From the log of the Blue Yonder.
I’m in the cargo hold checking out the rover one more time. Above me the stars are shining steadily, below me the engine thrums. But soon it will stop, and I’ll be just kilometers from something bigger than I thought I’d ever see in my lifetime.
Once I made the decision to search this baby out, finding it was close to inevitable: It’s huge, almost one hundredth of the Moon’s volume. The advance probe spotted it only two months after launch. I couldn’t believe it at the time. I thought we’d stumbled upon another proto-Pluto object. But as the probe got closer, it became clear this was it! The Honeycomb Comet, and no other!
Computer. All set.
Captain. Thank you.
The engines have stopped. Time to bring the rover out of the cargo bay and launch for the Honeycomb.
There it is as I round my ship, shining pure white in the sun’s faint light. Of course, just another point of light in a dark space filled with points of light.
This huge rock is lens-shaped with one rounded face and one fragmented face—clearly this used to be bigger and it got clobbered. The fragmented face is pocked, but the pocks are not shadowed as they would be if this was the inner Solar System. At this distance the sun looks like just another bright star among the billions shining in from all directions, but still you can tell which are the faint shadows it casts.
The probes have been analyzing the Honeycomb for months while I closed with it. It’s very roughly a hundredth of the Moon in volume, and scarcely a hundredth of its density. It’s about the density of Styrofoam—which is why it’s nothing close to round in spite of its massive size. Most of the rounded side is a dark mottled gray speckled with lighter spots, rather ordinary planetary looking, a space-weathered face. The fragmented side is pure white except for some small colored splotches. It rotates—
Captain. Laughs.
That’s what it looks like: A cupcake with sprinkles on top!
It’s rotating about once every 30 days. There’s a slight magnetic field, and the density seems quite uniform.
The probes have been trying to orbit the thing, but it’s so diffuse that it’s been really tough. It’s like trying to orbit a gas cloud.
I don’t call it a comet anymore, but I’m not sure what to call it instead. “Meteor” sounds too small, but it’s not an asteroid, certainly not a moon … for now it’s just “the Honeycomb” to me. They consider Ceres a “dwarf planet”, and the Honeycomb is bigger, so I guess that’s how they’ll officially classify it.
I’m coming in near the center of rotation on the fragmented side. This time I’m loaded for bear: In the rover I’ve got a couple days’ supply of food, water, and air, lots of “sample homers”—cargo containers that can launch back to the ship on their own—and a full battery of recording instruments. Plus some of all that stuff already stowed in the walker that I’ll be exploring in. Call me silly, call me irresponsible, but I’m sure I’m not going to find this expedition dull!
Like any spacer I’ve approached more than my share of smaller-than-planetary bodies. None have looked as imposing. Asteroids seem to shrink as you approach them because they’re rounded. Approaching comets is like a scene out of a mystery movie with the mists that always surround them. But nothing else has spread across my view screen like this. The face looms in front of me now, rugged and pocked and huge!
Temporary end of entry.
Log entry resumes.
I’ve landed the rover, gripping the surface with the walker legs. It’s the same as the fragment I found earlier, a porous, bone-like substance. I’m just down-gravity of a massive pock, so I’m getting into the walker and climbing up to it.
The pock is a huge tunnel roughly a kilometer in diameter, winding in an organic way. It’s so big that I’m going to have the rover tag along behind and above me as I move in. When it gets small or I’ve moved enough off-axis that there’s gravity, I’ll have the rover dock.
The entrance is bare, here where the gravity is essentially nil, but detritus has collected further in.
I’m a half kilometer in now, and the artificiality—the man-madeness, or alien-madeness, or whatever—has become definite. I’m moving through some kind of massive highway or passageway, in a ship that’s been intentionally built or grown or maybe modified. The walls are lined with entrances and porches of some nature all around the circumference, and probably under the trash on the floor. This thing is old, and whatever broke it in pieces broke up a lot of the internals as well. Everything delicate on this ship, the spin has pushed to that floor, and only the robust structures are still attached to the walls.
As I walk this corridor I can’t determine which way was down when this structure was inhabited. It’s disconcerting. Every man-made spaceship has at least one definable down; it may have more than one, but it has at least one. This doesn’t seem to. Now the only down is the “floor” I’m walking on, the thick layer of trash. I’d like to find out if there’s some layering to this trash, some difference in the composition as you go down, but I’ll hold off on digging until I’m two kilometers along. There’s so much to see.
Temporary end of entry.
Log entry resumes.
I’m about a kilometer in now, and I’ve found a body. It’s a suit actually, almost entirely buried, with a body still inside. When I first spotted it, the suit looked like a dead dog with its feet up in the air. Now I see it’s more insectoid with six legs, two still buried. It’s about dog-size, though, and there’s a big hole in the suit. Inside is a desiccated cat-size corpse that looks nothing like the suit, or a cat. In fact, as I stand staring, I see two bodies inside, different from each other, both different from the suit.
Jesus, I’ve done it. I’m the first person to discover an alien. I’m shuddering with the incredible thrill running through my body. This is no single-cell, living-under-a-rock alien, this is a full-fledged technological alien with a huge spaceship! The implications … the implications … !
This is really more than I can take. I think I’m still in a daze, but I’ve carefully made video of the surroundings, dug the suit out of the trash, taken video of that, packed the suit in my first auto-return container and sent it back to the ship.
