inhabitants of this gene pool were normally found way out to the
other edge of the spiral arm of the galaxy, and thats a long long
way.
It must have been pushed or pulled from its position and thrown
into deep space, had a massive amount of water dumped on it
somehow in what must have been liquid form, as the various
surfaces on the planet were uniform, and yet all this water hadnt
drowned the planet.
It had to have been blast frozen in deep space, and then ended
up stuck where it now orbits, pulled in be the gravity of this sun, all
in the blink of an eye, in cosmic terms. The acceleration to get it to

deep space, and then the subsequent deceleration to where it is

now must have been unbelievable, otherwise it would have shot out
to another galaxy.
There were still more questions than answers, but at least with all
of this new evidence being discovered, it was now possible to
correct any wrong notion or theory, though unfortunately, it didnt
always guide to the correct one.
Head Office were going to have a field day with this new
information, which Bruce was assuming, had already been sent to
them by the departing archaeologists.
Nothing seemed to add up.
This ice problem just wouldnt go away. How do you get a few
miles of thickness of water to arrive, and not drown the planet? The
ice would have had to build up gradually, but the evidence said
otherwise.
Snow!!
Thats how.
The planet must have been overrun with either snow or ice
crystals falling on a massive scale, maybe comet ice drawn in by the
gravity of the planet, or something similar. Perhaps they passed
through the tail!
This theory should keep the physicists busy for a while, and more
so the astrophysicists, who would have to work on to find out if this
theory was feasible.
Kira was still working on the opposite end of the problem, not how
it got there, but how to get rid of it, and she had a couple of sound
theories to run passed the boffins on the ship.
The gasses contained in the upper levels of the ice were gassing
off at much lower temperatures that the water, and were starting to
produce cracks in the ice sheet itself as the gas forced its way out of
the frozen water. This could help; it could be a danger sign too
The theories would be put forward tomorrow.

Chapter Twenty-Three
Kira stood in that lecture theatre again, and once again
surrounded by experts.
They were used to her by now and knew of her diligence to her
work, so were all open-minded about the proposals that were to be
put forward by her.
She stood there, again, nervously addressing these experts.
One again, I stand here as only a pawn in the larger scheme of
things, and I have no idea about the logistics that would be involved
with these proposals, and for that I would bow to your expertise.

However, the problem that is in front of us, basically, is as

follows.
We have a planet with too much ice, which when melted, as the
sun is doing as we speak, would flood the whole surface and turn
this into a water world desert.
We would lose forever the landscape, and the history of the
cultures who have lived there, bearing in mind that the cryogenic
lab have live tissue in the bodies received so far. There could be a
lot more that we havent found yet. If we do nothing, we will be
wiping that civilisation and all of its history out forever.
When I first started to look at the problem, number crunching is
what I do, I had difficulty in working out a method of separating the
gasses from the liquid, so the atmosphere stayed here, and the
water could be taken elsewhere and deposited, desert planets have
already been identified in this sector to receive the ice water.
The planet itself seems to have supplied the answer, with the
help of some rudimentary chemistry.
It appears that when the planet froze, the whole planet froze
instantly, the gasses included, so the lower melting point/gassing
point did not freeze last, but all together, in situ.
We can see this in the layers, as there isnt any. Had the freeze
been gradual, the gasses would have been lying on or in the upper
layers of the ice, for example, as the water would turn to ice first it
would be on the bottom, then the carbon dioxide would have been
next at minus 78.5 degrees C, ozone at minus 112 degrees C, and
so on, the layers would have built up that way, ending in nitrogen on
the top at minus 195.79 degrees C.
This didnt happen. The gasses and the water ice are mixed right
throughout the layers of ice all the way to the landmasses below. I
do not know why or how, Im not the scientist, only the statistician,
but all I can guess at is that the fall in temperature happened so
rapidly, the gasses were frozen at the same time, though I imagine
some would be trapped in liquid form first.
This I think is how we will be able to move out the water ice
without affecting the atmosphere too much, and to move the ice in
huge quantities to where it is needed most.
There was a bit of a buzz in the room by now, but they listened.
I am not an expert at this type of operation, and Im sure that
the experts among you will perhaps criticise my methods, but the
reasoning is sound, and mathematically, it is possible. Its up to the
experts, thats all of you, to make the idea a reality.
Even more buzzing in the room, though not all in agreement.
This is what I think we could do to take the iced water off the
planet, and leave everything else here, cheaply, and effectively.
The planet itself is showing us the way, and because there are
gasses trapped even at the lower levels, the method could be used
all the way down to free up the landmasses below.

Basically, the sun has released all of the gasses by, say, minus
50 degrees C, down to a depth of, say, a thousand metres at a time,
but the water will stay solid all the way up to zero degrees C.
We can somehow cut or carve out these blocks, and then also lift
the blocks already cracked away by the gassing off due to the suns
heat, we could send them into space where they will remain as ice
because of the lower temperatures, then couple a large number of
blocks together and then tow them as a sort of ice convoy, dragging
the blocks through space to the new destination planet, where we
could shatter the blocks into ice crystals, and let the iced water fall
to the ground by gravity.
That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the best, most efficient, and
cheapest solution I have found to answer this problem.

Chapter Twenty-Four
The crap had hit the fan.
Head Office had replied to the report that bodies had been found
on the planet, and it had been discovered that there were small
segments of live tissue, and to all intents and purposes they
appeared to be thawing out, and slowly coming back to life, a report
from an over zealous cryogeneticist no doubt.
It did prompt Bruce to find out by making up to date enquiries
into these bodies before starting to write a corrective report about
the state of them in the real world.
Entering the cryogenics lab, he looked at the silent and still
bodies, still inside their temperature controlled plastic bubbles, still
silent and motionless. The only change he could see was that the
contours of the faces seemed to be more defined, and they were
starting to look more human now. They seemed to be asleep.
The Head of Cryogenics met him and they walked together into
the office.
Bruce took a seat opposite the scientist.
I suppose you would like an update on our guests out there in
the lab?
Bruce nodded, and replied,
Ive got Head Office on my back now about them supposedly
coming back to life, some kind of unsubstantiated report that was
sent from this department to them.
The Head looked at Bruce for a moment,
Perhaps the report was a little premature, Ill admit, but it is the
truth. The cells in these bodies are gradually returning to normal, so
much so we are having to feed and oxygenate the cells that have for
want of a better word, defrosted so far, and the numbers of cells
which are starting to work normally is increasing by the hour.
Are you telling me that these bodies are really coming back to
life?

