19:41 (Universal Time)
Friday, June 20, 2324
Outer observation gallery of the A.M.S. KOSTROMA
Arriving in low orbit of 16 Cygni Ac (Atlantis)
70 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Cygnus
The mature couple looking at the planet 16 Cygni Ac, also known as ‘Atlantis’, was not the only one standing next to the thick armored windows of the Outer Apartments Ring’s circular promenade: pretty much every passenger and many crew family members were doing so as well. Since its discovery a bit over two years ago, few people, apart from the explorer crews and seeding specialists which had worked on Atlantis, had visited the planet. While the celestial body itself possessed a breathable atmosphere, vast oceans and near perfect climate, it was also a world still mostly devoid of life that needed an extensive program of vegetal replanting and ocean seeding before it would be suitable for large scale colonization. It once had been full of life, animal, marine and vegetal, until the intelligent race living on it had snuffed all life on the planet by triggering a catastrophic nuclear holocaust some sixteen million years ago. When a Spacers League’s explorer crew had discovered it, all traces of the radiations which had sterilized the planet had faded away, but Atlantis was now a nearly empty world, with only sparse, primitive vegetation covering its two large continents and thousands of islands and with oceans apparently empty of life. As for the race that had inhabited it before destroying life on it, everything that they had built had basically turned into dust, eroded by the winds and the sea.
Doctor Peter Schiller, standing shoulder to shoulder with his wife Romi, slowly shook his head while looking at the blue-green orb of Atlantis.
‘’Such a beautiful planet, emptied of life because of sheer stupidity and irresponsibility. The worst part is that we ourselves very nearly did the same to Earth in the Twentieth Century.’’
‘’But at least we learned our lesson, Peter. Those Cygnians didn’t! Now, we are replanting life on Atlantis and, in a few years, we will be able to open the planet to large scale colonization, once it will be able to sustain any sizable population.’’
‘’You are right, Romi, and we will be able to help that happen. Our job will be truly crucial for that goal. I can’t wait to be able to start sailing our boat on those oceans below us.’’
‘’A lonely boat sailing vast but mostly empty seas… I wish that we could have been able to study the local marine life before it vanished.’’
‘’Me too, but there are only fossils left from all that past life. Now, we have to make sure that the right kind of balance between the newly imported forms of marine life is established and maintained. It will take us years of work, maybe decades, to accomplish that job.’’
Romi, a marine biologist like her husband, nodded her head in response.
‘’And they will be years well spent, Peter. Do you know if the Spacers League is planning to send deep-diving submarines to explore the abyssal depths of Atlantis?’’
‘’They will, Romi. Apart from our own yacht and other small boats, the KOSTROMA is carrying two deep-diving manned submarines which will explore the bottom of those oceans. Doctor Yamatsuta promised me that she will save two seats for us when she will do her first exploration dive.’’
Romi, a 54-year-old woman of medium stature and with brown hair, smiled to her thin but taller, 56-year-old husband.
‘’Yes! That should be an epic dive.’’
‘’Indeed! Right now, we still know next to nothing about the remaining lifeforms at the bottom of Atlantis’ oceans. That deep-dive expedition should prove both exciting and most interesting.’’
Peter then looked at his wristwatch-cum-communicator.
‘’Nearly eight o’clock. Maybe we should return to our cabin and prepare for the night: tomorrow will be a busy day.’’
‘’Right!’’ replied Romi, who then took one of Peter’s hands and started walking back with him to their cabin, situated three levels up from the promenade.
09:06 (Universal Time)
Saturday, June 21, 2324
Bridge of the A.M.S. KOSTROMA
Hovering 250 meters above the sea
Western Sea, near the western coast of the continent of Tera
Atlantis, third planet of the 16 Cygni A System
‘’We are now in hover mode at an altitude of 250 meters above the water, Tina.’’
‘’Thanks, Frida!’’ replied Tina before giving a string of orders.
‘’Open our stern towing station! Prepare to gently lower our stern load down onto the sea. Tell the initial activation team to take their posts.’’
