The New World: Chapter 1

Sayloria

Chapter 1

Sayloria

     The planet Sayloria was four and a half billion years old. The planet had an inner and outer core, a mantle and upper mantle and a crust. Seventy per cent of the crust was covered by land, made up of seven continents and the remaining thirty per cent covered by water made up of five oceans. The oceans separated the continents and lay independent from one another. Each had its own temperature and climate and all five continents had the ability to sustain life. Sayloria had an atmosphere with different layers including a troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere. Much of the air was found in the troposphere, which was the layer closest to the planet’s crust and made up of several gases in varying amounts including nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide and small traces of other gases.

     The planet orbited a star completing its journey in three hundred and sixty five days before starting again in a continuous cycle. The planet rotated on its axis taking twenty-four hours to do so and had a magnetic field created by the molten layers of rock and metal within the planet’s inner layers and a gravitational force, which drew objects towards the ground. It had an equator that ran equidistant from the north and south poles and was twenty four thousand nine hundred and one miles long and seventy eight per cent fell upon land and twenty two per cent on water.

     The planet had a moon orbiting at a distance of four hundred thousand miles, close enough to have a gravitational effect on the bodies of water on the planet but too far to have an effect on the rocks and soil. Sayloria was one of nine planets that orbited the star and one of four terrestrial planets that orbited closest the sun with the five larger planets made of gas, further out into space.

     The planet was home to millions of different forms of life. Creatures of different shapes and sizes lived in the oceans and land and there were airborne species that lived in the tropospheric layer of the atmosphere within the flora. The most intelligent and dominant life form that had shaped this planet was a bipedal called a Saylorian. The Saylorian was the only creature on the planet that had become aware of an emerging threat that would be catastrophic to them and their planet.

Historians on the planet could not recall a period in their past where they faced peril such as the one presented to the current generation. The brightest and best minds on the five continents independently arrived at the same conclusion. The threat was not terrestrial and did not come in the form of a natural event such as an ocean tsunami, tornado or fire. And nor did it come in the form of an air borne disease that spread from one Saylorian to the next, or in the form of infection from cross contamination, but from an external event occurring three hundred million miles from their planet. Their sun, which for billions of years had bathed their planet with photons and had given life to Sayloria, had begun an inexorable demise.

     Their sun was made of several layers. At the centre was a core, which was full of hydrogen. Over billions of years, through the fusion of hydrogen into helium atoms, the hydrogen had depleted and the core contracted. This had raised the temperature inside the core. The outer layer, which still had hydrogen continued to fuse, but as the temperature inside the core increased the star began to increase in size. The increase in temperature caused helium atoms to fuse into carbon atoms, which reduced the temperature within the core. However, the outer layer continued to expand and began to eject material, which would form a planetary nebula. In the years to follow, the temperature would cool further to form a white dwarf and then a black dwarf. The star would no longer bathe the planets in its solar system with light and furthermore would consume the nearest planet and pose a threat to the second orbiting planet, Sayloria and the trillions of creatures that inhabited its oceans and land.

     Having never had the present danger in their history, the Saylorians could only speculate as to the events that would unfold on their planet. Some predicted that their planet might be consumed by the red giant and their civilization would be destroyed, or the planet would survive but with the certainty that life without its star would inevitably die out, either from the heat or eventually from the cold. Either scenario painted a bleak future for the planet and all its inhabitants.

     The only solution to their peril was to relocate to another planet to live on and although they were an advanced civilisation and they had millions of years to execute their plan, it would not be easy. New technology would be needed and ships to carry the essentials for life to planets in galaxies beyond their own would have to be built. Explorers and cartographers analysed maps of their known galaxies and discussed where the most likely place in the vastness of space there existed a star with orbiting planets, similar in size to their own that had life, or the potential to sustain life.

The Saylorians cast their light accelerators into the depths of space and sent probes into the known galaxies and eventually came to a star with four orbiting terrestrial planets and four orbiting gas planets. Eliminating the four gas giants they sent probes onto the four inner most planets. The probes carried a number of tools, which took samples and analysed the composition of the rock, atmosphere, magnetic poles and gravity. None of the four planets showed any life. There were no bacteria, no plants and no animals, but they all showed the potential for life to be started. And so it was decided that these planets, along with 356 other planets in different galaxies would be targets for the terra former teams and their hope seeds, vessels that carried the simplest form of life that lived in Sayloria and were called extremophiles. Extremophiles could survive in physically or geochemically extreme conditions and were the first organisms to thrive on Sayloria.

     For millennia the brightest among the Saylorians had unravelled the mysteries of their planets and had comprehended, understood and mastered the elements available to them in such a comprehensive manner that they were able to recreate the forces of gravity and magnetism on a planetary scale. Although they had not mastered the power of their star and tamed it, they had mastered the principles of its function and had piles that could self sustain the fusion of hydrogen into helium, which powered the engines on their spacecraft. This knowledge and technology would be used to send small un-Saylorianed ships to the desired destinations.

     Day after day, week after week and month after month, hope seed after hope seed was launched from the planet Sayloria to the three hundred and sixty targeted planets. The first wave of three hundred and sixty five would descend to a kilometre above the ground and orbit the planet distributing phials of extremophiles on its journey. If the microorganisms survived and life detected another larger ship carrying the necessary quantities needed to populate the planet would be sent to start the second stage.

     As more and more information was relayed and received they became more and more disheartened as planet after planet failed to give birth to the seeds that had been sent. As despondency grew, they cast their eyes to the sun, which had grown in size and loomed large upon the horizon with the dawn and dusk increasing in time as each year passed. Soon the innermost planet would be engulfed in the corona of their sun. As time elapsed and more uninhabitable planets were crossed off their target list a breakthrough occurred.

     Five planets had born life. They were from the first hope seeds to have been launched and were those whose journey was the longest and most arduous. The first had travelled for over two thousand years. It had travelled solitarily but had arrived and disposed across its targeted planet the extremophiles, which had survived and were being sustained by chemicals and nutrients within the crust and gasses in the atmosphere. The four other hope seeds had travelled a thousand years as a quartet and had then individually travelled to four terrestrial planets in another system. The second stage of the Saylorian’s plan could now be put into action.