Space Pioneer 3 - The Yanara Archives - 2. Chapter 2

Okpara led Lest and Jeff down a corridor. He stopped in front of a wooden door and pulled an iron key from a pocket of his robe. He unlocked the door and they stepped into a small chamber that smelled heavily of cinnamon. Lest and Jeff suppressed a sneeze.

The walls were clad with violet wall-hangings. An ancient violet carpet covered the floor. Wooden sideboards stood against the walls. Six candles were arranged on each. Another wooden sideboard on the wall opposite the door was covered with a white silken cloth. An elaborately carved shrine was placed on it. Opkara produced another key and opened the doors of the shrine. Inside was a modern preservation box. Okpara stepped to a wall and hit a button. Electric lights came on. Lest and Jeff exchanged a look.

Okpara made a sign with his hand. Jeff and Lest stepped forward and saw a stack of paper behind the pane. Black hand-writing covered the uppermost paper. The writing looked ancient and the letters unknown.

“What language is this?” Lest asked.

“Pre-Zalaki,” Okpara replied. “Ancient Zalaki was spoken in the kingdom of Zalaki. The language developed over the centuries into modern Zalaki. We still speak Zalaki on Yanara. And this is Pre-Zalaki. It’s even older than Ancient Zalaki. Linguists proved that Ancient Zalaki developed from this language.”

“You know how to read it?” Jeff asked.

Okpara gave him a surprised look. “Of course. How should I be able to tell you of the contents of the texts if I didn’t know how to read them?” he said.

“You could have deciphered the language,” Jeff said.

“Oh, no,” Okpara replied. “Ancient Zalaki developed into modern Zalaki, but the language in the monasteries is still Ancient Zalaki. Pre-Zalaki is very similar. Any friar can read it. With a little effort, that is.”

“Much like on Earth,” Jeff said.

Okpara gave him a questioning look.

“My home planet,” Jeff explained. “Latin is a dead language on Earth but still used in church ceremonies and for scientific terms.”

Okpara nodded and smiled. “The traditions of the past must not be given up abruptly. It is very unsettling for people,” he said. “Is your planet also in a transition stage?”

“My planet isn’t exactly a space-faring nation. We have a few spacecrafts, but can’t get far,” Jeff said.

“Oh,” Okpara said with an interested look. “Did Alliance approach your planet also?”

“They have not yet approached my home world. We’re still considered a class C species. I’m a test subject, so to speak,” Jeff said.

“It’s getting worse and worse. I heard of these kidnapping cases,” Okpara said, shaking his head.

“You did?” Jeff asked.

“Oh, yes,” Okpara replied. “Several persons on Yanara claim they were kidnapped by aliens. Taking an unprepared individual on board of a spaceship can be very unsettling to this person. I very much condemn these practices. I’m not without reservations towards the Alliance.”

“I’m not exactly a friend of them either,” Lest said.

“Really?” Okpara asked. “This kidnapped man is on board of your ship.”

“I rescued him from a sinking ship, so to speak,” Lest replied.

Okpara nodded thoughtfully. “You ought to take this kidnapped man home,” he said.

“I promised him we’d fly to Earth some day,” Lest said. “The opportunity has not yet arisen, though. Anyway, back to these documents. Could we get copies of the manuscripts?”

“Sure,” Okpara replied, closing the shrine. “We have plenty of copies.”

“Translated texts would be good also,” Jeff said.

“Yes. Can we translate them into Daglon?” Lest asked.

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you with this,” Okpara said. “I don’t know the Daglon language. I can only communicate with you due to this clip,” he said, pointing at his ear. “I must admit this technical innovation is helpful. The clip connects to the Alliance database. I see you don’t wear clips.”

“We use the neural implants,” Lest said.

“I heard of them,” Okpara replied. “But I can’t get myself to having my head cut open.”

“It’s a minor surgery,” Jeff said. “I recovered quickly from it.”

Okpara gave him a doubtful look.

“How about you read the texts to us on my ship? The ship’s computer will translate them. It will connect to the Alliance database,” Lest said.

“I don’t think Pre-Zalaki is saved to the database,” Jeff said.

Okpara looked between them. “Ancient Zalaki, the language of the monasteries, and modern Zalaki are saved to the database. I could read the texts in the modern language to you.”

“Perfect,” Lest said. “I suggest you come on board of my ship for the purpose.”

Okpara nodded, then smiled at them. “So you will sign the research contract, Captain Lest?”

“Yes,” Lest replied. “I’m in. The mission intrigues me.”

“We have not yet talked about the subtle traces that might lead us to the planet of Yanara origin,” Jeff said.