Tina then intensely watched as her bridge crew obeyed her and as the giant sliding doors covering the stern towing station of her cargo ship opened up. In this case, her ‘stern load’ was a huge structure measuring a maximum diameter of 420 meters and a height from top to bottom of 180 meters. Looking like a giant round cheese with twelve short, fat legs under it, that ‘stern load’ was a full-fledged floating city able to comfortably accommodate up to 14,000 persons. Due to its shape, it had been called ‘Medusa City’, a name that fit well with its intended use. As one of the first large habitat centers to be established on the planet Atlantis, Medusa City had been designed and built as a mobile floating structure, able to either navigate the seas with the help of its gravity sails propulsion system or to temporarily settle over a coastal spot of interest by extending down its telescopic seafloor anchoring legs to depths as deep as 200 meters. As such, Medusa City was going to be the prime oceanographic and marine biology studies facility on Atlantis, a planet still mostly devoid of life thanks to a genocidal nuclear war triggered some sixteen million years ago by the now extinct Cygnians. During the last two years, Spacers’ League scientific teams had first studied the planet, then had started to seed new life on it, planting vegetal seeds on its two continents and thousands of islands and seeding its oceans, first with marine algae and then with plankton, in order to turn the oceans of Atlantis into places which could sustain Earth-imported fish in the near future. If all went well, Atlantis would be transformed from an eminently habitable but empty world to a nice new home for millions of Humans from the Solar System. Many of those were going to be Spacers’ League citizens who had up to now lived mostly in cities located under the surface ice of moons in the Solar System and who would at last be able to enjoy lives in the open air and Sun.
Some forty minutes later, the big mass of Medusa City was slowly and cautiously lowered out of its covered stern towing station by dozens of tractor beam generators, to finally touch the surface of the sea, where it sank down to the lower edge of its main cylindrical section. The initial activation team inside the floating city then checked that no unintended leaks had sprung into the six billion credits-worth structure. Once that was done, they commanded the separation of the ten big floating dock sections temporarily attached to the belly of Medusa City. Those floating dock sections, each measuring a hundred meters in length, 25 meters in width and thirty meters in height, were extended out on their attachment rails and, in the case of seven of them, slowly moved on the surface of the water in order to take their planned positions, attaching themselves to other docks to form two open-air harbors, one meant for yachts and small boats and the other meant for fishing vessels. Another floating module attached to a side of the main section was then lowered down into the water and hooked itself to the two floating docks sections forming the sides of the open-air yachting harbor. Tina smiled on watching that on one of her video display screens.
‘’And voilà! An instant beach area in the middle of the ocean. The future citizens of Medusa City are going to be a truly spoiled bunch.’’
‘’After living most of their lives in under-ice cities?’’ replied her pilot, Frida Skarsgard. ‘’They sure earned the right to be spoiled, Tina.’’
‘’I know, Frida. We are part of those people, remember? We are simply lucky in living aboard a ship like the KOSTROMA, with its forests and giant aquarium. Still, Atlantis will be a near paradise…once we will have grown fully forests on it and filled its oceans with fish. The marine biologists who will be the first occupants of Medusa City will be crucial in making that last part a reality. So, is Medusa City now ready to welcome its first inhabitants, Dana?’’
‘’One moment, please!’’ said her navigator and second-in-command, Dana Durning. ‘’I am going to ask the head of the activation team about that.’’
A minute later, Dana twisted her head to smile to Tina.
‘’We have the ‘go’ from the activation team to start transferring our passengers to Medusa City, Tina.’’
‘’Excellent!’’ replied Tina before switching her microphone to ‘ship-wide’ mode.
‘’Attention, all passengers, this is the Captain speaking! Medusa City is now ready to receive its designated occupants. All Medusan heads are to pack up their things and go down to the Hangar Deck, on Level 7, where they will board shuttles to go down to their new home.’’
There were a few giggles around the bridge at the use of the term ‘Medusan heads’ by Tina to describe the future citizens of the floating city. That term had in fact quickly become a standard joke, albeit a gentle one, as a nickname for those citizens.
