CONTENTS
PROLOGUE Starship S1
PART I FIRST DEEP SPACE EXPLORATIONS
CHAPTER 1 Planetary Cartographers
CHAPTER 2 Shuttle Crash
CHAPTER 3 Extraterrestrial
CHAPTER 4 DP1 Antarctica
CHAPTER 5 DP1 Signal
CHAPTER 6 Parasite
CHAPTER 7 Extraterrestrial Confrontation
CHAPTER 8 Extraterrestrial Discovery
CHAPTER 9 Aboard the Starship
CHAPTER 10 Vega
CHAPTER 11 Return to DP1
CHAPTER 12 Second DP1 World
CHAPTER 13 Archeological Find
CHAPTER 14 Artifact Removal
CHAPTER 15 Energy Bubble
CHAPTER 16 Matter Alterations
CHAPTER 17 Dormancy
CHAPTER 18 Planetary Search
CHAPTER 19 Extraterrestrial Contact
CHAPTER 20 Extraterrestrial Source
CHAPTER 21 Extraterrestrial Life Form
CHAPTER 22 Deadly Encounter
CHAPTER 23 DP1 Confrontation
CHAPTER 24 Underground Chamber
CHAPTER 25 Black Object
PROLOGUE Hyperdrive
PART II TRANSCENDENT SPACE
CHAPTER 1 DP2 Surface
CHAPTER 2 Snowstorm
CHAPTER 3 DP2 Discovery
CHAPTER 4 DP2 Flying Saucer
CHAPTER 5 Entrance Chamber
CHAPTER 6 Life Forms
CHAPTER 7 Extraterrestrial Eggs
CHAPTER 8 DP2 Evacuation
CHAPTER 9 DP2 Life Form
CHAPTER 10 DP2 Departure
CHAPTER 11 DP3 World
CHAPTER 12 Haunted World
CHAPTER 13 Haunted House
CHAPTER 14 Ghostly
CHAPTER 15 Extraterrestrial Tower
CHAPTER 16 DP3 Artifact
CHAPTER 17 DP3 Mission Completion
CHAPTER 18 Deep Space Encounter
CHAPTER 19 Hyperdrive Engine
CHAPTER 20 Black Hole
CHAPTER 21 Starship Computer
CHAPTER 22 Gateway
CHAPTER 23 Deadliest Menace
CHAPTER 24 Extraterrestrial Search
CHAPTER 25 S1 Surveillance
CHAPTER 26 DP2 Monster Confrontation
CHAPTER 27 Supernatural Artifact
CHAPTER 28 Confidential Material
CHAPTER 29 World Discovered
CHAPTER 30 DP2 Monster Detection
CHAPTER 31 DP2 Monster Annihilation
CHAPTER 32 DP4 World
CHAPTER 33 DP4 Landing
CHAPTER 34 DP4 Life Form
EPILOGUE First Contact
PROLOGUE
First Contact
The Russian scientist stood staggered and dazzled in the shuttle’s interior lights, after he rushed in from the cold dark deadly outer world, breathing heavily in his spacesuit, and shaking as he attempted to seal the outer doors firmly behind him.
The other scientists studied his appearance, and occasionally gave strange tones, and he started to explain the horrors he had encountered outside on the deadly extraterrestrial DP1 world, and what had frantically chased him, and he removed his helmet revealing his pale white complexion and badly shaken appearance, showing them he had encountered something beyond his comprehension, of an immensely deadly diabolical nature, and he shook in terror, barely able to speak, and looked gravely ill.
After the voyages to the Alpha Centauri suns they had finally been exploring other suns and had located the DP1 world, and they had returned to the Earth and brought in many new scientists and members of the original crew, with a military presence, and the exploration teams had started carrying out landings, with the scientists, and planetary cartographers teams, who were exploring their first exo-worlds, and were giving scans, and findings on the world, and of anything unusual, to send back to NASA.
One of the scientists gasped out loud, in horror, searching the Russian scientist’s face, and muttered, “What did you see?”
“I saw something!” he muttered. “It’s hideous! I sensed its existence goes far further back than ours! It’s trapped down here!”
“You saw an extraterrestrial! Down on this desolate lifeless world? There has not been a plant or anything found anywhere! If it had not been for the new scientists we would never have landed, and perhaps even map it! It’s more like the moon …”
“I saw something! I’m telling you! It’s an advanced form of life and highly deadly!”
