It is twelve-hundred years in the future.
Ship Commander Ka’Am of the Star Cruiser Qu’thu was on a routine survey mission, having been sent to a star-cluster on the far ‘arm’ of the galaxy two negs before.
Surveys were usually boring work; they sought planets which were uninhabited, but which had similar atmospheres as their own. “Routine” was the operative word; usually, these surveys found very little in the way of habitable worlds, as such were rare; less still in the way of resources.
“Commander?”, said his first-officer, “There’s a planet that shows promise here.”
The Commander walked over to the spectro-scanner. These things weren’t perfect, but most of the time they –
“AH!”, shouted the first officer. “We’ve got what looks like the ruins of a city down there – and another one!”
“Atmosphere?”, said the Commander.
“Oxygen/Hydrogen mix. Not quite Ours, but this one sustains some form of carbon-based life, I’ll bet on it!”
“Ready the shuttle. I’ll take the shuttle crew plus three researchers.”
The shuttle touched down on a dry plain which showed evidence of dry watercourses. The Commander knew from the visuals on the way down that there was a river which ran most of the length of the continent; he knew from the briefing that there were four major continents; this area being among the driest of them. The senior research-scientist scanned some instruments before giving the go-ahead to open the shuttle hatch.
“Some background radiation, but nothing to cause alarm. Looks like these cities have been ruins for 1,000 negs or more.”, he said, half to himself.
“Is it safe, Sub-Commander?”, said Commander Ka’am.
“Oh, yes. Safe enough for jumpsuits, I’d say.” The Subcommander pressed the switch which opened the airlock; then the hatch. Eyes adjusting to the light, they stepped outside. Everywhere, they saw partial-walls and collapsed roofs, much like they would have seen in the aftermath of a volcano or other cataclysmic explosion. There were scorch-marks still visible on the walls which remained. Strange-looking glyphs covered the walls. “I’ve only seen this in transmitted form.”, said the Subcommander, again, half to himself. “I can make out some of it, but it’ll take a Linguist to get it all. This must be the planet which was the source of all that transmitted material from so long ago.”
“What can you make out, Subcommander?”, said Ka’am.
“It’s some form of painted wall-poster. ‘Victory Within Our Grasp – Hold On To The Last Man’, or something similar. Looks like we’re seeing the aftermath of a planetwide war.”
"Didn't we locate a penal colony hereabouts, about 10,000 negs ago?", said the Commander.
"I'd have to check the records on the ship, Commander," said Pa'tho, the Subcommander.
Commander Ka'am looked around. “Fan out.”, he said. “Rendezvous back here in a hundred qa'lons. Subcommander – you’re with me.”
“Yes, sir.”, replied the Subcommander. “Just keep your Lazrupter handy, if you wouldn’t mind, sir. I’ve only got an Analyzer.”
“Let’s go.”, said Ka’am. They walked what had been a large boulevard; the late-afternoon yellow light casting dust-shadows on the far walls; it was a warm afternoon, and soon both men were warm themselves, although not uncomfortably so. “Feels good to get some fresh air, even if it is like this.”, said Ka’am.
“I could walk old cities forever – you know that, sir.”, said the Subcommander.
“Subcommander Pa’tho, I’m counting on you to find us something we can report.”, said Commander Ka’am. He didn’t have long to wait.
“Over here!’, shouted Subcommander Pa’tho, waving to the Commander. Pa’tho had strayed just long enough to find what he was looking for – either a library or a repository of records. Commander Ka’am walked quickly to the location of Subcommander Pa’tho; they both walked up a short staircase to the entrance of a large stone building which had remained largely undamaged. While the doors had long since rotted away, the stone building had preserved much of what was inside.The cruel trick about a dry climate is that it preserves things - even when those who had created them had long since gone back to dust. They walked in; the first creatures on two legs to do so in over 1,000 negs.
They were in a library.
“Oh, my!”, said Subcommander Pa’tho. “I was right.”
“And?”, said Ka’am, impatiently.
