The Purple Planet

“So what if it’s yellow?” Gordon snapped. “Plenty of planets are yellow.”

“Yeah, but the last one was pink.”

The crew stood on the deck of the Chanticleer, looking down at the offending object. It was marginally bigger than Earth and covered head-to-toe in a bright yellow… something.

“Mars used to be red,” Gordon grumbled.

“I thought only gas giants were yellow,” Collins said. “This is clearly just rock.”

“Probably rich in sulfur.”

“That’s a lot of sulfur,” Phoebe said, doubtfully. “I’d bet anything this was terraformed.”

“Oh come on, do you know how much energy that would take? This system is completely devoid of spacecraft.”

Collins peered thoughtfully into space. “It’s theoretically possible. You could induce a chemical reaction, or genetically engineer a super-expansive bacteria. Let’s check out the next one.”

Minutes later, they floated above a new world.

Gordon crossed his arms. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“Ooh, it’s pretty,” Phoebe said.

It was covered in a rich green. The coating was smooth and even, except for the bright blue splotches across its surface.

“I know what this is,” she said. “They fix up a planet to look exotic and sell space station apartments at a premium. Oldest trick in the galaxy.”

“Then where did everybody go?” Collins asked.

The dead rock floated in a milky void.

Gordon turned to the controls. “Let’s move on.”

The Chanticleer came to rest over another body.

Collins scratched his chin. “Purple?”

Gordon rolled his eyes. “Ugh. Why not?”

“Let’s go in,” Phoebe said with a manic grin. “I want to see one of these painted worlds up close.”

Fidgeting with a hole in his shirt, Collins shook his head. “I don’t know, I really don’t like this.”

“I’m with Phoebe,” Gordon said. “We should see what’s going on here.”

“Well, if you say so.”

The spaceship skimmed over strange mountains. The land was rocky, barren, and very purple.

Phoebe gasped. “Whoa, is that…?”

Spiny metal rods protruded from the ground like the ribcage of a rotting carcass. Whatever preceded the wreckage would have dwarfed the Chanticleer. It was burnt by fires long since extinguished.

“Did someone crash land?” Phoebe wondered.

“I don’t think so,” Gordon said. “Looks more like a space station.”

Her eyes lit up. “Well, someone was definitely here. Let’s record this position and keep searching.”

The hole in Collins’ shirt grew wider. “I don’t like this…”

“Just save the coordinates.”

They rocketed over the land with new purpose, scanning the purple backdrop.

Finally, “There!” Phoebe exclaimed. The ship flew to the ground.

Spacesuits were passed around as Collins peeked outside.

“Are you guys sure about this?” he asked.

“Grow a spine,” Gordon sneered. “That was a doorway if I’ve ever seen one.”

Phoebe slapped the nervous man on the back, causing him to jump. “Yeah, come on Collins. Have you ever seen anything like this in your life?”

He whimpered, but fastened his helmet with a snap.

One by one, they stepped onto the alien landscape. Rocks crunched underfoot. A quick scrape by Collins showed the coloration went deeper than the surface.

His voice crackled over the comms. “This is so odd. I almost expected it to be painted on.”

“No,” Gordon said. “That is odd.” He pointed to the structure in front of them.

It rose from the rocks like a hut. A large doorway led deep underground.

“Looks like visitors are welcome,” Phoebe said. “Everyone got a flashlight? Good, let’s go.”

The passageway swallowed them. The descending tunnel turned in the shape of a corkscrew.

Phoebe brushed the dark stone. “Look at these walls. Perfectly constructed, not even a crack. Whoever did this was very advanced.”

“Of course they were,” Gordon said. “They turned the whole goddamn planet purple.”

“Wait, I see something.”

A blue glow was coming from around the corner. The group clicked off their flashlights and walked a little bit further.

“Wow!” Phoebe dropped her flashlight as they stepped into a massive chamber.

They stood on a platform near the ceiling, overlooking a drop hundreds of feet tall. The opposite wall was a distant haze. The Chanticleer could have comfortably flown through the cavern were it not for the building-sized pillars spread throughout the space. They were tall, rectangular, and emitted a mysterious blue glow from veins running down their sides.

Phoebe pointed. “Look at those tunnels.” There was one in each wall of the square room, reaching halfway to the roof.

“They must extend for miles,” Collins said. “Who built all of this?

“Hey, what’s this button do?” Gordon reached down and pressed a switch in the floor of the platform. It snapped into the stone.

“Whoa, don’t touch anything!” Collins exclaimed, but the platform, which turned out to be a lift, was already carrying the three crew mates to the floor below.

Phoebe knelt over the edge, peering underneath. “What’s holding this thing up? We’re not even attached to the wall.”

“Never mind that,” Gordon said. “Look down there.”

It seemed this planet was inhabited. Small figures populated the ground floor, moving about their business. As they came closer, their shapes came into focus.

