We Leapt Into the Sky

Chapter 2

They gathered in the cramped conference room.

Antony leaned back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the table. Next to him, Seph sat with his shoulders hunched, flipping through documents on his tablet and occasionally glancing at the door. Kendra sipped from her mug, ignoring the tension coming from the other side of the table.

The door creaked open and Bria strode into the room, her auburn braid swishing behind her. "Morning everyone," she said and stood at the head of the table.

"I want to thank you all for bearing with me these last few months while we planned this expedition," she continued, folding her hands in front of her. She spoke carefully, as if she had rehearsed every word. "But we're here, and I am ready to make the most of this expedition."

A hologram of the research station rotated in the air before them. "This is what we know. About twenty years ago, the funders' company installed this research station here to test sand weathering on their line of prefabricated buildings. They picked this planet because the atmosphere is breathable to most, and the lack of inhabitation meant fewer regulations."

She tapped at her tablet and a model of the entire planet appeared, rotating in the air. Sand and rocky plateaus covered much of the planet, with few green areas. "Travelers from the first spacefaring age, around 7,000-8,000 years ago, charted this planet. Most of their satellite footage was lost, but early expeditions noted no signs of inhabitation, then or in the past. Seph, do you want to continue?"

Bria took a seat next to Kendra.

"Sure!" he said, standing up and walking to the front of the room, bumping Antony's chair as he passed. Antony shot Kendra an offended glance. She covered her mouth, looking away so he didn't see her laugh.

"Like Bria said, early spacefarers more or less dismissed this place as a big, sandy rock. Bria and I cross-referenced the records we found, using algorithms for detecting putative architectural features. There was little to note."

"So, this planet hasn't been home to intelligent life," Kendra said.

"Right," Seph said. "And despite the effort spent setting up this station, the company did little formal follow-up. They programmed a rover to follow a predetermined route every six months, taking video and soil samples, and scanning the research station itself for deterioration. These videos were the only thing from the station the company monitored."

He brought up a video. "So it was astonishing that the base's unmanned rover picked up footage of this temple."

The footage was grainy and shook as the rover moved. Kendra leaned closer. She had seen the video before—they all had. But it was still astonishing in its simple revelation. From the empty sand, stone columns appeared. In the center of the columns stood a pedestal accompanied by other blocky structures. The rover hit the base of the temple, trying unsuccessfully to drive forward twice before it circled around and continued on its way.

"And of course," Bria cut in, "then the funding company published this footage, providing dedicated money for both an open-ended expedition to the ruins and analysis of the research station itself."

"Yes, right," Seph said. "And the ruins also show up on some of the footage we grabbed from recent probes flying past the planet."

"This site wasn't visible a couple years ago," Antony said. "This is the first set of ruins found on this planet."

"Right. We know next to nothing about them. The image quality from the recordings wasn't good enough to use architecture recognition software," Seph said. He swept his blond hair back up off his forehead. "I think that's all for my updates. We've already discussed the research plan on the trip here, but does anyone have questions?"