Chapter 9

Inside Kyle could see several rows of what must have served the function of seats for the builders of the shuttle and each of them was still occupied by a body of an alien. He could easily see the occupants of the shuttle were nothing like humans and he could also see that they were all dead. The occupants of the shuttle were all dead and they appeared to have been that way for a long time.

The occupants of the shuttle required an atmosphere similar to that of the Earth in order to live but when the door to the shuttle had been opened there had been no puff of escaping air. The occupants of the shuttle had died because their ship had lost pressure when it impacted with the hill, or perhaps even before that. None of the occupants of the shuttle were wearing any kind of pressure suit so exposure to the normal Martian atmosphere had quickly killed them. And then it preserved them in almost the same state they had been in when they died, at least in appearance.

Despite the lack of movement inside the shuttle Kyle was startled by the appearance of the occupants and he found himself reaching for his hand weapon. Pulling the weapon from the holster and holding it in his hand, Kyle felt secure enough to step inside the shuttle to take a closer look at the occupants. The two androids who were already inside the crashed shuttle had already checked for security but Kyle still felt more confident with the weapon in his hand.

Looking at the first shuttle occupant that he approached Kyle could see they were something completely different from human. The dead alien had a lot of similarities to an insect though it was much larger than any insect from Earth. The body of these must have been nearly four feet long and they only appeared to have four walking legs. The two front legs seemed to have had the same function as human arms and looking closer Kyle could see that each of these forelegs ended in a four fingered hand.

Kyle slowly walked around the passenger compartment of the shuttle, examining each of the seven dead aliens still strapped to their places in the shuttle. They all seemed to be similar in size with about the same amount of variation found among humans. Their limbs were thicker than those of smaller insects which was necessary to contain the larger muscles needed to move them. Their heads bore two large eyes and two antennae sprouted from the top of their heads. Despite having been dead for a long period of time the alien bodies still looked surprisingly lifelike due to the hard shells that covered their bodies. The near vacuum of the Martian atmosphere enhanced their preservation even further.

After looking around for a couple of minutes Kyle noticed Cindy peeking in the doorway of the shuttle with everyone else crowded together behind her, He also realized he was still holding his hand weapon but since every alien was obviously dead he put it away in his belt holster.

"You can come if you want Cindy. I don't think there is any danger," Kyle said over his suit communicator.

"OK," the girl answered and tentatively stepped into the shuttle. Cindy gave a start when she came to the first insectoid alien but then relaxed when the creature didn't move and she realized it was dead. "What happened to them, Kyle?"

"It looks to me like their ship lost pressure and they suffocated in the thin Martian air," he replied.

"How long have they been here?"

"I don't know. Maybe for a long time, because the near vacuum here on the surface of Mars would tend to preserve their bodies after their death. I'll have the androids examine everything and see what they can find out. Tracy, do we have any record on these bug aliens?" Kyle asked, addressing his android.

"No Kyle, we do not have any records of a race such as this one," the female android replied.

"See what you can find out about them," Kyle ordered.

"Yes Kyle."

"If it can be done safely bring this whole shuttle back to the ship. We can study it there at our leisure," Kyle continued.

"We can do that easily," Tracy replied.

"Good. Have it done as soon as possible."

After looking around the alien shuttle for a couple more minutes Kyle and Cindy slipped out the door and some of the other people outside went inside to have a look, too. Kyle decided to wait until everyone had a chance to look inside the shuttle and then they would move on to explore a little more of the surface.

Taking another look around while waiting for the rest of the women to look inside the shuttle, Kyle and Cindy could see what looked similar to any of the windswept desert areas on Earth, except for the deeper red color of the rocks and sand. Another dust devil spun out on the plain and a thin wind blew despite the thinness of the atmosphere.

Waiting for the rest of the party to have their fill of looking inside the crashed shuttle Kyle had a few minutes of time on his hands and his thoughts turned toward the hand weapons they had brought with them from the 'Adventure'. The humans had been given instruction on how to use them before departing for the surface but they hadn't had a chance to actually fire them. Kyle felt some interest in seeing what the weapons could actually do and the desolate desert surface upon which he stood now seemed to be a good place to make some test shots.

"Tracy, I would like to test fire my hand weapon. Can we do that here on the surface?" Kyle asked his android.

"Yes, Kyle. We only need to move a little further away and you can use the hillside as the target and backstop," was the reply over his suits communication system.

Tracy led Kyle a bit further away from the crashed shuttle and toward a more vertical area of the hillside in front of them. This provided a safe target for allowing Kyle to test the effects of his hand weapon. Kyle pulled his pistol from the holster and looked at the setting control. The effect and power of the weapon was controlled by a small knob on the top of the rear portion. Since this weapon had been made for human use the settings were marked with letters from the English alphabet.

The settings markers on Kyle's hand weapon were S, K, H, V, and P. The setting marked S when fired at a person would render them unconscious, K when fired at a person would kill, H would heat whatever the beam struck to a high temperature, V would disassociate the molecular structure and vaporized whatever the beam struck, and the P setting would generate an explosion wherever the beam struck. While Kyle had been told about each of these settings and what they could do he wanted to see it from actually firing the weapon himself.

Kyle could see out of the corner of his eyes the women were coming to see what he was going to do after they finished looking around inside the crashed shuttle. Actually once they saw the dead, insect-like aliens the women had little interest in spending any more time inside the crashed shuttle than they had to. So Kyle quickly drew a crowd of onlookers, both human and android until only two androids remained inside the crashed shuttle continuing their examinations. The two androids ordered a large cargo shuttle to come down to pick up the crashed shuttle and return it to the 'Adventure' for more detailed examination and analysis.

Kyle selected the S setting on his weapon, aimed at the target area of the hillside, and pressed the trigger. A red spot appeared where Kyle had pointed the weapon, this was the visible aiming beam and the actual effective beam was invisible. Since the S setting was only designed to render living beings unconscious there was no visible effect upon the cliff face beyond the red spot from the aiming beam. Kyle fired several more shots on the S setting to practice putting the beam where he wanted it to be on the target.

Kyle next selected the K setting on his w1eapon and fired once again at the cliff. Again the red dot of the aiming beam appeared but there was still no visible effect upon the rock. Kyle selected the H setting, picked out a rock about a foot in diameter at the base of the cliff, and fired the weapon at it. The beam emitted from the weapon now was slightly visible in the air and after about a second the rock began to glow red hot. Kyle released the trigger and watched as the rock slowly cooled until it was not glowing any more.