The Kingdom of the Seven Stars: Chaturanga

Chapter 7

Eighteen hours later, another wormhole spiralled open among the inner planets of the Solar System and the royal yacht glided out of it.

The Earth, as they approached, looked nothing like the ancient photographs of it, taken at the dawn of human space travel, which Alex had seen in history lessons at school. In them, the planet humans had evolved on had been blue and green and swept with white clouds, like a giant sapphire hanging in space. Today, the vast oceans were yellow and the continents were brown. The clouds drifting slowly above them were thin and grey. Alex watched through the windows with Alice and Ellen, none of them saying anything, as the planet grew bigger and they could see more clearly the damage done by the pollution that had forced their ancestors to frantically develop interstellar travel and move to other planets in the galaxy before it killed them. Even Captain Zachary, who had fallen asleep at the controls trying to work out Alice's password, woke up and watched with them in silence as the Earth drew closer.

But there was hope. The Earth Recovery Project's space station was circling the planet in high orbit. The station was shaped like a wheel and its outside edge was lined with docking ports. A supply ship from Mars and a long black space cruiser from Sirius were already docked to it when they arrived. The space station was there monitoring the several thousand environmental satellites and robots that were slowly cleaning the atmosphere and the oceans and decontaminating the soil. No one knew how long it was going to take, but one day, the Earth would be inhabitable again.

"I hate to say it, your highness, but you really haven't picked a good time to drop by," said Lieutenant Anderson, the space station's second officer, as he led them along the long corridor that ran around the outside edge of the space station. The lieutenant was a stall, sandy haired man from Capricorn, wearing an Earth Recovery Project baseball cap. "Don't get me wrong. It's always great to be visited by one of the project's most generous sponsors, but we're extremely busy at the moment. The commander and all the scientists are down in Antarctica – we're expecting our first new snowfall any day now – and everyone else is on monitor duty or doing robot maintenance. I just haven't got anyone available to give you the full tour."

"That's OK, Lieutenant. I'm sure you're doing a wonderful job," said Alice. "But we actually didn't come to see the project. We need to find somewhere on Earth. A place called Chaturanga in India.

"It's in Ashtapada Province, wherever that is," said Ellen. "Or it was before everyone left."

"Hmm. I can't say I've ever heard of either," said Lieutenant Anderson. "India's easy enough though. It's that big, upside down triangle part down there."

Alex stepped over to the wide curving windows that looked down onto the planet so he could see where the lieutenant was pointing. India did indeed look like an upside down triangle, curving out from a range of very tall mountains at the bottom of the Earth's largest continent into the yellow southern ocean. It looked just as brown and grey as the rest of the planet's surface, but for the first time, Alex felt a connection. This was not just the planet his species had evolved on. He was looking down at the place where they had invented chess, thousands of years ago.

"But it shouldn't be too hard to find," said Lieutenant Anderson. "We've got a huge archive of ancient maps in the computer. Our ancestors mapped every inch of the planet that wasn't covered with ice very thoroughly centuries before they left. Your place is bound to be on one of them. I'm sure we can find it."

"Well, thank you very much for the offer, Lieutenant, but that won't be necessary," said Captain Zachary. "Because we're not staying. We're going straight back to the Pleiades as soon as the yacht's been refuelled..."

"Oh, have you guessed the password already?" said Ellen, smiling at him.

"Your highness. Princess Alice," said Captain Zachary, closing his eyes and pressing his fist to his forehead. "You have got to unlock the system. Or I'm afraid I'm going to have to..."