The other scientist was staggered by his reactions and shrugged.
The Russian scientist bit his lower lip hard, and continued, “Its origins go beyond ours, and it has been undetected by our technology! Our detection methods are inferior and are mainly created and function to discover normal objects, and our investigations are futile!”
The whole crew remained silent considering if he was insane or if they were up against something of their worst nightmares, and capable of destroying them.
II
DP1 Extraterrestrial
It awoke from timeless dormant states screaming in agony and carrying out its ageless ritual and altering its composition as its tiny dim sun sat on the horizon of its cold dark desolate world and it tried to get energy from it as its formation glowed with powerful bright explosions of energy, blasting about its energy composition, while its fight for survival began.
For the first time in countless centuries its proper existence revived, as it had done for many thousands of years, over and over again, keeping itself in existence, though gradually aging and decomposing, with its dormant states extending, and it felt pain and saw death, and its formation constantly altered as it controlled its individual parts to a degree of individual atoms, stopping itself being destroyed by the colossal environment of the DP1 world.
Its destruction would one day occur and its fight for survival would be over, and it grasped the opportunity to avoid it with all it could muster and formed itself into a normal formation, and it shifted out of its energy chamber into the darkness of the world.
The dead world was unrecognizable now and it was staggered by the dangers it held and as it monitored its formation’s fight to repair itself and it considered how the occurrence could possibly have occurred, and it felt trapped, but felt satisfaction as it repaired major regions of damage to it.
Eventually it was able to alter and gain normal powers, and it managed to adapt more to the surrounding environment, and it shifted into the long black shadows of unknown rock formations like a meddlesome ghost creature lurking around, transforming its shape and appearance.
For a moment it stopped, astounded by something, considering what had happened, and sensed it had been awoken by itself and something arriving on its world, and it was staggered and contemplated the dangers and that it was trapped on the desolate world, with nothing, without any way to leave, without anything else, and it began to contemplate the dangers to the remains of its eternal life and it began to consider how it could survive on the world with what now existed.
It was so ancient it could not even believe it had a beginning, and it suddenly realized it had somehow been contacted by an unknown form of communications from somewhere unknown, and it realized it had not fully grasped the extraordinary outer universe, and that it was trapped on the world with something unknown and it realized it might have to fight to survive further than it had done before and it wondered if it could, and it realized it had been detected, and had to alter to stop it detecting it.
The distant sun glowed as its monster shape shifted through rocks, and it took comfort in its past experiences and existence and its ability to survive, and it stopped to examine something nearby, and a small formation moving by.
It could not explain its existence and it struggled to explain how it even functioned and its strangeness, and it altered its formation to adapt to it and it reformed its colossal energy formation.
Its now extraordinary shaped shadows shifted in the vague sunlight, probing the cold hideous darkness, and it moved on as it studied everything in its surroundings, expecting encounters, as it fought to return its normal detection senses.
It roamed about and it became apparent that the thing it had copied affected it far further than it realized, and it realized it was not just it but its damaged state.
It propelled itself forward its body adapted further and repaired damage and formed more into the thing and its leg formations, and it shuddered frantically testing its senses, and searched for any reactions from the thing and any dangers.
Its monstrous mutated shape shadow silhouetted it as it shifted in the direction of the formation, and its senses and knowledge improved further and it detected other distant formations further away, and it realized the formations took their energy from the consumption of others.
When it saw the thing close up it stopped, hidden in the darkness of a large pile of rocks, watching the strange glowing hills illuminating all around it, as it formed its eyes, and watched shadows stretching out over the world, and it saw it watch it emerging out of the darkness and pile of rocks and stand staggered, and it detected its intelligence as it escaped to survive.
III
SETI Institute
On its first detection in the early twentieth century the DP1 signal was proven to be of extraterrestrial origins and hidden by various advanced methods, over decades, as it was found to be one of a kind and its origins were not in other galaxies, or in the depths of the Milky Way, or vast solar systems away.
After World War II it was proven be far nearer than previously thought, and its presence was hidden and examined far further than ever before, and checked for a false or parasite sources from terrestrial sources, from satellites, manmade or natural sources, and was the only signal to be classed as a positive artificial extraterrestrial source of unknown origins.
