The Prize: Book One Read Free Page B

Captain of the heavy cruiser taken the time to decipher the meanings of the message, or simply waited for a science team, he might be alive today.”  The Director leaned forward slightly and looked at the screen pensively.
     
    “We shall never know if he did or did not understand the message, or simply chose to ignore the warning.  This, I might add, turned out to be easy to decipher.  Either way the stupid man paid for that mistake with his life when his ship was literally dragged out of the sky the moment it crossed the boundary line, and crashed on the surface.”  The Director paused for a moment, almost as if waiting for General Tandy to ask the obvious question, and he did.
     
    “How so, Sir?”  General Tandy asked, keeping his voice neutral.  He also had to refraining from laughing as he tried to make sense out of what the Director was saying.  Starships do not fall, or get pulled out of space.  That was blatantly absurd.  The ship must have crashed, although the idea of a starship crashing into a planet was ridiculous in this day and age.
     
    “As I said.  No ship of any size can survive past the proscribed one AU limit.”  The Director paused a moment, pursing his lips as if unsure of the words to use, then continued.  “Normally there is no way a planet of that mass has a gravitational attraction of that magnitude, or anywhere near it for that matter, yet it has.”  The Director's left shoulder made a slight movement that some might interpret it as a shrug.  ”It's a pity the stupid Captain had to take a valuable ship, and so many highly trained individuals with him on his untimely death plunge.”
     
    General Tandy kept his eyes fixed on the Director, almost as if mesmerizes by the Director's voice as much as what he was saying.  With an effort, he pulled his eyes away and for a moment looked around the lavishly furnished office.  The priceless statues and artwork strategically place around the room said much as to the Director's power and influence.
     
    "Since then we have attempted to land several types of vessels, including several shuttlecraft, two destroyers and one super-dreadnought.  He paused a moment.  “All, I might add, except one crashed with no survivors.”  The Director seemed to read off the list of ships that crashed with no more emotion than a man ordering lunch.
     
    The General winced slightly and raised his eyebrows in shock.  That was a lot or resources in ships, and crews to write off investigating some mystery planet.  To Tandy's mind, the benefits didn't appear to outweigh the cost.
     
    “What matters is that no ship that lands, or I should say crash lands, on the planet can take off again, no matter how powerful.”
     
    Discretion being the better part of valor, General Tandy said nothing.  Superdreadnoughts were expensive, and to order one in to investigate this unknown phenomenon meant that this discussion had serious implications.  General Tandy swiveled his chair around and looked at the planetary system schematic with the associated data beside each icon in the video screen.  It showed the planet's orbital path around its star, declination, mass and numerous additional details.  The first odd thing he noted was that this planetary system consisted of nothing more than a white dwarf star and one planet.  Very odd.  It had no other celestial bodies, no asteroid belt and no moons.  The star and its single planet hung in a region of empty space with no visible background of stars.  The Director also failed to mention a planet of that size, and class shouldn't even be within the life zone that far from the parent star.  In fact, the planet shouldn't even have liquid water as it obvious did.  The numbers showed that Sigma Alpha Prime massed about one and one half times that of Tellurian Prime with a corresponding higher gravity.  Even so, it didn't explain why the Director was so interested in this one miserable planet, other than some