Trappist-1, page 16
part #3 of Mark Noble Space Adventures Series
Tosh and I were both on tethers outside Spirit. We’d manually opened one of the RV hatches and carefully manoeuvred a probe out of its locker. Tosh used various tools to loosen the cover over the front end of the rover, while I tried to steady his legs. In freefall, every time you turned a screwdriver, Newton’s third law of motion came into play. The equal and opposite reaction caused your entire body to swivel the opposite way.
After forty minutes and much cursing and profanity, the cover was removed.
There wasn’t a huge amount of space under the cover. Mary and Tosh had taken a small computer monitor, the size of a tablet, and Bluetooth keyboard, hard wired the keyboard into a monitor port and taped the two devices together. They were then forced together, the keyboard against the screen with a protective cloth between them. Finally, a strong spring device, manufactured by Bill by cannibalising a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters, was put between the screen and keyboard to force them apart when the probe touched down.
The only thing left to do was to push a USB connector into a slot on the probe. Easier said than done. The female end of the connector was not fixed in position, it was on the end of a cable.
‘I can’t reach in to make the connection, Mark. Can you try?’ said Tosh, easing himself away from the probe to create space and accompanying the manoeuvre with a string of interesting profanities.
I peered into the opening. I could see the female USB tucked in behind some other cables. The space was incredibly tight and the full EVA suits had such cumbersome gloves. Holding the cable a few inches from the end, I wiggled the connector towards the slot, but as I pushed, the slot moved backwards in among the other probe cables. After several aborted attempts, I managed to get the plug into the hole, but when I pushed to complete the connection, the cable just buckled and it popped out again.
‘How much cable is on the probe end of that socket, Tosh?’
‘How am I meant to know?’ he snapped back.
‘Nothing in the diagram?’
‘If there had been, I’d have told you,’ he replied.
‘Pass me a pair of pliers… and I know you’re upset, we all are, but think about your attitude! It’s not helping.’
He grunted and slapped them into my hand like a theatre nurse would do with a pair of forceps.
I managed to grip the socket in the pliers and taped the handles shut. This time, when I got the plug into the socket, I was able to push, but it jumped out again as the cable flexed.
‘Another pair, please,’ I said.
The second pair was delivered with equal medical precision. I gripped the cable, as near the plug as I could and, finally, the plug clicked into the socket.
‘Done,’ I said.
‘Right, let me back in,’ Tosh said, taking both sets of pliers from me and securing them inside the tool satchel.
‘My pleasure,’ I said sarcastically. Tosh huffed something indistinguishable.
‘Okay, Mark. Can you now press down on the cover while I cut the tape holding the monitor to the keyboard, so that it will spring open on the surface?’ he asked.
I swung around so that I could access the space, held the panel in place, and watched Tosh slit the tape.
‘Don’t let go,’ he said.
Tosh used some duct tape to temporarily secure the cover, then began to screw the panel shut with the monitor assembly inside. The cover would be thrown off when the parachutes were discarded and jet power was applied. That would let the monitor open with the keyboard in front of it. We’d rigidly fixed it to the probe with Super Glue so it should make the journey without too much of a problem.
‘Mary,’ said Tosh.
‘Copy you,’ said Mary.
‘Do we have to put the probe back into its locker, or can we leave it floating free?’
‘Give me a minute,’ she said.
Tosh and I both looked down at the planet beneath our feet. We’d completed spacewalks in low-Earth orbit, but this was so different. Yes, there was the blue of the sea and the white of the cloud, but it was missing the greens and other subtle colours we saw on the Earth from this sort of distance.
‘I’m worried about this place,’ Tosh said. ‘Looks as unpleasant as Haven.’
‘Not inspiring, no. Perhaps the people will inspire us,’ I replied.
‘Tosh, you have a go to leave it floating free, but please manually close the probe’s storage locker. Did you cut the tape?’ said Mary.
‘Of course I damn well did!’
‘Tosh! Mary’s just checking. Ease up,’ I said. I could see his face and saw tears in his eyes. Not a good thing in freefall as they stick to the eyeball and sting. ‘Come on, let’s get back inside.’
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
In the airlock, we removed our gloves and helmets.
‘What’s up, doc?’ I asked, imitating Streisand’s voice from the famous movie of the same name to try to lighten his mood.
I knew he’d either tell me to go to hell or he might open up as he did once in Moonbase about my friend Roy Williams.
He looked at me. He was obviously deciding whether to speak or shrug off the question. ‘Chi,’ he said.
‘Yes, I know. Very sad.’
‘More than that for me. We’d built up a real rapport. She really seemed to like me,’ said Tosh, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘I know, Tosh, but we all like you. Might get frustrated with your bad temper, but we all like you really,’ I said.
‘More than that. We spent time together after the Mars expedition.’
‘Really? Romantically?’ I tried to sound surprised. Had he forgotten he’d told me?
‘Yes, she moved in, but we kept it quiet. We particularly stifled it for this trip, but we both thought there might be more when we got home. Now she’s lying dead, buried on that horrible planet. Such a waste. I thought I’d finally found the one.’