“There was a war.”, said Pa’tho, gently holding up a periodical; blowing the dust off to reveal a photograph of soldiers and weaponry and what looked like a great tracked-vehicle with twin-guns. Pa’tho laid the magazine back down. “Look!”, said Pa’tho, pointing yet again to another periodical, held open by a falling piece of masonry – it had been open to that page for a long time. “With the help of our – American – allies – we will emerge victorious”, Pa’tho read, haltingly. “This appears to be a government publication of some sort. It’s produced by the – Pa’tho had to slow down to read it to Commander Ka’am, almost syllable-by-syllable – “the ‘Israeli Self-Defense Force’. This must have been the armed force of the people living here.”
“Commander – if you can give me a few qa’lons here, I think I can piece some things together.”, said Pa’tho. Commander Ka’am took the hint, and wandered off, out the door, toward the sound of the surf. Twenty qa’lons later, Ka’am returned.
“What did you find, Subcommander?”, said Ka’am.
“Could make out a lot of it. Fragments of news reports; hard to tell what was propaganda and what was truth. A lot of talk about – if I got it right – these people called ‘Israelis’ – some sort of religious thing, I’d wager – and the cause of the war; it was the displacement of the people who originally lived here. Looks like we had the fortune to land right here in the middle of what was their biggest city.”
“Go on,”, said Ka’am. “Anyhow, looks like they fought this war right on the tail of the last one – fifty or sixty negs later, anyhow. First one brought down a bad-guy; last one was fought over what to do with some refugees, near as I can figure – these ‘Israelis’. Started here, then involved everyone else.”
“So, who’s left?”, said Commander Ka’am.
“Looks like no one. Background radiation is almost negligible after this length of time, but it suggests that toward the end, they used atomics. That would explain the dry watercourses we saw on the plain, plus the huge river which had not been there before – they likely suffered the weather disruptions whicht follow the indiscriminate use of atomics. Snow fell, and when it melted, those courses were formed. Never happened since, so there they sit. The river remained right where it was when the weather cleared up.”
“No survivors at all?”, said Ka’am, impatiently. Their time was running out; the shuttle would be ready soon, and they’d have to be in position to make the jump to the next survey-point. “Well, if what I read on the walls was right, there were a few. Mainly trading insults via graffiti. Wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing didn’t end with cutting-instruments, sticks, and whatever else they had. Looks like the last survivors died off a couple of negs after the war.”
Commander Ka’am pressed a button on his transceiver; activating navigation mode. “No point in prolonging this. It’ll take the Linguists, Historians, and others nearly ten years to figure this one out – but we know all we need to know right now. Signal the others. We’re going back.” Ka'am pressed another button on his transceiver. “Qu’thu! Qu’thu! We are four for the ship – planet is liveable, but nothing else here but ruins. Any word on your end?”
Commander Ka’am’s transceiver came alive. “This is Qu’thu. Read you 5X5. No, Commander, nothing here. No transmissions of any kind. We see no sign of life on any of the other continents. Appears that the original inhabitants really DID have themselves a war.”
"Qu'thu – coordinates are da’an-bu’ra-ke’tho; relative. There’s an open space just to the north of us. Land the shuttle there.”
“This is Qu’thu. Understood; and will comply. Over and out.”
“Subcommander?”, said Ka’am.“What, sir?”
“What do you suppose prompts an entire race to kill each other?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’ve studied things like this for negs, and I still don’t know.” Glancing at Ka’am, he added, “What have you got there, sir?”
Ka'am said, “While I was on my walk, I watched the sun starting to set. Beautiful. I wondered if the people who lived here thought it was as beautiful as I did. I found this.”, he said, holding up a fragment of the past.
It was a blue tile.
“Oh, my!”, said Subcommander Pa’tho. “So old – yet it looks like it was made yesterday! Almost three dimensional in the light.”
“Yes.”, said Commander Ka’am, putting the tile back in his pocket. “It almost looks like the ocean.”, he said, as the shuttle landed, ready to take them back to the ship, and on to another world.
(Elegy for a dead planet -- the discovery of which is a footnote in the log of an expedition on the way to Nowhere Special from Somewhere Else. No marker; no monument -- just the living -- and the dead....)