It was hidden away into the twenty-first century, with scientists examining it continuously, and for any signs of alteration, and on the introduction of new technology, but its repetitive pulses never altered or gave anything away.
The signal was detected by others continually and analyzed under the assumption it was an unidentified phenomenon as well as an extraterrestrial phenomenon, but its highly advanced perfectly symmetrical pulsations left them staggered the more they established its properties and significance, with its pulsations beating out through the depths of space.
The commonest assumptions assumed it was a greeting signal/message to other races, and perhaps directly to the Earth, and perhaps put there for humans someday to find and trace its origins, to the world where it came from, which was only properly established in the decades before the creation of the Starship S1.
While human technology created ultimate powerful telescopes they scrupulously searched the DP1 extraterrestrial world with them, and its region of space for signs of life, and for the advanced intelligence that created it.
Astronomers searched the dark barely visible DP1 world with the most highly advanced technology and techniques scrupulously searching for anything, as it was not only the only proper signal found, it was almost at its closest location without being in this solar system, or out in interstellar space, and it was located near the Alpha Centauri suns, which astonished all the astronomers and scientists, and suggested it had been put there for a reason.
IV
Starship S1
Throughout the twenty-first century the world’s biggest and most advanced searches for extraterrestrial civilizations expanded and advanced beyond what was once thought impossible, and even NASA and the SETI institute were superseded in the race to detect extraterrestrial intelligence.
The world’s most advanced and powerful telescopes developed at an inconceivable rate and searched far deeper into the depths of space than ever before, expanding knowledge of the cosmos, anticipating breakthroughs.
They scanned the depths of space thousands of times faster in greater detail than thought possible, while repetitively advancing technology to detect inhabited exoplanets, with highly advanced extraterrestrial life, and explored worlds in the depths of newly discovered galaxies, and sent out messages by new methods to the most compelling, and more frequently, and even into the invisible black depths of space where hidden worlds could exist.
Many millions of worlds were detected, with many believed to have advanced extraterrestrial life and civilizations, but were never entirely proven, and could not be entirely proven until properly physically confirmed, and what was detected was not caused by unknown phenomena, which preceding encounters confirmed on numerous occasions, and even being created by phenomena not existent on the Earth.
Proper methods of exploration of stars and worlds had to be found, and NASA consequently developed their starship engine, and Starship S1 was created from decades of vast technology advances from highly advanced technologies, and from space and scientific agencies, and corporation from all around the globe, investing in twenty-first century star exploration.
The starship was colossal compared to previous space vehicles, and had the most advanced starship crew, engineers, technicians, scientists, specialists in numerous fields, and many needed to test and develop it.
The first voyage to the Alpha Centauri suns tested voyaging to the stars – going from Proxima Centauri, the closest star, to the other Centauri suns – and with other voyages from the Earth to the Centauri suns perfecting star travel, and they were soon ready to start proper explorations of proper worlds, with normal crew members running the starship, and exploration teams made up of astrophysicists, celestial cartographers, planetary geologists, planetary cartographers teams, carrying out exo-cartography, and exo-biologists, and many forms of scientists and specialists, reporting findings and anything unusual back to NASA and the world, with the advanced extraterrestrial scientists and specialists and original crew to be brought in on the discovery of anything, with a military presence if needed, and Starship S1 voyaged out on the world’s first proper exploration of deep space.
PART I
FIRST DEEP SPACE EXPLORATIONS
CHAPTER 1
Planetary Cartographers
The extraterrestrial sky outside the planetary shuttle was so dark, peculiar, and empty Ripley was sure that the DP1 world was not in the normal universe, or at least on the edge of it, and somehow in some form of warp in space.
He switched on a small light, avoiding putting the larger bright lights on, to see only the interior about his front, and he watched the other vehicle pilot staring out the windows at the surrounding darkness, and into the visible landscape.
The world was so strange to them, and even though it was the first world they had been on the surface of it looked stranger than it should, and barely had a sun.
The world about them was a flat stretch of barren ground full of nothing but space dust and rocks, with no atmosphere.
The planetary cartographer shuttles automatically carried out their programming and functions floating high over the surface of the DP1 world at hundreds of miles an hour, mapping and analyzing everything they could detect, while searching for anything of interest, and any abnormalities, covering a low radius of about a hundred miles, at equal distances apart, with special shuttles flying over mountains and other difficult terrains, mapping the whole world.