Well, not exactly. I dont think they were ever really dead. The
cells that are showing signs of life are the simple cells of the body,
not the essential ones, like skin, hair, and that sort of thing, nothing
like anything near what would be needed to resurrect these people
to full, normal life. Fully sentient humanoids.
So, can you explain to me how has Head Office got hold of this
misleading information? It came from here in this lab.
That, I dont know, but I will find out. I will have a word with my
team and ask them to damp down any rumours from spreading.
It would make my life a lot easier if you did.
The Head of Cryo looked at Bruce and watched for his reaction as
he said,
What if I was to tell you that the young boy was in the last
stages of, for want of an easy word you will understand, defrosting,
and that inside his body about eighty percent of his cells were
functioning normally, which in his case includes the internal organs,
liver, kidneys, these types of organs.
However the brain still shows no sign of any activity, which
means we could just have a brain dead body. Only time will tell.
Not wanting to get anyones hopes up, including Head Office, as
this is a procedure we have never done before with live tissue or
any other tissue come to that, so we would also like to keep our
findings and results quiet for the time being in case it all goes pear
shaped, and fails.
So, what do I tell Head Office?
More or less what I said earlier. Some non essential cells were
showing signs of life, but it is far too early to come to any
conclusions.
And the leaked report?
Exactly what you suspected, an over zealous member of my
team assuming projected results before the tests and experiments
have even been carried out.
Bruce looked at this man, who has also been put in the same
difficult position as he is by this leak,
Off the record, between you and me, how do you predict that
you will succeed in reanimating these bodies, say, as a percentage
of success?
The Head of Cryo smiled at Bruce,
Only about one hundred percent!

Chapter Twenty-Five
Back in his office, Bruce had time to think. The information he had
received from Cryo was unexpected, and would send ripples all the
way to Head Office if they got to know.

Here he was, trying to work out some three-dimensional puzzle

where the information changes by the hour and to work it out
without giving any of the answers or solutions away.
The engineering scientists on board had already worked out a sort
of scheme, based on Kiras theory, which would enable the removal
of the unwanted ice, without too much disruption to the planet
underneath it. It was still in the planning stage, but it could be done,
and lots of contractors were queuing up to do it.
This was the subject he concentrated on when he wrote his very
lengthy report to Head Office, and he spent only a very short time
debunking the Frankenstein theories that were fuelled rumours back
on Earth about the original inhabitants of this frozen planet.
This led him to another conundrum.
If, and only if, the planet was completely cleared of ice, Head
Office would try to use this ready-made haven as yet another colony
since they had technically paid for this ice removal, assuming of
course that the indigenous people from the planet had all died out in
the frost. It would be ideal for colonisation. The position in relation
to the sun in this system was perfect, the atmosphere, once sorted,
would be ideal.
Bruce didnt like this. He could almost hear the greedy land
grabbers back on Earth bidding for the rights to rape this planet for
whatever reason they could think of to make even more money.
What if the real indigenous people of the planet were in fact all
still alive under the ice, and could be, to use the special scientific
term used in the Cryo lab, defrosted?
Maybe it was time to work up some misinformation to keep the
hounds at bay till the investigations by this crew were complete, but
what could he tell them?
That night, he went to bed early, but couldnt sleep. This had
happened before, the last time; they made a new craft, the modified
Hopper. Perhaps he could be the catalyst in yet another invention if
he went walkabout, though probably not.
Things were niggling at him, little things that could become big
things. He had lots and lots of what ifs to try to think his way
through.
He called in to see Kira who was working late.
She had studied the results of the engineering crews projected
ability to get rid of the ice, and the huge queue of contractors, hired
and paid for by Head Office, to do the job, all of them making lots of
money on the way.
Bruce was happy for her, as this was another procedure that had
been overcome by her mathematical approach, and he remained
complimentary throughout the conversation, but she picked up on
his less than perfect attitude.
Something seems to be bothering you, she said in an enquiring
way, And Im getting concerned
Its nothing really, well, it is, but, not important, but it is.
She gave him a strange look.

How so? she asked.

Well, heres a theory I want you to listen to, and comment at the
end of it.
If we clear the ice from the planet, as you have already
explained and planned how to do so, and if we find lots of dead
bodies, we would then bury out of respect, then we as a race, would
go ahead and colonise this planet, taking over where the indigenous
races has left off, exactly as Head Office has hinted at already, I
suppose that this is fine, but, and I mean but,
What if the indigenous population were still alive or could be
reanimated? Still here. Just in some sort of suspended animation.
Impossible! Im sure this extremely cold temperature will have
killed them all by now Kira wasnt sure where this was going.
What if, by some random chance, the whole indigenous people
of this planet were hit by temperatures so low they couldnt and
didnt die, which means, in theory, still alive, or perhaps quite a lot
of them, just waiting to re-emerge after their severe ice age in some
kind of defrosting?
Kira shook her head,
These temperatures are far too cold to support any life, and after
hundreds, maybe thousands of years of these conditions, nothing
would have been able to survive.
Not so. Bruce felt he had the upper hand.
The people on this planet have no idea what was about to hit
them, and we can only speculate, but this planet went from about
forty degrees Celsius to minus two hundred and thirty degrees
Celsius in less than two hours, and not for hundreds or thousands of
years, its only been like this for less than thirty years
Kiras eyes widened at this timeframe information,
We can only speculate where all of the water came from, but we
know it doesnt belong here, and you are making moves to put that
right.
Kira looked shocked at this new information, nodded, but didnt
interrupt,
Reading between the lines, outside the box, whatever, this is
what I see happening now.
Head Office have authorised the removal of the ice from the
planet, as per your planning, in almost record time. It is normally
extremely difficult for them to be asked to pay for anything as large
a project as this, but they have agreed it almost instantly, which
makes the little alarm bells in my head start to ring.
I think they want this planet as a colony. They are hoping that
none of the indigenous peoples would have survived, so it would be
ripe for the picking.
The Terraformers have told me that taking this planet over, more
or less ready made, would be lot cheaper to do than a full
transformation, as the vegetation would still be there for the
atmosphere production.

However, Cryo seems to think that, with a little caution it is

possible to save some of the inhabitants, possibly most of them if
given the time, which would scupper their plans.
I hate to admit it but I also think Head Office may have an
informer planted in the Cryo lab, as they were sent news of the
ongoing reanimation of one of the bodies.
I hope Im wrong, but I have this feeling that the contractors will
remove most of the ice, but leave enough to let the surface
landmasses drown so as to prevent any animal from surviving as it
naturally defrosts with the sun, then at a later date, pump away the
rest of the water into open space.
Kira looked horrified.
Is there anything we can do to stop them?
I think so. I have a plan.

Chapter Twenty-Six
As expected, a large number of working contractors suddenly put
in an appearance at this normally quiet part of the galaxy, all
waving pieces of paper to show they were the lead contractor on the
various different projects, and all requesting the local co-ordinates
to start to remove the ice, in huge blocks, in their given sector of
the planet.
Head Office had carved up the whole of the surface area of the
ice on the planet to a large number of contractors, adding fuel to
the fire that they wanted this clearing as quickly as possible.
Head Office had also asked for help from Bruce and Kira, as they
were the onsite science team, with their own team of experts, to
liaise with these contractors, and to help them with local information
that would expedite the removal and relocation of the ice to the
designated desert planets This was good news to Bruce as he could
then monitor what Head Office was planning without having to
resort to openly spying.
He also got the chance to see the blueprints of the contracts, and,
as he had feared, the removal of the ice did not go all the way down
to where the planetary mean sea levels would have originally been,
the excuse was for safety reasons in unknown topography.
Sorting that out, with Kiras help, should be easy.
What would become more difficult would be to hide the progress
of the bodies from the planet going through this defrosting without
alerting the Head Office.
Bruce knew there was a mole in there somewhere, and the Head
of Cryo was setting up lots of misinformation tracers, which would
go through the pipeline, and throw Head Office off the scent of what
was really going on, and at the same time expose who was sending
it to them too by the nature of the lie.

