The Lost Animas (The Ammonite Galaxy Series, Book 5)

Chapter 20

THE NEW INDEPENDENCE dropped into a low orbit around the planet in the Pyraklies system, and everybody crowded to the visor to get a first glance of the final planet the Ammonites had chosen.

There was a general intake of breath. The planet was there, but it was completely overshadowed by the debris belt nearby. It seemed that although the Pyraklies sun had clung on to this small planet, it had been at the cost of disrupting one of its other satellites, for there were huge asteroids circling the sun, quite close to the planet. The debris belt spanned the night sky, illuminating a sizeable smudge of the celestial sphere, almost as bright as Lumina was from Kwaide.

Ledin was at the control panel, trying to collate information about the surface of the planet. He pushed buttons, and then gave a whistle as the first images of the ground below came up.

"Come and look at this!"

The others turned back from the visors and went to the console screen. The first close up of the surface was showing, and they all blinked. The surface was made up of a honeycomb of hexagonal rocks and columns, jostling each other, piled one on top of the other, forming hills and valleys, mountains and plains, but always hexagonal.

Ledin looked up from the console. "The atmosphere might even be breathable," he said. "I am getting borderline readings. The trouble is that the debris belt is so close that the whole planet must be subject to intense meteors all the time, and those that make it through most of the atmosphere could cause lethal explosions. Look! There is one there!" He pointed out of the rexelene screen in front of them all.

They watched as a thin trail of fire in the upper atmosphere became wider and wider as the rock began to fall towards the planet. Slowly, it became incandescent, and the trail it left behind it grew more and more brilliant. They were already having to shelter their eyes when a huge explosion flashed in the sky, blinding them all momentarily. Some long seconds later the clap of noise and the wave of expansion rocked even the New Independence.

Six stared. "Hmm. It's all right if those things explode up in the atmosphere, but if one were big enough to make it right down to the ground it would leave a pretty impressive dent."

"Like that one?" Ledin pointed to the scene now showing on the screen. They were overflying an area where the hexagonal rock had been fused into one twisted basin, with strange vitrified remains curling up and over each other and reaching for the sky.

"That must be ... what? ... a mile across?" Diva stared. "The shock wave on the ground must have been tremendous. That would kill anything alive straight away, surely?"

Ledin went back to the controls. "I can't see any signs of life," he admitted. "And there is certainly no vegetation. As far as I can tell from up here, the planet is completely sterile."

"Pity," said Grace. They all looked at her.

"Well, it's a waste of a breathable atmosphere, isn't it? It seems a shame to actually find a planet which could have life, and then find that for some reason it doesn't."

"We don't know that for sure, yet," pointed out Ledin. "The data I have so far seems to suggest that there is nothing down there alive, but it doesn't preclude it."

Tallen peered down at the surface of Pyraklion from the visor. "There is not much for them to eat, even if there are lifeforms down there. But surely the morphics can tell us about the surface of the planet?"

Six gave a snort of derision. "Yeah! Like they've done a great job so far! They nearly got us killed, twice."

"We certainly did not." They looked up to find all three morphics hovering near the ceiling of the New Independence. "That was all your own fault."