Ripley watched Dan, sitting beside him, in the two front pilot seats, and front cockpit, with the other eight members of the crew in the shuttle behind them, examining their equipment and all the readings, and checking the mapping, and he examined Dan for anything unusual, but he saw nothing, except that he was more secretive than he had originally noticed and that he was hiding something, and tried to figure it out.
Normally he would ignore it but the mission was too dangerous, mysterious, and there were surprises everywhere, and he had even wondered if they would return alive to the Earth.
They were the first explorers of deep space and had no idea what they would be up against.
Yet there could valuable life forms on the worlds that could be traded back on the Earth, but he knew that they would be very keen to stop anything illegally getting aboard the starship, in orbit above, and he did see the point, and definitely never wanted anything from the DP1 running around the ship creating unknown dangers, as the world was dangerous, and nobody had even thought anything could survive there.
If anything seriously dangerous got on the Earth, they would have serious problems. Such creatures could inhabit worlds!
Though the encounter by the Russian scientist had been the only encounter, and nothing had been proven, and they had not found anything when they had searched where he had been, and nothing indicated how it could be on the world.
The greatest mystery was why they were on the world, and why when it was discovered they returned to the Earth before arriving at it, and had basically only picked up new crew members, who insisted they had a mission, and why they had hidden backgrounds and careers and seemed to be specialists in extraterrestrials, and some were from the original scientists, who seemed excited at the exploration of the world, and seemed to be silenced and told not to give anything of their mission, and military backup was more surprising as they seemed to be ready to handle their biggest ever mission, and were always well armed on the world.
Colman and Gates were two of the new scientists, at back of the large shuttle, and Rickman and Carter beside them were two of the military backup, and they refused to mix with the others, and stayed at a distance, and only spoke to the others for information.
It was the strangest situation Ripley had encountered, and he sensed something was would happen.
Yet what the hell was there? There was no sign of anything!
“Do think there is anything of value down there?” he asked Dan, trying to get his view.
Dan laughed, and replied, “I have checked a few times. Nothing indicates anything! What do you think? Could there be anything valuable about?”
“There could be diamonds! I wonder how much they would be worth back on Earth.”
Dan looked at him, still amused, with his amused expression, and replied, “Out here! But how could you find anything?”
He ignored him and wondered about what the Russian scientist had claimed he had seen!
How the hell did it get out here in this hellhole? He wondered if it could capture one of the vehicles or sneak on the ship, which was thought to be just about impossible by some of the others.
He realized it could hide in the back of the vehicle – where they kept the supplies. Yet could it get aboard at the speed they were going at?
Suddenly he recalled something Colman had said to Gates, and something about what was there and the Russian scientist being questioned by them aboard the starship and that something about a signal they called the DP1 signal being traced, and he recalled something he had heard from the first voyages and one of the scientists mentioning it, and wondered what the hell it was, as the reaction they gave to it was colossal.
“What is the main objective of us checking this world?” he silently asked the shuttle’s main computer, to see if it knew anything. |“And who ordered it? As I cannot recall hearing anything of it!”
“That is an easy one!” Dan silently replied first. “It is to check it because it is out here in this void. It had to be the scientists that wanted it.”
“Where were you when they did it?” he asked.
He just shrugged back, and smiled.
The computer gave an acknowledgment that it had no reply to his questions, and he realized how strange that was as it normally gave some other reply if it did not know, and someone had altered its programming to avoid giving a reply.
They went silent again. He could not recall something and something that had happened, and was sure he was missing something! Something had to have been mentioned somewhere.
He was sure by the earlier reactions from Colman that he had mentioned something, and he continued to search through everything that had happened for clues, and he was sure they never kept such secrets as secret as they claimed.
He then saw an immense ghostly shape in front of them, away over at the world’s horizon, out across a long flat plane, and he saw Dan’s eyes widen, as if he had been waiting on something to occur and it was occurring.
CHAPTER 2
Shuttle Crash
A tranquil abyss flowed surreally by as an astronaut shot out of the universe, with no awareness, tumbling through infinity, far from the furthest stars, and he came to, in a state of disarray, studying light formations.