Bruce had also been asking lots of questions of the Terraformers

as to where, if they were to be working to totally terraform a planet
like this, where would they advise to put the dwellings? Near to, and
on what?
He needed to think on a huge scale. Once the ice was almost off,
how much time they would need to find as many indigenous people
as they could, and move them out of harms way.
The actual ground would still be frozen solid, as would the
average of ten metres of ice left on for safety, the ambient
temperature at ground level would still be somewhere around minus
sixty degrees C, but for how long? How much time did they have to
locate and extradite as many of the indigenous population they
could, in secret?
Kira calculated that a period of months would go by before the
temperature on the landmasses would be sufficiently high enough to
cause a melt, and the cells in the remaining bodies still present
there on the planet to finally split, and the person would die.
Could the science ship house that many persons from the planet
while they defrosted them, slowly, painstakingly? This answer was
simple, they could not.
Could they find these people, under all of that ice, without help of
heat signatures, since everything around them was all at the same
temperature, and current sensors wouldnt penetrate that far
accurately for something as small as a person?
Then, if and only if, they managed to remove a large number of
people from the planet, still in frozen condition, what would they do
with them?
The reanimations would take months to complete, and that meant
the possibility of detection and discovery.
If the reanimations were successful in any large numbers, what
could they do with them? Its not easy to hide a lot of people,
especially as they would be in plain sight at some time or another.
However, the priority at the moment was to get any frozen,
assumed living, persons off this planet, as soon as possible before
the floods deluged it. Thats when the big ifs would start to come
into the equation.
If we can detect them, if we can get to them, if we can keep them
frozen till we can do the controlled defrost, and if we can find
somewhere to put them afterwards.
This was going to be an interesting few weeks.

Chapter Twenty-Seven
The contractors set about carving up the massive areas of ice
blocks, and literally dragging them into space, where, once
becoming weightless, they were easier to control.

They were then tethered to the next block that had been brought
up, and moved further out of orbit, the many blocks being worked
on simultaneously by the contractors were arriving as each
contractor came into the correct position of the orbiting tugs using
the planets rotation.
Kira was able to calculate how many blocks, in cubic kilometres
were being shifted over a twenty-four hour period, and was able to
project a calculation as to how long before they would stop, and
allowed the remainder to flood the planet.
It was a lot less than she had hoped.
Bruce had been to see his engineering people, with a view of
making some kind of detector that didnt work with heat, but
perhaps chemistry or shape.
This was currently being worked on while Bruce had yet another
problem to solve.
How do we get under the ice, unseen, and work under there, one
again, unseen?
They could wait until the contractors had left, but this would
narrow the timeframe available for getting as many indigenous
people as possible off before the melt.
They could tell Head Office that they would be taking samples on
the underlying ice as a block was stripped off; monitoring the
remaining ice for pollutants, quality etc, and this would not draw
suspicion to their drilling activities. They would just drill a little
deeper, a little wider, and a lot more often, that was all.
The modified Hopper would transport the samples to the ship for
analysis, and therefore, no possible contaminates could be picked
up inside the ice blocks, in error, and dumped on the new desert
planet it was to be helping by accident. The samples would be in
cylindrical, sealed containers till given the all clear to stop any
possibility of cross contamination.
This cover story could be used to explain their continued interest
in the project, and their activity on and around the ice below.
The hardest part of this plan was still to be able to use some kind
of device to locate dwelling structures from a distance, through
dense, hard-pressed ice and still with a high degree of accuracy.
A team would drop down the rapid laser drilled shaft using ion
propulsion belts to the inside of the dwelling, collect any bodies
there, bring them up to the underside of the Hopper, where they
would be packaged out of sight into cylindrical sealed containers for
transport to the science ship. Once here, they would be taken out of
the cylinders, and still kept frozen for the time being. The science
ship could hold about eight hundred at this very low temperature
indefinitely.
The shaft would then be shaped into cracks to look natural to the
next batch of contractors.
That was the theory behind it. Whether it would work remains to
be seen, and with this project experiment, there would be no
rehearsal.

Real samples would also be taken, and the suspected moles on

board the ship would be kept busy in an isolation chamber analysing
the real samples for the whole period of the rescue.
It all hinged now on detecting the dwellings.

Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kira walked into Bruces office.
The guys at engineering think theyve sussed out the detection
system for you.
They said the problem at first was making it small and easily
carried. They think that they have that sorted.
Bruce stood up, and together they made their way down to
engineering, hoping against hope that these guys had come up
trumps for a second time on this mission.
He was greeted with a lot of smiling faces in the engineering lab.
The Head of Engineering stepped forward and lead him over to
one of the tables.
The problem we have always had with this type of detection
system is that it uses immense amounts of power to be effective,
and to make it small enough to be portable, and have enough power
to penetrate the thickness of packed ice overlying everything was
almost an impossible task.
The technology has always been available to make and use
these types of scanners and detectors, in fact we have a number on
the ship already, attached to the outside hull, but the energy
requirement to operate them is very large indeed, and would need
constant and lengthy recharging after only a short space of time on
the planet, so not very efficient for our project.
So we decided to look at it from a different perspective, and
came up with this idea.
He handed Bruce a small box with a semicircular dial on it, no
markings or grading, just a single digital pointer, and a coloured
backlight.
This, Sir will point to the location of a detected dwelling, to a
very high degree of accuracy. Follow the arrow direction, and when
you arrive directly overhead of the dwelling, the background light
turns green.
Bruce was impressed, though puzzled,
But you said it would need vast amounts of energy to power a
scanner that could do this. How is this possible?
The box you hold in your hand is not the scanner, its a remote
receiver connected to the ships scanners, and will pinpoint for you
exactly where to drill. The ship scanners will scan, find a target, and
relay the locations to the remote receivers below.
We have made a number of them, so you can appear to be
sampling in lots of different, apparently random places, as the

