THE GATE

Raftos shouted orders, Predling Casso and Kimlon were to man the shuttle, Harris and packet were to Join Raftos in communications while Mick was to the switch room get ready to make a Jump.

As they watched a small screen in the communications room they could see the track of the missiles, the missiles were heading straight for LightStar. Raftos shouted through the intercom at Mick asking how long to Jump. Mick shouted a number, Packet did a mental calculation and shuck his head from side to side indicating they did not have enough time to jump. Raftos shouted through the intercom and told the Predling to launch the shuttle and try to intercept the missiles, which as they could see from the screen were closing rapidly.

Just as Raftos was giving the order to Predling to launch the shuttle a small Vissi screen over the main scanner control just in front of them flashed on, incoming message shouted Packet. A face appeared on the Vissi screen.

"Take no action do not move your ship." the words spoken by the face that appeared on the screen were crisp and sharp,

"That's the same girl." shouted Packet at the screen. "That's the girl that got me out of prison." he pressed the transmit button.

" Who are you." he called. But by the time he had got the words out the screen had gone blank.

"What now." said Harris but there was no time to answer as the whole ship began to vibrate with the thunderous sound of a Military Streaks engine. Less than half a second later a second craft followed. Packet tracked the ships as they raced passed the LightStar very close and at very high speed.

The Streaks intercepted and obliterated the missiles then moved away in the direction the missiles had come from. There was no indication on any of LightStars instruments as to where either the Military Streaks or the missiles had come from.

The Streaks were not deep space craft so must have come from a mother ship but they could see no sign of it on their screens. They tracked the Military streaks into the distance on the small screen, everyone in the communications room was silent. They saw a large image appear just in front of the Streaks, the image flared and disappeared. The streaks turned ninety degrees away from each other then boosted to top speed and simply disappeared.

" Now they're trying to kill us." said Harris.

Raftos got on the intercom. "Predling stand down, Mick are you ready to jump to the last set of chordates I gave you."

When Mick answered. Raftos simply leaned over and said quietly, when ever you are ready Mick, after a short interval they all felt a slight jar as the ship jumped to it final location just off Aganoon two.

Raftos looked at Packet and ask him how far they had gone from the last jump point. Packet understanding his meaning simply said that it would take anything, even at high speed, at least five days to catch up with them. Raftos's face relaxed a little. Raftos told Packet to set the scanners for other ships although it had not done much good last time.

The intercom crackled into life and Mick's voice came on.

" Is there something you guys aren't telling me."

Raftos, Packet and Harris met up with Mick in the food store cum galley where Mick was already tucking in. He had changed his trousers. Everyone grabbed some of their favourite food, it was comfort eating time.

A large flat screen had been set up at the end of the module so everyone could watch what the robotic telescope was seeing. The telescope was scanning down toward the large grey green planet LightStar was now in high orbit around. Raftos stared fixated by the images on the screen as the telescope showed mile after mile of desolate landscape.

Packet, also starring at the screen, ask Raftos if this really was the planet he remembered, the planet he had evacuated the Aganons to. Raftos still looking at the monitor whispered almost inaudibly as much to himself as any one else.

" Where are the snow tipped mountains, the golden cites, the beautiful emerald green seas, the clouds and the yellow sky. Where have all the people gone."

Mick suggested this was a kind of bus stop, a dropping point before moving on. Raftos dismissed that idea, he had seen the planet he had been down there, he had walked in the fields, seen the cites.

Harris proffered that he had thought it had been a bit too easy just retracing their flight path. That if the Aganons had been so careful about hiding there planet that they took the trouble to wipe every ships computer flight logs, they must have also guessed some one could retrace the flight by memory.

Mick thought they perhaps erased the crews memory as well. Raftos continued to look at the screen. Somehow Raftos had thought the LightStar would give him the edge, the key to finding the lost planet, now he did not know what to do.

After a long silence Mick put a voice to what they were all thinking

"Why were they shooting at us." he said.

" You don't often find that out." Raftos said looking away from the screen at last and facing Mick. " You just have to be thankful you're still alive enough to ask the question." Raftos stood up and stretched.

Raftos suggested six hours rest after which Raftos, Kimlon and Harris would take the shuttle and inspect that planet, it was just possible that some one might have left a forwarding address.

Packet suggested he look for a promising place to land before he turned in.

" God this stuff tastes awful." said Raftos throwing the packet of the rations down."