I saw that he was breaking down. Most unTosh-like. I was amazed I hadn’t realised his relationship with Chi had become quite so important. He’d really lost the love of his life.
‘You two okay in there?’ I heard Anna’s tinny voice coming from inside my helmet. She was concerned about the time we were taking.
Tosh wiped his eyes and opened the inner airlock. His moment of emotion gone.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
‘We can’t see any sign of movement on the planet,’ said Anna.
‘Nothing at all?’ I asked. ‘How can that be?’
‘We’ve had the six-inch Celestron telescope on the job,’ said Bill. ‘There seem to be boats in harbours and there is even one in Mary’s canal, but no movement. No cars moving or anything similar. It’s freaky.’
‘So, where are we landing?’ I asked.
‘There’s a coastal city here,’ said Bill, showing me a photograph. It has some very large areas which might be parks, except that they are brownish rather than green. We’re calling it Liverpool because the geography is similar.’
‘We thought a park would be a sensible place to land,’ said Anna, ‘in case there is traffic which, for some reason, we’re just not seeing.’
‘Can you hit it accurately with the probe, Anna?’ I asked.
‘I can have a damn good try,’ she said.
‘Okay. Let’s go for it.’
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
The five of us sat on our couches on the bridge, strapped in to stop us floating away, watching the large monitor which sat just to the left of Anna’s pilot seat.
Anna had a plug-in console in front of her with a joystick and various other controls. The probe was currently incommunicado as the ionisation caused during atmospheric entry superheated the craft.
‘Communication re-established,’ said Anna.
The monitor was still blank, but suddenly there was a line of bright light running across the middle of the screen and the canopy blew off as the parachutes deployed and the probe swung violently from side to side.
‘Chute controls responding,’ said Anna, letting us know that she could steer the descending craft.
The view swung to the right and, in the far distance, we could see the coastal city we’d decided was our target.
‘Liverpool in view,’ said Anna.
It really looked like the Merseyside city and had the same large estuary, coastal features and even an alien Birkenhead on the opposite side of the water.
The descent was steady and continued towards the centre of the conurbation. The parklike area grew in size.
‘Chutes being discarded in three, two, one,’ said Anna, and we saw the probe begin to plummet, then stop in mid-air and continue in the direction of the park, but now under power.
‘There’s nothing moving,’ said Mary.
It was true, the city looked like the empty cities from the coronavirus pandemic back in 2020.
‘Looking good, Anna,’ said Bill.
‘Yes, spot on so far. Height two hundred metres,’ she said.
The probe swung through three hundred and sixty degrees as it descended vertically and came to rest. The dust cleared and we had a perfect colour view.
‘Keep rotating the camera, Anna,’ I said. ‘I want to see if anyone comes to visit us. Landing in Central Park might scare a few people away, but on Earth it wouldn’t take long for curiosity to overcome the initial fear.’
After thirty minutes there was still no movement.
‘Okay, Anna, trundle us over to that path,’ I said.
The probe moved smoothly forward and climbed the low edge to what looked like a concrete pathway which crossed the entire park. Still nothing alive.
‘The trees are all dead,’ said Tosh.
‘Or it’s winter,’ said Bill.
‘No. There is no tilt to the planet’s axis. These are dead. Anna, can you go over to that branch which is lying on the ground?’
‘No problem, Tosh,’ she said and approached a substantial branch which was lying beneath a large tree. There were several.
‘Can you bump it?’ asked Tosh.
The probe moved forward, knocked against the branch and backed off.
‘It crumbled into dust,’ said Bill.
‘Yes. Dead. A long time dead, I’d say,’ said Tosh.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s get out of the park. Follow the path, Anna.
We watched, intrigued, as the probe made its way at walking speed along the solid pathway. There was no sign of life. The ground was flat and almost featureless; the trees seemed to be dead with branches scattered around them. The only other features were blackish mounds of what looked like the remains of miniature bonfires.
‘I think the brown material either side of the path is bare soil,’ said Tosh. ‘We would expect it to be grass or something similar, but it’s been killed and has decomposed.’
‘You’re probably right,’ I agreed.
Finally, we arrived at the entrance to the park. Tall tubular bow top fencing ran off in each direction and we passed between two open, ornate, metalwork gates into the street.
‘The whole city’s dead,’ said Bill.
‘Anna,’ I said, ‘drive over to that mound in the roadway.’
The camera jolted as we dropped off a kerbstone onto the roadway. A few metres in front of us was one of the black mounds we’d noticed in the park.
‘Extend the arm, Anna. See what happens when you touch it,’ I said.
A metal object extended about a metre from beside the camera. At its end it had a three-fingered hand. Anna gently pushed it into the mound, disturbing the blackened debris. It crumbled into dust.
‘There’s something white to the right, within it,’ said Tosh.
Anna moved the hand towards the object and grasped it, pulling it out of the black material which behaved exactly like ancient cloth, crumbling at the slightest touch.
‘Good God,’ said Mary. ‘It’s a bone!’
There was no doubting it. It wasn’t a human bone, but it was a bone nonetheless. A bone from an animal, maybe slightly smaller than us. Were we poking about in the remains of a person from the planet F? As the robotic hand turned the bone over, the weight of one end of it caused it to fracture and break in half. The section which hit the road surface crumbled into fragments.