How had he managed to end up in such a far-out place? Where the hell was he? How could he have survived in such a place?
He felt as though he had fallen through something and he tried to grasp the concept, and where he had been, and he saw the lights surrounding him.
For a few seconds Ripley was in complete darkness, wondering what had happened, and who the astronaut that shot out of the stars was, and why he had imagined him and his thoughts, as though he had really been there, and felt only metal about him and realized that they had actually crashed, and realized the speed and height they were at and that it should have smashed every bone in his body and killed him and the others, and wondered what had protected them.
An explosion had sent the shuttle crashing down and almost somersaulting over the surface of the world and he was sure it had to be the deep dust and lower gravity on the surface that had cushioned the blow, and as the lights came back on he wondered how it had occurred, and he watched the others recovering from the hard impact.
For a moment he was sure it was deliberate, especially from the reactions of the others when they started checking the occurrence, and he wondered who could have done it, and would have wanted to do it.
Was someone trying to kill them and had gone crazy beyond anyone he had met.
Then he wondered if it was the military presence on the starship and examined Rickman and Carter to see how they reacted, and if they knew anything, and saw nothing but confusion, and just accepted that they had not known.
He remained confused at who could do it! He had not even known that there was a way of doing it to such a machine with such a computer, without it stopping it!
When they got outside on the DP1 surface through the airlock he stood staggered, realizing he was actually standing on another world staring up at a lifeless sky, going across his front to a flat horizon, and he realized he might get the chance to explore worlds with atmospheres, without the spacesuit, and he spotted a star he had been staring at and realized it could very well be the sun and that the Earth could be hidden in its light in its orbit, and he saw how dim the DP1 sun was and like compared to other suns in the galaxy, and how strange it was, as though it had been damaged by something, and he could not believe where he was, and near the Alpha Centauri suns.
It was incredible and he realized that the others wished to check things about them, and the strange surrounding dimness, and even the military agreed, even though it was a rule now to remain inside or near the vehicle, but they wished to check what had happened, and if something had done something, and if the vehicle had hidden damage that they had not detected.
It was so peculiar and empty that he was sure that something was there, and perhaps great danger, and he imagined himself out at the outer limits of the universe, at a most distant point.
He removed a small pair of binoculars and studied the dim DP1 star and for a second thought he saw something and was amazed that anything could actually be there, but realized it was not, and he considered how much danger they were in and if he should stay on the Earth when they returned there and leave it for a while until he grasped what was happening, and how dangerous it was, and if he would survive.
They started to check their surroundings as the others checked the shuttle with lights, and by feeling around regions for damage, and testing and checking things for hidden damage, and searched where they came down and about the area for signs of anything that could have caused it and the vehicle to react as it had.
At first Ripley thought the impact, with the bang, had damaged something, and considered if the shuttle had a hidden defense against crashing down that they had not bothered telling them, and it had fired an explosion in the opposite direction, downwards, to slow the shuttle speed before it impacted, and he realized it was the low gravity and thick layer of dust and the vehicle moving fast forward, but after a short while of checking he realized that they had been lucky and that the shuttle had main defenses that slowed it and stopped and cushioned the blow of the impact.
He felt around where he remembered there was a large outer sidelight, for examining the vehicle in darkness, realizing they had either forgotten or not known about the light, and quickly switched it on, and was surprised at how explosively bright it and the surrounding landscape became, and he stood staggered with the others, all staring around them.
In his imagination the dark surrounding world was close to looking like the moon landscape but in the bright light it looked far different and staggering, and he wondered why. There was something about the place that was different and made it far different than other worlds.
CHAPTER 3
Extraterrestrial
The DP1 extraterrestrial remained out of its dormant state, carrying out endless alterations as to its composition, remaining invisible in the normal universe, as it raced towards the new shuttle, desperate to get the life forms, without being detected, and the immense energy supply powering the shuttle.
The small cold sun of its dark desolate world was on the horizon and it drew little energy from it, and its shape glowed as powerful explosions of energy blasted through it, as it created more energy.
For the first time it had met other existences and with powers it needed, as for thousands of years, over and over, it had kept itself in existence with vast amounts of methods, though slowly aging and decomposing, with its dormant states extending, and it now even felt pain and the approach of death, and its formation constantly altered as it controlled its individual parts to a degree of individual cells, creating its own energy, stopping itself being destroyed by the colossal environment.