"Why don't you eat with your crew." said Harris. " They seem to make good cake."

"You ate the cake." said Raftos.

" It was quite nice." said Harris. " Why."

" You'll dream tonight." said Raftos. " Boy will you dream tonight."

With that happy thought in his mind Harris returned to his bunk for his six hours rest period. There were still alot of questions running around in his mind, but with all the days events and the final attack Harris was sure nothing was going to stop him going to sleep.

When the shuttle landed they found themselves in a blue green landscape. The surface of the planet was covered with a soft moss type growth that was ankle deep and made walking quite an effort. There were no signs sign of life anywhere just soft rolling hills and this strange moss. They had landed on a small hill looking over a valley where they had observed a collection of strange objects. They could see these objects from where they had landed and started to walk towards them. As they got closer they found the objects were cylinder like objects with flat tops and a series of mounds twice the height of a man, all covered with this moss like substance. They walked all round the objects, there was no indication of what the objects were.

Harris walked round one of the mounds, then shouted to the others. There was a large door at the rear of the mound. The door was perfectly flat, grey in colour and had a square marked out in a thick red line in the centre of the door. Apart from this marking there was nothing else on the door. Cautiously Harris went up to the door and touched the centre of the red square. With a motorised werring sound the door slid sideways. Harris entered, inside was a perfectly round room with a spiral staircase in the centre leading downward. Harris went to the staircase followed by the others, as he approached lights flickered on in the passage below. The staircase wound down a long way. Harris started down the stairs. Eventually he came to a large round room with doors leading off in all directions. Harris picked a door and went through, this lead into another round room with doors leading off. This was a bit disconcerting, leaving the door behind him open so he could see the spiral staircase Harris picked a door and opened it. This opened onto a small round room with mirrors and wash basins, it was a wash room. Odd thought Harris then went to another door. This opened onto another round room, this room had a large round table in the centre of it, there was something odd about the table. Harris went over to it, as he reached the edge he realised the table had a large hole in the centre, not just a hole but a large shaft that went down into the ground. Harris leaned over to look down into the shaft it seemed to go down for ever into the darkness. There was a small lantern on the edge of the table, Harris threw it down the shaft, he could see the sides of the shaft as the light went down and down disappearing into the empty blackness. Suddenly there was a rumbling like an earth quake, everything in the room began to shake, pieces the ceiling began to break up and fall, the shaking got worse and worse,........

Everything was shaking violently the whole place seemed as if it would explode. The shaking continued to get worse, yet it seemed to be coming form Harris's lift arm. Harris opened his eyes.

Kimlon was standing at the side of Harris's bunk shaking his arm.

"Time to get up" said Kimlon, Harris looked round. Harris sat up in his bunk, bang, again he bumped his head again on the bulkhead over the bunk. Harris flopped back on his bunk as Kimlon disappeared down the passage. He had been dreaming, but what a dream, Harris had never dreamt like that before, it was all so vivid. Harris lent forward and swung down from his bunk stretching and trying to shake the sleep from his head. He a pulled out a wash wipe from a small container clipped in a rack by his bunk. He rubbed the cloth over his face, the tingling freshness made him feel a little better. Harris decided to go and get something to eat and drink so he headed off to the food locker area, to get there from his bunk Harris had to go through the control centre. As he pushed the door open Harris saw Raftos sitting at the table slumped over the star charts, obviously asleep. Harris went over to him and shuck him. Raftos did not respond. Harris shuck him harder Raftos's his head flipped over sideways, for a moment Harris thought Raftos was dead, then he smelt the whisky. There were two empty whisky bottles on the table and a broken glass on the floor. Harris lifted his head and felt for a pulse, that was strong and he was breathing heavily. Rather disgusted Harris slammed Raftos's head down on the table. Harris went off to get some breakfast.

In the food store Harris met Kimlon and told him about finding Raftos drunk. Kimlon said that they would still go down to the planet but they would take Packet. Harris was not very happy.

Harris held his breath as the shuttle touched down on the surface of the planet. It did not sink into soft ground as in his dream, it landed on firm rock. The atmosphere was good so they did not need space suites. Standing by the open hatch they looked around. They had landed near one of the more interesting features of the surface, which did not say alot for the rest of the planet. The landscape was mostly greeny brown with no sharp features at all, just gentle rolling slopes wide plains. The feature they had landed near was one of the few object that broke the smoothness of the planet. They could not seen any detail on the objects so decided to walk toward the area. Before they set off Kimlon opened a locker just inside the door of the shuttle and took out an object and handed it to Harris, Harris took it, Kimlon offered one to Packet who put up his hands up saying he would not know how to use one. Kimlon pulled out a strap and threw the object over his shoulder, Harris did the same. Although Harris had never fired a disrupter he knew how to.

