The Eudoxus traversed deep space toward the planet M3D_2A.
Three crew members were aboard: the captain, Poe; the engineer, Orliss; and the scientist, Dovzhenko. Their mission was to map M3D_2A and report to Earth on the planet’s potential for exploration, colonization and commercial exploitation.
“If Earth still exists,” said Orliss.
They’d been hibernating for thousands of Earth-years.
No contact.
They felt utterly alone.
“Earth’s inexistence wouldn’t change the mission or its parameters,” said Poe.
“It would render completion strictly impossible,” muttered Dovzhenko, raising his eyes—briefly—from the ancient Greek tragedy he was reading.
M3D_2A had been deemed “category:interest” because of two theorized characteristics, its geological make-up and the presence of over a million moons in its orbit. Small moons, yes; but moons nonetheless, and not neatly arranged in rings as around the Solar System’s own giant, Saturn.
Now as the Eudoxus made its final approach the three crew members could discern one more distinguishing feature:
A brilliant, undulating surface.
“What in the gods’ names?” asked Orliss, staring at the ship’s screen. “The surface—it looks almost alive.”
“An ocean?”
“With waves of such size? An illusion of some kind, surely,” said Dovzhenko.
As for the moons, not only did they exist in the hypothesized untold numbers, but they were hardly simple spheroids. No, they resembled things: shapes, figures—
“It’s as if they’re statues hewn from stone and placed carefully into orbit around the planet,” said Poe, filled with wonder.
“Unless my eyes deceive, some look even like spacecraft,” added Orliss.
“Spacecraft constructed of stone,” said Dovzhenko sardonically. “I think our eyes deceive us more than we wish to believe.”
Poe ordered a preliminary scan.
But when it returned readings consistent with the existence of life, the three crew members found themselves in disagreement about how to proceed. Orliss wanted to commence mapping immediately, whereas Dovzhenko suggested deviating from the mission and making planetfall to determine conclusively whether life existed. “Chances of life are already slim,” he argued, “and the chances of intelligent life—life capable of resisting us—many times slimmer. There is no appreciable danger, captain. Only opportunity.”
Poe sided with the scientist, and Dovzhenko shuttled to the surface.
Poe and Orliss watched from the Eudoxus.
Immediately upon taking his first steps on M3D_2A, Dovzhenko noted that the planet’s surface, in its billowing brilliance, was not as solid as he had expected. It was in fact made up of countless fleshy and sinuous strands, intertangled and in perpetual motion. “The surface appears organic,” he communicated to the Eudoxus.
Then the surface began to tremble. To unravel and squirm.
Dovzhenko fell.
He flailed his arms, searching desperately for stability, but there was none upon this black and sudden sea of snakes.
Fangs penetrated his spacesuit.
Aboard the Eudoxus, Poe and Orliss stared—transfixed—at the screen showing M3D_2A’s surface shifting, parting…
Drowning in a depth of serpents, Dovzehnko understood.
“Gorgo—”
But it was too late.
The planet had already revealed herself, and Poe and Orliss, and the Eudoxus itself, had been already turned to stone.