Sing to me of Earth

      It was the year 2230, and all communications with the first expedition to the planet Muse, a planet in orbit around a star adjacent to the Horse-Head Nebula, had been mysteriously lost. Ten years later, in the year 2240, four veteran astronauts, each in his sixties, had been summoned out of retirement and assigned the task to investigate. Of course, they were baffled at first, since there seemed to have been other younger and healthier and equally qualified astronauts available for the task. But eventually, those in higher authority convinced them that their experience was indispensable to the mission’s success.

     Strangely, the mission had been a top secret so there wasn’t much fanfare on the day that they embarked. When they inquired why, they were told that it was a matter of United Nation’s security. They boarded the ship, entered their chemically-induced-hibernation chambers, and regained their senses five years later, emerged from suspended animation, when the ship had finally reached its destination. Of course, they had been cautious and had meticulously scanned the area from orbit before they finally deciding to land and approach on foot. When they did, they found it exactly as the previous mission’s crew had described it.

    A rectangular windowless, crystal-surfaced, edifice stood majestically towering into the purple-clouded atmosphere while refracting the star system’s starlight into rainbow-like striations which undulated vertically along its dark, highly-polished surface. Each color was accompanied by some bell-like resonation which increased and decreased in intensity as it slowly undulated vertically in a serpentine fashion along the structure’s beveled edges. At its sand-sunken base, a bannistered, narrow, white-marbled stairway spiraled toward a triangular in a helix fashion while an emerald-glowing aperture that appeared like an entrance flickered erratically in front of its platform. Then, just as had been described, surrounding the structure, at a distance of a kilometer or so, were small, silver-colored metallic domes arranged around it like spokes fanning out from a wheel’s hub.

     “Well, just as the first-mission’s reports describe it!” Manuel Miranda, the Mission‘s captain said in a manner as casual as he could manage to convey.

    "Those damned domes all appear to be abandoned sir.” Robert Anderson, the mission’s geologist, responded in a tired and disappointed tone of voice.

   “And get this?" Anderson continued, "Our robotic nano-probes indicate that the door and the steps leading up to the structure are nothing more than holographic images of some sort. The structure’s power source remains undetected. How is that for the mother of all enigmas, Captain?"

    "Please, cut to the chase Anderson!" Captain Miranda grunted. He wasn't in the mood for long, casual, ego-serving palavers.

     "Well, whoever, or whatever built that thing was very clever. Impractical, perhaps, but clever sir. I mean, why build a structure with a fake entrance? Why all the useless whistles and bells?” Anderson added.

     “Which means that you mean they were stupid or deceitful for some reason?” Captain Miranda hated cryptics and Anderson was definitely being cryptic. Back on Earth, he could have easily tolerated such roundabout inefficiency, but here, verbal accuracy was crucial, in order to get in, get out, and go home. Yes, he was in a damn hurry. He didn’t like the way that the other expedition had disappeared and being on this planet longer than necessary made him jumpy. Why hadn’t the first expedition reported the holographics. Also, why hadn’t these now-very-visible holographics been detectable from orbit?

     Furthermore, why had the structure suddenly activated only after they had approached it on foot? Why hadn’t it done so while they were still observing it from orbit from where it could have been thoroughly examined at a safer distance?

    “The same with those domes spread out like wheel-spokes around its base sir.” Anderson continued, and interrupted Miranda’s train of worried thought. “No matter how or where or how deeply we probe, the archaeological evidence indicating a logical practical reason for all this is absent. It doesn't make any sense, sir. No artifacts such as cooking utensils or ovens, or anything else indicating habitation, nothing to show that these structures had ever been used at all - actually. As for those areas between the spokes that we had assumed were paved streets, and those that appear that way, they are just out-croppings of the crust or else a solidified lava flows perhaps brought to the surface by seismic activity." Anderson, the geologist, was a patient man, but the failure to corroborate his theories had taken him beyond his endurance and he appeared, for the first time in his career as a geologist, genuinely perturbed.

