Robotic Expedition (4.2)

The Star Traveler slowed down as it neared Jupiter. Laurie's arm floated off the computer console set into the arm of her chair, then suddenly, gravity returned to normal again. Laurie winced as her hand hit her chair's armrest.

"What was that all about?" Eli asked, looking over at Laurie.

Laurie tapped an icon on her screen.

"It says the gravity generator is having trouble compensating with the momentum from the engines, along with the natural pull from the planet," Laurie reported.

"In other words, the ship's systems are confused," Captain Mitchell suggested in exasperation.

"Yeah," Laurie replied, irritated as well. "I think the computer engineers missed a few things in the ship's programming. I'm shutting the gravity generators down."

Laurie tapped her command into the console, and the crew was suddenly sent into weightlessness. They extracted belts from the sides of their seats, buckling them over their shoulders and around their waists to keep from floating out of their seats.

"Incoming message," Dr. Kingston replied, transferring the call to the front screen.

"It's Jupiter Station!" Laurie exclaimed, recognizing the blue, silver, and gold patterns on the wall in the background.

"Hello Star Traveler, we were informed that you would be paying our area a visit," Commander Jack Gatores replied with a warm welcoming smile. "We can see that you are having problems with your gravity generator. Captain Mitchell, would you like us to look into the problem before you get on your way? Before you head to Ganymede, our scientists have something they think you might want to see."

Understanding that the Commander was trying to drop him a hint, Captain Mitchell nodded politely.

"Sure, we will dock as soon as possible. Star Traveler out. "

"What was all that about?" Eli exclaimed, looking confused.

"Something must have happened at the Jupiter Station that the Commander thinks we should know about," Captain Mitchell replied, bringing the Star Traveler closer to Jupiter Station. "Laurie, I know you've been trained to know this ship's systems better than anyone. This ship is complicated enough as it is without someone else repairing it and making it even more so. If their repairs fail, I want you to be able to know how to reverse the problem."

"I was just about to suggest the same thing," Laurie replied with a nod. "I'd be glad to stay behind."

The Star Traveler docked gently with Jupiter Station, and because of the station's inertia, the Star Traveler took on gravity from the station itself. Commander Gatores met the Star Traveler team as the airlock between the station and the ship opened. Laurie waited off to the side for the station's technicians. Shaking each of their hands politely, she led them down to the hall to the left engine room.

"The panel to the Gravity Generator is there," Laurie pointed to a panel near the end of the room.

"Hold on, do you mean to tell us that you are the engineer on this ship?" one of the technicians asked.

"I am the onboard technician. I have been trained to know every system on this ship, yes." Laurie replied in an even tone. It was apparent they were amazed by her age and somewhat daunted by the brand new equipment now revealed inside the panel.

"We thought we might be able to offer some assistance, but I'm not sure any of us knows where to start," another technician said, getting up from the floor.

"That's alright. I'm sure it's just a calculation error that needs to be adjusted," Laurie replied as she peered in through the open hatch herself and noted the information on the circuit board readouts.

Laurie tapped in a string of codes into the computer panel along the wall beside her. She then stuck her hand between the circuits inside the panel to flip a small switch. Standing up once more, she tapped another key on the computer panel. A light hum filled the room as the machinery came back to life. Laurie checked the readouts again.

"There!" She exclaimed pleased. "The Star Traveler is now generating its own gravity again!"

"Well done, Miss," one of the technicians exclaimed as he shook Laurie's hand.

"I wouldn't have put it past EASA's Head Engineer to design the problem just to test you one last time before we headed out past our Solar System," Captain Mitchell laughed as he entered the Engine Room.

The rest of the technicians chuckled and exited the room.

"Laurie, you should come see this," Captain Mitchell said, holding the door open. "The scientists on Jupiter Station just showed us a tape from two of their bots that are stranded on the surface of Jupiter's moon, Ganymede. We think they may have located the cylinder we were supposed to try and find here!"

With Laurie keeping an eye on the instruments and calling out the surface readouts, Captain Mitchell targeted a landing area on the cold surface of Ganymede that looked to be the most stable. Once the ship had landed the Star Traveler crew disembarked from the ship wearing their space suits. Looking around at the icy, barren, seemingly forsaken world, Laurie reflexively shivered even though her suit protected her from the cold.

"Don't you think we could've chosen a warmer time of year to visit?" Eli joked quietly.

"This is the warmest time of the year," Dr. Smith answered.

Captain Mitchell took out his MTD and pointed in the direction that the bots had traveled. Silently they followed the Medebot's tire tracks until they came upon the cave where the bots were last seen.

