The Blue People of Cloud Planet (40 page)

Surely no more Surprises

Olivia watched as the Black slowly dropped down the dome and, as it did, so the lander rose in the water as the huge weight of beads fell off its hull. Now it was half way down the dome surface and Olivia gasped as she saw that all of her forward horizon was black, topped eventually by the blue sky.

‘How big is this black slick, Zec-2?’

‘Approximately 70 kilometres in diameter, half on half off the icecap. We are about 20 kilometres from the icecap.’

‘And how much damage did we do to the cylinders?’

‘About 2000 either destroyed or severely damaged, this slick must be the fallout from them. They must have been full of the bead like objects.’

‘My God! There’s still 48,000 left!’

‘And a similar number under the other icecap!’

This sobering comment put Olivia into deep troubled thought until AJ’s voice again echoed in the command dome.

‘Olivia, we are going to take the starship up. We’re consuming a huge amount of fuel at this low altitude. Zec-C confirms that all systems on your lander are OK and you should be able to lift off once the black slick completely sinks. We need to discuss our next actions. We’ve damaged the menace but what do we do next?’

LifeSeeker-1 had risen to an altitude of 500 kilometres and the astronauts could clearly see the extent of the huge black slick. It appeared to rest over the edge of the ice – its silhouette contrasted sharply with the brilliant white of the ice. The tsunami had run its course and the slick and sea were calm and flat. They could not see the lander except on the dome display.  Zec-C had reported that the slick was now 2-3 metres in depth and continued to sink. Zec-C was about to give a time estimate for its complete disappearance when the urgency in his voice changed.

‘New black mass forming around the icecap and covering a sector 500 kilometres wide directly in front of LifeSeeker-1. Depth of mass is approximately 1 kilometre.’

The astronauts could see the mass forming on the display screen. It seemed to be pushing the black slick away from the icepack.

‘Uh, oh! What’s happening now?’ Steve shouted. ‘Should we get ready to fire more missiles?’

‘We can’t risk it against this organised enemy,’ AJ countered. ‘They might be turned back on us again.’

‘Now what? Alison pointed at the icecap. ‘The new mass seems to have disappeared!’

Zec-C zoomed in on a section of it.

‘It’s still there but it’s emitting water vapour over the whole of its surface building up a dense layer which is already 10 metres high and continuing to grow.’

‘It’s like a wall of cloud!’ said Steve, ‘And look, it’s darkening as it’s rising. Why’s that Zec-C?’

‘The Black is rising in its own cloud and building the height as it gets higher. Cloud height 100 metres.’

‘But how?’ queried Alison.

‘We know that the bead-like structures can accelerate water through themselves at huge velocities. What they are doing now is atomising the water as it leaves the capillary, which is forming mist and cloud. We also know that they can travel in cloud. They are building up their own transport medium. Cloud height now 500 metres and widening over the icecap. Two kilometres in width across a sector arc of 600 kilometres.’

‘Command Zec-C! Have all non-nuclear missiles readied for firing. We don’t know what’s happening but we must be ready to defend ourselves.

‘Command Zec-2! Get lander into the air immediately and back away from the icecap,’ AJ ordered.

The astronauts watched as the collar of grey black cloud grew with astonishing speed. It was so big they could see it through the dome of the starship. It was as if a huge barrier was being erected between their position and the icecap.

Zec-C’s next announcement shocked them to the core!

‘The cylinders are moving upwards under the ice! They are rising around the whole perimeter of the icecap! They have reached a position just below the ice and started to push it up!’

The astronauts above and Olivia below watched the same scene in disbelief as the lander lifted from the sea and shook off the remnants of the black slick.

The icecap was cracking!

Huge splits and crevasses were radiating from a circular line around the icecap. Zec-C had zoomed in on a section to the right of the cloud barrier as they could not see through it directly in front of their position.

Grey cylinders pushed up and rose above the ice. Their connecting tubes seemed to support hundreds of them in mid air. Then the next layer of cylinders broke through the ice.

‘My God! The whole lattice is rising through the ice and into the air!’ gasped AJ, ‘And the black cloud collar is building with them!’

‘Is the cloud collar protecting them? We certainly can’t see the damaged section,’ said Steve, more in hope than conviction. ‘We couldn’t attack them anyway from this angle!’

‘Look! Black is spewing out from those upper cylinders and entering the cloud!’ Steve continued, ‘Building the barrier higher and higher!’

