Ryan Taylor awakens from hibernation to a mystery that he, along with his crew, must solve in order to continue their mission. How they solve it and what they find is astounding.
We achieved orbit around an Earth-like moon orbiting a gas giant in the habitable zone of a K-class star. The moon orbited out of the plane of the ecliptic, which was an indication that it was captured early in this system's formation.
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"This moon is definitely habitable," Sharon said. "It must have a pretty good magnetic field in order to resist the gas giant's hissy fits."
"I think this might have been the alien's home world," Janet said. "I see several large city complexes on the main continent."
"Any activity?"
"That's the interesting point. There seems to be none."
"I don't understand this. Why are humans on the planet we just visited if this is the alien home planet?"
"Guys! The saucer is on the ground," Sharon said, pointing at the image of the surface on the main screen.
"That's the saucer we saw in orbit around the planet. Obviously, it decided to return home."
"I'm not detecting any infrared signals in the saucer," Sharon said. "It's inactive."
"What are we going to do?" Natale asked.
"We'll have to go down there and see what's going on, but we're going armed just in case."
I didn't elaborate on what the case would be.
We boarded the shuttle and flew down to the moon's surface. We were astonished by the beauty of the moon framed by a Saturn-like gas giant. It would be considered a spectacular sightseer location.
I sat the shuttle down in an open area near one of the large cities, the one where the saucer was located near. The weather on the moon was almost ideal. It had the proper oxygen concentration and was near one atmosphere pressure. Much of the vegetation appeared to be similar to what used to be on Earth.
As we walked toward the city, we were met by a young human male dressed in conventional Earth-like clothing.
"Hi!" He said, raising his right hand, palm out. "I assume you came here to find humans."
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