Temporary end of entry.
Log entry resumes.
I just broke for lunch. It gave me time to think and I’ve decided to root around here a little longer. Who knows what brought these little fellas here, or what ended their life here? One thing I’m sure of: If something living killed them, it’s dead now. This place has been in hard vacuum and unrelieved cold for eons.
So I’ve walked around a little and looked the area over carefully. I’ve set up the neutron analyzer for directional analysis. Up until now it’s been on omni-directional and recording the macro characteristics of the terrain I’ve been walking over. The results have been mostly silicates of magnesium and calcium; in other words, rather pure space rock. There have been traces of heavy metals, but nothing big enough for a hoary old prospector like myself to get excited about.
But wait! I’m not looking for a minable vein, now. This is a ship. I’m looking for artifacts. Small is OK.
Temporary end of entry.
Log entry resumes.
All right. I’ve scanned around and triangulated in on an interesting mix of carbon, iron, and copper that’s close to the rubble’s surface. For sampling I normally use the rover’s driller, but this time I’ll get out of the walker and attack the likely spot with a shovel.
As I hoped, it’s another suited body, but clearly not the same design, or the same species inside! What am I looking at here? Was there some kind of meeting going on when this ship blew up?
Temporary end of entry.
Log entry resumes.
After fishing around further, nothing else of interest has shown up. It’s all just rubbly space rock. I’m sending the second body back to the ship.
There have been small corridors springing off the main corridor, not quite at random, but not in a strictly ordered way either. About two kilometers in I’m coming to a giant intersection where my corridor and two others of equal size meet in a huge dome. Well, it could be a dome, or it could be a sphere that’s half filled with garbage that was the sphere’s contents. There are huge scars in the walls, and they seem to be where the wall had a color. I’ll investigate the nearest one.
There are scrape marks. It looks like someone went after the wall with a backhoe. Mining something? Why would you mine something out of a spaceship? I’ve taken samples of the colored rock.
Here’s as good a place and time as any for a cat nap.
Temporary end of entry.
Log entry resumes.
Now that I've seen the big, it’s time to see the small. I’m going to follow the left-hand rule here. Like many others over the centuries I’ve found that going left finds me things faster than going right. So I’ll return down my entering corridor and take the first major branch to the left, the next sub-corridor off from it, and so on.
As the corridors have gotten smaller, the trash thickness has declined dramatically. I’m now in a corridor four steps down from the main corridor, three meters high, where I can actually see the floor in places. There’s a door at the far end. It’s broken, but it was clearly a cover, the first I’ve seen.
Inside the door is a room and in the room are containers—all broken and scattered. I’m photoing the area.
I wasn’t surprised when the first container I touched turned to dust. I’ve collected a sample bag and returned back to an intersection, where I’ll try the next branch.
I’ve passed two more rooms filled with broken containers. A blank wall at the end.
More of the same in the room at the end of this next corridor.
The walker’s mapping function is recording my route. Still more of the same.
More of the same, except the diameter is down to just over two meters.
More of the same.
Nothing different. This place must have been looted, and looted thoroughly.
All right, then! This is another two-meter corridor—good thing I’m not claustrophobic—with a door still pretty much intact. It’s partially open, not wide enough for the walker to get in.
This is a find! I’m peering in and recording with an optical fiber from my position outside. Scattered on the floor are more suits, and the boxes haven’t been fully ransacked.
The room is covered in white dust, and the suits are not a pretty sight, disintegrated into mere outlines. I’m imagining an unsuccessful last stand where the attackers used something highly corrosive to finish these creatures off.
One suit turns to dust on touch. So does the nearest box. The far boxes look to be in better shape. I won’t touch them yet. I’ve scanned the white powder and will wait for results.
It’s been a million years, maybe. Could whatever corrosive or toxic chemicals they used survive in hard vacuum? Once a corrosive has corroded something, it’s harmlessly inert. But if there was more than enough to do the job in the first place … And of course some toxic metals persist after they’ve been ingested and killed something.
The white powder is about 80% phosphorous pentoxide. The attackers apparently were no-nonsense physical types. The bad news is that phosphorous pentoxide is highly corrosive, to metal and humans, even after a million years. The good news is it’s not too hard to neutralize. The better news is that anything subtler, such as nasty germs or organic poisons, won’t have survived extended contact with it. This room is as sterile as the outside of the ship.
I need to get the door open. When I pushed it experimentally, it wobbled a bit. It’s not going to be hard, but to be on the safe side, I’ll pull it open with a long stretch of cable and the winch.
Temporary end of entry.
Log entry resumes.
Okay. The door inched open, shedding a lot of white powder in the process. I’ve saved myself a fair amount of clean-up by keeping myself and the walker far away while that shedding happened.
I’ve put gloves on the walker’s feet—that was a pain-in-the-ass job, it took forever—and will head in slowly.
Yeah, it’s gonna be dusty. I’ll have to head back after this and clean up the walker. I’m using a rake tool to scrape at the remains of powdered boxes and suits. I won’t bother to try and collect these suits, they’re just too damaged.
Paydirt! At the back of the room is at least one box that doesn’t fall apart under the rake’s touch.
Total of five boxes! I’ve pulled them out with the big grabber, brushed as much dust off as I can, and sent them back, one per container.
Weehaaa! It’s time for this cowboy to gallop back home!
End of entry.