It was sure its destruction could somehow be avoided and its fight for survival would be over, but it needed a vast source of energy and it grasped the opportunity to avoid death and with all it could muster it formed itself into a new formation and shifted over to the shuttle, at a distance it would not be detected.
It had used massive amounts of energy taking control of the shuttle and crew so the shuttle came down onto the world, and the shuttle had nearly been destroyed, and it remained where it was, studying everything it could detect from the shuttle, and the strange life forms, and it thought it recognized something similar had existed many thousands of years ago, but it could no longer recall what it was, and stared out into the darkness of its world.
At times for some reason the cold world was unrecognizable to it and it tried to recall why and what it had forgotten, and it wondered if the world altered from something, and why it had a hard time surviving on it, and it was staggered by its dangers and its formation’s fight to repair damage it had not been fully able to repair with its low energy and it considered how the occurrence could possibly have occurred, and it being trapped on the world.
It eventually used its available energy to alter and gained some normal powers, and it managed to adapt to the surrounding environment once again, and it shifted into the black world and rock formations like a hideous dark ghost creature lurking in the shadows, transforming its shape and appearances, and temporary stopped astounded by the life forms appearance outside the crashed shuttle, and sensed something familiar about them.
It was staggered and contemplated the dangers and that it was trapped on a desolate world, with no other life form, without any way to leave, and the great dangers to the remains of its eternal life and it contemplated it was its last chance.
It closed in on the shuttle sensing they could not detect it and watched, hidden behind large piles of rocks, trying to grasp what was there, and watched the life forms outside the shuttle, and their examinations of the of the damage, and gasped at the power from their lights, and sensed power behind them, and it could not recall seeing so much light being created.
It realized that it might somehow be able to make contact with them by turning itself into a similar life form, and it managed to pick up communications from the life forms communicating by a strange method, and realized they gave strange communication vibrations that they transmitted.
Again it realized it had not fully grasped what existed in the outer universe, and that it was trapped on the world, and realized it might have to fight to survive further than it had ever done before and it wondered if it could.
The distant sun’s shape glowed through the rocks, and it took comfort in its past experiences and existence and its ability to survive, and it stopped to examine everything, and it tried to imagine the place where they came from.
It could not imagine what it was as it never had any information of it and it struggled to explain how they functioned and their strangeness grasped its imagination, and it started altering its formation to one of them, and it reformed its colossal energy formation, and did everything it could to form itself and replicate its brain and consciousness, and gradually started to succeed.
CHAPTER 4
DP1 Antarctica
While the shuttle approached the DP1 Antarctica Ripley saw the S1 Starship main shuttle coming down and landing in the distance and he had a strange sensation of something was about to happen, and he never knew why, and kept watching ice emerge ahead over the exact south polar region of the world.
The extraterrestrial sky outside the planetary shuttle was still so peculiar and intimidating he put it as a main factor of what was wrong, and he checked the shuttle controls once again for any signs of damage and still saw nothing, or signs there could be a future problem, but the shuttle had come down, and though they found nothing, there had to be something behind it.
After seeing a worried look on Dan’s face he wondered if it was his own reactions affecting him, and he firmly switched off the small interior light and put them in darkness and put on the more powerful headlights under the shuttle lighting the region below them, and he started lowering the shuttle to travel along near the ground, making scientists in the room behind him look out at the world, and he watched them staring out at the surrounding ice and rock, and he wondered how ancient it was.
He checked the geochemical map they had got of the world and the chemical elements and wondered why they were different, and as though the world at one point had been covered with elements from some other celestial body.
The world was so strange to they usually never gave answers to what was there and left things until more was known, and as it was also one of the first worlds they had been at.
The world about them altered and he saw the massive Starship S1 shuttle, where the exact southern pole was, and saw the other shuttles heading towards it, all at accurately spaced positions, still giving out their scans and mapping information, and he realized by communications and conversations that they had not damaged the map by crashing, and had accelerated faster until they had reached their normal position in the group, even though the job would have been done perfectly if they had been the last to arrive.
It was mainly a region of ancient ice, dirt and rocks, without any atmosphere.