Out in the Outer Apartments Ring Section, Peter and Romi Schiller simply smiled on hearing Tina’s announcement and sat in the anti-gravity sled already loaded with their suitcases, which had been parked in front of the door to their cabin. Imitated by some 600 other people, the Schillers let their robotic sled drive itself all the way to the level of the ship’s Hangar Deck, until it stopped just outside of the Passengers Arrival and Departure Lounge Number One, where the couple stepped off the sled and unloaded their suitcases. Once empty, the robotic sled then departed, in order to return to its assigned waiting position at the Outer Apartments Ring Section. Romi, carrying a suitcase and a travel bag, showed clear excitement as the couple walked into the passenger lounge, which was filling rapidly.
‘’I can’t wait for us to be in our new home, Peter. To be able to live in the middle of an ocean while studying it is like a dream come true.’’
‘’Well, we did live next to the sea while in Malta, but the pollution and fish stocks depletion in the Mediterranean were becoming more severe every year. In comparison, I was told that the waters on this world are pristine, albeit devoid of life, thanks to a sixteen million years reprieve which allowed the oceans of Atlantis to recuperate from any pollution caused in the past by the now-extinct Cygnians. The radiation contamination caused by their genocidal nuclear war is also said to have completely disappeared with the passage of time. We should indeed be able to soon navigate around pristine waters in our yacht. Hopefully, our beloved VEGA will not have suffered damage during the transport aboard the KOSTROMA.’’
‘’Oh, I am not worried about that, Peter: those people on the KOSTROMA obviously know their jobs well and are true professional.’’
Peter could only nod his head at that: up to now, they had enjoyed only courteous and professional service during their short stay aboard the KOSTROMA.
Sitting down on two of the still unoccupied seats in the vast waiting lounge, the couple had only to wait for less than fifteen minutes before the start of passenger boarding was announced. Still carrying or dragging their suitcases and bags, the couple joined a long line of passengers which had formed after the public announcement and walked out of the lounge and into a vast hangar, where ten big passenger shuttles, each of them 28 meter-long and able to carry up to 150 passengers, were parked. Boarding one of the shuttles via its lowered aft ramp, the couple first stowed away their luggage, then took their seats and buckled their seat belts for the departure. Another twenty minutes and their shuttle levitated silently off the steel deck of the hangar and floated towards a big craft airlock, entering it and then pivoting on the sport to face the exit door of the airlock. After the inner airlock door closed and the outer door opened, allowing the passenger shuttle to fly out via a wide tunnel. While the KOSTROMA had been on Earth Universal Time and it was theoretically early morning, this longitude on Atlantis was actually on its last hour of daylight. As their shuttle performed a wide, slow turn in order to head towards the 400-meter-wide landing platform crowning Medusa City, it allowed the Schillers to admire the floating city, which had all its lights on.
‘’God, it is truly beautiful!’’ said softly Romi to herself, to which Peter could only nod in agreement.
‘’It sure is, Romi. We should be happy here.’’
After its very short flight, their shuttle then landed smoothly on top of the landing platform, imitated by the other three shuttles carrying the rest of the contingent of first occupants for the city. An announcement from their pilot then made the Schillers look up and forward in their seats.
‘’Ladies and gentlemen, we have now landed at Medusa City. Since this shuttle is not scheduled to stay here more than a few minutes, we will not proceed to one of the craft elevators on this platform and will not go down to the shuttle hangars’ level. Guides and lights will instead direct you to one of the platform perimeter’s access points, where you will be able to take lifts to go down to the city’s hotel reception area, where the local administrative staff will welcome you and guide you to your respective apartments. For those of you who had storage crates or other voluminous possessions aboard the KOSTROMA, those will soon be unloaded in the hour to follow and will be temporarily stored in the city’s main warehouse, where you will be able to access them tomorrow morning. For your information, the local hour is now 20:07. However, you have no need to change yourself the hour on your wrist communicators: a time signal generated from the city administrative center has already synchronized them with the correct local time. You may now leave your seats and recuperate your luggage before leaving via the aft access ramp.’’
The Schillers eagerly followed those instructions, like the other 141 passengers of their shuttle, and were soon walking out into the open air, stepping on the vast landing surface. Peter took with delight a deep breath of the ocean’s breeze, which was light, fresh and saline.
