"I hope they understood, or at least can
figure it out." Karl said as he put the now useless communicator away.
"What can they do." asked Sam.
"Well they can reconfigure one of the probes
we use for high radiation areas. Those probes are very well shielded. They
should be impervious to whatever we have here. At least I hope so."
Jeff added, "That will give us communication
with the Chrispin. Whatever you've got here certainly drained our
communicators fast. All of out instruments are useless."
"Sam, I want to look at you generator."
"What are you looking for?"
"Don't really know, but I'd like to see it
anyway. Jeff, could you wait here for the probe?"
"Sure. I'm going to rewire some of the
instruments so we can hopefully power them from the probe."
Sam and Karl headed for the house to look at the
generator. Jeff started removing the cases from the instruments. Laura stayed
to help Jeff.
Jeff looked at Laura. "I was really surprised
to see you here. You always seemed to want to settle down."
"I do. But you always wanted to go from place
to place. You had to have the stars. You could have never settled down."
"I still do. That's my way!"
"I know. That's what drove us apart."
Jeff stared her for a moment. "I guess that's
true. I want you to know that I did love you."
"I did love you. I still do in a way, a
different way now. It would have never worked. That life was not for me."
"Then how did you end up here?"
"I have you to thank for that."
"Me!" Jeff stopped and stared at Laura.
"I met Sam not too long after you and I broke
up. He's a lot like you." she paused. "We were married a year later
and I got what I wanted, a home, husband, children. It was perfect but as the
years went by, Earth seemed to get more and more crowded. Well Sam heard about
a colony ship coming here and wanted to go."
"So how do I figure in?"
"I wouldn't have had the courage to go, to
leave Earth. I kept remembering how you talked about the stars and dreamt of
all the new worlds that were out there just waiting for people. I decided I
would go, and here we are."
"So you do like to travel like I do!"
"No, not like you. One trip, that was enough,
now all I want is to settle down; and this is the place. Jeff, It is so
beautiful here!"
"That it is."
"I have everything I want right here. Well,
except for electricity. You can help us can't you?"
"We're going to try."
Just then a whistling hum was heard, getting
Louder. "The probe!" Laura exclaimed.
The cylindrical probe gently landed several hundred
yards from where they were standing.
"Right on the mark|" exclaimed Jell.
"Let's see what they sent us!"
They ran to it and Jeff opened the cover plate.
There was a communicator with wires leading back into the inside of the probe.
He keyed it. "Chrispin, do you read?"
"Loud and clear." came the response.
"You guys did good landing the probe.
Thanks."
"We should have anticipated that your
equipment might malfunction. Hal in Engineering did some modification of the
probe. You now have power leads for use with your instruments."
"That's great!"
There's also a map from the scanners. We've marked
the energy source, which incidentally seems to be getting stronger. It doesn't
seem to be very far from your location."
"We'll check it out. I think we can carry the
probe with us. Its small and light enough. We'll keep in touch. Out!"
They carried the probe back to where the quads were
tied up. Most of the rest of the instruments were still in the pack bags. They
lashed the probe to one of the quads, then after checking the map, headed off
along the edge of the mountains.
There was no trail so they had to pick their way
through the rocks. Finally they reached a deep cleft leading back into the
rocks. Jeff was using one of the instruments, now wired to the probe's power
supply.
"The energy reading is getting quite strong
now." He said. "Its increasing rapidly. Faster than can be accounted
for by our getting closer."
Suddenly the communicator burst into life.
"Landing party, come in!"
Karl answered, "Landing party here. Go
ahead."
"The energy source has started to transmit. It
is very narrow and directional; and its modulated!"
"Modulated?"
"Its some kind of a pattern. We can't make out
anything, but its definitely an intentional pattern."
"We're not reading anything like that
here."
"That's because its very directional. We
almost missed it ourselves."
"We're almost there. We'll let you know what
we find, Out."
As they rounded a bend in the cleft, Jeff said,
"There's something in those rocks"
"It looks metallic." Laura said.
"Those rocks have been laid there. Look how
even they are." Sam added.
The grayish rocks formed a regular pattern with
foliage growing around and through them. Some of the root looked very old.
As they approached the thing in the rock they could
see a greenish cylinder about a meter long and about a third of a meter in
diameter. A dull silver sphere, about half a meter in diameter was on the top.
It was mostly inside the rocks but the sphere portion extended above. The
foliage seemed to be freshly pushed back from the sphere.
Continued