“Like I said, the ancient manuscripts refer to the world of Yanara origin,” Okpara said. “Page 14 of the documents describes the stellar constellation at the time when the spaceship left the planet of origin. Page 16 refers to the long journey of the elders that they spent sleeping in their cold cots. It says the length of the journey was ten times the average lifespan of a man. Page 19 mentions the lifespan of a man was fifty years. Hence, the journey must have taken 500 years. There may be more clues that we don’t understand. And we have the seal impression, of course. I’ll show it to you in the assembly room.”

They went back to the meeting room. The archivists and the Horus crew looked at them expectantly. Lest and Jeff sat down. Okpara talked to his colleagues. A man left the room and returned with a stack of papers. He handed one paper to Okpara and the others to Lest.

“These are copies of the texts,” Okpara said. “And this is a copy of the seal impression. It can be found on the page that describes the stellar constellation.” He held up the paper.

“A serpent,” Jeff said.

“Unfortunately, we don’t know what to make of it,” Okpara said, placing the paper on his desk.

“We don’t have much to base our search on,” Lest said.

“I know,” Okpara replied. “I told you we had only subtle traces.”

“Why did you publish your offer on Cyrus?” Lest asked.

“We didn’t want an Alliance ship getting involved in the search,” Okpara replied. “We don’t know what happened on the planet of origin. Maybe the civilization died out, maybe they dropped back to a more primitive stage, maybe they are still a space-faring nation and even more advanced than 12,000 years ago. Maybe they are an Alliance member already. We just don’t know. We don’t want the Alliance to find out about our activities and spoil the planet’s culture,” Okpara said. “A young novice pointed me to the Cyrus board.”

“I see,” Lest said with a smile. “I think it was a good choice, Okpara. Okay, let’s talk about the price.”

“50,000 credits. 10,000 as an advance payment, 10,000 at the end of each week,” Okpara said. “This should suffice for a while to cover your costs. We’ll expect a report every two days. If the search turns out to be fruitless after three weeks, we’ll stop the search and pay you the rest of the credits. Further payments would depend on the developments of the search. If we want to proceed, we would have to renegotiate.”

“It sounds like a fair deal,” Lest replied. “I’d like to have the texts analyzed on board of my ship. If we can’t get nowhere with them, we’ll stop the whole operation. It doesn’t make sense to jump at random in space in search of a lost planet.”

Okpara nodded. “I don’t object,” he said.

He waved to an archivist. The man went and came back with a pen and a piece of paper. Okpara wrote down the contract in Zalaki and then read the text to Lest.

“Okay,” Lest said. “Let’s record and translate this on my ship, too. I cannot read Zalaki.”

“Very well,” Okpara said.

The Horus crew and the Yanara archivists boarded a bus that took them to the spaceport. The group entered the Daglon warship and went on the bridge. Contract and texts were recorded and Okpara and his colleagues left the ship. The advance payment came in half an hour later. It was noon on Yanara, but the crew was jet-lagged and tired. Lest ordered the men to rest for a couple of hours. They set to work again later that day.

“Doctor Midad,” Lest said. “I want you to check on the genetic profile of the Yanara. Since they are an Alliance member, the profile should be documented in the database. Check if you can find any genetic relations to other species.”

Doctor Midad reported back an hour later. “Negative,” he said. “The computer didn’t find any species even remotely related to the Yanara.”

“A pity. A positive result would have solved this mystery in an hour,” Lest said. “Okay. What do we know? It was a vast spaceship, 5,000 people. They travelled 500 years. They travelled in cryo-tanks.”

“Cryo-technique supports the idea that the ship travelled through real space conventionally and didn’t jump. Cryo-technology isn’t used anymore,” Hulton said.

“We must find out more about conventional crafts’ specifics,” Le’Ton said. “We know they travelled 500 years. We must define the most probable speeds. Then we can derive the minimum and maximum distance from the planet Yanara.”

Lest hit the intercom button. “Galven, Forrit, on the bridge, please. We need engine expertise here,” he said. He looked at Le’Ton. “Calculate the minimum and maximum average speed of a conventional ship and derive the distances from the planet Yanara. Map two circles around the planet. This will be our search corridor.”

“The ancient Yanara were capable of building a spaceship that actually arrived at Yanara, but the settlers didn’t build up an advanced civilization after their arrival. They didn’t leave technical records, but described stellar constellations instead. I don’t think the species brought a lot of advanced technology. They were not able to maintain their technological level. I think their spaceship wasn’t very advanced and travelled slowly. They didn’t travel that far, it just took them a very long time. I think their planet of origin is located closer to the inner circle.”

“The area would still be vast,” Corr said. “A complete circle around Yanara.”

“Yes,” Lest said. “We’re lucky, though. The sector is documented well. We should find all possible planets in the Alliance database. We can exclude all planets that joined the Alliance in the previous 11,000 years. We would have detected the genetic profile of the species.”

