Chapter No.24 Impossibility

Nothing is impossible. It's just highly improbable.

After we moved away from the cloaked planet system, we traveled to another promising candidate exo-planet system. This one supposedly had an Earth-like planet orbiting a G2 V class main sequence yellow dwarf star, which is identical to our sun.

The instant we came out of warp, Molly was working her navigation station tools to determine just how good the planet is.

"I don't get this!" she exclaimed.

"What?" I asked.

"This planet looks a lot like Earth," she said while concentrating on her screen.

"It's supposed to be Earth-like."

"Yea, but there's a big difference between Earth-like and Earth's twin."

I got up and stood behind her to view her screen, and what I saw blew me away.

"What the hell! Is that even possible?"

"I would say that the chances of this are next to impossible."

"This has got to be a joke!" I said adding a guffaw. "I could understand a planet forming that would be Earth-like, but this planet looks almost exactly like Earth. The continents are shaped the same and the islands in the pacific are identical. The chance of a second Earth being formed has a probability in the trillions to one. Even more amazing is the fact that it has a large moon about the size of our moon."

"Maybe we could do a mask test," Molly said. She punched a few buttons and superimposed an image of Earth on the image of the planet.

"That's close to a total match," I said. "How about the moon?"

"It's close to the size of our moon. The chance of that happening twice is astronomical."

I frowned. "I think it's impossible." 

"I'm not detecting any satellites in orbit about that planet," she said. "If there is an intelligent species living on it, they haven't advanced to space flight."

"The question I have is; would evolution take place on this planet the same as it did on Earth?"

"We'll soon find out," Molly said.

We entered orbit around the Earth planet and settled into an intense study of the surface."

"Well, one thing is different," I said. "The cities don't match up to those on Earth. I also don't see any evidence of air ships."

"Maybe they're still too primitive for that."

"Yea, that could be." I turned to Judy. "Launch a Class-A probe and land it in an uninhabited area next to the Lake Erie duplicate of Earth."

After several minutes had passed, we received data from the probe.

"The readings match those of Earth plus or minus a few," Molly said.

"I'm not surprised." I tuned to Judy again. "Launch the insect probes and have them go to that major city near where Chicago once was."

"At least we know this is not a complete duplicate of Earth," Molly said. "There's no Eifel Tower."

I chuckled. "Maybe these people haven't advanced to that stage yet."

She gave me a smirk.

The video feeds from the insects blew my mind. "This is totally ridiculous! They look like humans."

"They're attired as if in the early twentieth century."

"I find it hard to believe that both biological and cultural evolution progressed exactly as on Earth."

"I don't think these are humans," Molly said. "Look at these close ups. There are little bumps on their heads, which I would think are vestigial horns, and there's a cranial ridge on their foreheads."

I stared at her close up views. "Yes, you're right. I seriously doubt that we could use one of those females as a mother for our embryos."

"I agree. Their immune systems would reject it." She looked over at me. "Are we going to make contact?"

"I don't see any reason to," I replied. "They are too primitive and more than likely have no information that we could use. Our presence might initiate a violent reaction. Let's just make a note of this and go on to the next candidate location." I turned to Judy. "Retrieve the probes." I turned back the Molly. "Why aren't these species on the reptilian list?"

"I think that the reason is because we're over six thousand light years back up the Orion arm. I don't think they've explored more than a few thousand light years away from their system."

"Maybe we should go back and stick to exploring near to the reptilian home system."

"I agree," Molly replied. "We're not making any progress here." She displayed a tactical map of the galaxy and zoomed in to the reptilian alien system. "There is a habitable system near their home system approximately seven hundred light years nearer to the center of the galaxy."

"Take us there, Judy."

"Yes, Jason."

We arrived at the candidate system after a few hours, which I considered a virtual miracle. It means that we could go anywhere in the galaxy in less than a few days.

"This is a K2 V star with a M3 class companion star," Molly said. "The rocky planet orbits the K2 star at the outer edge of the habitable zone, but it's in a highly elliptical orbit because of the red dwarf companion's gravitational influence."

"What does that mean as far as the habitability of the planet is concerned?

"It means that they would have very cold winters and hot summers, but I think it would be survivable."

"We're in a stable orbit, Jason."

"Thank you, Judy." I looked at the planet and strained to see if there was any evidence of intelligent life.

Molly beat me to the punch. "I see a group of structures at the equator of the main continent. They appear to be long narrow buildings made from a concrete-like material."

"Send a Class-A probe down."

Several minutes later Molly had a report. "The readings are nominal for human life. This planet has a sufficiently strong magnetic field to prevent high radiation from penetrating the atmosphere."

"That's good. Is there any activity down there?"

"No, but I do see some smoke coming from two of the buildings."

"Someone must be home. What do the life form scans indicate?"

"So far, I'm not picking up any reptilian life. The only detectable life signs indicate human."

I stood up. "Okay, we'll go down there and check it out. Prepare a shuttle, Judy."

"The shuttle will be ready, Jason."

Efficiency, I love it!

We rode down to the surface and landed near the structures. Molly and I walked up to one of the structures and found an older male sitting near an entrance to a windowless cement building. I estimated that he was in his eighties judging by the facial wrinkles and balding gray hair. He was attired in crudely made clothing.

"Hello," I greeted him. "Are there more of you?"

"There aren't that many any more," he said in normal English. "The good ones have been taken away."

I glanced at Molly. "I think we've found a reptilian food farm."

She grimaced.

"The woman and I are the only remaining people from Earth, but we are no longer human."

"You look like humans," he said, sounding confused.

"How often do the lizard-like creatures come her to take people away?"

"Haven't seen one of those ugly bastards in a very long time, years I reckon. I suppose they don't like us anymore because we're aged."

People began coming out of the buildings and gathering around. They were mostly older individuals.

I turned to them. "How long ago did the lizard aliens come here? Does anyone remember?"

"It's been at least seven seasons, sir," an older woman said.

I turned to Molly. "What's that in years?"

"It would be at least ten years. Allowing for time dilation, it would be a couple of years for the reptilian home system by the time we got back there."

I smiled. "Ah, you're thinking what I'm thinking."

I turned to the people. "If you wish, we could take you back to Earth. There are no humans there because of a large asteroid collision, but the planet has recovered."

"We were never on this Earth you keep talking about," the old man said. "We've managed to stake out a living here as long at those damn lizard bastards don't return."

"I don't think they will," I said. "They may be gone now. We're going to go check it out and if they aren't we'll return and take you somewhere safer."

That seemed to satisfy them. We returned to the ship and prepared to go back to the reptilian alien home world.