The planetary cartographer shuttles automatically carried out their programming and functions floating over the surface of the DP1 world at hundreds of miles an hour, mapping and analyzing everything they could detect, while searching for anything of interest, and any abnormalities, and slowly slowed, and stopped in a perfect circle around the S1 Starship shuttle and waited to be brought in individually through its gateway.
Ripley watched Dan, sitting beside him, in the two front pilot seats, with the other eight members of the crew in the shuttle behind him completing their work, examining their equipment and all the readings, and checking the mapping, and he examined Dan for anything unusual, but he saw nothing, except that he was more secretive again, and that he was hiding something, and he realized he thought there was something wrong.
Suddenly he realized they should have started taking them aboard by now, and gasped, and had a strange sensation he was missing something, and suddenly realized he had turned off the shuttle mission information computer screen, which gave them facts about anything occurring and he turned it on and searched through it and sat back staggered, as there was a large warning message, which appeared earlier, telling them an extraterrestrial had been detected, and he searched through the message trying to discover what it was and where it was but found little. Except a danger warning not to approach the S1 Starship shuttle, and realized it had to be there and that it mentioned its defenses against being attacked had been activated.
It was incredible that they had not directly warned the shuttle pilots or scientists and had only given a computer warning message, and he never fully grasped how serious it was, and he wondered if they would return alive to the Earth.
They were the first explorers of deep space and had no idea what they were up against.
He started to see the mistake they were making exploring the universe, and what could exist there.
Yet he knew that they were keen to stop anything getting aboard the starship and that it could be a procedure to test their defenses, and they had a point, as he definitely never wanted anything alien aboard.
If anything seriously dangerous got on the Earth they would have serious problems. Alien parasites might populate entire worlds and destroy races!
He recalled the Russian scientist had been the only person to claim he had encountered something. Though nothing had been proven, and they had not found any evidence when they had searched where he had been, or on their maps of the world, and nothing showed how it could survive on such a world.
CHAPTER 5
DP1 Signal
The greatest mystery to Ripley was why they were carrying out the explorations of the DP1 world, and why they had immediately returned to the Earth before arriving at it, where they really only picked up new crew members, including the scientist Colman and soldier Rickman, and he knew that he had to discover it.
So after hours of waiting for something to occur, and while going to his sleeping cubicle, he saw Colman and Rickman secretly talking over their mission, and what was happening, he quickly moved over and began talking to them and asked them about the extraterrestrial.
“Do think there is anything deadly here?” he asked Colman, trying to get his view.
He laughed silently, and replied, “Nothing indicates anything!”
“Just why are we exploring this place? There is nothing here! How much will it cost them?”
Colman looked over at him curiously, still slightly amused, and replied, “You mean you have not even been told why we are down here? We’ve been trained for years for this mission and to investigate the DP1 world!”
Ripley knew the Russian scientist had been with them and he thought about what he claimed he had seen.
How the hell did it get out here in this hellhole? He wondered if it could capture one of the vehicles or sneak aboard the ship, which was thought to be impossible by some of them.
“They never bothered informing us.” Ripley moaned. “Perhaps as they never thought we would find anything.”
“It is thought that the entire starship was built to investigate this world!” Colman replied. “As well others like it! They discovered the DP1 radio signal about a century ago and it was their first proven extraterrestrial origins radio signal.”
“They discovered it as early as the twentieth century!”
“They hid it over decades – especially as it was found to be one of a kind and its origins were not vast solar systems away.”
It was colossal and Ripley knew it was the big one and they had been hiding its existence for a reason, and was staggered that they had not even warned them, even when landing on the world.
“After World War Two it was proven be far closer than previously thought and its presence was hidden and examined far further than ever before, checking for a false or parasite source, from a terrestrial source, from a manmade or natural source, and was the only signal to be classed as a positive extraterrestrial source of unknown origins.”
“Now we may encounter it?”
“It remained hidden away into the twenty-first century, with scientists re-examining it continuously, for any signs of change, and on the introduction of new technology.”
“What did they find?”
“The signal was analyzed under the assumption it was of an unknown phenomenon or extraterrestrial phenomenon, but its highly advanced perfectly symmetrical pulsations left them staggered even further the more they established its properties and significance, with its pulsations beating out through the colossal depths of space.”
“So it could be anything?”
