Pristine Earth Sinister Planet: Mark Noble Space Adventure, #6

By Tony Harmsworth

PRISTINE EARTH SINISTER PLANET

Again, two great stories in a single volume.

Firstly, Mark and the team return to the Pristine Earth that they discovered at the end of their Trappist-1 adventure, only this time they are fully prepared, with researchers, scientists and a military contingent for emergencies.

They are surprised to find no humans on the planet, the closest relatives being chimpanzees and gorillas. As the exploration continues, an entire group of scientists suddenly vanishes. The alarm is raised and Mark, accompanied by the military sets out to investigate. They, too, unexpectedly vanish without trace. Something or someone is kidnapping the people from Earth. Who, or what, is the enemy? This is the shorter of the two stories and it moves on to a surprising conclusion.

In the main story, Sinister Planet, another team is 500 lightyears from Earth at Kepler 186F, also known as Pangu. Mark's geology buddy, Roy Williams is leading the expedition. The planet has a massive amount of civilisation infrastructure, but the explorers cannot find any people. Did they die out? Did they leave? The buildings and roads are all deteriorating as if abandoned for decades. When Roy's team decide to return to orbit, the engines refuse to fire. Some unknown force seems to be stopping their escape.

It becomes even more sinister when they are joined by astronautic engineers who can get the tank engines to fire, but not when attached to the Rimor (shuttle). Strangely, the whole stack can be fired, but not if there are any astronauts on board. How can this be? The force is strangely targeting the humans. There are now seven astronauts on the surface with no way to return to orbit or to home.

The sole remaining crew member of the Orion, Carol Appin, returns to the solar system to bring the news to NASA. Mark's team are tasked with solving the mystery. If they fail, they'll be permanently marooned on Pangu.

PRISTINE EARTH SINISTER PLANET includes all the familiar characters, Mark, Anna, Tosh, Mary, Bill, Chi and Roy on their frightening mission. Enjoy this latest example of Tony Harmsworth's brand of science fiction and discover how other planets might have encountered similar problems to our own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Harmsworth
• Release date: May 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224350735

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A book cover of a planet Description automatically generated

Pristine Earth Sinister Planet

Mark Noble Space Adventure 6

Tony Harmsworth

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Details can be found at the end of Pristine Earth Sinister Planet.

Pristine Earth Sinister Planet

Part One - PRISTINE EARTH

1 Story so Far

2 Pristine Pastures

3 Arrival

4 Landfall

5 Missing

6 Located

7 Breakout

8 Dilemma

9 Conference

Part Two – SINISTER PLANET

10 Kepler 186F

11 Debate

12 Pangu

13 Moon Alpha

14 A Working Moonbase

15 Working the Problem

16 Brick Wall

17 First Look

18 Strategy

19 Jungle

20 An Endless Journey

21 Tent

22 An Almighty Shock

23 A Hazardous Transfer

24 Argot

25 Catching Up

26 Tosh’s Revelation

27 Preparing For Action

28 New Concerns

29 The Attack

30 To the Victors the Spoils

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Copyright Page

Part One - PRISTINE EARTH

1 Story so Far

This chapter contains spoilers for previous books in the series. I strongly recommend reading the earlier books before starting this one for the best experience as certain threads in each of the stories are linked.

Note for non-British readers – I write using UK English spelling, punctuation and grammar, plus some US English words where appropriate as there are various nationalities within these stories. Metric and British imperial measurements will be used in the stories.

Thank you.

Tony Harmsworth, December 1, 2023

In Moonscape, while working on the surface of the moon, a tiny hibernating creature is found which infects one of the Moonbase crew. It is thought to be a parasite and there is concern that it is trying to infect all the astronauts and will then find its way to Earth.

Astronaut Mark Noble is infected during re-entry while escaping the moon, but the parasite was killed in the Van Allen belts.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

In Moonstruck, the second book, an international team of Americans, Russians, Chinese and British, headed by Mark, returns to the moon to recapture Moonbase from the infected humans.

