Chapter 6: Visiting Jahnville

~~ April - Week 15~~

The question of whom to contact was put to the ship’s crew.

As Lee had guessed, Essco was all for making contact with the people of the largest community that was on the large southern continent. The cohorts (the people who had met in Lee’s room), had already decided they probably could live on this planet comfortably from the information they had borrowed from Essco.

They had decided not to let Essco get his way until they knew a hell of a lot more. While Essco’s main group of cronies was seriously depleted these days, the man could still be eloquent and persuasive when he needed to be.

The cohorts decided a stop on Jahnville was a good idea. They would use the same reasoning as Captain Ubobo had. Essco was obviously unhappy about the delay. However, he had to go along with the committee’s decision to play it safe. After all, as far as he knew, they didn’t know what he did.

The cohorts had also released low orbital probes to orbit over the big cities. They hadn’t let it be common knowledge that they had done so. With-in a couple of days, Kyle, with a little help from Lee, had modified the probes program.

It was now able to look for the different alloys made from the elements in Ozlium and Rihlite. He even added the ones that produced the EP shield and added the complex equation for common plastics used on Earth.

He had picked up some strange readings from a large Island to the west off the large northern continent. He found them again in an area near one of the bombed sites. It was in the south of the Apple-shaped continent.

He mentioned them to Lee. He didn’t think that they had anything to do with the original ship, but they were unique signals with trace elements that were coming up as unknown. Lee was also intrigued.

When looking through the data from the modified probe, Kyle and Lee both believed that Allan’s ship had blown up on re-entry and its parts were at the bottom of the ocean east of the Apple continent.

A few days later, Kyle found the transporter. It was near the big city on the southern continent, in a silo-shaped shed. The question was, while they may have survived initially was the crew still alive?

On a hunch, Kyle tried to hail the transporter using old codes that he knew from when the ship left Earth. So far, he hadn’t acquired any answers from it. The readings he had gotten were weak, but he was sure that he had found it. He told Lee and Sean that the new probe will detect it better when it gets in range.

When the cohorts met for their ‘coffee and chat’ at Lee’s that night, Lee asked Philip if visiting one of the bombed sites was worth their while. Philip wanted to go check out a bombsite really bad. While it was a personal wish, he did, however, think that they could learn something about what had happened here about two hundred and fifty years ago.

It was decided that the transporter would go down and get some samples from Beanbag. They would spend two days there before heading west to the bombed site on Apple, which Kyle had chosen.

He had argued it was one of the least contaminated sites. The vids had shown buildings that were still standing that they could sift through. This, of course, made Philip happy, so he never questioned Kyle’s choice.

The Transporters party for the trip to the surface consisted of Sean, Gary, Terry, Penny, Ellen, DT and Juanita. The other grunts would remain on the ship to let Philip, Lee and Kyle go in their place. Strangely, few grumbled at the big ship meeting.

Many thought that as long as Lee and Kyle were going, then everything was going to be okay, and they would come back. As much as many of them wanted to get planet side, they all knew that most of the Army team had to go first and check it was safe for the rest of them.

A few initially wondered why Philip had been picked, but as he was to be their Expedition leader, it made sense as he had to know what he was getting them into.

It was agreed everyone was to carry a zapper and a pistol with a spare mag and two percussion grenades just like Allan’s people had. Terry and Penny would stay with the transporter as the pilots and its guards while the eight others explored. They would all remain suited during the landings.

The team picked a different spot than Allan to land. After all, they already had information on that area. They chose a site on the east coast. It was on a large bulge of land or as Kyle said the top of the knee hump of the beanbag. Its northern coast was about eight degrees south of the equator.

The bulge was approximately 1,650km east to west by 1,200km north to south. The head of the beanbag was to the west and extended over the equator. The body of the continent extended as far as forty-six degrees south. Several islands were off the coast of the bulge, providing some protection from the storms.

They planned to stop twice on Beanbag. They had picked a location that was still snowbound in the south and the one on the bulge. The outside temperatures wouldn’t be a problem, as they would be in their suits.

DT (Corporal David Topple), who was also a qualified geologist, was interested in recording the quantities of the run-off from the ice sheets. He also wanted to inspect what damage the freezing and thawing was doing to the land.

They believed this half of the planet was currently just heading into early spring for the southern tropical to equatorial zone due to the axial tilt. Sandra said there were really only two seasons at the equator. Wet or dry. They could expect most days to be between sixteen to twenty-five degrees Celsius. It was actually a nice climatically region.

The other stop planned for, would more likely be between about minus five to ten degrees. The sun hadn’t moved back far enough to really warm that end of the continent yet.

