Chapter No. 42. Historical.

Janet and Sharon concentrated on determining what sort of habitable planet we were on course to arrive at in a few days. What they found initially was not unexpected.

"The planet is definitely habitable," Sharon said. "It shows oxygen and water vapor in its atmosphere. I estimate its size at about 1.5 times that of Earth."

"The K2-class main sequence star is about twelve billion years old," Janet said.  "It appears to be stable."

"When do we have to make the burn to obtain orbit?" I asked.

Janet entered some numbers into the computer. "forty-eight hours and twenty minutes."

"I'm not detecting any signals, both electromagnetic and quantum, emerging from the planet," Natale said. "There is no evidence of space craft in this system."

"Good," I said. "Maybe we'll get lucky for once."

Later that day, I was down in engineering at the command station, when all five women arrived.

"We want to use the pool," Natale said with a serious expression.

I could detect a subtle frivolity in her stoic expression. "Sure," I said gesturing. "Go enjoy."

"You can watch them with me," Kali said with a subtle smile.

I hesitated for a moment but got up and followed them to the pool chamber. I really didn't want to gawk at them, but there was no way to avoid it under the circumstances.

When we got to the pool chamber, Kali and I watched them enthusiastically strip and then jump into the pool, screeching and laughing like children. They didn't seem to be embarrassed by my presence. In fact, they enjoyed themselves like children who had just gotten out of the house after being confined for an entire week.

I found their exuberance uplifting, but their lack of modesty disturbing. On the other hand, for me it was essentially a pleasant experience. Although I felt weird watching them climbing back out of the pool and then jumping in, splashing water and chasing one another as if I weren't there. I guess it was their ultimate way of teasing me.

The time came for the burn to adjust for an orbital insertion. As we approached the planet, it became much easier to see its surface.

"I don't see any activity in what appears to be cities," Janet said. "The planet's weather patterns are not too crazy, so I doubt that's the reason."

"I'm not surprised that this planet has an intelligent species," I said. "It's been around for at least ten billion years."

"That's right," Sharon said. "It's more than enough time to evolve intelligence, assuming that the habitable conditions were stable for that long."

"K-class stars are not quite as stable as the G-class star that Earth orbits, but they're a lot better than M-class red dwarfs," Janet said. "It has to do with the star's spin. Smaller stars spin much faster than larger stars, and spin is what makes the magnetic lines tangle and emit powerful flares. The good news is that K-class stars stay on the main sequence burning hydrogen much longer than G-class. M-class stars can last for trillions of years, long after G-class stars have died."

"How do they last longer?" I asked. "They're smaller and have much less hydrogen,"

"That's true but M-class stars have access to all of their hydrogen, whereas G-class can only burn about ten percent of theirs. It has to do with the size of their convection zones, which block hydrogen from getting to the core where all the fusion takes place."

"Well, the good news is that this system seems stable and able to support intelligent life."

"Yep," Sharon said. "However, I'm concerned by the fact that we're not seeing any activity."

"We'll know for sure soon," I said.

The next day, we achieved a stable orbit around the planet, allowing Janet and Sharon to make close observations of the surface.

It wasn't long until they had an opinion about what was down there.

"We are seeing no activity on the surface," Janet said. "The cities look abandoned."

"There is no evidence of any activity outside the cities, which are connected by highways," Sharon said. "Judging by the infusion of plant life, I would estimate that these cities have not had inhabitants for possibly thousands of years. However, some sections appear to be pristine.

"The question then is; who were they?"

"I think we'll have to go down there to determine that," Janet said.

I rubbed my face. "Yeah, I'm afraid you're right."

"Who are you taking?" Janet asked.

"Sharon, Bridget and Kali," I said. "We'll have to wear bio suits."

I had Kali lug a laser rifle and I strapped on a laser pistol. The other two packed science instruments. We went up to the hanger and boarded the shuttle. I activated the controls and told COMA to depressurize the hanger and open the door.

Once I got the shuttle out of the hanger, I fired the breaking rockets to plunge into the planet's atmosphere. I flew down toward the city and passed over it a few times to find a decent landing spot, which turned out to be a plaza.