sensor direction beams of the scanners here on the ship are invisible
to all but these boxes.
Bruce was now feeling a little happier with the development of
this project. He could beat Head Office at their little game, and
hopefully, get away with it.
What he needed now was a test run.
He gathered together a sampling team, highly qualified in rough
and dangerous terrain environments, spending a full morning
briefing them on how he thought the trial mission should be
executed. They knew what they had to do, and how.
The secrecy of the mission was paramount, so the team of
analysts, all suspected security risk personnel were given their very
important placement in the sealed lab, to conduct the sampling on
the ice brought up in the samples. Basically, locking away the
suspected moles in the quarantine chamber for the duration.
The ground crew in the hangers set about loading the extra
equipment that was not mentioned on the itinerary into the
sampling ships which carried the sampling crew members to the
surface of the ice, and setting up the Hopper to go and assist in the
collection of the samples, operating like a shuttle with the samples.
Bruce stood in front of the huge screens that filled the whole wall
in front of him, studying the information being scanned by the
sensor array of the ship, set on the best frequency to scan for
dwellings, since they now knew the general materials that were
used in the building of these dwellings.
This plan would only work if the dwellings were still standing and
undamaged, so there would be gaps inside for the teams to move
about in the dwellings, unseen, and undetected. The freeze came so
fast that the weight of the ice supported itself around the dwellings
like a clamp, leaving them more or less intact.
What he really wanted the scans to find for this first trial was to
find a block, or group of dwellings together, hopefully connected to
each other, so the team could move freely inside all of them, and to
test out their retrieval ability with the minimum amount of fuss,
practicing getting any frozen bodies out in a seamless military style
operation, without raising suspicions
He did not know if the indigenous people lived in cities, towns or
villages, so it was going to be a wait and see kind of outcome on
that.
Kira monitored the progress of the contractors working on moving
an ice block many kilometres thick, which the science ship was
about to pass overhead of.
The sensors on the ship, once the ice was lifted out of the way,
would penetrate the remaining ice better than they had been able
to previously, and the sampling crews on standby, all suited up,
ready to go and do what they had discussed and planned.
As the contractors began to haul up this recently detached ice
block, the science ship moved over, as if it was getting out of the

way of the ice coming up from below, but instead started a sort of
sideways sensor sweep under the block as it lifted.
The operation had started.

Chapter Twenty-Nine
Got one.
The voice of the technician operating one of the sensors rang out
around the room,
Look, Sir, there, just over to the left of the screen.
Bruce looked at the monitor, not exactly sure what he was looking
for or at, but slowly, he could make out a rectangular shape, and as
his eyes got used to the very slight differences in the degree of
darkness of the image, he was able to make out other rectangular
shapes connected to it, possibly more feint because they were not
as tall.
Worth a look though.
His landing crew were given the coordinates, and off they went,
followed by the Hopper filled with those cylindrical containers for
the samples.
The contractors were informed that the science ship was
beginning to collect samples of the lower ice for contaminates, and
there would be people on the ice below so they didnt laser a block
without checking first.
The teams, with the help of these newly developed remote sensor
receivers were able to report, in code, that they were standing
above the detected objects, and were about to drill for samples, in
the ice.
Bruce gave the go ahead, also in code, and the deep drills, which
we far more powerful than anything that would be needed to take a
few samples, were through to the suspected dwelling below in less
than three minutes, cutting at over a kilometre a second, the laser
beams rotating so rapidly it looked like the beams were bending
backwards. This was by far, the quickest way to rapidly produce a
shaft.
Meanwhile a couple of the crew moved about a short distance
away, drilling a little here and there with the normal drill rigs, and
taking real samples, in full view of anyone watching from any of the
other ships in the vicinity. With unknown origin ice, you cannot be
too careful.
Meanwhile, under the Hopper, the six-man team had put on the
ion propulsion belts, and were almost freefalling down the shaft to
the bottom, using the noiseless belts to slow them to a stop at the
bottom.
The ship sensors had been correct.
This was a large dwelling, but there were not signs of occupation,
but lots of signs of civilisation, as it seemed full of what appeared to

be paperwork. This was very much like the old Town Hall, with the
historical documents and land registry, all handcrafted, scrolled up,
frozen in temperature as well as time.
This find was way too important to leave behind.
Bruce ordered as many documents as they could find to be
loaded into the sealed containers, and the restoration of them would
come later.
In total, only three frozen bodies were found in these buildings,
possibly workers, or librarians, or something like that, and it seemed
clear that since there were so few here, and the others had been
found in bed pointed at the freeze coming about during the night.
These was also packaged and shipped back to the labs above.
Bruce needed more time here at this location, so he got his
normal sampler people to contaminate the samples, so they would
have to go and take them again, the spying moles being the ones
who would recommend another sample run.
The plan worked, only this time, instead of bodies, they had
retrieved documents, which could explain a lot about the indigenous
people should they not survive. It should give a window into their
life and lifestyle, culture, leisure if any, and the many other aspects
that make up the heritage of this race.
That part of the discovery would have to wait for the time being,
the priority was to retrieve as many bodies as possible, but it was a
find that those archaeologists who left a few weeks ago would love
to get their hands on. Not before Bruce knew every written word on
them first.
The next day, the real samplers took new samples, and the
underground samplers were able to find over fifty bodies inside the
lower class dwellings in the area of the can now be best described
as a civic centre. They cleared out the population of this small town
effectivly and efficiently.
The town had no water mains, no gas, and no electricity, almost
Earth medieval style, or the Wild West of those really old movies.
There were bodies of animals found in the outbuildings, but the
remit given was for the humanoids to be priority.
Over the next three weeks, the sampling continued, and the
underground sampling was racking up more and more frozen
inhabitants, the ability of the sensors to see through the ice
becoming easier as the contractors were removing the ice.
It also meant that the time was limited, and was now starting to
come to an end.
Kira had come up with a really good plan.
If the underground samplers as they were known only on the ship
could clear the low-lying areas of the populous, and she could
convince the computer controlled ice removers to get in as low as
possible without picking up soil, then the flooding would leave the
higher lands untouched, but the lower ones would flood.
If bodies, thawed out by the sun, and really dead this time, were
found by the reps of the new terraformers above the set water level,

it would satisfy Head Office that the world had perished under the
ice, then the heat melting the ice, and the water flooding all of the
lands would have drowned any below the waterline. They wouldnt
think to check properly that the low-lying areas had been cleared
out of population.
Time was running out for Bruce and the team to get as many of
the indigenous people off this planet as they could, without
detection, still frozen solid, and no guarantee that they would live
again.
News came to him from the Cryo lab. The boy was awake.

Chapter Thirty
A lot of things were running through Bruces mind as he made his
way, quickly, with Kira almost running behind him, to the Cryo
department.
The sample workers, both types, were getting on with their work
and missions respectively, and could be left to it without the
supervision of him or Kira.
This new development needed his personal attention at the
earliest possible moment, and great secrecy would have to be
maintained when the suspected moles were not working or confined
in their quarantine lab.
He entered the cryo lab, not sure what to expect, but found this
young boy, aged about ten or eleven, sitting on the edge of the cryo
bed having a drink of water and appearing to be relaxed and not as
fearful as Bruce would have expected.
The Head of Cryo took Bruce into his office, closed the door and
started to explain the position so far.
He came around about an hour ago, opened his eyes and just
stared up at the lights. No expressions, no panic, just staring
upwards.
When he did move his head to one side, as he must have heard
us moving about, he saw some of my white coated staff, but still he
didnt seem to panic, he just followed them with his eyes.
At first, we thought that there must have been brain damage
that we hadnt detected, and he had lost his ability of his awareness
of position, but this is not so,
He started to mumble, repeating a word, over and over, quietly,
almost to himself as he looked around his surroundings.
Even when we realised he was awake and removed the chamber
cover then helped him sit up, he showed no fear, no expression, just
whispering this one word over and over to himself.
The dialect he was speaking in is known to us but only very little,
so we sent for one of those language history guys from upstairs, and
he said this dialect was based on a very old colonial language, from
way over the other side of the galaxy arm, used by some of the first