Now half of the lattice of objects had risen above the ice to a height of seven and a half kilometres. The astronauts could see the ring of cylinders right around the whole icecap. It was an unbelievable and terrifying sight. And still they continued to rise and spew black streams into the cloud collar they had created.

Then the interconnecting tubes between the cylinders at the top of the lattice started to fall away, crashing down to the ice, spewing black randomly.

Next thousands and thousands of the top cylinders started to rotate! The sunlight glinted on their multi-faceted surfaces.

Further tubes fell away and the second and third layers started rotating.

‘My God! My God! What’s about to happen?!’ Alison shook with fear and trepidation.

‘Look!.... some of the cylinders near the damaged section. They’re wobbling!’ Steve blurted. ‘Several of them are cracking!’

The damaged ones suddenly exploded in a deluge of black, which shot in all directions and the exploding mass tumbled back down onto the ice. Two other wobbling cylinders literally fell out of the sky and crashed through the ice below shooting up geysers of rain.

‘But one cylinder, which was hidden from view behind the cloud, was hardly clear of the ice when it toppled sideways on its connecting tube. It shattered the ice on impact, but remained on the surface. The object cracked open, like two halves of an egg, and Black shot into the air around it.

But what happens next leave the astronauts in the starship and Olivia in the lander absolutely speechless. It even causes Zec-C to repeat himself and question his own observation.’

The Dicepteron Mothership

‘Centre of icecap rising!  Centre of icecap rising?’ 
Zec-C queried
.

They stared at the zoomed image of the icecap. Huge crevices started radiating away from the centre which bulged upwards. Then a grey white structure started to push through the ice.

It was rotating, light reflecting from facets in the upper surface. The astronauts were speechless. They could not register the scale of what was happening. But Zec-C continued. His usual analytical composure now recovered.

‘From the radius of the object pushing through the icecap, I conclude that we have a rotating disc whose diameter is approximately 140 kilometres!’

Silence in the starship.

Silence in the lander.

There was stunned utter silence as they watched this goliath of structures which rose slowly from the very centre of the icepack. It was surrounded by its lattice of about 48,000 rotating grey black cylinders!

AJ broke the silence. ‘How can something so big come up through the icecap?’

‘I conclude that the rotation is generating heat and melting the ice – a process not too different to regelation. If you recall, the thinner ice at the centre was also 140 kilometres diameter and this huge disc is probably the reason. Also there are 2 kilometre diameter darker shapes in the vertical surface of this structure – I estimate about 50 around the circumference – and they are hexagonal in shape.’

‘This must be the mothership!’ Steve guessed. ‘I think the surrounding cylinders and the cloud barrier have been protecting it.’

‘It’s nearly out of the ice!’ Alison shrieked. ‘What’s it going to do!’

By way of answer, the grey white behemoth accelerated in both rotation and vertical velocity until it was completely clear of the ice. It had left a perfectly circular crater at the centre of the icecap.

‘The disc is approximately 20 kilometres thick and its upper and lower surfaces are slightly concave. I cannot be more specific because the surrounding cylinders and clouds are masking my instruments.’

Then it rose to a point half way up the lattice of surrounding cylinders. It was truly a magnificent and utterly threatening spectacle.

No one moved, they hardly breathed as the 140 kilometre disc, glistening with reflected light, and its 48,000 surrounding darker objects rotated faster and faster until they were one continuous blur.

The whole mass then rose into the sky and dominated the vista over the decimated icecap. For the first time the astronauts could see the breach in the cylinders where the nuclear warheads had wreaked their havoc. Many were still wobbling and they fell back to the icecap in enormous explosions of black.

 It seemed such a small breach in the massive structure.

Then the surrounding cylinders seemed to swirl around the massive mother-disc and, in the blink of an eye, disappeared into the perimeter of the giant. Suddenly the whole assembly accelerated upwards........

........ and vanished!

‘Zec-C! Where have they gone?’ said a perplexed AJ.

All the astronauts in the starship leaned forward, totally dumbstruck, and stared at the space above the icecap.

In the lander, Olivia craned her neck upwards at the emptiness where, fractions of a second earlier, the sky had been filled with the enormousness of the rotating masses.

She and the astronauts above her could only sit and listen to Zec-C and his mind blowing commentary.

‘I have absolutely zero signal now. But from the point where they started to accelerate to the last measured signal just nanoseconds later.....

...... I estimate that they left the vicinity of Cloud Planet .......

...... faster than the speed of light!!’