“The most common assumption is that it is a greeting signal/message to other races – and perhaps directly to the Earth – perhaps put there for humans someday to discover and trace the origins of, to this world where it came from, which was properly discovered in the decades before the creation of Starship S1.”
“So have they traced where the signal is coming from?”
“Just before we arrived the signal vanished! We searched this dark empty world with our most advanced technology and we searched for anything we could but we have not found anything, and it looks as if whatever is here is hiding from us, and we have not found anyway to locate it.”
“Even after the Russian discovering something?”
“Correct! There was nothing detected there, and his description of the extraterrestrial was virtually incomprehensible! He clearly had not properly seen it in the dark. Now they believe there is something in one of the shuttles, and it was detected when all the shuttles arrived here, but they were not able to detect where it was, and it now seems to have hidden itself from being detected!”
CHAPTER 6
Parasite
It remained carrying out endless alterations to its composition, remaining invisible in a state it formed into, to hide itself away in an enclosure in the back of the shuttle, when it had seen the humans, and Ripley and the others, while they had been completing their repairs to the crashed shuttle, realizing they would not accept it as a human, and had remained there as the shuttle had flown up to the Antarctica, staggered at the speed, and realized it could not penetrate the solid almost impenetrable shuttle shell.
Desperate to survive and check out the life forms and their immense energy source, without being detected.
The cold sun of its dark desolate world was on the horizon and it still drew little energy from it, and its shape occasionally glowed as explosions of energy blasted out from its new formation, as its fight for survival continued, and it occasionally examined the shuttle’s power source, without being able to fully examine it through the shuttle shell, unable to grasp if it could even handle such force and discover a way to extract and absorb lower levels.
For the first time it had met others and with powers it needed, which it desired for thousands of years, and it had kept itself in existence with vast amounts of methods, though slowly ageing and decomposing, with its dormant states extending, and it now for the first time it could recall had found a way of avoiding the approach of death, and its formation constantly altered as it controlled its individual parts to the degree of individual cells, creating energy, constantly stopping itself being destroyed.
If it could not get a source of energy it desired it was sure it could alternatively get off the world and go to the world where they came from.
When the Starship S1 main shuttle appeared ahead and other shuttles appeared around it in a circle it had been staggered by the amount of shuttles and the size of the Starship S1 shuttle, and that they had been surely searching the world, and wondered what they wanted there and if they were dangerous to its existence.
It was then it had detected something scanning the shuttles in Starship S1 shuttle and had tried to analyze it but it had quickly changed its formation and had avoided being discovered and had escaped from the shuttle to another, but they had so much power it knew it was in great danger and its fight for survival had begun, but it needed an energy source and it grasped the opportunity to avoid destruction with everything it could muster and it formed itself into a new formation capable of not being discovered at the new shuttle.
It sensed thoughts from the life forms and for some reason the cold world was unrecognizable to them and it wondered why and where they had come from with amazement and it tried to recall something it had forgotten a long time ago about the world, and it wondered if its world had altered from something, and why it had been there and had a hard time surviving on it, and it was staggered by its dangers and its formation’s fight to alter and be restored, and it wondered how it had been trapped on the world.
From what it seen and sensed from the humans it started to realize it could not get aboard but it watched a human leave another shuttle near it and it became desperate and had swiftly left towards it and entered its spacesuit and mind and altered itself into surviving in a place in the human’s mind, allowing the human formation to have its own conscious and not know of its existence.
It lowered its consumption of energy and altered to a near dormant state, and managed to adapt to its new surrounding environment, and sensed and felt the human’s strange thoughts of the black world and rock formations with fascination, and its emotions to it and what it thought it was, and it was staggered and contemplated the dangers of them and that it was trapped on such a desolate hideous world.
It realized it had not made a mistake and it learned more and more of the beings as the human entered its shuttle and communicated with the others, and it realized the mistake it had made of being on the world, and gasped at the power they had, and sensed far more power existed, and it actually recalled something similar somewhere once existed.
It began to realize it had not fully grasped the immensity of things and the outer universe, and what existed there.
Its distant sun glowed more powerfully on a screen and it took comfort in its past experiences and existence and its ability to survive, and it examined everything in the shuttle with fascination, and tried to imagine where they came from.
Their strangeness grasped its imagination, and it examined the other life forms aboard, which the being communicated with, and it gradually started to succeed in understanding what they did and wondered if it would survive.