colonies to be set up there. Weve not heard this language spoken

for centuries.
Was this linguist guy able to communicate with him?
Not at first. He tried some of the simple words and phrases used
in this dialect, but the boy didnt seem to react to any of the words,
so the linguist wasnt sure whether he had understood the words or
was ignoring them. Perhaps his hearing may be impaired, though we
ruled the last one out quite quickly, he can hear perfectly.
He seems happy to interact with us on a non verbal basis. We
have checked him over physically, and he seems fine considering
his ordeal, and he has even accepted water from us as well, so he is
very trusting at the moment.
The Head of Cryo took Bruce back out into the lab to see the boy,
close up and in person, the boy still sitting on the edge of the cryo
bed with his legs dangling over the side.
There was no reaction at first as Bruce approached, then the boy
looked directly at him and smiled, uttering a short phrase that Bruce
could not understand.
The linguist translated, as best he could,
Hes asking if you are the person in charge, the leader, that kind
of thing.
Bruce looked at the boy and nodded.
The boy said another short phrase which Bruce couldnt
understand either, so he looked to the linguist,
What did he say?
Im not one hundred percent sure, but it sounds like he is asking
if this is Heaven, and are you the Divine One?

Chapter Thirty-One
This kind of moment was the kind Bruce didnt like. He was lost
for any answer that wouldnt take hours to explain, and he needed a
really good one of about six or seven words that said it all.
He looked at the linguist and asked,
Do we know anything about him, the rest of the people, where
they came from?
Im afraid not Sir. He has only just started to speak in real
sentences as you came to him from the office.
So we still know basically nothing really.
Its early days yet Sir. If I can strike up a conversation with him, I
can ask the simple questions first, and get the rest slowly as he
becomes more open to the questions.
Bruce thought for a moment then said to the linguist,
When I meet anybody for the first time, I always introduced
myself, and ask their name. That might be a good start.

The linguist turned to the boy and spoke in this unusual dialect. To
our ear it sounded like French words with a broad Cornish accent,
though it certainly wasnt French.
The boy looked at the linguist, and replied with one word,
Tolly
Bruce took the lead, and pointed to the boy,
Tolly, then pointed to himself, Bruce.
The boy pointed to Bruce,
Bruce.
The communications barrier was now beginning to be broken
down, but there was little they could expect to glean from one so
young about what happened to their planet.
Bruce left the linguist to carry on communicating with the boy,
albeit, only small beginnings, and took the Head of Cryo back into
his office.
What progress do we have on the other members of the family,
the two adults, the girl or the baby?
The two adults are about a week away from total defrost and
recovery, perhaps a little less, and are doing well. The little girl is
only hours away from completion of the defrosting. We will know
then if she can or will wake up. We have no way of knowing till they
actually open their eyes if we have been successful or not.
The baby however, we hold little hope for, as the body cells were
still in initial growth, and this enforced stopping of the development
may have serious consequences on any further growth. We are
monitoring the situation closely.
Bruce thought for a moment.
Perhaps it would be better if the boy didnt see the girl till she
was reanimated, and then we can put them together. The same
would apply with the adults. Seeing them in the cryo chambers
could stress them into thinking they were dead.
As the success rate of this animation programme looks, on the
face of it, as being a steady and sure possibility, this could mean
that most, if not all of the frozen bodies we are bringing up from the
planet, given time, could be, in theory, reanimated?
Yes. Given the time, it could be done, though I would say that
the realistic figure would be around eighty percent success at the
lower to about ninety percent success at the higher end of the
estimate. Anything above that is a bonus
The new problem for us now is going to be the sheer numbers of
people you are pulling off the planet, and the time it will take to
defrost and reanimate them all. The facilities here on board, though
good, are limited in the number we can process at once
We would have long finished the mission after this one before we
were halfway through the process.
Bruce had been toying with this idea for a while,
Then we need somewhere for some of your cryo people to be
able to work, undetected, or in disguise as being something else,
with plenty of time to work their magic on the frozen bodies, and

then sort of merge the reanimated people into a new society by

rehabilitation, as if they had always been there.
And I know just the place.

Chapter Thirty-Two
Bruce put his idea to Kira, so she could run the numbers, the
possibilities, and the probabilities, arriving at the chances of success
or failure, theoretically speaking.
My idea, and its a good one, is to carry on loading as many of
these frozen bodies as we possibly can from the lower areas as you
suggested, the low lying areas being the areas that would definitely
be the flooded ones, in the time we have available, then, when we
have done all we can here, we leave.
Kira looked puzzled. Bruce continued,
Like you said, if bodies are found in the higher regions of the
planet after the natural thaw, Head Office will assume that anything
and everything below the waterline would have drowned, and would
not even bother to check below that waterline for bodies.
I think that once we have done everything we can here, we
should follow the convoy of removed ice over to the desert planets,
and standby with our team of terraformers to help plan the water
drop on whichever two out of the three planets have been selected
to receive this ice.
How does this help us?
One the ice has been almost shattered and almost atomised, the
planets being hydrated will have almost continuous torrential rain
for weeks, the lower lying areas will flood, but the basics for
colonisation will have started.
The teams of terraformers, with their essential labourers, will
move in to begin the introduction of plant life and other things to
the once barren landscapes, irrigation, fertilisation, that sort of
thing
Once again, Kira looked puzzled. She asked,
A good theory, but there are things wrong with this plan.
First of all, while I am a great believer in the amazing skills of our
terraformers, this is a massive undertaking, and would take an army
of skilled farmers
A look of understanding appeared on her face.
Now I get it! You intend to put these people after reanimation
onto the planets to work alongside the terraformers, as if they were
labourers. Cunning, but, how can these people get there without
detection?
Almost correct, but not quite. Bruce smiled,

I intend to put the frozen bodies we have into a hidden location

on whichever planet we start first, together with a full cryo crew,
and let them defrost in their own good time.
I know that Head Office will be aware of labourers working with
the experts at various points of these planets, the numbers of which
will increase week on week, but they will have no idea who these
labourers really are, where they came from, or how many of them
there are. Im hiding them in plain sight!
Kira looked incredulously at Bruce,
Can we really achieve this?
Had a word with cryo today, and they could do it, and were quite
happy to go long term on saving these people
The full plan isnt sorted out in my mind yet, but the way I see it,
as the people are defrosted, they go through a debriefing from their
own people, and merge into the flow of immigrant labour, of which
they are the only immigrants.
Bruce suddenly burst out laughing.
Kira remained puzzled, but waited.
I have just realised something really funny, in fact two ironic
possibilities.
I have just realised that Head Office had planned to drown these
people, a kind of genocide to land grab the planet, and now they are
going to be paying them as terraform labour.
The second irony is that, in thirty or forty years time,
terraforming of what was their old frozen planet will begin, so, they
will be paid to move back to their own world to colonise it!
Kira had to smile at that.

