The New World: Chapter 2
New Sayloria
The resources available to the Saylorians, living on a planet where seventy per cent of the crust was above sea level, were so bountiful as to make them inexhaustible. The scale of their resources was only matched by the scale of the task at hand; the inclusion of most life on the planet Sayloria into five ships with enough fuel and food to last a journey, in one case two thousand years and in the case of the remaining four, one thousand years.
Having long since established a comprehensive understanding of their own existence and that of all the bacteria, flora and fauna on their own planet, they had invented a storage mechanism for the blueprints of all living things on their planet and the ability to bring about the existence of each one. They had managed to decode their form of life and liquefy all the atoms; molecules and proteins that were needed to artificially produce their kind in a form of a three-dimensional printout. They did not need the complete organism on board or the sustenance to keep it alive to transport it to another planet, they only needed the code of its DNA, and if the elements were on the planet they were going to, the scientists would have all the resources they needed.
The five ships fired up their hydrogen engines and slowly ascended through the troposphere, between the clouds, and eventually passed through the exosphere and into space for their individual journeys to the new worlds. Such was the scale of the five ships that after their departure the planet had lost a quarter of a per cent of its mass. The population of Sayloria had amassed to witness the spectacle and looked upwards to the skies at the five ships, which carried their hopes.
On the nine hundredth and ninetieth year of the four-spacecraft journey, they reached the furthest belt with orbiting bodies from their target star. The probes detected bodies composed of ice, methane and ammonia. As they continued their journey, another belt was reached, with an orbiting planet with thirteen moons. The next planet, composed of gas and tilted on its side had twenty-seven moons. Sixty moons orbited the next gas planet and rings made up of smaller ringlets ran round the circumference of the planet. The next planet to be passed was the largest their convoy of ships had passed. It’s brilliant red, brown and orange colours swirled and danced, and the sight of this spectacle signified their arrival to the boundary of their destination as the four planets they had targeted to land their terra forma ships lay beyond this swirling giant.
The ships began the final part of their journey and headed towards the planet closest to the star. The planet had no moons and orbited the star faster than any of the other planets. The second ship then proceeded to the second orbiting planet. This planet rotated in the opposite direction to the other planets. The third ship made its way to the third planet orbiting the star, the planet had a moon and the fourth ship had the shortest journey to travel to the planet beyond the gas giant they had passed, the planet with two moons.
The first of the ships approached the site of the hope seed that had landed several hundred years earlier, the ship that had carried the equipment to establish if life could be sustained on the planet was visible to the detectors. However, the detectors were unable able to pick up the signs of life that had seemed to promise opportunity. The surface of the planet was covered with holes made by the impact of rocks falling from space. An atmosphere was not evident on this planet and the rocks that had damaged the hope seed had also destroyed the starter colony of the extremophiles. There were no signs of life. As each ship carried just enough fuel to complete its journey and not enough to leave, it landed and would never re launch. Once landed, the automatic sequence for life was initiated, but no life took hold in this inhospitable planet closest to the star and slowly and surely everything was pulverised and obliterated by the intolerable heat and extreme cold and falling rocks.
The second of the ships descended into an atmosphere made up of carbon dioxide and nitrogen into a landscape of mountains and volcanoes. Homing in on the beacon broadcast by the hope seed it landed on an adjacent strip. Acting like insulation and stopping the heat from the sun escaping, the temperature of the planet was such that some of the metal structure on the hope seed had melted and lay warped and twisted. There were no signs of life that had taken root a millennium earlier and the ship landed and began a slow and agonising destruction due to the ferocious heat and extremely heavy atmosphere.
The third ship began its descent towards the beacon. Once it had entered the atmosphere the front of the ship began to experience severe heat until it broke through and entered the stratosphere and descended into the troposphere and landed on a flat piece of land. The temperature reading was the same as the planet they had left behind and the pressure of the atmosphere was similar as was the content of gases. The hope seed was intact with signs of life appearing on their screens.
The fourth ship had a shorter journey and landed on the surface of the red planet, close to an enormous volcano, erupting several hours after the ship landed. The hope seed was seen, but no life was evident and as the huge clouds of ash bellowed from the volcano and the lava flowed towards the hulking ship it came to a stop before melting its way into the cargo bay filled with water. Some of the water vaporised into the atmosphere, but the remainder gushed out onto the landscape like a tidal wave filling canyons and creeks before disappearing into the depths of the planet. The disastrous events that unfolded on the first, second and fourth planets were relayed back to Sayloria. The signals from the third planet were the first glimmers of hope where a small pocket of life had managed to take hold. The planet was called New Sayloria.