We exited the shuttles wearing our bio suits. The city was weird. For one thing, there were potted plants, which for some reason looked as if someone was taking care of them. In fact, the plaza looked too clean to have been thousands of years old.

We walked over to what looked like a billboard. What we saw was incredible.

"What in the hell is going on here?" I exclaimed. "This is picture of a human family having an outing."

Sharon pointed at other pictures. "They all depict humans."

"I would say that they're dressed like the 1950's. That makes no sense whatsoever."

"Maybe they got these images from TV broadcasts," Kali suggested.

"How far are we from Earth?" I asked Sharon.

"I think it's over a thousand light years."

"That makes that idea impossible. We have to assume that these represent the species that created this city."

Bridget looked around. "Where'd they go?"

"Good question." I thought about it for a moment before giving my opinion. "If we assume that human-like people populated this planet, then they must have advanced well beyond Earth humans." I turned to Sharon. "Is it possible to date these buildings?"

"Not really. The material they used to make them have radioactive thorium and uranium, but their half-lives are in hundreds of millions of years." She pointed at the picture. "I think that has some materials that contain carbon. I could date that because carbon 14 has a half-life in thousands of years."

"Take a sample. It'll help us figure out how old the people that made this are."

"There's no evidence of violence or climatic destruction here," Kali said. "We have to assume that these people went somewhere else."

"if this planet is benign, why would they have left it?"

She shrugged. "Good question."

We searched other buildings but only found more evidence that the people who worked there were definitely human. Unfortunately, we didn't find anything that would constitute a historical record.

We boarded the shuttle and allowed the disinfecting spray to purify us before entering the shuttle cabin to prepare for a return to the ship, but before that, I decided to fly around the area near the city to see if we could see anything else that might give us clues as to what happened here.

"What's that down there?" Sharon asked, pointing at what appeared to be a launching site.

I angled down to get a better look. "Yeah, that's definitely a rocket launching site, but it looks to be in much worse shape compared to the city."

I turned the ship and accelerated on a course that would take us into orbit near our ship.

As soon as we arrived on the crew deck, we were inundated with questions.

"What happened down there?" Natale asked.

"What'd you find?" Janet asked.

"We found solid evidence that humans lived here. We have no idea how long they were there and what happened to them."

"How could humans living on a planet a thousand light years from Earth just disappear?" Janet asked.

"We don't know. There are two possible theories. They just died off. However, we didn't find evidence of that. The other possibility is that they abandoned the planet and went somewhere else. However, that doesn't make sense because the planet and star appear to be stable."

"Maybe they came to Earth," Kali said.

"Now, that would be wild idea. The problem I have with that is that these humans seemed much more advanced than humans that existed thousands of years ago on Earth."

"So, you think that humans evolved here and then went to Earth as a proto-human species," Janet said.

"That's a possibility, but we have to get more evidence to verify that."

"Maybe there's evidence on Earth," Sharon said.

"Could be. However, it still doesn't explain where all the humans went."

"Yeah, I forgot that."

"So, what's next?" Natale asked.

"I think we should consider looking for more habitable planets," I said.

Janet and Sharon began the process of planet hunting while I went back to my bunk to take a nap, which was a signal for Natale and Bridget to strip outside the shower module. They made sure that I knew they were there by giggling and laughing.

I got up and sat at the food station after ordering a beer. Kali joined me.

"Are those two flaunting their assets at you?" she said after getting a beer.

"It certainly looks that way," I said after taking a good swig of beer.

"They're foolish," she said with an ornery grin. "But I'm sure they make for good entertainment."

I smiled. "No doubt."

"If I were you, I would just enjoy it."

"Actually, I see it as the result of having no privacy on this ship."

"Yeah, the USS-Avenger, the ship I was on, had a much better setup."

"I don't think that the designers gave one twit for our privacy. Worse yet, they risked our lives for a mission that was doomed to fail."

"At least you've changed it into a mission that makes sense."

"I don't think they," I gestured to the shower module. "Think that I'm doing a good job."

She became more serious. "They are dedicated to your leadership. They will do whatever you wish, and that goes for me."

I didn't know what to say, so I simply nodded.

The next day brought a new adventure, one that would have consequences for my command.