There is a huge, bold black streak in the sky. Branches appear out of nowhere over North America, Southern Europe, and Central Africa. People who live beneath The Rift can see it. But scientists worldwide are distressed—their equipment cannot pick up any type of signal from it. The rift appears to consist of nothing. Literally. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Most people are curious but not overly concerned. The phenomenon seems to pose no danger. It is just there.
Then something jolts the most hardened naysayers, and surpasses the worst nightmares of the world’s greatest scientists—and rocks their understanding of the universe.
Genre: FICTION / Science Fiction / High Tech10.000+ copies sold in both English and German
“Prepare for impact.”
M6 groaned. The warning almost came too late. He had just enough time to bend his knees and press his body against the ground. Almost at once his seismic sensors detected the force of the impact. The meteorite had barely missed him. About 100 meters to the north there must be a new crater. This was his chance!
M6 forcefully straightened four of his six knees, giving himself momentum that immediately lifted him off the ground. His legs had been pointing toward the south, so he sailed north through space, just above the surface of the dwarf planet. It wasn’t long until he saw the new crater. In order to analyze its composition, M6 shot his laser into the dust cloud that had formed above the crater. Simultaneously, he logged the crater’s structure and measured the temperatures inside it. His positioning jets fired to bring him even closer to the action.
The impact had almost cost him his life. The meteorite had come in on a very flat trajectory and, due to Ceres’s fast rotation, it had stayed hidden from his instruments for too long, like a cannonball that had been fired just before its target came around a corner. But now that he’d survived the event it had saved him some work. The meteorite had drilled directly into the side of Ahuna Mons, Ceres’s sole cryovolcano. M6 had been planning to drill into the four-kilometer-high mountain starting in the morning, and now the meteorite had laid open its icy interior.
What M6 observed was fascinating. As if in slow motion, material was flowing into the crater from above, while the lower crater edge was collapsing. The hole from the impact looked like a strange, giant mouth, with secretions running out of its nose and over the upper lip, its lower lip drooping sadly. The spectral analysis of the cloud showed that its composition was a mixture of various salts with ammonia and water ice.
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German
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Already translated.
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Italian
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Santiago Machain
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Author review: Great work, deluvery on time, easy communication. |