They looked a little like small bears. Well, the ears were there, at least. They stood upright, half the height of an average human. They had no arms or legs, like life-sized chess pieces.

Phoebe gushed. “How cute.”

The platform settled to a stop. Several beings turned to look at the visitors. Squarely in the center of their metallic faces, each had a glowing blue eye.

“Oh, they’re robots,” Collins remarked.

One came forward. It glided across the floor.

Phoebe stepped back. “Um, hi.”

It replied with a series of chortles that sounded a little like what was supposed to be language.

“Alright…” She looked to her companions. “I mean, they seem friendly.”

Another chortle. The robot whipped around and headed toward the center of the room. A dozen of its brethren followed suit.

“I think they’re trying to lead us somewhere,” Phoebe said.

They trailed behind the swarm of figures.

Collins gaped at the scene around them. “There must be hundreds of these things.”

“Hundreds,” Gordon scoffed. “Try thousands. Look at those tunnels.”

He was right. The tunnels were stuffed with androids moving in either direction.

“There could be rooms like this across the whole planet.”

“Yeah,” Phoebe said, ominously. “Or maybe all the planets.”

Androids surrounded them on all sides. Spindly arms unfolded from their bodies. Many were cleaning. Others hooked into open hatches on the pillars, as if doing maintenance.

“You don’t think these pillars are computers, do you?” Collins asked.

Phoebe sniffed. “Kinda big for computers. They’re probably power generators. Something’s gotta keep these critters running.”

The procession stopped before a step pyramid. It was about a dozen feet tall, made up of small, climbable levels.

“What’s all this?” Gordon asked.

As if to answer him, four holograms activated around the structure. Each was a large screen projected from a side of the pyramid. They played a recording.

Two aliens spoke with one another on screen. The shape of their ears was the only thing remotely bear-like about them. Their texture seemed to be a blueish-gray cross between scales and elephant skin. They had two eyes and spoke using what might generously be called mouths. Their bodies were remarkably human-shaped, except for the unsettling joint placement.

“That’s not how I pictured them…” Phoebe said.

Gordon pointed to the material wrapped around the creatures’ hips. “What’s with the leotards?”

“I’ve seen weirder clothing on aliens,” she commented.

The screens displayed a series of videos, depicting the culture, life, and history of the species. They sang, wrote literature, painted, and spread throughout the solar system.

“I think we’re watching an obituary,” Gordon said.

Collins shook his head in disbelief. “What on Earth have we stumbled into?”

The technology was getting advanced. Spaceships banded together by the moon of a large planet. They shot powerful beams at the satellite, combining their energy to slowly move the celestial body.

“I don’t believe it,” Collins said, breathlessly. “That’s advanced gravity manipulation. What kind of species was this?”

“Some species,” Gordon chuckled. “They had cheap gravity tricks but couldn’t figure out interstellar travel? Ow!”

“Shut up,” Phoebe said, shaking out her fist.

He rubbed his shoulder. “That hurt…”

“Wait guys, somethings happening,” Collins said.

The images had switched to a microscopic view of bacteria.

“That’s weird,” Phoebe said. “Why would they show that?”

The bacteria shrunk to a small circle on the screen and entered a representation of an alien.

“Are they trying to tell us a disease wiped out their whole species?” Collins asked. “How could that happen?”

The alien was depicted giving birth. Its child grew to adulthood, then had a child of its own. A third child was born. The final figure keeled over dead.

Phoebe gasped. “My god. A plague laid dormant for three generations. It must have spread to the entire species before it was detected.”

Collin’s eyes widened. “Is that possible?”

The recordings continued. Chambers were constructed across the solar system, filled with glowing pillars and androids. A still from space showed a half-pink planet, the coloration spreading in jagged waves.

“I don’t get it,” Gordon said. “Why would they waste time and resources turning planets different colors?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Collins said. “It was so people like us would stop.”

The projectors shut off. A robot glided to the pyramid. Stuck an arm into the rock. Retracted it. It came up to Collins and handed him a small, round canister.

“What is that?” Phoebe asked.

Collins spoke in an awe-stricken voice. “Don’t you see? They’re giving us the legacy of their species. That’s why they built all of this. So their memory could live on.”

“Hey, where’s Gordon?”

They looked around for their companion.

“Up here guys! Check it out!”

They turned. Gordon was at the top of the pyramid, holding what looked to be a small idol.

“It’s like their god, or something,” he said.

“Gordon!” Collins cried out.

It was too late. The surrounding robots erupted into garbled shrieks. Like a wave passing through the crowd, blue eyes turned fiery red.

“Gordon, get down here!” Phoebe yelled.

He leapt down the pyramid. “What the hell are they doing?”

“Just run!”

They belted for the lift, chased by a growing number of enraged robots.

“It’s spreading,” Gordon said. One by one the red color reached more bodies.

“Run faster,” Phoebe chided him.

