Edenesque? she thought. No, that designation would be premature. She waited as the members of the expedition team filed out in the direction of the airlock and the deployed landing ramp.
“The team is heading out now to investigate the source of the transmission,” she told the comm. “I’ll relay their findings if it proves necessary. Suit signals might need a boost, if the damn storm doesn’t settle down.”
When Upworth’s voice responded immediately, Faris let out a sigh of relief. Maybe the current state of ground-to-ship communications wasn’t the best, but at least it was functional.
“See if you can push more power to the lander’s uplink, honey,” Upworth replied. She, too, sounded relieved at the stabilizing of contact. “Signal’s coming through up here, but still showing a tendency to fall apart. Have to gather, assemble, and process before you can be understood.”
“Will try.” Faris rose from her seat, glad to finally be able to stand without having to worry about being slammed against the bulkhead. “Repurposing main relay. I have to go outside for a bit to check for potential damage to the hull. Then I’ll see about further goosing the uplink. Now that we’re down, maybe I can redistribute some power.”
Though there was enough cloud cover to mute the daylight, it was far from dark outside the lander. Not exactly cheery, Faris told herself as she followed the rest of the team out the lock and down the ramp, but far from unrelenting gloom. Their surroundings were just—gray. While the team worked out last-minute preparations before embarking on the hike ahead, she made her way toward the back of the ship, checking the underside as far as was possible given that it was sitting in shallow water, and then working her way carefully around the forward and aft landing thrusters.
The dent was sufficiently prominent that she noticed it right away. Any possible internal damage would have to await an instrument scan. As she continued to study the indentation, Oram came up beside her, his boots sloshing through dark water.
“Okay, Faris, we’re heading out. Keep all expedition security protocols in place,” he instructed. “And watch out for hungry dinosaurs.” It was a weak attempt at levity, but she appreciated the effort nonetheless. Oram really was beginning to relax into command.
“Will do.” Peering past him, her gaze traveled up the soaring mountainside in the direction of the signal’s source. “Don’t see anything moving yet, dinos included. Pretty peaceful.” She turned her attention back toward the damage to the lander. “Have fun, y’all.”
Turning slowly, he took in the immediate surroundings. The lake was stunning, reminding him of images he had seen of glacial lochs on Earth. The mountains that framed the lengthy body of water were equally imposing, as were the fir- and redwood-like trees that climbed their flanks. It was all quite beautiful.
Beautiful—and quiet, he couldn’t help noticing. Faris was right. The only sounds were made by the slight breeze as it caressed rocks and grass and the barely perceptible liquid clink of wavelets against the rocky shore. There were no animal calls, no bird cries, and no exotic analogs thereof. Despite the inarguable habitability of the planetary surface, despite its welcoming atmosphere, temperature, and gravity, nothing moved in the sky, in the water, on the dry land, or in the forest.
Quiet.
He gave a mental shrug. Maybe the lander had come down in a particularly sterile spot. Or maybe the local fauna engaged in mass migration. Or were hibernating in expectation of warmer weather—and fewer storms. He couldn’t spare the time to ponder on it. This wasn’t a zoological expedition. Two thousand colonists in hypersleep were waiting on what they found, and on his ultimate decisions. Which he could not make until a number of questions were answered.
Walking back to shore, he rejoined the group that stood patiently awaiting his orders. With one hand he gestured at the looming mountainside.
“If everyone’s ready…?” When no one demurred, he added, “All right then. Let’s go find our ghost. Walter?”
Without a word and holding his multiunit out in front of him, the synthetic started off. Lopé accelerated to take point in front of their guide. The rest of his squad—Hallet, Cole, Ledward, Ankor, and Rosenthal—fanned out around him, forming a standard semicircular perimeter. Daniels, Oram, and Karine followed close behind Walter.
As she collected the necessary ingredients for a standard scan-and-repair kit, Faris listened to her husband via the relayed comm.
“No way to boost the signal?” he asked her.
Kit in hand, she replied as she once again exited the lander and descended the ramp. “Not without going completely offline, and allowing the cells to recycle.”
“How long would that take?” he inquired hopefully.
Wading out into the water she halted next to the dent in the hull. Using a special tool designed exclusively for the purpose, she began opening service hatches, striving to maintain the contact with the Covenant while also trying to envision the work that might need to be done.
“I dunno. A couple of hours.” Straightening, she pulled a tech scanner from her kit. “If I take the time to do that, it would mean taking time away from making repairs down here, and I don’t even know the extent of those yet. Depending on the damage, they might require minutes, might require hours.” She didn’t say “days.”
Don’t let it be days, she muttered to herself.
Tennessee made the logical choice, as she knew he would. “It’s not worth taking time away from what you might have to do to the lander. Do what you have to do with it first. Meanwhile, let me see what we can do up here. I can try overriding the automatics with a couple of experimental resolution algorithms, see if we can maybe improve clarity without having to boost signal strength.”
“Okey doke.” Repeated attempts failed to get a particularly reluctant hatch to open, but the problem was solved by the simple expedient of whacking it hard a couple of times with a spanner. “I’ve got plenty to keep me busy.” She cast a squint skyward. “Viewed from down here, there’s still plenty of crackle overhead, but none of it is hitting the ground, and at least it’s not raining.” She hoped that didn’t jinx it. “Faris out.”
As communication terminated she paused to inspect the small internal portions of the lander that her efforts had exposed to view. A sudden sense of unease caused her to turn and look out across the somber landscape. She knew immediately what it was that was bothering her.
It was that damn unbroken continuing quiet.
VIII
Daniels moved up so that she was walking alongside Walter. After climbing a lightly vegetated slope, the expedition team found themselves pushing through a flat field of some kind of tall grass. Pale gold instead of green, the stalks swayed in perfect unison with the prevailing gentle breeze. Despite the increasingly uncomfortable ongoing silence she was glad that the grass, at least, did not make any noise.
Looking ahead, she saw that two of the lead security team had stopped. In complete violation of proper expedition procedure, Sergeant Lopé was crushing the top of one of the golden stalks between his fingers. Before she could object, he rubbed the residue between his palms, brought it close to his face, and blew part of it away. Picking up the loose chaff, the breeze carried it off toward the nearby mountains.