‘’Aah! I haven’t breathed this pure a sea breeze in a very long time. I am already in love with this world. Sailing on its seas should be pure bliss.’’
Romi also took a few deep breaths while eyeing the panoramic view they now had of the sea surrounding the floating city.
‘’Look at those colors, Peter: this ocean’s waters are crystal-clear. Hopefully, we will not repeat here the same mistakes Humanity did on Earth during the past centuries.’’
‘’We won’t, if I have anything to say about that.’’ replied firmly her husband. ‘’Well, let’s go down to that hotel reception area. I see a guide with light batons next to that access point ahead of us.’’
Walking for less than thirty meters, the couple arrived at an access hut covering a pair of wide escalators leading down into the city’s structure, where a smiling young woman gave them short instructions.
‘’The hotel’s reception lobby is situated on Level 24. Please take an elevator cabin down to the reception lobby, where you will be assigned an apartment and given access cards and keys to them, along with written guide pamphlets to Medusa City.’’
‘’Thank you, miss!’’
Going down to the hotel’s reception lobby, the Schillers did not have long to wait before being formally registered in and receiving their access cards and keys. All the new occupants of the floating city had been registered weeks ago in the Solar System and had been expected this evening, allowing the local staff to be fully ready for their arrival. With a robotic sledge carrying them and their luggage to their assigned apartment, Peter and Romi were soon at the door of their new home: Apartment 2342, on Level 23 of Medusa City. Feeling anticipation as he unlocked the door to their apartment, Peter then signaled his wife to enter first.
‘’Go in first, dear: I will start bringing in our suitcases.’’
Romi held her breath as she walked in: their last home on Earth had been a rather old, cramped and way overpriced rented apartment in Valetta, a hopelessly overcrowded city surrounded by a polluted sea and equally polluted air. What she saw then made her grin with joy: the single bedroom apartment was quite vast and comfortably furnished and had a total surface of 91 square meters, with the wide window of the four-meter-wide lounge giving a great view of the surrounding sea. Slowly walking around the apartment, Romi found in succession a walk-in closet next to the entrance door, a large private study, a laundry and storage room, a complete bathroom with a big bath and shower unit, a well-equipped kitchen corner next to an open area dining corner adjacent to the lounge and, finally, a five by three-meter bedroom with a huge bed. That bedroom also had a large window giving a nice view of the sea outside. Going out of the lounge via an outer door, Romi walked onto the large exterior balcony, where she was able to breathe in the fresh marine breeze. Peter joined her there after himself touring their new apartment and wrapped one arm around Romi’s shoulders, contemplating with her the coupled yellow sun and red dwarf star visible low on the horizon. The third star of the 16 Cygni System, a distant yellow star, was not visible, being well below the horizon at this hour.
‘’We should have a happy life here, Romi. Tomorrow, we will go check out on our yacht and, if we have enough time for it, will do our first sailing trip around, to learn about its currents and conditions. For now, let’s go unpack our bags before we go explore the city a bit.’’
‘’Give me a moment more here, Peter: I am truly enjoying this moment.’’
‘’Anything you say, dear.’’
They both stayed on the balcony for long minutes, enjoying both the scenery and the fresh, saline breeze. The couple finally went back inside to unpack their bags, something that took them less than half an hour. At the end of that task, they consulted their printed guide booklet, only to realize how vast and extensive the city facilities were.
‘’Damn, it would take us a good two days simply to tour all the corners of this floating city.’’ said Peter while studying the folding map included in the booklet. ‘’The city, not counting the floating docks attached to it, covers over 340 hectares of surface distributed between thirty main levels, twelve sub-levels and twelve tower-like pillars.’’
‘’Yes, but all that surface also provides plenty of space for all kinds of facilities, Peter. They have a kindergarten and schools for primary, secondary, college and university grades, plus a center for professional studies. I also see extensive sports and entertainment facilities, plus commercial shops and restaurants. And the city also has over 230 hectares of agricultural cultivation areas and animal farms, plus fish ponds. Compared to the average living conditions on Earth, this is like a near paradise. I think that we should delay a bit our first boat trip and take the time to explore in depth our new city.’’
