Worlds Apart

"Don’t you dare! You will need the power that you have for landing. I will be all right, dear. Honest, I will." There was a short pause then she asked, "What is the planet like?"

"Just like Earth", I replied. The scanner had given me that news at least.

"Then, I will see you when we have landed. Take care of yourself and Arnie, because I will miss both of you if you don’t."

"I will," I promised. Then I added, "And care yourself."

For the first time in days, everything worked properly. On the lifeboat’s display there was a clear view all round: Maria’s pod, the planet, that damned moon, the hulk that had been the "Golden Adventurer", even some space junk. Behind me, Arnie stood there softly whistling to itself and thinking about whatever bots think about when they have no work to do. Once I had turned the lifeboat towards the planet, I let the automatics took over. It was a chance to take well-earned forty winks. I rolled over on my couch and slowly drifted away....

Arnie’s warbling awoke me from my slumber. I hoped that it had a good reason or a particular astrobot was going to be turned into spittoons. At first, I could not see the reason for its alarm. Admittedly, the lifeboat was losing power faster than anticipated, but there was sufficient to run all the systems and still have enough to land with. Everything else looked fine.

The problem turned out to be the scanner, or should I say, what the scanner was showing. What I saw was nothing less than catastrophic. Maria’s escape pod was no longer matching the same course as my lifeboat. And it was nothing to do with it aiming for a point on the planet. No, its auto pilot had locked on to the moon and steering the pod in that direction.

At the sight of that, I went ballistic. I literally tried to seize control of the lifeboat by hitting every panel and button that I find, but to no avail. The automatics cut me out completely. An icy, mechanical voice ordered all passengers to strap down so that they would not injured on touch down. In my grief, I shut it out. My eyes were fixed on the scanner display, the rest of my senses dead to the world.

Then, the lifeboat swung round the planet and the blip that was my life slipped off the screen. In spite of that, I continued to battle with the controls in the hope of hijacking it. I was still fighting when it hit the ground.

The next thing that I can remember is lying on the floor of the cabin, my head still reeling from a blow taken during landing. Arnie was standing over me. On seeing me move it warbled to ask me if I was OK. I was, but I did not reply. Instead, I hopped back into the pilot’s seat and prepared to take the craft back into space. However, the thrusters did not fire and when I took the trouble to investigate, I saw that the batteries were completely drained. In anguish, I smashed my fist down on the controls. My wife’s language on learning about the moon had been bad. Mine was even worse. It would have stripped the paint off the bulkheads had there been any.

In the end, I went outside to cool down and take a look around. The lifeboat had landed in a valley, marking its trail with a line of burnt vegetation. What plants had survived vaguely resembled bracken interspersed with a few bushes of gorse and some large cacti. Ahead of me were a couple of peaks and when I turned to gaze in the opposite direction, I could see that the valley curved down onto a plain. To get a better view of my new home I set out to climb one slope.