It was just like Earth

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

There was no doubt there had indeed been some screaming. Prolonged, pained, dreadful screams. Someone or something may have heard it, because these screams were not in the vacuum of space. But we will never know. We do know what appeared to have been the cause.

After eight years of looking for an Earth-like planet which humans could inhabit, it would seem we had found a contender. The United Nations research vessel Hercules landed in an area much like Earth’s meadow and woodland, and the planet was given a 99.5 out of 100 score for habitability.

We had circled the entire planet, marvelling at the similarities between it and Earth, its blues and greens, deserts and tundra, oceans, lakes, valleys and mountains. Then, as we’d passed its north pole, I had caught the faint sound of what I could only assume to be a distress beacon. I froze, the cabin faded away from my attention as I’d focussed on the regular blips.

Once convinced, I swivelled in my chair and beckoned the first officer to come over and listen with me. He didn’t hurry. I mentally willed him to be quicker as he casually adjusted a cup to fit over one ear. By then we were heading back towards the equatorial area, and the first officer handed back my headphones.

‘I didn’t hear anything, sorry.’ He’d said, shaking his head. I managed to keep my expression neutral, but my heart had thumped angrily.

‘Any chance we’re merely out of range, now?’ I’d suggested. ‘Can we head back at some point, maybe we’ll pick it up again?’

‘I’m sure we can schedule it in.’ He’d walked away without looking back.

My job, while in this chair, was to report things like this. His flippancy had irritated me, but couldn’t to show it. I merely grunted an ‘okay’, and turned back to my duty.

The priority had been to establish a base in the more temperate band north of the equator, test the air, the water, the flora and then investigate possible fauna. In time, we would search and test other regions. We hadn’t observed wildlife as we approached the planet’s surface, so we had no idea if there was life here or not.

We had to assume there was for our own safety.

Either way, we were going outside blind. We could encounter herbivores or carnivores, so we left as armed and prepared as best we could guess we needed to be. One of our medics joined the scouting party.

Stepping out of the ship and into the fresh air, I could have sworn we were back on Earth. There was everything Earth-like around me but for humans and their creations, their junk, noise and waste. Birds and insects went about their daily lives. Flowers, grass and branches moved in the breeze. The smell was familiar, the colours were familiar. It was beautiful. I gathered samples and back on board they tested similarly to what we knew back home.

My thoughts were half on my task, and half on the beacon the entire time, and eventually it was investigated. I was left behind, much to my disguised annoyance, after all, I had been the one who heard the darn thing, and I could say precisely where we were when I’d heard it. And though I put that point forward, I was told I’d be called upon if need be.

Well, there was a need be, in the end.

While a name was being argued for the newly found planet, for now it was HC1. HC1 had a sun, a moon and a couple of planets arranged like Venus and Mercury, and I was certain there’d be at least a Jupiter and Saturn similarity when we eventually scrutinized the rest of the solar system. The necessary reports had been made back to Earth, and teams were scrambling to join us. With luck, they would be here within a month.

Towards the North Pole, but still hundreds of miles south of it, around 55 degrees longitude 30 degrees latitude, we landed where the signal was stronger, and we found a crashed vehicle. Nestled in a clearing in a wooded area, it was one of Earth’s lunar landers, crumpled as though it had rolled and on its side with two of its primary struts bent like broken insect legs, the secondary strut and landing pad of both nowhere to be seen.

Looking like part of it, next to the broken lander stood a small base, for want of a better word; mostly destroyed. It consisted of no more than a large gazebo, really, maybe two. Hard to tell. There were three of us accompanying the first officer and one of the mechanics and we took an area each while they kept armed watch.

Sifting through the debris where I could get my feet and hands in, among other items, I found a diary and what appeared to be something scribbled rather than a printed notice the likes of ‘Staff Only’ on the remains of the door flap that was somewhat obscured by snow, vegetation and broken parts of the structure and, of course, as I cleaned it, less and less visible. It seemed that as I tried to clear the mess coating the material, I was actually rubbing off the writing, too. I stopped and stood back to better view it.

‘Le e now! Ro ots ba ’

Reading it aloud offered up nothing useful; the others all tried, with the same result as me. Although we did agree on ‘robots’ assuming the gap meant a missing letter.

I returned to the diary which was open, wedged under more debris. The entry I read was merely to log that the lander had crashed, main ship landed nearby, that those who had been in the lander were being rescued, no-one was badly injured, but it was the last part of the entry on the next page which sent a shiver up my spine. My companions stopped rummaging to listen as I read aloud;

‘Sunday 9th June 2035: Second officer Jones reporting. Somewhere east of here is the mother ship, we managed to crash that as well. Not too badly, 2 struts were damaged which needed repairing to have enabled landing elsewhere.’

I frowned as I read… why such a vague reference to the ship’s location? I read on.

‘Timpson suggested we activate some of the robots to do the heavy work so that the repairs would be done in a fraction of the time. Great idea. Turns out, the bots aren’t our friends.’

I gazed around the site, as did the others, and as my eyed rested again on the door flap, I realized the mess coating the flap was dried blood.