Read Online Orb by Gary Tarulli - Free Book Online Page B

say that was a riddle. Intelligent enough to understand that if I have a problem with you, plain and simple, you’ll be the first to know.”
    The ship’s eerie silence descended—to which nobody ventured a disturbing word.
    “Kyle, I’m not sure you got what you wanted here,” Thompson said after a moment, “but unless you or anybody else has something to add I suggest we go about the pressing business at hand.”
    I thanked everyone for their input but failed to keep an expression of dismay from my face. As the crew dispersed to go about their work, I caught a brief look of sympathetic understanding from Kelly.
    Despite my best intention, broaching my hypothesis with the crew did not have the positive effect I hoped for. On the contrary, the ensuing conversation culminated with everyone ill at ease. Worse, I may have inadvertently helped widen the divide developing between Thompson and Melhaus.
    Several hours had elapsed and
Desio
, now in a lower orbit, was companioning the planet as it entered into night.
    What was awaiting us down there? Would the unknown conveniently fit within the realm of human experience or, more likely, would it rise to challenge, perhaps surpass, our imagination? One tantalizing mystery had already presented itself.
    Desio
was passing over that portion of the planet which was spinning away from the steel blue sun into blackness. The crew, anxious to see a world without a dense web of artificial light marring its surface, had crowded at the main viewport. But as we transgressed the thin terminator line dividing day from night, instead of total and uninterrupted blackness, there appeared on the planet’s surface countless tiny flecks of colored light. They emerged slowly at first, like early evening fireflies; then with ever greater rapidity as we progressed further into the realm of expected darkness. Diana said there was no evidence to suggest the phenomenon was produced by the plankton-like organisms that were prolific in the planet’s ocean. Paul suggested that the colors were some type of atmospheric disturbances. At the same time he wondered why there were no lights above the steadily shrinking icecaps.
    Teloptics further resolved each speck as perfect circles of varying sizes, ostensibly residing on, or very close to, the ocean surface—as seen from our top-down view. None were greater than twenty meters across.
    Thompson and Melhaus, after reviewing every scrap of sensor data, could offer no plausible explanation.
    In the end, a consensus was reached: A similar phenomenon had never been observed before; that our present altitude rendered it unamenable to explanation. This, truth be told, gave the four scientists secret satisfaction, for they wanted nothing more than a great mystery to unravel.
    The others had turned in for the evening and I found myself alone in the darkened mission room, again drawn to the unspoiled world. The inscrutable mystery of the glowing lights, the distant and untouched beauty, the surrounding panoply of stars—these were captivating wonders to behold. Together they conspired to affect in me a singular thought—not of science and solutions, but of fancy, of literature. An ancient compilation of fables,
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (Alf Laylah Wa Laylah)
came to mind.
    The ancient fable is framed around the storytelling ability of a vizier’s daughter, Scheherazade, who marries a Persian king who has an unfortunate history of wedding—and executing the following morning—a succession of virgins so as to exact vengeance for the actions of his unfaithful first wife. Scheherazade, to save herself from the same unjust fate, each night tells the king a fantastical story, only to leave it unfinished, or claim a more imaginative story will follow. By doing so, night after night, for a thousand and one nights, she postpones her own death until she is pardoned.
    No untimely thought, this. Evocation of a collective work of Middle Eastern folklore needs no