‘They’re everywhere, look!’ said Anna as she did a three-sixty with the camera. The street was covered with the remains of what we now had to assume were animals or people. If the decomposing rags were clothes, then these were certainly the residents of the planet, lying where they’d died, a long, long time in the past.
Anna raised the camera and we had our first close-up look at the buildings. This could have been any big city in any country on Earth. Apartment blocks or office structures lined the streets. They had doorways, a little shorter than we might have, but they were clearly entrances. Upper floors had rows of windows, some still glazed, but many had lost their glass. A few of the buildings were clearly collapsing. Rubble from fallen walls lay in the streets, showing how they’d fallen. Had there been earthquakes? When the probe hit the pavement or sidewalk, we could see shards of glass littering the walkway. How long ago had this plague occurred? It looked like decades or even hundreds of years.
‘Where are we in relation to the harbour?’ I asked.
‘If we head this way another hundred metres and take a left, it will be at the end of the road,’ said Anna. ‘Do you think that is a vehicle?’
The probe was looking at something which was obviously rusted metal, had glazed panels at one end, two sides and metal wheels. Whatever material had covered the wheels had crumbled away, leaving black flecks of itself surrounding them.
‘Yes, I think it is,’ said Mary.
‘Take care to avoid rubble. We don’t want to lose the rover to a fall of masonry,’ said Bill.
We saw several other vehicles of different sizes and hundreds of the black mounds of decomposed cloth and bones. At one place the entire road was covered in them and we had no choice but to drive through the debris. Elsewhere, we tried to avoid them, but it was difficult. People seemed to have run into the streets to die. I began to wonder whether they had drowned in their own blood, like Chi. Millions dying when the plant released its pollen. A plague to end all plagues. They probably didn’t all get hit at the same time, but the weed eventually got them all. No one had survived.
The probe arrived at the junction. We turned left and the sea was visible in the distance. We trundled onwards and soon encountered what we’d all inwardly feared we would find. The plant from Haven.
It was clearly the same. The black, slimy material lined the harbour walls and, in some places, crept onto the main surfaces. On one side was the remains of a ship. It looked like a cargo vessel, but not a container ship, smaller than that. It had sunk and was now listing to one side, resting on the harbour floor, slowly rusting away. It was covered in the growth, all the way to the first deck and a little beyond.
‘Does this mean what I think it does?’ I asked, knowing that I didn’t need an answer.
‘It wiped them out,’ said Tosh.
‘That probe at Haven,’ said Anna. ‘I wonder if they carried out expeditions to their neighbouring planet, brought the plant back to F, accidentally or as samples, and then found it impossible to eradicate.’
‘I think so,’ said Mary. ‘And when it released its pollen, it caught them all by surprise, as it did Chi.’
‘Head back onto that main street, Anna. See if you can find a building we can enter,’ I said.
‘What are you thinking?’ asked Bill.
‘I want to at least find out what they looked like,’ I said. ‘The doors and vehicles indicate something not unlike our size, but I guess the devil would be in the detail. If we can get inside a building we might find paintings, sculptures, or photographs of them.’
‘Good idea,’ said Tosh, ‘I’d hate to leave this tragic civilisation without putting a face to them.’
‘Maybe they escaped to another of the Trappist-1 worlds,’ suggested Bill.
‘Possible, I suppose,’ I acknowledged.
‘We need to find out,’ Bill said. ‘Which other worlds are habitable, Mary?’
‘A, B and C are too hot. We thought G might be okay, but while you were on Haven, we studied it. Maximum surface temperature was minus forty centigrade. D is the only possibility, but very small and might also be too hot,’ said Mary.
‘When we finish here, we’ll check D,’ I said. ‘What are we going to call this world. We can’t talk about the people of the planet F. They must have a name.’
‘How about Quietus,’ said Anna. ‘This world has died and will never reawaken.’
We all looked at each other. There were a couple of nods, no one objected. ‘Quietus it is,’ I said.
We travelled the length of the street from the park and found not one building where the doors would allow us access. Anna charged at one building’s entrance, but the central door strut would not break to allow us in. She used the rover’s powerful lights to scan the interior walls, but any works of art had long since fallen from their mountings and lay as debris on dust covered floors.
‘We need to recharge the batteries,’ said Anna. ‘They’re almost drained. The solar panels are not replacing our usage in this Trappist-1 light. There’s a big open square ahead. It should get what sun there is if we park centrally.’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Tosh.
‘They’ll take a while to recharge,’ said Bill. ‘Two or three hours this evening and another couple in the morning, at least.’
‘We’re not in a hurry,’ I said.
We turned into the city square and there, almost directly in front of us was a statue. We had our image of the Quietus inhabitants.
‘Wow,’ said Anna. ‘Fascinating.’
The plinth, about four metres by eight was constructed from polished white stone, perhaps a marble, and one side showed some hieroglyphs. Atop it, the sculpture was in jet black. An extraordinary beast filled the space and its limbs overhung the stonework.