The ground was not as solid as they had first thought, it was covered with a kind of moss. This moss covered everything and if you pulled at it there were no roots to speak of, it simply sat on a hard dense rock. When touched the moss gave a pungent acidic smell. The moss even covered the objects they had landed near. These they had thought when landed may be signs of an old buildings but up close to the objects were far from regular, just large piece's of the same rock. They pulled some of the moss off but found nothing. Suddenly Harris saw something that almost stopped his heart beating.

Not far away from the rock was a small gentle sloping mound just like the one in the dream.

"If there is a door in the other side of that." said Harris." I'm going to scream."

They made there way over to the mound, it was just a mound, no doors nothing. They climbed on top of it, at the top there was a circular object about the size of a dustbin lid, covered with the moss. It was only the width of a hand high, just high enough to see its outline, as if some one had put it there. They scraped the moss from its surface. It was not an object as mush as a rased core, as if the mound had been worn away around it. Its flat top had some marking, but nothing recognisable, they could have been caused by the wind or the etching of the moss.

Suddenly as they were examining the rock Harris felt faint and sank to his knees he started to fall forward and had to put out his arm to stop himself falling flat onto the rock.

"Damnation." shouted Kimlon. "How stupid can you get, Packet grab his other arm and pull him away from where we have cut the moss."

They pulled Harris away and he began to recover slightly.

" It's the moss." said Kimlon." I gives off a narcotic gas we've go to get away from here as fast as we can."

Travelling as fast as they could the three made their way back to the shuttle. All three were struggling for breath by the time they made it inside. Kimlon opened a hatch and passed out oxygen masks. The three of them slumped on the shuttle floor for quite a while breathing heavily into the masks. Kimlon then took the controls of the shuttle and with great difficulty managed to get the shuttle away from the extremely strong pull of the planet and into low orbit.

The three put on emergency space suites and Kimlon purged the shuttle of the air from the planet, then re pressurised the ship and they removed the space suites.

"What was that." said Harris still not feeling at all well.

Kimlon apologised saying it was not till Harris had fallen ill that he had remembered where he had come across that pungent acidic smell before. He had come across that moss many years ago on a planet in the Gerrifon system. He was a young cadet in a survey squadron, they were setting up a survey camp when it started to rain, if the moss gets wet or is disturbed it gives of this narcotic gas.

Over seventy five were killed, Kimlon only survived because he and a few others were close enough to there scuttle to get inside and don protective suites. It was so long ago Kimlon had almost forgotten about the incident.

When the shuttle arrive back at LightStar Raftos was awake and in a bad mood, he had a headache and a large bump on his forehead where Harris had slammed his head down on the table. Harris kept quiet about that, it served him right for getting drunk.

Kimlon instructed Packet to select a new place to jump, it did not matter where but away from where they were. He told Mick to jump as soon as possible. Meanwhile Raftos was moaning and following Kimlon about asking what they had found. Eventually Kimlon turned on Raftos and said that they had not found the Old Aganoon but they did have to get out of there fast and Raftos should shut up.

LightStar sat motionless a billion miles away from her last position. The space around them was so empty it was almost as it had been swept clean. Packet had chosen this position for that very reason, setting to scanners to general scan, no one could creep up on them unnoticed here, even something with a blanking device.

Raftos slightly more sober, Harris, Mick, Packet and Kimlon were sitting around the table in the command centre. There were a few more computers in there now and Harris was sitting in front of one of them.

Kimlon started to explain the rush from the little planet. Kimlon was a young boy just starting out as a space cadet, it was all a very long time ago, some hundred and seventy years in fact, he was a junior in a survey ship moving in the north part of the fifth sector.

They had found this strange featureless planet that had air and vegetation so they had put a survey party onto the surface to do a detailed inspection. The standard procedure was followed, a small group went down to check it out then a larger party followed to set up a survey camp.