During the expedition, they discover that the creatures were not parasites after all, but are actually symbiotes related to the hippocampus which, it now seems, arrived on Earth and enhanced all vertebrates in prehistory. The one on the moon had been stuck there for millennia.

These fresh symbiotes, however, add immensely to the intellect and intelligence of their enhanced humans, also extending lifespans and curing cancers and many other health conditions.

The military on Earth become paranoid that the entities will arrive from the moon and take over the world, but on the moon, Mark and his closest advisers, Bill and Anna, try out the symbiosis and soon become convinced that they have to stop the military’s plan to wipe out the alien entities.

By subterfuge, the enhanced humans manage to fool the military and NASA into believing the entities have been destroyed, but when they return to Earth, they are all already enhanced and carrying more entities to pass on to key people.

The entities are able to reproduce every two days and within a few months, many of the world’s population have their own symbiote.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

In the third book, Trappist-1, Mary Carter, enhanced by her entity, manages to invent the spolding drive (a space-folding mechanism that permits travel as if faster than light, by utilising the dark matter universe).

NASA works with Boeing, SpaceX and others to build the first spolding ship, Spirit, and its two Rimor shuttles, which will be used to land on and lift off from other planets.

Diagram, engineering drawing Description automatically generated They head for the red dwarf star, Trappist-1, which has seven interesting planets, including three which are potentially habitable.

On Haven (Trappist-1E), the first planet to be explored, Mark, Bill, Tosh and Chi land and carry out experiments. They discover that the planet has a very invasive vegetation that grows near the lakes, seas and oceans.

On the day they plan to leave, pollen is emitted from the plant. All but Chi had their visors down and some of the pollen is breathed in by the Chinese pilot. It kills her within minutes, despite her entity trying to stop its invasion of her lungs and digestive system. She drowns in her own blood in Tosh’s arms. This is not only a great blow to the rest of the crew, but Tosh and Chi had recently become a couple. Tosh is devastated. Returning to orbit and Spirit is problematical. How can they stop the weed’s pollen being brought aboard?

While the ground crew has been on Haven, Anna and Mary have been observing planet Trappist-1F and discover an orbiting craft circling Haven. They believe it has come from planet 1F which might have a spacefaring civilisation.

The starship, Spirit, travels to Trappist-1F and the crew finds that there is, indeed, a sophisticated civilisation, but their efforts to make radio contact are unsuccessful. The planet has many satellites, but all are ancient and running out of power. It is as if the people have given up space exploration.

It is decided to send down a rover-probe which is directed to a coastal city. It lands in a park within the city boundaries but encounters no life at all. Eventually, they realise the piles of rags lying around the streets are the remains of people who died in the distant past. Even their bones crumble when touched. Something had wiped out the inhabitants of Trappist-1F.

They go on to discover an identical plant to that found on Trappist-1E (Haven). It seems that a space mission, taken in antiquity by the people of planet 1F, went to Haven and accidentally brought back the plant, without realising how deadly its pollen could be. It established itself and wiped out the entire population when it released wave after wave of pollen clouds.

Somewhat depressed, the remaining five of the Spirit crew decide to head back to Earth where they will need to be thoroughly disinfected before landing.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

In the fourth book, The Spolding Conundrum, the crew discover that the Earth they have returned to is not the Earth they left. There is no sign of human habitation. The distance between this Earth and the moon is checked and it is identical to the distance between the original Earth and moon. This means that the ship has not travelled through time to some point in the past or future. The only explanation is that they have travelled into some sort of parallel universe.

Astrophysicist, Mary, working with chief pilot Anna, and both of their entities, theorise that when the spolding drive was used, it not only took them through space but also into alternative realities. Each time they jumped, they had essentially turned left into the dark universe and also left to return to normal space. They should have turned the opposite way – left in and right out. Later they discovered that it is more of a twisting rather than a simple left or right.