The whole ship personnel helped the team to pack the shuttle for the trip to the planet that people could one day be living on.

The team landed at the northern spot first.

DT and Lee had picked a medium-sized valley that varied between 32 to 55 klicks across and was roughly 220 klicks long that ran south-east then curved to the south for the last 100 klicks or so before going back into the high country.

The valley was surrounded by an open-forested mountain range that had several low ridges that spread to the west to the back of the knee hump. The wide range supported several more significate valleys and rivers and even several wide zones of undulating foothills.

Their valley had a wide river, which meandered through it to the sea and emptied into a deep protected bay. Many smaller creeks ran into the main river down in the valley floor. At the sea end, the river cut to within 600m to a low range of steep rocky hills that surrounded an extinct volcanic basin. It was about a klick and half away from where they intended to land.

The inner hills of the extinct volcano then rounded for about another 6 klicks around a modest lake before heading back to the south. The valley opened up to the full 55km in shallow sloping rises before climbing up into the range of mountains that surrounded it.

The valley floor was dotted with small groves of open woodland areas mixed with open grass and low shrubs. The valley was a beautiful place. Outside the valley to the south and west was an open forested area for about 150km inland from the coasts. This changed to more woodland areas for about twice that distance. Then into a grassy and scrubbed plain, that was about another 140 to 200 klicks across.

It then changed into a mulga (scrubby) flat. The mulga petered out into a small rock and sand desert that was 60 to 90 klicks across, on the inland side of the hump the valley was in. This effectively cut the top of the hump of the beanbag off from the rest of the continent. Except for the forests, that ran down and around the hilly coastlines.

More mountains extended down the west of the valley. They dipped down into the bum of the beanbag before turning north. Then they headed around the back of the hump until reaching the west coast. There were two other good-sized valleys to the west on their knee hump, but Lee and DT had liked this one, it was also the flatter of the three.

‘You could build a good size city in this valley,’ thought Lee when she looked at it on the map. She didn’t know what attracted her the most to the valley, but she and DT both decided it had sufficient diversity to get good samples from.

A large flattish outcrop of rock with low scrub around it stood as a centennial on the east side of the river mouth about a half klick away from the river. It was perfect for their needs as a landing spot. Terry and Penny would be able to keep them in view, as they explored.

They would run the scanners to warn them of heat movements of animals/people and would record the temperatures, wind speeds and air purity from the transporter.

Sean and Gary were the first off, the transporter. They ran the scanners that could record any movements and checked near the forest entrance that was about 250m away from them. Finally, they decided it was safe for the other six members to debark. The team came down, loaded with gear.

They planned to camp on the planet that night and had bought the mini Dome tent that could sleep ten comfortably. Terry and Penny would stay on the ship except for short periods when the others would relieve them. The other eight would camp in the tent, which could be attached over one of the transporter’s ramps.

Kyle had been slowly increasing the gravity on the starship over the last couple of weeks, so it was now set at 1.1g. The extra 0.1g on the planet while not a lot statistically, was immediately noticeable as you felt ten percent heavier. The crew moved carefully until their motor functions adapted to their increased weight.

Their initial recordings indicated it was a pleasant twenty-two degree Celsius (72F), but the humidity was up around seventy-five percent, and it was barely mid-morning. A heavy ridge of cloud hung out to the east. Lee thought they might get wet before the day was over.

The team cleared a spot beside the transporter where the ramp came down. Terry had blasted a 120m square area before dropping the nose and landing inside the scorched area. The Ionic engines on the transporters had sufficient thrust to lift the transporter off the ground. It then flew much like a conventional plane in low elevations. When going back to space, you pulled up the nose to head into the atmosphere like a rocket.

Sean and Lee set up the electric fence, so it surrounded the burnt zone back to the front of the transporter. The rest of the team connected the tent to one of the transporter entrances and then unfolded the base of the tent and pinned it down, ready to be inflated.

Philip was having a ball. As an avid and active archaeologist, he loved setting his camp up, ready to explore, and he happily pitched in. Archaeologists loved to explore extinct civilisations and collect artefacts. Contrary to popular belief from movies, they were just as interested in where and how the people had lived with respect to what they ate, drank and made to survive or even for recreation.

They also spent a lot of time comparing the current environments to the pasts to work out why they lived where they did or why they no longer lived there. Many like Philip, also had biological and geological qualifications, making Philip an excellent choice for this expedition.

The team ran the hoses from a panel in the side the transporter to the connection ports on the tent and started the pumps. It would take about half an hour to inflate. An air purifier/steriliser on the compressor system would filter out and kill any biological contaminates.