Kimlon being a junior was assigned to humping equipment and stores out of the landing craft shuttle, stacking them ready for transport to the camp site. Everything was proceeding well until it started to get misty then it started to rain, suddenly people were falling down everywhere. Kimlon and a few others near the landing craft started having difficulty breathing so rushed into the ship and put on space suites. This saved them, outside they could only watch as the landing party suffocated. As quickly as they could they went out in their space suites to look for survivors, there weren't any. They were ordered to abandon everything and return to the orbiting mother ship, with some difficulty managed to take off and rendezvous with their mother ship. This was one of three in the small survey fleet orbiting around the strange planet.

The survey was abandoned and the lead ship with fired its engines to leave orbit, fifteen and a third seconds later the supply ship with Kimlon on board fired its engine to follow. As it did so the lead ship exploded directly in front of them. All the pilot could do to avoid smashing into the exploding ship was to use full boost and rise above the explosion, the explosion in fact propelled the supply vessel rapidly out of orbit, although under almost no control and damaged it was hurled deep into space. As the ship moved away another explosion was seen as the third ship tried to leave orbit. Several hundred good men had been killed.

The supply ship mostly filled with cadets eventually made it back to base and no rescue attempt was ever made. No one ever went back to that part of the galaxy. As is the way of youth Kimlon's career in space moved on he had eventually forgotten about the incident, having been through many wars and seen many men die, it was just another memory. He had only recalled the event now while on the planets surface when he saw Harris collapse. On that original mission he had not been on the surface long enough to take any interest in the vegetation, it was only the smell that seemed familiar.

"You think that planet we have just visited was the same one." ask Packet.

" Definitely not." said Kimlon. " I was a similar shape and size but in the wrong place."

"Unless it's moved." said Mick.

"Any conclusion why the ships exploded." ask Raftos." This is the first time you've told me this story, do you think the planet shot at you."

" The best guess was that the gas which killed the landing party was highly flammable, it leached to the upper atmosphere, when the engines were ignited it simply exploded around the ship." said Kimlon. " Our ship was saved by being so close to the other one."

" Why did our ship not explode." said Packet.

" Our motive power does not eject any flammable products." said Mick.

" And we did not hit a rain storm." said Kimlon. " We only disturbed the vegetation a little giving off a small quantity of gas."

" Why would two planets so far apart have the same toxic vegetation." said Raftos

" Protection." said Harris who was still sitting playing with the computer.

While the others had all been talking Harris had pieced together all the images they had taken though the telescope when orbiting the planet. Harris had a display of the rotating blue green planet on the computer screen. Harris then turned the image into a contour map of the surface. The image continued to rotate as Harris separated the image into two halves. Like two halves of an orange top and bottom, the two halves continued to rotate, he then separated the two halves into quarters, then separated the quarters. Suddenly as everyone watched this process on the computer screen, they realised something very odd happening. Each segment of the planet had a mound and a group of standing rocks, each right in the centre of its segment.

"Now that." said Harris. "Did not happen by chance. Someone has constructed or reshaped that planet to a distinct pattern, and one must suppose for a purpose. That vegetation is a way of stopping people looking too hard at the surface."

" A very effective way." said Raftos.

" These numbers at the top left of the screen." said Mick. " What do they indicate."

" The circumference of the planet and gravitational pull at the surface." replied Harris.

" That is spooky." said Mick. " Both are exactly in ratio to the size of this ship by ten to the power ten. That gravity is also too high for the size of the planet."

"That would explain why we struggled to take off." said Kimlon.

" Lets suppose." said Mick who seemed to be working something out very slowly. " If this Aganoon civilisation is as old as we are led to believe. It is quite possible, in fact quite likely, that they discovered the principles of seller jump along time before I ever thought of it. A long time before I was ever thought of even."

Mick started drawing lines in pencil on one of the star charts.

" If they wrapped the jump coils around a small planet." Mick drew lines travelling around a small sphere. " They might be jumping in a different way, using static coils to hurl a nearby ship to a new point in the galaxy. The people on the ship might never know it has happened."

" The other planet we came across." added Kimlon." Would be to throw the ship back again."

"The crew would not have to know about the jump, the instruments would register the new position." said Packet." But clean out the computer memory and you could not find them."

" So they must be near that other planet." said Raftos.

" There could be hundreds of those planets scattered throughout the sector." said Harris." They are small uninteresting and dangerous, no one would pay them much attention."

" There is one thing." said Raftos rather brightly. " I was right about the LightStar. It is the only ship that can find the old Aganoon."