The wall was far away, and the chortling grew increasingly violent. The slapping of boots echoed up and down the room.

“These space suits are terrible for running,” Collins panted.

Phoebe noticed the figure still in Gordon’s hand. “Do you still have that thing? Leave it!”

“No way, can you imagine how much this is worth?”

Finally, they dove onto the platform and Phoebe stomped the button. The horde missed the rising lift be mere inches.

Collins collapsed on his back, gasping for breath. “That was too close.”

“What were they going to do to us?” Phoebe asked.

“I don’t want to think about it,” Gordon said. He looked over the edge. “Uh-oh.”

Collins poked his head out. “They can climb?”

Hundreds of robots were making their way up the wall. They slid over the surface as easily as on the ground.

Phoebe swore. “Of course they can climb. Those aliens moved a moon, this is like an eighth-grade science project.”

She turned to Gordon, grabbing at the idol. “Give me that thing!”

“No!” He held it over his head. “What are you doing?”

“That’s the reason they’re after us, dumb-ass! If we return it, they might leave us alone.”

“Stop it! They won’t catch us. We’re almost out.”

Phoebe jumped at the statue, knocking it from his grasp. It tumbled to the ground below and smashed into pieces.

“Damnit Phoebe!”

She folded her arms with a harrumph.

“They’re not stopping,” Collins said.

Under his helmet, Gordon was turning red. “Why would they, Phoebe just destroyed their deity.”

“Only because you stole it in the first place,” she shot back.

Collins waved for their attention. “We have to start running again.”

He was right. The lift was about to reach the top with the robots closely behind.

“I’m sick of running,” Gordon said. “We should have never landed on this stupid planet.”

“Oh, shut up,” Phoebe snapped.

The lift stopped, and they took off. It wasn’t long before the tunnel filled with mechanical voices.

“I forgot how long this thing was,” Collins said. He glanced over his shoulder. “C’mon, Gordon, keep up!”

The man stumbled, but kept going. “Man, they just don’t stop,” he said.

“They’re gaining on us!”

The sound was getting louder. The tunnel walls around them began to pick up fractions of red light.

Through choked breaths, Phoebe forced out: “Gordon, I swear to god when we get out of here I’m going to kill you.”

“I see daylight!” Collins announced.

The three explorers burst out of the tunnel. They stumbled onto the Chanticleer, shutting the hatch behind them. As the ship rose from the purple dust, an army of robots spilled through the doorway, invading the vacant landing site.

Each crew member leaned against the nearest support, fighting for air.

Collins tossed his helmet aside. “I can’t believe that just happened.”

“Do you still have that canister?” Phoebe asked him.

He held it up. “Yeah.”

“Well, come on,” Gordon said. “Open it.”

Collins twisted the object. It’s two halves pulled apart to reveal bundles of black-and-gold chips. “I don’t get it,” he said.

Phoebe took it from him. “They probably piled as much information in there as they could. There must be a way to read it.”

Gordon perked up. “We could sell that thing. I bet it could go for ten- or twenty-thousand, easy.”

Phoebe scoffed. “Who’ll believe us? We should donate it to a museum or something. Someone who’ll figure out how to get inside.”

“What? That’s such a waste, we almost died for that thing!”

“It’s not a waste. If we donate the canister and talk to the media about it, we’ll become famous overnight.”

“Oh.” Gordon tapped a foot thoughtfully. “Yeah, that might work.”

The pink sky gave way to outer space.

“I’ve never been so happy to see the stars,” Phoebe sighed.

“You know, there’s still one planet we haven’t seen,” Collins said. “Just because that species died out doesn’t mean their whole world did. There’s still life out here.”

Gordon groaned. “Alright, but no landing this time. I don’t feel like running any more today.”

Phoebe poked at the canister as the Chanticleer shifted course. “We should have this dated when we get back to civilization. That chamber might have been thousands of years old.”

“Really?” Collins said.

“Sure. Those robots were there to keep everything intact. I’ll bet that place will look exactly the same fifty-thousand years from now.”

“We’re coming up on the planet,” Gordon announced.

The world grew to full size in the window.

“This can’t be right,” Collins said. “Are you sure this is it?”

Gordon looked down at his screen. “This is the only planet even close to this star’s Goldilocks Zone.”

The crew inspected the dead rock. It wasn’t even colored.

Collins grasped the controls. “I’m bringing us in.”

The planet wasn’t any more alive up close. They hovered over a massive canyon, once home to a long-deceased river.

“What happened?” Gordon asked. “Was it the plague?”

“No,” Phoebe said. “No disease could do this. Collins, can you scan the sediment for organic matter degradation? That should tell us when everything died off.”

Collins pecked at his computer for a few moments. His face turned white.

Gordon leaned forward. “What is it?”

“There-” It caught in his throat. “There hasn’t been life on this planet for millions of years.”

~~~

Did you like the story? Click here to receive an email every time I post something new.