    "Shit!" he said "Lets just get the hell out of here, and get back home where things are supposed to make some sense sir!“

     “Yamamoto Sunahara, the ship’s engineer, who was quietly standing in front of one of the squat, gray abodes next to the geologist, whom he had accompanied in the archaeological investigation, appeared to be just as baffled. Both men had been uncharacteristically quiet since the landing, but Miranda had attributed it to nerves. After all, it was their first extra-solar-system expedition, and most solar-system astronauts usually felt out of their league during their first extra-solar system assignments. So why should Anderson and Sunahara be any different?

     "All this is exactly what the last expedition signaled back to Earth before we finally lost total contact with them.” Miranda uttered tensely while both men stood silently listening. Strange how their attention seemed to flicker from what he was saying back to the structure, occasionally - as if they were being repeatedly distracted. Or perhaps it was merely the residual effects of suspended animation. So he decided to shrug it off as normal.

    “Just keep your eyes peeled and your spacesuit-motion-scanners at full range." he added sternly as a precaution.

     “There’s the baby I’m interested in. The big Kahunga.” Smyslov, the American of Russian descent, who was the ship’s navigator, grunted as he joined them and pointed casually back at the structure with a gloved thumb.

     He was a big man, of placid disposition, with a broad, hairy-chest, and a massive bull-like head. Not someone one would typically identify as a scientist. Anderson, the geologist, was just the opposite, small and compact, baldheaded, quiet and reserved. He rarely spoke, but when he did, it was usually something profound - or as in this instance - disturbing. Miranda, was an all-around guy. Average of stature, athletic, pilot veteran of Earth’s Third World-War, and now captain of the rescue-expedition that had required a journey of five years in chemically induced hibernation.

     Sunahara, an American of Japanese descent, and the crew engineer, was the jokester of the group who kept things from getting too serious. Always the optimist, he had a knack for dissipating fear with an offhand joke or a witty remark.

     They had all been trained meticulously for the mission to retrieve the former expedition members either alive or dead. For that reason, the ship had been fitted with four extra hibernation units where the four rescued members could be placed for their trip back to Earth. The cost for the units had been covered by the grieving family members who had saved the money during the ten intervening years before the rescue mission was finally made ready. The rest was covered by NASA which had received an unusual amount of funding for the task. Something which the crew could make no sense of but which they ignored for the sake of expedience. After all, their duty was to go where they were told and not to worry about motives.

“Well if that’s your Kahunga, let’s go get it! “ Sunahara shouted into his helmet’s intercom.

“Go get your meat you Russian swine,” he added, with a wide, tight, grin, punctuated by several mischievous winks.

     The burly Russian celebrated his wit with a deep, resonating, Russian guffaw as usual. But this time, he suddenly stopped in mid laughter, as if something had snared his attention.

     Miranda had felt it too, a sudden irrational, inexplicable, almost overwhelming instinctive urgency to flee back to the ship and relative safety. It was all that he could do not to show it.

     “What seems to be the problem Smyslov?” Miranda said to the Russian who was staring wide eyed at the structure while fiddling frantically with his oxygen-supply-valve with index finger and thumb.

     “Nothing sir. Just a feeling.” Smyslov responded.

    “Anyone else having the same sensation?” Captain Miranda shouted into the intercom while striving to sound as confident as possible. All solemnly responded in the affirmative while looking as if they desperately wanted to break into a run back towards the ship.

     Miranda had felt it too and for a moment almost gave the order to return to the ship. Yet, he had never disobeyed orders and the expedition orders specifically required a detailed examination of the structure. Samples were to be taken, bagged, frozen and returned to Earth. If possible an unforced entry into its interior. If not then explosives or concentrated sonic energies should be used. All fine and well when ordered by men in the comfort of their planet millions of light-years away, but an entirely different matter for those who were facing the unknown in all its raw intimidating power.

     Yes, he had been prepared to carry out the mission. But somehow, he was beginning to get the impression that there was far more to this structure than met the eye. It was a feeling he had experienced once in a holographic-entertainment sequence where he was charged by a rhino and had been armed only with bow and arrow. A sense of being overwhelmingly outmatched. A strong desire to create whatever protective distance he could between himself and that charging juggernaut intent on goring him. A feeling he could now not shake off. Irrational? Perhaps. To be ignored? That was entirely another matter.