“The Alliance formed only 8,000 years ago,” Doctor Midad said.

Lest shrugged. “Class A and B species would have joined the Alliance in the meantime. We must look for a planet with a class C species or a planet with an extinct species.”

“True,” Doctor Midad said. “We can then cut the search results down . The living conditions on Yanara are documented and we know the biological system of the inhabitants. The planet of origin must have resembled Yanara closely when the settlers left it. However, if there was a major catastrophe, the planet might have changed or was even destroyed.”

Lest nodded. “Le’Ton, after defining the search corridor, look for planets in the sector that are not Alliance members. Hulton, look for any major catastrophes that occured in the search sector 11,000 to, say, 20,000 years ago. Any such disaster should be registered in the database. Doctor Midad, define the biological system of the Yanara in order to sort out the search results. Corr and Jeff, scan the Yanara manuscripts again for further information regarding the Yanara and their origin.”

Lest leaned back in his seat. “We must define a near perfect search corridor and narrow down the search results quickly, else we won’t get anywhere with this project. I’m searching the database for Alliance reports on the Yanara species. The Alliance might have documented additional facts that the Yanara themselves are not aware of.”

The Horus crew, now an investigation team, set to work on the project.

Two hours passed by.

“Okay, status updates, please,” Lest said. “I’ve looked into Alliance reports on the Yanara species. The reports reveal nothing new. Le’Ton, please.”

“Galven and Forrit identified conventional spaceships used in the past,” Le’Ton reported. “They used the Alliance database. We identified the specifics of the hardware and, based upon the results, determined the probable minimum and maximum speeds of the ship. From this we derived two distance circles around Yanara, the search corridor. It’s fraught with uncertainty, of course, but it’s the best result we came up with. The computer is currently running a search for planets in the search corridor.”

“Good,” Lest said. “Hulton?”

“I looked for any catastrophic events in the determined time period. I’m not yet done with the search. It proves difficult. Since the Alliance formed only 8,000 years ago, it’s difficult to find reports of catastrophic events before that time. I have access to a few national databases that are linked to the Alliance database, the Daglon archive, for instance. I’m currently looking into these,” Hulton reported.

Lest nodded. “Okay. Corr and Jeff, what about you?”

“I read the translations of the texts. I found nothing new,” Corr said. “In my opinion, the person who wrote the texts had no actual knowledge of space technology. No specific terms and expressions are used. It’s written in a descriptive and roundabout way. They wrote down what they were told but had no actual knowledge of the matter. I think the texts were written in later times and not soon after the arrival of the spaceship.”

“I agree,” Jeff said. “The texts remind me of ancient Earth texts. A few passages might refer to a journey through space but could also be interpreted as religious texts about the Yanara gods. I also think the texts were written some time after the arrival of the spaceship.”

“The stellar constellation is described in detail,” Corr said. “If we were able to identify the planet of origin, we could run a simulation of the stellar constellation and its change over time.”

“The seal impression might be a key to what they saw in the sky,” Jeff said. “Although I doubt we would see what the ancient Yanara saw in the constellation.”

Lest nodded. “I’m not confident we’ll come up with a result, but we’ll carry on the research and then decide on how to proceed. I’ll write a report on our first findings and send it to Okpara.”

The men resumed their work and reported back to Lest four hours later.

“We have 107 candidates,” Le’Ton said. “All planets are catalogued in the database. Among them are two with a Class C species dating back 11,000 years. The biological system of the species, as described in the database, doesn’t match the Yanara. Five planets are inhabited by species that immigrated there between 5,000 and 800 years ago. Twenty-two planets are used for mining and exo-agriculture. The rest, 78 planets, are not suited for settlement and mining because of the planetary conditions.”

“I found no major catastrophic event in the area,” Hulton said. “No gamma-ray burst, supernova explosion, major collisions of celestial bodies or the forming of a black hole. I can’t rule out a catastrophic event entirely, of course. I simply don’t have enough data. But I tend to say that the event that caused the Yanara to leave their planet is intrinsic to their planet of origin.”

“We must cut the search results down,” Lest said. “Exclude the mining and class C planets and look into the rest. Check against Doctor Midad’s list of Yanara specifics.”

“The planet’s conditions may have changed drastically,” Doctor Midad said. “We must not quickly rule out a planet.”

“Sure,” Lest replied. “But you can rule out gas giants and planets with inappropriate mass and gravity.”

“A rough cut-down of the search results won’t take long,” Le’Ton said.

“Fifty-six planets left,” he said twenty minutes later. “We must check them against Doctor Midad’s list in detail.”

“We must run a contingency analysis,” Hulton said. “I can write a code. It will take some time, however.”

Lest nodded. “Good idea, Hulton. We’ll carry on tomorrow.”