Eli pounded an anchor into the ground and attached a line to it. One by one, the whole crew carefully climbed down into the tunnel, the lights from the crew's helmets illuminating its rippled walls. Dr. Smith was the first to set his feet on the cavern's floor. He tilted his head to illuminate the two robots. One robot sat immobile, transfixed by the cylinder that the other robot had fallen on top of. Once Laurie made it to the bottom, she walked over and gently picked up the Ganybot robot lying atop the cylinder. Carefully she carried it a short distance away while the rest of the crew inspected the cylinder.

Opening her own MTD, Laurie radioed the team of scientists onboard Jupiter Station.

"Hello, Jupiter Station, I have Ganybot here!" Laurie exclaimed, looking into her MTD screen and then to the damaged robot.

"How bad does it look?" one of the team members asked.

"I think I can repair him. Give me just a few minutes," Laurie answered, taking some tools out of her belt to begin working on the bot.

Meanwhile, Captain Mitchell and the rest of the crew continued inspecting the second cylinder.

"I thought it was supposed to help us complete the map," Eli remarked, considering the large object.

"We found the map when Laurie placed her MTD on the smaller cylinder. What would happen if we tried putting both on the bigger one?" Dr. Kingston suggested.

Dr. Smith proceeded to comply, and his MTD came to life once more. However, this time, the still uncompleted map had a new piece added to it—one that pointed to an unnamed planet outside of the Milky Way Galaxy, in the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy.

"Another mystery. Well, first things first. Where is the other bot?" Captain Mitchell called, looking over to Laurie, who was testing the repairs she had made to Ganybot.

"Medebot was right here when we came down," Dr. Smith replied, confused.

"We lost contact with it right at the spot where you are all standing," the team on Jupiter Station said from Laurie's MTD. "It has not responded to us since then."

Laurie pulled out a flashlight and headed further down into the tunnel. The team followed Laurie, while the scientists instructed the Ganybot to travel ahead of the group. They hadn't gone too far before they found the Medebot sitting in front of a dead-end wall. The wall had been polished smooth and was covered ceiling to floor in an intricate carved and painted mural depicting scenes and cryptographs quite alien to the Star Traveler crew, all centered around an image that looked remarkably like the cylinder. Laurie bent down and plugged her MTD into Medebot while Dr. Smith and Eli set about recording images of the mural onto their MTD's.

"Apparently the cylinder gave Medebot instructions to come down here- I have returned control to the station," Laurie commented.

"What do you think made this mural?" Laurie asked, running her fingers over the foreign language carved into the mural.

"My MTD calculates the tunnel to be about the same age as the mural. I don't know of any human tech that could create something like this," Dr. Smith answered.

"Our instruments agree with you Dr. Smith" A lady from the Jupiter Station team announced from the screen on Laurie's MTD.

"Perhaps it is a message from an alien race?" Laurie suggested, "Are they the ones who left the cylinder, or did they find the cylinder and left the mural to tell others what they found?

Laurie's MTD screen switched back and forth as different scientists from the team back on Jupiter Station chimed in,

"Seeing how no human has yet to ever meet an alien, I'm not sure we could answer that…"

"We'll send some cryptographers down. Maybe they will be able to figure out what the mural says."

Not enjoying the prospect of sitting around, Captain Mitchel drew his team together, "We won't be much help in translating this thing. EASA wanted us to follow this map from the cylinder, wherever it leads. Now that we have a new location opened up on our map, who's ready to go find another planet?" Captain Mitchel

"They certainly won't need us in the way," Dr. Smith added. "Would you like us to carry the robots out of here?" Captain Mitchell asked the scientists.

"We'll retrieve them when we send our research team down."

"I give it a day. This whole place will be swarming with scientists and architects." Eli replied with a laugh.

"We have images of the mural recorded, you'll let us know if your team makes any sense of it won't you?" Laurie asked.

The Star Traveler Team took one last look at the strange mural before heading back up the tunnel to where the Star Traveler waited out on the icy surface.

Next stop, The Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy.

*****

"We have some bad news," the Platonian called Neb, told Jean. He paced back and forth in her dark and gloomy quarters inside the Platonian base of operations, "The humans have found a master map, it is leading them on a quest to find more of these alien relics. They are being led to their own destruction, we must divert them."

Thinking hard, Jean took a seat on the edge of the desk. She peered up the small, earthen tube in the wall that was the only source of light in the room. The tube angled upward, affording her, not a view of the landscape outside but a small view of the sky instead. A slightly cool breeze trickled in.

"Where are they heading?" she asked.

"We believe they are going to Exandra. This particular planet could prove very dangerous for your species. Can you help us find a way to divert their course?"