Chapter Thirty-Three
News came from the cryo lab that the little girl had fully
recovered and appeared to be in good health.
The Head of Cryo had made a room available for her and her
brother to meet and talk so they wouldnt feel frightened or all
alone.
The newly appointed linguist was in with them, working on a
translation programme for the computers, which could translate
spoken word in real time, as they did with other extraterrestrial
languages. Once the full thesaurus was compiled, which could take
a while; the language would join the others in the database on
Earth, though for now the basic words and syntax would have to do.
Bruce went to the cryo lab to see the girl and her older brother,
with the aim of trying to find out any clue at all as to what they
could remember before waking up here.
The boy, Tolly explained that he woke on the morning before this
one, but the house was still in darkness when the sun should have

been shining, and that he and his father worked all day to try to dig
through the snow that had piled up against the house in some kind
of huge snowdrift. He told of trying to light the fire to cook and heat
the house, but there was nowhere for the smoke to escape. They
went to bed really tired, ready to try again today, but he found
himself here instead.
May I ask a question? he said through the electronic translator
to Bruce,
Are our parents dead, or are our parents here in heaven with
us?
Bruce looked at the Head of Cryo, and they both seemed to nod
assent that it was time the boy and girl were told what had really
happened to them, their family, the whole nation, and the whole
planet, but, where to begin?
Bruce looked at Tolly and his sister, and smiled,
Your parents are still alive, but they will not be ready to join you
for about another two or three days. Let me explain as simply as I
can.
For the next two hours, Bruce, and now Kira who had joined him,
explained how they found their home world under ice, and where it
had never been before, completely in the wrong place, and at the
wrong temperature. He explained how they had found them and
their family, and how they had taken them off the frozen world to
the science ship they were now on, and that they were still rescuing
as many people as they could before they ran out of time.
The childrens eyes opened wide when they heard they were out
in space and not at home, though they didnt interrupt.
They were told that the cryo people had found a method to
defrost the people from the planet slowly so they didnt die, and
were working on the last stages of this with their parents in another
part of the cryo complex.
This was when Bruce had to be a little brutally honest to say that
if they hadnt moved them up here to the ship, the natural
defrosting of the planet by the sun would have meant they would
have all drowned under miles of water, as the whole place would
have become a water world. He decided to omit the part about Head
Office leaving some ice on, trying to do this intentionally.
The two children seemed to take it in their stride, though they
were a little bewildered by it all. They were also bewildered and
confused when they were told that the night they went to sleep was
not yesterday, but somewhere around thirty years ago.
Bruce paused, letting this entire information sink in, and then
asked,
Any questions?
The two of them looked at each other, then Bruce.
Yes. Can we see our parents? This will make my sister happy if
she knows she can see our mother.

You can, as long as you remember that they still look like they
are asleep till we complete the work we are doing on them, so that
they will be fine in a couple of days.
Tolly muttered something to his sister, and she nodded back.
We are happy to see them sleeping. It will make my sister happy
to know they are here, with us, and safe from harm.

Chapter Thirty-Four
Things were starting to move quickly.
The work of the special samplers, working covertly under the
remaining ice, was now coming to an end as the last of the ice from
the lower regions had already been lifted. They had found as many
of the dwellings as they possibly could, and evacuated the
inhabitants, hopefully unseen.
Kira had reprogrammed the machines remotely, and without
detection, basically hacking into the programs of the ice cutting
machines to take the ice off to about one metre above what would
become mean sea level, and adjusting for the terrain, making it
appear to those who may be observing on the other orbiting ships,
that the planet was still completely covered in ice, albeit the planet
itself now being considerably smaller in size than it had been
originally. The higher lands like the mountain ranges in different
parts of the planet were now starting to show through as the ice and
snow had started to melt naturally from the heat of the sun. Until
the atmosphere stabilised, and water vapour was able to form, the
suns rays were hot, as there was no protection.
The science ship had been able to retrieve, using the methods
designed by Bruce and Kira, over eight hundred and fifty frozen
bodies from under the ice, all of which were now stored, in secret, in
the specially adapted freezer chambers next to the cryo labs.
The time had now come to leave this planet, allowing the thaw to
happen naturally, and their request to move to one of the recipient
desert plants on the pretence of supervising the hydration was
authorised.
Tolly and his sister had finally been reunited with their parents,
both of them none the worse for their experience, and almost as if
by a miracle, the baby had also managed to go through the
procedures apparently unharmed, but in the babys case only time
will tell if the child will be completely recovered as the staff had had
to use extreme caution, the different set of problems coming from
the smaller size and less robust cell structures, and they would now
expect to have to do the same again with the still frozen infants on
board in the storage.

Gorun and Axin were introduced to Bruce by Tolly, and very

lengthy and sometimes detailed discussions were held, first
explaining what had happened to their world, and approximately
how long ago. Both Gorun and Axin, like Tolly, seemed to take the
explanation very calmly and didnt have any questions at this point.
More important to Bruce was to find out what could be gleaned
from the past with regard to their world, as every detail could be
useful in tracking its point of origin.
Did they know where it had sat originally in the star systems, or
could they describe their night sky, so Bruce could get a locality of
where they had come from.
Luckily, it was part of their culture to watch the night skies for
season changes and, though it was not part of a religion, it was still
used as a calendar. They used the heavens as our ancients did, a
system similar to our astrology.
After a number of sessions in the astral mapping section, looking
at a blank screen and adding small and large, white and coloured
dots on the black screen, slowly building up an image of the stars
and clusters that the family could remember seeing in their local
night sky. From this information they would begin to discover the
original location of this ice planet.
Kira drew, electronically, the dots of stars and colours of nebulae
on the huge screen, positioning the stars and brightness as the
family described it, comparing this rough scale image of their sky
with the map records held on the database at Head Office.
Once the details on this image had become fairly accurate, a
fairly close match was found, and as the DNA had suggested, it
seems the planet had originally come from somewhere over the
other side of the spiral arm, more or less where the linguists had
said too.
This area of space was huge and in the main, uninhabited, and to
try to locate one planet in this vast area was going to be a real
headache for the charting crew.
Bruce set about checking for any anomalies listed in that area of
space, anything that may have occurred over there, and in a
timeframe of up to about thirty years ago.
In the meantime, while waiting for this information requested to
come back, he was able to explain properly his motives to Gorun
and Axin for what he had done, and told these people not only what
his plan was, but also for the benefit of the adults, why it was to be
kept a secret from Head Office, as technically speaking, they didnt
exist or were believed already dead.
Gorun was quite annoyed at first, since it appeared that Head
Office wanted them all of his race of people dead, but then saw the
sense in Bruces actions. He quite liked the way Bruce had not only
saved his race of people from under the ice, but had even planned
for them to continue doing what they do elsewhere, as if part of a
moving labour pool, actually getting paid to do what they do
normally, so they would not become victims of other peoples greed.