Hulton worked on his analysis the following day. The others were left with little to do. Finally, Hulton said he was ready to present his results.

“I based my analysis on the conditions of the planet Yanara. I assumed that Yanara resembles the planet of origin closely. I assumed mass, gravity, rotation, length of day and so on are similar,” Hulton said. “Based on these assumption I can rule out thirty-two planets. It’s highly improbable that the conditions changed from a Yanara-like state to the current state other than due to a major cosmic event. We didn’t detect a major cosmic event in the relevant time period. This leaves us with twenty-four planets. I refined my analysis and incorporated atmospheric data. Another sixteen planets can be ruled out. This leaves us with eight planets with a high probability of being the planet of origin.”

“Excellent,” Lest said. “We should be able to check out eight planets. What are the characteristics of those?”

“Mass, gravity, rotation and so on fit very well,” Hulton said. “The composition of the atmosphere is different, however. The levels of oxygen, nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide, neon, helium and methane vary slightly. The change might be the result of planetary developments like volcanic eruptions and so on.”

“Are any of these planets inhabited?” Lest asked.

“No,” Hulton replied. “They are catalogued as uninhabited planets.”

“Why were these planets not chosen for terraforming?” Doctor Midad asked. “Changing the atmosphere isn’t a big thing in these days.”

“Yes,” Lest said. “We must look into why the Alliance discarded them. Thanks, Hulton, very good work. Send Le’Ton the coordinates of the planets, please.”

Le’Ton mapped the planets into his chart and sent the chart to the main screen.

“They’re scattered all over the search zone,” Lest said. “Jeff and Corr, look into these planets and find out why the Alliance found them inappropriate for settlement.”

Corr and Jeff reported back a short time later.

“I looked into four planets,” Corr said. “Two are waterworlds, one has extreme reptile wildlife, the fourth has very small land masses on the poles, the land masses covered with ice sheets.”

“Similar,” Jeff said. “Three waterworlds and one planet in the grips of an ice age.”

“What about the land masses of the last one?” Lest asked.

“Two continents, one in the northern, one in the southern hemisphere, both are almost entirely covered with ice. Only parts of the continents close to the equator are ice-free,” Jeff said.

“Our search is based on assumptions and we don’t know if we’re even remotely close,” Doctor Midad said. “The planet of Yanara origin might long be destroyed. However, if we plan to continue, I would investigate the planet that is in the grips of an ice age.”

“It’s the only one of the eight that could have been inhabited in the past. I rule out the waterworlds and I can’t imagine that extreme reptile wildlife replaced the Yanara people or developed after they left 11,000 years ago,” Jeff said.

Lest nodded. “The drawing of the serpent might point to the planet with reptile wildlife, but the ice age planet deems me the most probable candidate, too. I’ll report our findings to Okpara and speak with him on how to proceed. Meanwhile check the database for any information regarding this planet,” he said.

Lest contacted the archivist. The man’s face appeared on the screen.

“Greetings to you, Okpara,” Lest said. “We’re making progress. Let me report to you on our findings.”

Okpara nodded. “Please, captain,” he said.

“Based on the descriptions in the old texts and actual hardware data of Alliance ships, we determined the probable range of a vast conventional passenger ship with cryo-techniqe on board. We searched the Alliance database for planets in the resulting search area, a corridor around the planet Yanara,” Lest said. “All planets in the search corridor are catalogued in the Alliance database. We performed a contingency analysis and ran the model on the Horus computer. I spare you the details. We found that eight planets were highly probable to be the planet of Yanara origin. A closer look into the planets ruled out three waterworlds and a planet with minor land masses on the poles. There’s a planet with intensive reptile wildlife. The planet might be a possible candidate. Another planet is in the grips of an ice age, vast land masses are covered with ice, but the coast lines of the two continents, one in the northern and one in the southern hemisphere, are ice-free in the equatorial zones,” he said. “We’re currently focusing on this planet and attempt to gather more information.”

“Very well,” Okpara replied. “I’ll inform the other archivists on your findings. Please let me know if you find out any more.”

“Certainly,” Lest replied.

They ended the conversation.

Hulton turned to the captain in excitement. “I had the computer run a deep search on the ice-age planet and the computer came up with something interesting. I found a clue in the Alliance database,” he said. “An old report states that a spaceship passed by the planet 1,018 years ago and received a scrambled transmission. It had lasted only two minutes and could not be deciphered. A following up investigation had come up with nothing. The planet is listed in the Alliance catalogue of planets as not suitable for settlement, mining and exo-agriculture No reason and further explanation was given.”

“A transmission from the planet? I’d suggest we’ll check this planet out,” Lest said.

The crew completed their research and Lest contacted Okpara again. The archivist supported Lest’s idea.

The Horus left the following day.