“Besides these disturbing distractions, ” Miranda hastily entered in his log, "the mission is going without a hitch. Orbital, scanning for debris: result negative. Sign of human remains undetected. Deposition of previous ship and crew unknown. Cause for detection failure-unknown. Previous civilized life forms undetected. Area habitability history-undetected.”

     Captain Miranda ended the log-entry with a deep and tired sigh. The place was a disturbing enigma and he had always detested troublesome enigmas and conundrums that involved the probable loss of human life. From orbit, they had considered all the possibilities, but one by one, they had all been rendered unfeasible. A geological catastrophe perhaps? Yet the structure and its surrounding abodes remained totally unscathed and intact. Anderson, the expedition’s geologist, had confirmed that the landing sight or the area in general had not undergone some catastrophic event such as an earthquake or a violent volcanic eruption.

     He had also found that the planet had been dead geologically for billions of years, and that only the scarred remnants of previous geological activity were evident. The fossil-records indicated the presence of both flora and fauna. And, if one were to go by the conical abodes and their wheel-spoke arrangement, even a civilization of sorts, although very strangely no fossil record of the inhabitants had been found, and the abodes themselves were totally bereft of all commodities that were usually associated with habitation. But regardless. That had been in the planet’s far distant past as the rock dating showed and all that was left was this small enclave with its neat abodes and the enigmatic central structure that seemed to beckon them on.

     “Do you feel it?” The doctor said in an uncharacteristically calm, and disturbingly mysterious voice, accompanied with a faraway look.

     “Feel what?” Miranda asked.

    “The irresistible pull?”

     “The good doctor loses his mind!” Smyslov’s voice crackled over the spacesuit helmet intercoms.

    “What is it Doctor?” Captain Miranda asked the doctor while shaking him by the shoulders in an attempt to get him to regain his senses.

   "If there’s something wrong tell us man! Tell us!"

     “It was probably nothing. Probably nothing at all.” the doctor responded while swiveling his head from side to side nervously as if expecting something dangerous to suddenly emerge from anywhere. His eyes had a wildness that Captain Miranda had only observed once before, but he couldn’t quite remember. Miranda placed a hand on the doctor’s shoulder and felt his body shuddering violently under his palm. That shivering also was somehow familiar. Then he recalled the dear hunting in the Catskills, the thunder and recoil of his rifle, followed by the furious thrashing of hooves and antlers against the underbrush. Recalled the wide tense almost frozen stare of it’s dark apprehensive eyes. How it had lain there mortally wounded and trembling under his palms. It had frozen dead in its tracks when it realized it had been cornered. The intensity of its desperate, dark eyes. It was the panicked behavior of the hunted and this was the way that doc was now behaving - like a hunted animal when in the presence of a predator.

     Instinctively Miranda felt for his holstered sonic weapon strapped to his waist and radar scanned the horizon for movement. The ship too was scanning the area in the infra red and downloading the data to the spacesuit computers which displayed the results on the left side of their faceplates. But there was only the fine-grained sand tossed about by the planet's gentle breeze.

     “It was more a feeling. Hard to describe sir.” The doc continued shaking his head from side to side as if attempting to clear it.

     “Give it a shot!” Anderson the geologist kicked in. “We are all ears here!”

     “Speak for yourself Sunahara quipped filling his faceplate with a wide oriental grin.

    “It was like the sound of distant singing!”

     “Now I know the doc is gone bananas!” Smyslov chortled.

    “What do your instruments show?” Miranda asked Anderson taking his eyes off the doctor who was still gazing about like a hunted beast.

    “Same as before sir. No significant geological activities in this area.”

    “Any fluctuations from our ship’s force protective field?”

     “None at all,” Sunahara responded. “She’s as steady as the Rock of your Catholic altar!”

     Miranda gave him a reprimanding look. He never did agree with Sunahara’s half-bantering attitude and always thought it a lack of character and discipline. He’d kept it to himself among the crew but had been chagrined at learning that one of his crew was to be a clown.

    “Did you do a physical scan on yourself doc?”

     “No abnormalities according the suit’s bio-scanner. Everything is ship shape,” the doc nervously replied.