Distance, mass and other factors are calculated, and Spirit returns to Trappist-1, leaving the pristine Earth behind. If they follow the same procedures, backtracking each journey, they should return home, but before they do, they discover radio broadcasts from Trappist-1G. Are some of the inhabitants of Trappist-1F still alive in a colony on the frozen outer planet?

A black and white drawing of a bird head Description automatically generated Tosh and Mary begin communicating with the aliens. It is indeed a colony which had escaped their home planet when the invasive weed had been accidentally brought back from their neighbouring world.

The Heradians, as they call themselves, are in a desperate situation. Marooned on the ice world for hundreds of years, the health of their species is deteriorating and, more recently, devastating accidental fires struck some of their underground hydroponic farms. Now, with a shortage of essential minerals and vitamins, they are dying out. Contact by the humans appears to be miraculous, offering a chance to save their entire civilisation.

The only way to provide help is for Spirit to reverse its original journeys, return to the real Earth and begin a rescue plan.

When the corrected jump is made back to Earth, all appears to be well, but there are still changes. The Earth is not quite the same, but the best news is that Chi is alive and well. She’d been replaced by another astronaut in that Earth’s Spirit mission, so had not travelled to Trappist-1 and had not been killed by the weed.

The Spirit returns to Trappist-1 and a tank full of vitamins and vegetables is delivered to the Herade colony, but it is not the same colony. Communication has to be started all over again. This colony is in our universe, but the colony the team originally contacted is in an alternative universe. That colony is still dying from a vitamin-deficient diet.

An even greater shock is their discovery that a second Spirit is in the Trappist-1 system. On board are a second Anna and a second Mary. The rest of their crew, Mark, Tosh, Bill and Penny are all lying dead on Haven (Trappist-1E), killed by the weed’s pollen.

Both Spirits return to Arctur (Trappist-1G), the ice world, and Mark, with Chi, descend and meet with their leaders. Two of the aliens, Stroya and Gurd, return to orbit with them and the two Spirits set off for Earth to come up with a plan to re-establish the Heradians on Herade (Trappist-1F) and also to rescue the other colony in the related universe. (Stroya is one of the crew in Pristine Earth Sinister Planet.)

At the end of the story, a genetically engineered weedkiller is beginning the destruction of the weed on Herade and thirty-two alien scientists are being ferried to Earth to work on the plan to relocate the Heradians on Arctur, back to their home world.

Tosh, in the second Spirit, has left to find and help the second colony in the parallel universe.

When Mark’s ship Pathfinder returns to Earth, the welcome is rather unexpected.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

In the fifth book, Cybernetic Tyrant and Deep Space Visitor, the team has to deal with robots which have taken over the world during their absence and are stopping humankind from carrying out any task which is deemed unsafe – i.e. travelling into space, climbing ladders or even boiling kettles.

Once back on Earth, they join the resistance and eventually, the robot threat is overcome.

In part two of the fifth book, the team sets off to Nu Lupi, from where they believe that a deep space vessel has been sent to Earth. Before investigating the vessel, which is moving at a substantial proportion of the speed of light between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus and would take a long time to catch up with using an ion drive, they could, instead, use the spolding drive to travel the forty-eight light years to Nu Lupi to discover if that were the ship’s origin. Spolding was almost instantaneous.

When they arrive, they find a scorched planet suffering from its sun beginning to turn nova.

A frantic search is made for the creatures. Everywhere they explore is burned out or comprised crumbling structures, even what was apparently intended to be a safe refuge at one of the poles.

The team returns to Earth and constructs a new ship, Grissom, which could catch the Nu Lupi vessel near Saturn. While spolding ships could move from planet to planet, trying to rendezvous with a fast-moving vessel in the outer solar system is a different challenge. Grissom’s spolding drive is complimented with an ion drive which could increase speed gradually and consistently and thereby catch the Nu Lupi vessel within a number of weeks.

As they approach it, the crew experience ghostly apparitions. Once they board the ship, they discover that it is an archive of the creatures from the planet scorched by their star’s death throes. They bring it back to the moon where it can be studied in detail.

The next adventure begins now...

