“Sixty-two degrees.”
“Hold a minute.” Kate was acting on what everyone was thinking—just a few more seconds of data! NASA would not object to a detonation at a slightly lower altitude once they saw the results. “Let me know when we reach seventeen thousand.”
Greta watched the screen. “Seventeen thousand.”
“Detonate.”
Greta pushed a button and the probe data vanished from her screen. “Probe destroyed at sixteen thousand, six hundred feet.”
Kate nodded. Her euphoria over the discovery of life was tempered by the loss of data. “What was the final temperature?”
“Sixty-six degrees.” Greta bent down and worked the numbers. “By my calculations, it should be close to ninety on the planet surface. Perfect sunbathing weather.”
More good news. “All right, let’s massage the data. Jorja, let’s map the planet, starting from the area covered by the probe. Greta, let’s coordinate the groupings of all lifeforms you recorded. Beth, see if you can add anything about these lifeforms. Ally, let’s drop down into a lower orbit and get some detailed pictures.”
The crew got to work, excited over their discoveries. Ally took the ship down to minimum orbit and focused the high-definition camera through her monitor. Her head snapped up. “Jesus,” she breathed.
“Captain,” she turned. “I think you’re going to want to see this on the monitor.”
“Switching over.” Kate punched a button and the high-powered camera image jumped onto the large overhead monitor. Everyone’s jaw fell open at once.
There were villages down below.
Chapter 5
Two hours later, they were poring over a map of the continents. A rough circle indicated where the probe had picked up lifeforms. Ally had a sheaf of photos taken of the area, plus others that showed several small towns grouped near water and forests.
“Here and here, two large groupings of the mammals that we can assume are intelligent,” Greta was saying, pleased to have their attention. “And smaller ones here and here. Closer to the probe’s drift radius, I picked up some scattered smaller mammals, and what appears to be reptilian lifeforms.”
Reptiles too? It was beyond belief. This planet had evolved similar to Earth. The idea was staggering. Kate knew that this planet would soon be festooned with ships from Earth, all carrying scientists who would spend the rest of their lives discovering new facts about Devon.
Ally passed around the photos. “They have an agrarian society, probably similar to Earth of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. You can see they’ve tamed some beasts and use them to haul carts and plow fields.”
Kate studied the photos. The beasts looked like donkeys, although they had thicker, shorter legs. The carts rode on large wooden wheels. In one photo, she could see a cage of some sort over one of the carts. Probably transporting prisoners, she mused, which would indicate some sort of judicial system. This world fascinated her.
“The beings in these villages are humanoid, not all that dissimilar from us. I’ve asked the computer to develop a more accurate picture of both sexes, based on what we can see from here.” She pushed some buttons and small holograms appeared before them on the flat top of the display.
Two creatures appeared, standing side by side and rotating slowly. They were darker, with more body hair, but otherwise looked human. Both had two arms and legs, a face with two eyes, a nose and mouth. The woman had two breasts. The only obvious differences were in the foreheads and ears. A narrow, lumpy bone extended down from the hairline to the bridge of the nose and the ears were flatter and attached to the skull.
The average man appeared to be larger and more powerful than a human male. The man’s chest was deep and well developed, indicating hard work. The woman looked much the same as an Earth woman, except she had some scattering of hair between her breasts, as well as the expected hair in her armpits, on legs and pubis.
Because of the apparent heat on the surface, the humanoid images wore hardly any clothes at all. The woman was entirely naked, except for animal skins wrapped around her feet. The man wore a covering over his privates as well as foot skins.
Jorja spoke right up. “Let’s see what the computer can do without the clothes.” Everyone smiled.
Kate sighed. “Well, I suppose, as long as it’s in the interest of science. Computer, can you generate an image of the male being without clothes?”
“Insufficient data,” the metallic voice intoned.
“Damn!” Jorja said.
“Why are the women naked?” Beth asked.
Ally shrugged. “Maybe it’s custom.”
“The men sure look strong,” Jorja said. She needs to go off somewhere and masturbate, Kate thought.
It did give her an idea. “Computer, replace the female image with that of an average human male.”
The woman vanished and the image of a naked man appeared. Compared to the native, the Earth man looked like a ninety-pound weakling. “Scale,” Kate said. A scale rose up next to the holograms. The Earthling was six feet tall. The native was easily six-six and probably outweighed him by fifty pounds or more.
“Wow,” Beth said. “Look how they’ve developed. Makes us look puny in comparison.”
“Let’s compare the women too.”
Kate gave the instructions and in seconds, holograms of a native woman and an Earth woman appeared side by side. The scale showed the native was only about two inches taller than the average Earth woman, who stood five-six, according to the scale.
“They’re a lot like us, only hairier,” Greta put in.
“Yeah, a lot hairier,” Jorja said. Everyone laughed. On Earth, American custom dictated that women remove all their body hair, a trend that had begun around the beginning of the 21st century. The development of depilatories had advanced to the point to where women entering puberty could use them to kill the hair roots, leaving their skin silky smooth.
Kate brought up the native pair as before, and the crew just stared at the images for a few minutes.
“God, this is such a huge discovery,” Jorja said. “We’re going to be famous.”
“Too bad we can’t name the planet after you,” Beth said to Kate.
“Maybe they could name the humanoids after you,” Greta put in. “Welcome to the planet of the Dysons.” The crew laughed and Kate laughed right along with them.
“Let’s get some more data,” she said. “I want to launch another probe, only this time, over water. See if we can get it close to land, but not too close. I’d like to record some ocean temperatures, salinity, et cetera.”
They had to wait fifteen minutes for the planet to circle around underneath them before they could launch. There had been some discussion about where the next probe should be sent. The obvious choice would be to launch the next one on the other side of the planet to see if lifeforms existed everywhere. Greta had a better suggestion—launch a probe near where the first one fell in order collect more detailed data in anticipation of a manned landing. She would lead it, of course.
Kate agreed. She knew NASA would insist upon exploring the planet, provided they could avoid contact with the beings.
The probe burrowed through the atmosphere, on target to a splashdown about ten miles offshore, four-hundred kilometers east of the first probe. The footprints of the two probes would overlap, giving them an excellent view of climate conditions and geological topography as well as additional information about the humanoids.
“Chute deployed!” Greta sang out. “Telemetry coming in!”
The initial data was similar to that collected by the first probe. The crew waited for the probe to fall below twenty thousand feet.
“Fifteen thousand. Wind, thirty knots! Temperature sixty-eight degrees!” A few seconds passed. “Ten thousand, seventy-five degrees.”