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(Page 2 of 2) Survey by john walker
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Jiya took some more scans and reported on her findings to Ortieth.
"Sir, I have confirmation of a stage 2 civilisation, there is no evidence of stage 3, so it looks as if they did not get to that point".
"Ok, so what do we have?"
"It looks as if the planet has been devastated by armaments, there's no life signs left, but we may have some remnant tech artefacts. There seems to be a major spaceport on one of the continents, which appears to be more or less intact. I recommend we take down one of the landing craft and scout the area."
"Agreed. Computer—prep the landing craft"
"Command Acknowledged. Landing craft preparation commenced."
The landing craft skimmed the atmosphere before heading in at a shallow descent towards the decaying ruins of the spaceport. Ortieth had in front of him a display which the computer had made up from the data its sensors were gathering. He had a clear vision of the spaceport as if he was gliding in on a clear day, instead of what was really around the ship. The planet was in the middle of a nuclear winter, with storms raging across the planet.
"So, Jiya. What is your opinion of what happened here?"
"Well sir, I would say that there was some sort of war, which resulted in the use of primitive thermonuclear weapons, which resulted in the devastation around us."
"It does seem that way. Any ideas to the cause?"
"Who knows sir? It could be any number of factors. What I would say though, is that it couldn't have been important enough to destroy the entire planet."
"I agree, such futility. What a waste of resources. Oh well, let's go see if we can find anything remaining."
They continued on their descent, landing in a hail of dust and debris at what looked like the main reception area of the spaceport. Ortieth opened the door of the craft and stepped into the darkness in his radiation suit, followed by Jiya and Orta.
"Jiya: situation report."
"Well sir, the radiation levels are high, but way below the tolerance levels of our suits. We will be able to stay out for about 10 hours".
They walked around to the main concourse. There were various signs around but one stood out as being the main focus of attention.
"Jiya, see if you can get a pattern recognition on these signs to try and translate them."
"Yes, sir."
A few moments passed as Jiya passed her scanning device over the various signs around the concourse.
"Sir, I have a match. There is enough dialogue here to enable translation."
"Ok, so what does that main sign say?"
There was a pause as the device swept its scanning beam across the alien characters, ran through its databanks, and spat out the translation:
"Welcome to Earth"
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