     “Everyone else’s bio-scanner show the same?” Miranda knew this was all technically unnecessary since the suites themselves would scream bloody murder if any of the physical bio-signs dropped below acceptable parameters. But in view of the circumstances, he desperately needed to know the crew’s mental status, how they were holding up.

     “We are all here and accounted for!” Smyslov said in his deep, slow, and sluggish bear-like Russian way while he swept dust from his carbon fibered spacesuit with the palms of both gloved hands. He never had looked fit for the mission and now in the ill-fitting spacesuit, he looked and moved like a gorilla in a cramped cage. A perfect example of what political connections and the right amount of money can do, Miranda thought.

    “Then we are all set to go. We have nothing more to do here.” Miranda announced as he entered the information into his suits computer and turned to his crew.

     “The log entry will remain as it originally was. The previous crew disappeared without leaving any detectable trace and will be assumed dead. Further investigation of alien artifacts at closer range has been deemed inadvisable. ”

     Miranda lowered his helmet’s anti-glare visor to shield his eyes from the slowly setting star that was now half visible above the distant jagged mountain horizon. Then he turned toward the direction that they had come and where the ship stood behind its anti matter force field. It was merely half a kilometer away perched atop a small diamantine hill surrounded by basalt and a few shallow craters and would take them approx. ten minutes to reach. He started in its direction, but the familiar steps that had always followed as he led were now absent.

     “You mean that we won’t attempt to enter the structure?” The pleading and wavering edge of the voice made Miranda whirl about instantly and found Sunahara glaring at him through his helmet faceplate with no hint of his former jovial self.

     “Why would I order such a thing?” Miranda responded as calmly as he could.

     “How do we know they aren’t inside sir?” Sunahara giggled briefly, and then looked astonished at his own reaction. Then, as if heeding the call of some distant persistent clarion, he ignored Miranda and gazed forlornly toward the structure. Miranda ignored it. His prime concern was to get his crew back in the ship, into suspended animation via chemically induced hibernation, and home. Arguing with his subordinates, who were obviously succumbing to some mysterious undetectable force, could mean a confrontation, and confrontations could lead to lethal force. He had never lost a single member of his crew on any mission, and he wasn’t about to start now.

     “Simple,” Miranda said patiently, “because there is no entrance. You know that our scanners show it’s solid. You just heard what Sunahara said, the entrance isn't real. It's a hologram of some sort. As for the structure itself, the scientific consensus is that it’s merely an obelisk of some kind, maybe in remembrance of some indigenous deity.”

    “I think Sunahara is right captain.” Smyslov enunciated mechanically while barely moving his lips. He was sweating profusely now and breathing rapidly. He dabbed at his faceplate repeatedly with the back of one hand while readjusting the oxygen percentages with the other.

     Usually the doc would react to such an urgent display of physical discomfort, and Miranda expected it as a matter of course. But the doc, a small frail man in his late fifties, had separated himself from the others and was standing on a dune about a hundred feet closer to the structure. His white space-suited form was sharply framed against its multicolored patterns and he swayed from side to side as in a cadence with a rhythm that only he could perceive.

     “We should personally probe the structure at the least.” Sunahara continued, seemingly oblivious to the doctor's unusual behavior. Miranda forced his eyes away from the disturbing display to face Sunahara who was perspiring profusely and frantically pawing at his visor and adjusting the temperature-control settings while staring mesmerized past the doctor who was now continuing his swaying in a kneeling position.

     Then, suddenly, as if he had been maliciously targeted last, Miranda began to sense it in himself. It began with a soft buzzing sound accompanied by an irresistible persistent yearning to be physically closer to the structure, as if he were being pulled by an invisible, unbreakable tether wrapped tightly about his torso.

     The three other men had formed a semicircle before him. It seemed weird the way they were all staring past him at the structure and how the structure had suddenly intensified its prismatic colors from emerald to crimson undulating them like curtains, rising and falling in hypnotic spirals.

     “Can’t you hear it?” The doctor was deathly pale, and his thin lips were quavering uncontrollably.

     “It’s lovely!” he whispered hoarsely as if in a trance. “I never imagined…” he sobbed.

