Lucifer Devil Jr.'s Christmas Surprise... And Other Short Stories

The Lost Colony

At the end of the 22nd century, the human species or rather the International Space Committee decided that now was the time to start its most ambitious project: Project Alpha had been in the works for centuries by then, but no one had really dared to go through with it and start a colony on another planet. The colony was to be founded on Amaltheia, a tiny planet outside Earth's solar system which had been discovered at the end of the 21st century and allegedly had a similar climate. It could also be reached within 5 years with a modern spacecraft. So in 2201, 88 people, 20 of whom were scientists and 4 trained astronauts, were sent off to Amaltheia.

From the beginning, it was clear that they would not be able to stay in touch with Earth, which is why they had a tiny robot shuttle on their spacecraft that they would have to send back to earth. Therefore, it was a sensation when the robot shuttle returned in 2211. Even though it collided with a meteoroid and was completely destroyed, Earth's scientists had been able to copy most of the data stored on the shuttle's computers by then.     

Amaltheia was just like the scientists on Earth had imagined it would be. As a matter of fact, it was more. It had not been dubbed "The Garden Planet" for nothing because it looked like a green paradise. Earth had never been a paradise like this, not even before its nature had been destroyed by human beings. 

The pictures and films caused quite a sensation on Earth. All of a sudden, a lot of people were interested in leaving Earth and moving to Amaltheia. Even though it was a risky move and 5 years in space was a long time, the list got so long that the International Space Committee began to question people's motives for wanting to leave their planet behind. But as one official stated, there had been too many wars, too many stupid politicians and too much destruction in the history of the planet that this attitude was somehow understandable. 

A second spacecraft with settlers left Earth in 2213. Like the first group of settlers, this group was fully aware of the fact that it was a one-way trip and that they would not be able to return to Earth.

But the planet they landed on a few years later looked nothing like the one they had seen in the pictures. The atmosphere was full of dust, and the planet's surface was grey, not green. The two scientists that had travelled with the group warned their fellow travelers that they would have to be careful and wear their spacesuits. "The planet looks as if there has been a volcanic eruption recently," one of them stated carefully. 

Even though he didn't want to alarm the group, he certainly did. Almost all of them panicked as soon as they had heard the words "volcanic eruption." "But what happened to the others? I mean, to the people who lived here?" "Are they all dead?" "Are we going to die here, too?" 

"I don't know. We need to find out what happened here first. Perhaps there are survivors," the second scientist said even though he exchanged worried looks with his colleague at this point, too. They were both certain that it was highly unlikely that anyone would have survived a volcanic eruption of this magnitude. 

So a group of a dozen volunteers went outside and walked towards the coordinates of the Project Alpha settlement, which had been amongst the data rescued from the robot shuttle in time. They found the settlement two days later, but the place had been deserted for some time. It actually looked as if the people who lived here had left this settlement before it had been completely destroyed by the catastrophe.  

"This looks like a lost colony," one of the men in the group, who was also a historian, suggested. "Perhaps we should take a look around. Perhaps they left us clues as to where they went." 

"What do you expect to find? The word 'Croatan'*? They don't live around here!" another man, who was a historian, too, said.

"I, for one, hope to find something like that or someone who might have saved them!" one of the scientists, who had understood the implicit references in the historians' conversation, said sharply. 

They looked for clues in the debris for hours, but found none. 

It was not until someone went to take a leak among the nearby trees that they accidentally stumbled upon something. "Come here! I think I've found something!" the man yelled. 

He sounded so excited that the entire group, who was beyond tired at this point, completely lost it and raced towards the trees. 

Then they saw them: three dead teenage girls who were wearing wreaths in their beautiful long hair and were holding each other as they shielded themselves from the catastrophe between the trees. They were stuck in a strange sort of pyroclastic flow that had turned them into stone figures.  

As they took a look around the wood, they saw that it was full of caves that led to the underground, as if people from Project Alpha had lived underground before all of them had died. They knew for certain that all of them were as dead as a doornail soon because they started to dig and opened up the entrances to the homes again. 

Apart from dead bodies, they found the journals that some of the settlers had kept. Especially one entry made the scientists shudder. It read, "We gotta warn people on Earth not to come here. Everyone who comes here will die!" 

* This is a reference to the story of the famous "lost colony" on Roanoke Island in North Carolina (USA).