Chapter No.15. Surprise.

The next day we made our way to the hanger deck and got into full bio suits before boarding a shuttle. I was taking a chance in having all of us go down at the same time, but I felt we needed all of the expertise we could get in this situation.

The trip down was more exciting than the last time we did it. The stratospheric winds were stronger than on Earth and the lower winds buffeted our craft as if it were in a choppy sea. Despite that, I guided the shuttle to a landing in a clearing near the ruins.

We got into bio suits and locked down our helmets before we exited the shuttle. The weather was warm with a five-kilometer per hour wind. We walked up to what appeared to be a stone wall twenty-five meters high that encircled the ruins. Fortunately, there was an open entrance, which had intricately carved symbols on the arch stones.

Our helmets had radios so that we could communicate.

"Those symbols are definitely alien," Natale said. "It suggests that the builders were an intelligent species."

I was surprised that she could come up with that logic. It indicated that she wasn't a total airhead.

We walked through the entrance to a truly amazing sight. Impressive stone buildings lined a stone paved street that converged in the distance. This walled city was obviously something that required a lot of time and effort to build. The stones appeared to be perfectly aligned with very little evidence of gaps.

I decided to enter the open doorway of a large building that was a thousand meters high. What I saw inside was completely unexpected.

"Holy hell!" I exclaimed. "It's full of bones!"

"They're complete skeletons," Janet said. "There must be thousands of them in here."

Bridget, the exo-biologist, was the right person to examine them. She went to work trying to determine what sort of species they belonged to by measuring the skulls and leg bones using a handheld LIDAR device.

"These creatures would stand over seven feet. They have curved skulls that peak at the back. I would say that they had two large, independently directed, eyes and their hearing was acute, Judging by the size of the auditory openings. They have three fingers and toes."

"They were obviously an intelligent species. Is this some sort of burial chamber?"

"I don't think it was. Everything about this indicates a catastrophe. They're just stacked up like fire-wood."

"I was afraid of that. What we need to determine is if this was the result of a natural event or a war."

"I'm not detecting any signs of trauma in the bones, but there is the possibility that it was some poison or gaseous cause."

"I don't like this," I said. "We had better check out some of the other buildings to see if there's more of them."

We exited the building and walked to another smaller building with a domed roof. There weren't any skeletons in it, but the walls were covered with mosaic art that depicted these creature's in various poses and situations.

"This is amazing!" I reacted. "Their heads look like a curved gourd."

"Their clothing appears to be some sort of silken material," Sharon said. "Evidently, they used dyes. I love the colors."

"I would peg their civilization level at say Rome around a hundred BC. However, I might change my mind when we explore more of this walled city."

We found similar art in the buildings around the morgue. None of the art indicated what the hell happened to these creatures.

Some of the art suggested that these creatures did engage in combat with primitive weapons that looked like spears. It was difficult to determine if a war was responsible for this species demise, but war is always a factor. However, it's hard to imagine how primitive combat would cause a species extinction.

There were also indications of catastrophic weather events like hurricanes and lightening storms, but again, it's doubtful that this would cause a complete loss of all life. Unfortunately, we had no way to review their complete history. It would take archeologists and paleontologists decades to investigate this planet for a true understanding as to what went on here.

"It's getting late," I said. "We had better get back up to the ship."

We entered the outer door of the shuttle, waited for it to close and then blast us with the disinfectant treatment to eradicate any possible alien infectious agents. After gaining entrance to the shuttle proper, we removed our bio suits and buckled up for the ascent to the ship.

After a forty-minute trip, we arrived at the ship. After I carefully maneuvered the shuttle into the hanger, I waited for pressurization before having us exit the shuttle and head back down the axel tube to the crew wheel deck.

We didn't waste time retiring to our bunks after an exhausting day of exploring.

The next morning after a quick breakfast, I joined the women at the command station. I consulted the ship's status report and found something that concerned me.

"Ah, COMA reports that our water supply has gone below acceptable levels. I think it's time for a water collection mission."

"How does that work?" Sharon asked.

"The second shuttle has large tanks instead of landing struts. As I recall, there's an island offshore from the walled city location that's situated on a freshwater lake, a perfect location for taking on water."

"Are we all going down for that?" Janet asked.

"No. There's only two seats in that shuttle. I think I'll take Bridget down. She's the exo-biologist."

She looked at me with a confused expression. "I'm not familiar with gathering water."

"Yes, but you do know how to operate the water testing instrument."

She gave me a smirk.

After gathering the required equipment, Bridget and I went up to the hanger and boarded the second shuttle. After depressurization, I coaxed he shuttle out of the hanger and then moved it away from the ship before firing the engines to drop out of orbit and head on down to the island.

"This shuttle is cozy," she said, smiling. "It only has two seats."

"That's because we have to save mass to store more water."

She smiled. "I'm surprised that you chose me."

"You and I really don't have anything to do on the ship, and we needed water."

"Didn't they include enough water on the ship when it launched?"

"Yes, but the engines require hydrogen to run and we need oxygen to survive. The way those essentials are generated is by electrolysis of water. With time and use of the engines, we deplete the original stores of water."

"So, we depend on finding planets with water to replenish our supply," she said.

"Well, if we had ended up at Proxima-b, we would have had the water we needed to live there, but that isn't what happened."

"We're lucky, I guess."

"Yeah, that's for sure."

Fortunately, the weather was stable, and we had nearly an entire day to collect water. I landed the shuttle on the beach of the island as near to the water as I could get away with. I had checked with Janet before leaving the ship to determine when the tide would come in. According to her calculation, we needed to get finished by 1500.

Once we put on our bio suits, we exited the shuttle and dragged hoses from the tanks to the water. The intakes from the hoses had buoys attached to keep them from sinking to the bottom. I activated the pumps and the microfiltration devices to purify the water we collected.

Bridget used a handheld instrument to analyze the water. "There's only minimal levels of dissolved minerals and biological material. The deuterium content is around 0.03 percent by mass, which is very close to Earth's oceans."

"I'm not surprised," I said. "An Earth like planet would have to be similar, assuming that planetary formation process is uniform throughout the universe."

After getting things started, we were able to relax while the pumps did the work. We walked along the beach to see if we could find anything interesting. We did see a few flying creatures, but they maintained their distance. Beyond the beach alien trees that resembled ferns covered the island's surface. We did see some amphibian like creatures crawling in the sand, but they were not very large and represented no threat.

That's when I saw something that would change everything.