2 Pristine Pastures

This is the last chapter of the previous book.

Back at Space Administration, some weeks later, plans were again being formulated for a visit to the primitive Earth we’d discovered during our first Trappist-1 expedition.

‘How many spolds will be needed to get to it?’ I asked.

‘That’s the beauty of our better understanding of spolding,’ said Mary. ‘All we have to do is spold to Mars then spold back to Earth, twisting through the entiroverse using our new knowledge. It should bring us straight to the Earth which seemed to have no humans.’

‘There are lots of considerations,’ I said.

‘Spell them out,’ said Mary.

‘The primitive Earth will be a dangerous world. We’ll need a reasonably large landing party equipped with weapons. Remember that the animals will have no knowledge of us – we’ll be seen as just another form of food or predator,’ I said.

‘How many crew?’ asked Neil.

‘I’d like to take twenty-four to the surface, which means four Rimor shuttles with emergency seats deployed,’ I said. ‘We’d need another two crew on board both Pathfinder and Frontiersman to deal with any extra fuel tanks which needed deploying.’

‘What’s the strategy?’ asked Neil.

‘I’ve put Adam Cherry in charge of colonisation and he’s been working in conjunction with Tosh,’ I said. ‘If, after another check, we can’t find any evidence of human life, then, initially we’ll land in Europe, create a working base and explore from there. Adam will also head the construction team of twelve who will travel in the second spolding ship, Frontiersman.’

‘Who’s in the team?’ asked Neil.

‘The main squad includes me, Doug Baker, Mary Carter, Adam Cherry, Stroya Elya [the alien from Herade], Chan Huang, who’ll pilot Frontiersman, Emma Liskova, John MacIntosh, Chi MacIntosh, Dave Morgan, Linda Noble, Mike Robertson, Anna Stanbury, Roy Williams and Bill Wright. That gives me a broad collection of science and military personnel.’

‘No robots?’

‘Yes, Adam will pick some that have specialisations which will be useful. He’ll also pick the eleven Frontiersman crew. Chan Huang and Emma Liskova will be the pilots. Adam will be in command of the military: himself, Doug, Mike and Dave.’

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

A month later, we’d tucked Jason up with Linda’s parents and flew up to Pathfinder in one of the new ten-person Crew Dragons. We’d added a third Rimor to Pathfinder so that the crew left on board while the rest of us descended to the primitive Earth, would not be so isolated. Now, Mary had us rotating and aimed at Mars. We spolded out to the Red Planet, where we had a twenty-hour delay to ensure the correct programs were ready to run in the spold machine to take us back to Earth, but through a number of parallel universes.

‘Ready?’ Anna asked.

‘As we’ll ever be,’ I said.

‘Pristine Earth, here we come,’ said Tosh.

Anna said, ‘Three, two, one, spold!’

3 Arrival

The pristine Earth spread out beneath us, was the most wonderful sight. Primarily blue, the oceans gave the planet most of its colour, with continents filled in with green and brown land, all covered by swirling brilliant white cloud formations. Summer in the northern hemisphere left the North Pole with a tiny ice cap, while Antarctica was its usual vivid mass of ice and snow-covered mountains.

While preparing to address the crew, I sat in the commander’s seat on the Pathfinder bridge. To my right, Chi was monitoring various extra-vehicular activities among the fleet which I could see on the right side of the view and to my left, the stunning vista of the unexplored planet, one we knew so well, but simultaneously didn’t know at all. Chi was chatting with Mary and Anna, who were in full EVA suits, opening the huge latticework container which had spolded alongside Pathfinder. It contained all the heavy equipment needed for such a large undertaking. Helicopters, mechanical diggers, armoured vehicles, weapons and all the miscellany of a large expedition. Close beside the latticework container were three domes which we’d be using as secure accommodation and our headquarters when we landed.

The cylinder-shaped matter-transferer, was complex technology, but very simple to operate if coordinates were accurately entered. Mary’s improved matter-transferer was able to move anything from orbit to the ground as long as it could be open to space before being transferred.