From now on, Bruce would use Gorun as the liaisons person to the
rest of the frozen people as they came out of cryo, still totally
confused and bewildered by it all at first. He was to talk with all of
the newly defrosted people, and explain what had happened, and
what was going to happen, the cryo team working at a rate of
defrosting people in a sort of production line, completing the
process at a rate of about eight a day.
Hopefully, by the time they arrived at the desert planet, and set
up the cryo labs underground, about thirty of the people brought to
the first planet will have been briefed in everything, and would know
not to trust Head Office, information they would then pass on to the
next batch coming out of the frozen state, and so on.
The science ship made good time travelling to the first of the two
desert planets to be trialled and water seeded, and they were able
to arrive well in advance of the ice blocks that were being towed
through space much more slowly.
The terraformers and their equipment would be the first of the
crew to land on this new planet to look over the makeup of the soil
or sand, and where to position and erect their operational
headquarters, prefabricated airtight structures which could be
erected in less than a day, and fully operational in less than three.
This planet already had an atmosphere, but they still needed to
isolate themselves from the local environment so as not to
contaminate their work as they seeded the whole planet, bit by bit.
The difference with this array of connecting terraforming pods as
opposed to say any normally used ones elsewhere was that they
stood directly over some already scanned and detected large
underground caverns, where a team of cryo engineers would be
working, out of sight of any prying eyes above.
The site was selected because, apart from its remoteness, the
caverns were well above the new sea level that was about to be
created by the incoming ice and water, and would be using the
power created from the solar panels covering the terraformers pods
above.
As the frozen people were eventually thawed out, they would be
filtered through the working system a few at a time and join the
terraforming crew above to work the land, something they did
naturally, spreading out into increasingly larger areas as the
terraforming progressed and the labour somehow became available.
All the crew of the science ship had to do while they were the only
ones here was to have this entire complex set up and running before
the ice arrived, which would become water and the massive cargo
ships en route to them with the seeds of terraforming to be
delivered.
The crew set to work with their usual enthusiasm, and a few new
labourers too, the language barrier being broken by the new
portable translators, the software completed by the linguists. It
wasnt perfect, but it will do.

Bruce had other things on his mind now. He had received data
from the mapping headquarters about the other side of the galaxy
arm, and he was keen to take a look at it,

Chapter Thirty-Five
Bruce and Kira began to pour over the results of the data stream
sent from mapping and also some additional data from the news
media about the area they were investigating, and all within the
timeframe he had asked for.
As they expected, nothing was immediately detected. If there had
been, the planet going missing would have shown up somewhere on
some file or story. The photo images received for that region were
many and very detailed.
By using these images and creating them into a virtual reality,
then doing the same with the information given by Gorun and Tolly,
Bruce was able to overlay and triangulate a position of the origin of
line of sight, so that when they were over layered, it would enable
Kira to calculate almost exactly where Gorun had been standing to
be able to see that night sky as he could remember it.
The photographs sent from central mapping displayed a lot more
stars than the virtual star map from Goruns memory, but the larger
ones could be matched up to give enough of an accuracy to plot the
viewers position.
Calculations complete, they were able to see the night sky as
Gorun would have, and both he and Tolly confirmed that this was
their view of the night sky above them.
The next part was simple.
By reversing the view from a given point a distance away from
the planet, to look back at the planet, the star maps should show
the planet where the original observations were taken from.
Kira plotted, and flipped the view.
Nothing.
She checked out the calculations for errors, but the results came
up the same. There was nothing there. Wherever Gorun and Tolly
had observed the night sky from, it definitely wasnt there now.
Bruce thought it might be better to look at some older mapping
photographic scans of the same area to see if any changes had
been logged by the twenty year mapping crew updates which also
happen over that side too.
At first there was nothing, as nothing had been either detected or
reported, only that an asteroid, or a comet was detected leaving the
system, a tail visible to the mappers at the time.
Going further back in the maps, to the previous twenty-year
check, which had now taken them back to over forty years ago.

Gleaming like a blue pearl, there it was, a planet registered as

orbiting a sun star, and registered as lightly colonised by farmers
and growers, and possessing limited technology.
The tribes of people living on this planet were described in the
files as Casters, due to an almost religion like belief in being able to
change the future by casting their dreams and aspirations to the
sky, and therefore improving their lives and health.
It was almost like a kind of empathy with nature and their
surroundings, where if one knew, they all understood. They almost
sensed what was to be done, or not to be done, whichever would be
for the good of the community, so as not to interfere with the
dreams and goals of the others on this world. No words, they just
knew.
This would seem to explain why the people coming out of cryo
didnt seem to stress at their strange surroundings, but seemed
calm and composed. The ones already defrosted could have dream
cast, possibly without realising, to the newly animated.
Bruce was making progress on researching the history of the
colony, but still having problems solving how it came to be found
where it was, and in the state it was.
A small clue came in the form of a news report for the area, and
dated just over twenty years ago.
In the night sky, the news media had reported, a spectacular once
in a lifetime occurrence, a full sized comet was going to pass
through the system, and give spectators the thrill of a near swing-by
so making the tail clearly visible to the naked eye. There were only a
few reports written about the science of the comet passing through,
but there was a lot of speculative superstition written instead, as
happens on these kinds of occurrences.
It was in looking at a couple of photographs taken at the time of
the comet passing, that Bruce thought he spotted something not
quite right. He called Kira over.
Look at this photograph of the comet taken as it was supposed
to be going through the solar system.
Now look at this one of it supposedly leaving the system. Can
you spot whats wrong?
Kira looked for a while, a little confused at first, and then she
spotted what she thought could be wrong with the picture.
Is it that the comet tail is pointing in the wrong direction for the
assumed direction of travel?
Exactly!
If you look at this sequence of photographs in the order they are
supposed to have been taken, the comet tail position is wrong in
relation to the position of the sun. It should be streaming away from
the sun as the comet gets closer to it, but this one is pointing at the
sun, as if heading away.
Now, if I reorder the photographs according to the position of the
comets tail, its a totally different story.

By looking at the sequence of events using the tail of the comet

as the timeline, both in position and size, and looking for anything
remotely connected to the frozen planet we are tracking, we should
be able to get an idea of what happened.
The two of them poured over the memory banks of photographs
taken at that time, then took the copies of the relevant part of space
from the same period of time into their own computers, and resequenced the turn of events.
What they found defied anything they had ever come across
before.

Chapter Thirty-Six
Are you sure you have checked all of the calculations?
Yes, Bruce, over and over. Ive even ran the simulation over and
over again, using different parameters, and still the simulation
remains the same.
Then lets run it, and see what it says happened.
Kira started to run the simulation based on the photographic
evidence and the known timeline of the comet passing through this
region, and eventually the solar system where they think the frozen
planet had come from.
With both of their sets of eyes focussed on the screen, they
watched the story unfold.
At first, it seemed very quiet in this area of space, the timeline in
the bottom corner being the only indication that the sequence was
running and then in a sort of time lapse, the comet appeared,
travelling across the night skies in the distance and heading away
towards the edge of the arm of the galaxy, away from the solar
system entirely.
Then something strange seems to have happened.
The comet appeared to lose most of its long tail very quickly, and
then for some reason, suddenly changed direction; the tracking we
were using to monitor what was joined to the tail indicated a really
massive swell of rapid acceleration. The comet was turning around
and starting to rapidly increase speed as it went, as if gripped inside
a gravitational slingshot. As far as they could discern, there was no
reason that they could see for this change in direction or speed.
There were no black holes known in this part of space, but
something of immense gravitational pull had dragged the comet off
its course.
The planet under investigation, the ice planet, was moving within
its normal orbit until it ended up right in the middle of the broken
and frozen comets tail, and stayed there.
This could explain the water, ice and snow, but not the extreme
low temperatures.