‘’I concur!’’ replied Peter after a short hesitation, as Romi was right: they could do that first boat trip whenever they wanted, while getting accustomed to their new home was the true present priority. ‘’What about starting our exploration with the top levels in the services section? They contain most of the communal facilities we will end up using while living here.’’
‘’A good idea. Let’s go! And don’t forget to bring that pamphlet with you.’’
‘’Of course, dear!’’
Walking slowly and taking their time to look around them, the couple then left their apartment and went up to Level 24, the lowest level of the hangars and services section, where they used the seven-meter-wide promenade forming a closed loop around the outer part of the 420-meter-diameter section. It took them a good two hours to complete the circuit around the promenade, by which time the couple was both quite tired and hungry. They thus decided to return to the section containing the restaurants and public cafeteria of the city. Unfortunately, the various restaurants established in that section were not yet in operation, their working staff and supplies still having to arrive. The Schillers thus had to fall back on the public cafeteria, which was open and operating but with only a basic menu, due to the newness of the place. Still, however limited the buffet might have appeared to some critical customers, it had enough quality and choice to satisfy the couple, which had never been social snobs or picky people. Romi and Peter thus dined on plates of fresh salads and sushi, washed down with some white wine, before resuming their exploration of the city. Of a common accord, they decided to go visit the enclosed inner port section of the city, situated at the base of the main structural section, and which was linked to the open sea by two sea channels and to the open port areas of the floating city, formed by a total of ten floating dock sections linked together.
As an experienced boatman and sailor, Peter was favorably impressed by the inner port, with its donought-shaped harbor and its boat quays, distributed around both an outer and an inner docks ring and with a thirty-meter-wide boat circulation channel around it.
‘’Excellent! This will be an ideal place to shelter the VEGA during rough storms. There are also two boat maintenance and repair drydocks around the port. Let’s go visit the open-air ports now.’’
Going up by six levels and using a long and wide passageway linking the inner and open-air ports, Peter and Romi ended up on the so-called ‘beach module’, a big rectangular, box-like floating structure with a gently-slopping deck dipping down into the protected waters of the yachting port, itself formed by seven floating dock sections linked together to form two opposite ‘T’, with a twenty-meter-wide entrance to let small boats in or out to the open sea. The sides of the floating dock sections actually sheltered mooring positions for boats, which provided both maintenance and servicing to those boats, something that pleased Peter.
‘’Decidedly, whoever designed Medusa City knew quite a lot about the sea and boating. They have here everything that our VEGA will need while in port.’’
‘’And they also have this large, nice beach surface with sloping floor going down into the water.’’ added Romi. ‘’There are as well a line of safety buoys and nets to protect the swimmers. We will be able to enjoy some swimming around, even in the middle of the ocean. I love it!’’
The last part of the city they visited that day was one of the twelve underwater pillars located under the main city section, around its external circumference. Each of those pillars, which supported huge telescopic seafloor anchoring legs, measured sixty meters in diameter and sixty meters in height and housed either apartments, fruit trees plantations, fish ponds or machinery space. For that last part of their tour, the Schillers chose to go down to one of the panoramic underwater observation lounges of the pillars. While the view they got there was truly beautiful, the total absence of visible marine life saddened the marine biologist couple.
‘’Such a beautiful and pristine ocean…totally devoid of life. What a sad sight.’’
‘’It is definitely a sad sight, Romi, but don’t forget that we have been seeding both algae and plankton around the oceans of Atlantis for two years now. As fast as we and the other marine biologists of our team can go out and find out how well or not those seeded algae and plankton have established themselves in these waters, the faster we will be able to trigger the next phase of the colonization of this planet, meaning the seeding of various types of fish and seashells imported from Earth.’’
‘’You are right again, Peter. Well, lets go back to our apartment now: my legs are getting quite tired and I also want to start studying the marine charts and meteorological reports made to date about Atlantis.’’