     “Yes, I can hear it too!” Smyslov yelled into his space-helmet intercom. Miranda was clearly hearing it also. It reminded him of the songs of legendary sirens by the mythical shores singing enticingly to sailors who chanced to pass their shores. As if in a trance, he could feel himself following the others as they robotically began to approach the structure’s base in single file. He desperately struggled to stop his legs but they seemed to have a mind of their own. Every musical note seemed as if a command which their brains helplessly obeyed. Soon, the great structure loomed featureless, towering into the alien red-clouded skies, black dunes fanning out like a skirt from its borders.

     Miranda felt himself stumble and fall face-first onto the sand, but was immediately wrenched violently to his feet again like a marionette. He watched helplessly as Smyslov, still bellowing in protest, was ascending the undulating basaltic sands toward the structure’s quivering base. Its former metallic appearance had suddenly assumed spotted, organic, and sponge-like texture. The Russian wavered stubbornly for a moment as if in a life or death struggle - his massive back muscles working in spasms, and his pillar-like legs striving to anchor themselves in the black sand. Then, as if he had been drained of all energy, his body went limp and lurched violently forward at the waist, and disappeared into the heaving mass of gelatinous surface that the structure had now assumed.

     Sunahara was next to go. He had been reaching for his sonic weapon, his arm quavering with effort just centimeters from the holster. For a few agonizing seconds, it seemed he would mange to reach it, then he suddenly glanced back, mouth in a ghastly scream of terror, the once jovial countenance disfigured by fear, eyes pleading like those of a pet dog begging for a scrap, and then he too was gone.

    The doctor had managed to edge away and was almost at the dune’s ridge which separated the structure from the abodes. That’s when Miranda saw it. With a quivering frenzy, two abodes nearest to the doctor divested themselves of their metallic appearance and sprouted thick, snake-like yellow tendrils which serpentined across the doctor’s path and blocked his way. Then the doctor raised his hands to his helmet, his head shaking violently from side to side and his arms flailing and gloved hands making clawing gestures.

     Anderson, who had been able to resist the structure’s mesmerizing effects, appeared suddenly at the doctor’s side, drew his sonic blaster and aimed it at one of the transformed abodes. Miranda saw him pull the trigger and saw the weapon disgorge its deadly sonic beam, and then witnessed its beam reflected back to its source. Then he heard the deafening blast that scattered Anderson’s whole dismembered body across the sands as his weapon exploded.

     Then it was his turn. Miranda had been fighting desperately to un-holster his weapon, but as he did the human female voice-like songs intensified rhythmically and in volume and the structure’s light shifted from emerald to scarlet. They were no longer the placid beautiful patterns. Now they ascended and descended in strident gyrations that rimmed the structure’s beveled sides with an intense bioluminescent crimson light. Simultaneously, Miranda’s arms became limp at his side, and his once hesitant and faltering steps became steady, steadier than they had ever been in his entire life. No longer did he foolishly wish to desperately resist the melodic insistent throbbing or the persistent primordial ululations, nor the deeply resonating animalistic growl that had previously sent a quaver of intense dread through every fiber of his being.

     Then briefly, just before the total darkness of death set in, he saw it, the great maw lined with glistening white saber like teeth and the tentacles that had been cunningly hidden beneath the planet’s sands snaking out like monstrous anacondas, slowly encircling him in the fathomless darkness, drawing him slowly toward it as it disgorged its enticing melodies of ravenous hunger.

     Finally, as suddenly as it had started, all was once more totally silent. Having satiated itself, the predatory creature that had cunningly employed the structures as lures, gradually withdrew them into its underground lair. Then, on what had once appeared to be the remnants of an ancient civilization, only the wind-tossed sand on a vast featureless plain swirled relentlessly about a lone ship that was gradually and slowly being absorbed into the surrounding dunes.

     Although the crew had been lost along with the ship, back on Earth, the mission had been pronounced a resounding success. Ten more years of peace had been established because warlike humanoid Musian Ambassadors to Earth had finally been pacified. Their animal god had been fed living human meat as they had furiously demanded, and Earth governments would not feel forced to offer another for the next ten years.