The Dead Planet by Jedediah E. Dahl Page A

reading the name early, but wasn’t entirely sure.  “I believe they call it Devil’s Peak, sir.”  I paused for a moment.  No, that’s not right.  “Or maybe Devil’s Tower.”
    “Sir, I have secured the room!”  Gækob interrupted. 
    “You find anything?”
    “No sir, nothing.”
    Now that’s odd.  “Captain, I’m picking up some stuff on the long-distance motion sensors but nothing on the heat scanners.”
    “What do you mean, Lækas?”
    I said what I meant, you social science idiot.  “I mean that there are things moving around about ten miles North-East, but there are no corresponding heat signatures.”
    “Maybe some of the native peoples are out there?”
    “Sir, according to our observations, the inhabitants give off extreme heat signals.  Their bodies resonate close to a hundred degrees.”
    “What’s your point?  There still may be some clues as to what happened.”  I thought he’d finished, but then the dumbest thing I’d ever heard came out of his mouth.  “Also, perhaps the inhabitants have evolved to this new environment.  Maybe their bodies have mutated so that they don’t give off as much body heat.”
    Seriously?  I wanted to argue with him and explain that evolutionary mutations take thousands of years to occur, not two.  Instead, I tried a more diplomatic approach.  “Sir, the indigenous species have not been contacted and, primitively, believe themselves to be the only species in the galaxy.”
    “Nonsense, Lækas,” he cut in.  “They must know we have a station here. We’ve had ships flying around this planet for thousands of years.”  He was right about our presence on this planet, but our chameleon technology kept us hidden.  “Now, coordinate the transportal to set us close to the motion your sensors picked up.”
    I programmed the transportal to drop us about three miles from the motion.  That would give us enough time to determine if these inhabitants were friendly or not.  Hell, for all we knew, they may have killed our observation teams.
    Gækob went through the portal first, followed by Mævin, and then myself.  Just as the environmental scanners indicated, the planet had become an empty desert of brown sand.  My suit’s environmental reading confirmed that the atmosphere was breathable, but something told me I shouldn’t take my suit off.  I was suddenly thankful that Gækob had suggested them. 
    “Why are we so far away?”
    “Oh, sorry sir!  I’m not familiar with this planet’s terrain.  I must’ve miscalculated the distance.  Perhaps moved a decimal or something.”
    “Captain, I believe it will be fine.  We can just leap there.”
    “Ah!  A great idea Gækob!”
    Gækob was the first to jump.  I watched as he leaped about half a mile towards our destination in a single bound.  The Terran gravity was unfamiliar to us, so we had to be careful in our leaping.  On our home planet, Kælty, we could easily jump and drift for miles, but this planet’s gravity was more severe than our lush forested planet.
    It took five minutes of jumping and gliding to reach the outer limits of what use to be a city.  Most of it lay in ruins with sand storms and other Terran natural disasters demolishing the buildings.  The roads were completely covered in sand with dunes blanketing as much as half of the buildings.
    “What happened here?”  All of the photos from Terra show cities, lights, cars, and busy streets.  This place lies in ruins.
    “I don’t see anyone, Lækas.  We came here to talk to the Terrans. Where are they?”  My Captain seemed to ignore the destruction in front of us.
    I pulled up my suit’s motion and heat sensors and began searching.  It took a few minutes for the sensors to pinpoint the motion.  It was located about quarter of a mile up on the right.  I pointed in that general direction.
    “Sir, Lækas is correct about the primitive beliefs of this planet.  We should, perhaps, activate our chameleon