08:30 (Local Atlantis Time)
Monday, June 23, 2324
Yacht VEGA, leaving the open yachting harbor of Medusa City
Peter Schiller was at the helm station of his eleven-meter-long, Bermuda-rigged trimaran sloop yacht, as his boat was leaving the open yachting harbor of Medusa City, using its gravity sail secondary propulsion system in order to navigate precisely through the relatively narrow opening of the protected harbor. As for Romi, she sat on one of the chairs fixed to the open deck of their trimaran, admiring the seascape and breathing the fresh, salty air. In order to also enjoy the refreshing breeze, Peter had left the transparent canopy of his tiny, low-profile wheelhouse opened, his head emerging in the open and with only a frontal windshield protecting his face from sea spray. As soon as his boat was safely clear from the harbor’s floating docks, Peter then cut his gravity sail propulsion system and switched to full wind-sailing mode, selecting the ‘auto sails trimming’ operating mode before veering his boat towards the North. Peter was a very experienced sailor who, contrary to many so-called ‘sailors’ in this century, fully mastered the use and operation of a pure sailing boat. His reason not to go to pure manual sails trimming mode at this time was simple: he knew next to nothing of the winds, currents and meteorological conditions on this planet and wanted to concentrate on his job as a marine biologist tasked to monitor the progress of the ocean seeding program initiated two years ago. Once he was going to be in his designated zone of study and would know more about the local conditions, then he would be ready to switch to pure manual mode. Right now, he would let the small computer of the boat operate the sails of his beloved VEGA, using the data inputs from the sensors equipping his yacht, which included a wind speed and direction indicator, a global positioning system receiver, a gyro-compass and a nautical loch indicating his true speed in the water. The VEGA was also equipped with an extensive battery of sensors, including a small remotely-piloted submersible vehicle, meant to provide data and images of the ocean’s depths, conditions and seafloor topography. Finally, a radar and a small satellite communications antenna completed the electronic equipment of the yacht, which Peter had fitted to turn it into an independent, mobile ocean survey and marine studies station. Sure, there were much bigger ships equipped for that same job, but they required a significantly bigger crew and also cost a lot more than his yacht. With its automated systems, Peter could easily operate his yacht by himself, with Romi serving as his relief at the wheel when he needed to either work in their marine laboratory, installed inside the central deckhouse of their trimaran boat, or when he needed to rest or sleep.
Once both his mainsail and staysail were trimmed properly for both the heading he had set and the prevailing wind, Peter decided to deploy as well his large, baggy spinnaker sail, judging that he had enough adequate wind for it. One push of a button then made small electric motors pull the large sail out of its storage and protection sock at the bow of the yacht, deploying it into the wind presently blowing from the stern and making it fill with air. From its initial speed of nine knots, the VEGA then jumped forward and accelerated to the respectable speed of fifteen knots. Thankfully, the sea was fairly calm at this time and the trimaran hull of the yacht made it quite stable despite of the huge surface of sails it now deployed. A happy grin came to Peter’s face as he piloted his boat, feeling the relative wind from its speed on his face.
‘’Now, that’s what I call real life!’’ he exclaimed, getting an approving nod and a smile from his wife, who now had to hold on to her wide-brimmed straw hat.
Continuing on his northerly course and staying some ten kilometers from the western coast of the continent of Tera, one of the two continents present on Atlantis, Peter and Romi soon started dipping at intervals of twenty kilometers water sample bottles, collecting samples from various depths in order to examine them for the presence of algae or plankton which had been seeded around in the last two years. At the same time, the yacht’s bottom mapping and sidescan sonars were working continuously, imaging and recording the topography and depth of the portions of seafloor the yacht was passing over. Apart from documenting the extent of spread of the algae and plankton previously seeded in the oceans of Atlantis, another goal of the Schillers was to map the portions of oceans they were going to sail through. For that purpose, they also lowered in the water at intervals a number of preprogrammed small drones designed to study the underwater currents, water temperature and salinity of Atlantis’ oceans. Those drones, trailing a thin floating antenna wire, then dove to their preprogrammed depth before drifting freely in the ocean currents while recording and reporting their movements and data about the surrounding water via radio. Such oceanic drones had been used on Atlantis for a number of months already but, due to the vastness of the planet’s oceans, only a small portion of those oceans had been ye