After the comet had passed through this solar system and did the
one hundred and eighty degree turn, from what Bruce and Kira
could deduce, it started to accelerate rapidly to almost light speed,
heading back towards the solar system it had just left, and towards
our frozen planet. The best that they could calculate from the
limited evidence was that the comet seemed to do a complete
about turn as if in a slingshot.
Its new path took it onto a collision course with the planet being
investigated, and here was where the simulation seemed to falter.
The last available photographs taken from many different sources
show the planet was now reflecting white light, which would indicate
ice was on it, but the strangest thing was that, as the comet passed
near to or by it, the planet vanished without a trace. The planet was
blindsided by the comet.
Looking at the still photographs later after watching the
simulation a number of times, it appeared as if the comet had
swallowed the planet, which was now shielded and therefore
protected by the ice from the impact, sinking into the heart of the
comet itself. The internal temperature of the comet would send even
the atmospheric gasses into liquids and then solids in fractions of a
second on the whole planet.
The comet, on this new course at just under light speed to start
with, would leave the solar system so quickly; it would appear to
have vanished.
Making its way, gradually slowing down as the various
gravitational effects of the suns and planets it passed by were
tugging at it, this is how they think the frozen planet inside would
traverse the gap from where it had been over the other side of the
arm of the galaxy, to where it was found by the mapping ship, by
travelling inside the frozen comet.
From this point it became speculation as to how it ended up in the
solar system it did, but the best theory that could be put forward
was that another rapid course change took place, possibly another
slingshot acceleration, which then threw out the planet, still under
its protective ice cover, where it would drift till the gravitational pull
of the sun in this solar system captured it, and it ended up where it
was found.
These theories would have the best brains at Head Office tied up
for weeks on their deliberations as they studied the evidence and
the simulations.
Numerous other theories might be put forward, but judging by
what evidence was available, it looked like this was the correct one,
or as near as could be assumed under the circumstances and not
too much evidence.
Hard to believe, but this was the only working theory. Maybe the
planet itself would reveal more when it was investigated properly in
a few years with the return of the real terraforming crews. Until
then, this was the only answer they were going to get.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Bruce was a lot happier now. He felt good.

He had been correct in his assumption that his theories would
keep Head Office and their scientist and physicists very busy. Too
busy to interfere with the building of the terraforming pods on the
surface of the desert planet, and to miss the equipment plus the
large number of sealed containers going in underneath the pods.
Within the three days, the terraforming pods were erected joined
up, and operational.
The cryo labs placed underneath would take longer to set up, so
for safety, the defrosting was put on hold, until full power was
available to them, and even then, that would have to wait till the
coming water storms were over, as the terraforming pods would
need a protective cover over them all till the deluge of coming iced
rain had fallen. This would make the power cells on the roof
inoperable for a while. It may fall as huge hailstones and cause
damage to the solar cells, so they needed protection, as once
started, they had no control over where or how it fell.
The first batches of ice blocks arrived and were placed in orbit
around the desert planet in a sort of ring.
The order was given, and the blocks were shattered into tiny
fragments, propelled towards the planet by the explosive force of
the shatter ray.
Hundreds of tiny rainbows were being generated as the water
crystals refracted the light of the sun in different locations around
the desert planets equatorial regions.
As expected, because of the dryness of the atmosphere, a lot of
the first water crystals cascading down was turned to vapour, and
gave the planet a little more humidity.
The second string of blocks were moved into position just behind
the first ring, and waited for the first to be completed, then move up
to take its place and so on.
Little by little, the torrential rain coming onto this ordinarily dry
world started to pool in the lower areas, and evaporation began the
process of cloud formation.
String after string of blocks were moved up and shattered,
deluging the planet with water.
Small oceans were becoming larger; river runoff was working
from the higher ground, and the whole landscape was changing,
hydrating.
As the planet no longer needed any sudden and rapid water
drops, the rate of blocks being shattered slowed, allowing the water
already showering down to settle and drain into seas, oceans, and
lakes, giving a better idea of the quantity of water needed overall.

The terraformers down on the planet reported that the seeding of

water had been a success, and signs of great possibilities for
terraforming were emerging.
The giant cargo vessels with the plants and seeds had arrived,
and were being unloaded and stored in some underground caverns
beneath the terraforming pods, an area that was kept as a strict
quarantine to preserve the sterility of the planet, a place where they
would be safe till they were needed to be planted out when the
ground was ready to receive them.
The local labour force was able to unload these ships and take all
of it through quarantine and into storage, as they were dressed in
their sterile overalls and helmets.
The work had begun.

Chapter Thirty-Eight
Over the next few months, the advance terraforming crew
returned to the science ship, being replaced by the more permanent
terraforming colony recruited from somewhere a long way away,
and the planet would slowly become a green place. They now had
animals, bees, all manner of insects, and in time, it could be another
Earth. Things were going well.
The science ship went off to complete another mission, returning
here after about a year to pick up their cryo crew, who were never
really there in the first place. They had successfully reanimated
almost all of the frozen bodies, and even the library, which would
remain in the caverns below the terraforming pods for the
foreseeable future.
The ruse that Bruce and his team planned had worked.
The people that had been reanimated were now working on the
new planet, no longer a desert, farming and getting good yields for
them to live off, and were also getting paid to do it. To them, this
was real heaven.
The ice planet was left until it had defrosted naturally, and the
surface remained under about a metre of water. Head Office did a
complete survey, but they decided to leave it undeveloped for the
foreseeable future due to the cost of removing the water. Nothing
beneath the surface was deemed to have survived, and nothing
above water level was found alive either. So much for their
projected investment.
On returning to Earth, the science ship docked in its berth, and
shore leave was given to all of the remaining crew for the
magnificent work done by the team.
The modified Hoppers were now seen all over the bays on a lot of
the ships, and some further modifications had been made to enable
then to carry cargos sealed in cylindrical pods for both safety and

quarantine of the ships, all bearing the name of the engineer who
designed it.
As some of the crew were moving on to other posts on other
ships and ports, and even different laboratories for the science
community, Bruce spoke to Head Office with a request, and then
asked Kira if she would remain in the position she held on board as a
permanent member of his team. She accepted.
Over time the desert planet became a fertile land, a land of New
Hope for the people who went out to help with colonisation, joining
the almost newly indigenous people already on this planet and
expanding the humanoid race even more.
The planet received some identification letters and numbers to
identify it, and to indicate where it was in the universe.
EG/P3 wasnt really a romantic name, or even a name to identify
with.
Bruce, and every trusted member of the science ship crew who
went on that mission would remember it by a different name.
The Land of the Dream Casters.

John Baxter September 2016.