The silence dropped suddenly; only the crackling and hissing of damaged wiring continued somewhere in the depths of the shuttle. Erik unbuckled the straps and exited the pilot's seat, carefully keeping his balance on the tilted deck.

Helga was already standing, both hands resting on the communications desk, looking grimly at the mangled screens. An impressive abrasion on her forehead, just below the line of blond hair, was quickly turning dark, but the girl paid it no mind. Running through the communicator keyboard, she flicked a few switches and waved her hand hopelessly.

"How bad?" Eric asked.

Helga sighed.

"The comm is crumpled. I can get the spare transmitter up and running as soon as I restore power, but there's no telling whether it'll have enough power. The radio waves are behaving very strangely here."

Eric looked at the outside view screens. Six of the eight were dark (the cameras had obviously crashed on landing), but the last two showed an unimpressive brownish-gray stony desert stretching to the horizon.

"Are you all right?" Eric stepped toward Helga to get a closer look at the abrasion.

Helga grimaced.

"It looks worse than it is," she said. "It barely caught me. The communicator got the worst of it. Who would have thought that a fire extinguisher ripped loose could have made such a mess..."

"When we'll be back on the Endeavor," Eric snarled, "I'll cut off Jack's hands. It's all right, Cap, I checked it out, Cap, all done!" he mocked the husky voice of the fat technician from their ship, the research frigate Endeavor. "When we spun, and that damn cylinder started flying all over the deck, I thought we were doomed," he said. "But what happened? It felt like we hit something..."

Helga looked away from the broken communicator.

"You were checking the dashboard at that moment," she said, "but I thought I barely saw the..." She stopped, her eyes widening as she stared at the screens. Her mouth fell open in astonishment.

"What?" Eric asked. "What are you..." He turned around and was just as taken aback.

On the screens was a vast city, with the towers of skyscrapers and the delicate lace of elegant overpasses shining in the brilliant colors of luxurious buildings and lush greenery.

* * *

"I can't believe my eyes," Helga said. "Where did all this come from?"

Eric squatted down and patted the silver material that paved the street.

"It feels real," he said.

Helga looked back at the shuttle. The landing craft lay about twenty feet away, heavily tilted on its port side. Behind it stretched the long furrow plowed by the shuttle during the landing, except it was surrounded not by the lifeless desert but by the vast sea of lush green grass. The astronauts in light protective suits and breathing masks stood where, with virtually no transition, the prairie gave way to the cityscape.

"Just before the crash, I thought I saw something," Helga said. "Though now I'm unsure..." She sighed. "Erik, we crashed into a huge airship. It appeared on the screens just moments before the collision."

Eric stepped to the side and picked a flower with fleshy purple petals from a manicured flower bed. A few drops of thick pearlescent sap dripped from the stem onto the fabric of his glove. The respirators cut off all odors, but somehow Eric was sure the flower exuded a wonderful aroma.

A marvelous city that had appeared as if by magic. A city that beckoned: "Settle here. I'm waiting..."

"It's typical Precursor architecture. I saw the ruins on Gehenna."

Helga shook her head decisively.

"The Precursors disappeared hundreds of millions of years ago. And this city..."

"The city is in perfect condition," Eric nodded. "Not some ancient ruins. You can see that it has been meticulously maintained. But by whom? It's empty: no population, no bots, nothing."

Helga pointed to the nearest building with mirrored windows resembling a frozen steep wave.

"Do you think they're hiding?" She asked. "Afraid of us after the collision?"

Eric twirled a flower thoughtfully in his hand.

"You have to repair the communicator," he said. "Something is wrong."

Half an hour later, Erik's uneasy feeling had increased even more. The city was breathtaking in its beauty, grandeur, and meticulous layout but completely empty. Besides, Eric couldn't get inside any of the buildings: all the doors and windows were sealed shut. Eric didn't risk breaking a window or a door: who knows what kind of security systems the Precursor builders might have used? If, of course, this was their city, which was hard to believe. Hundreds of millions of years...

The short-range radio rumbled in his ear, and Helga's voice said:

"Eric, I've fixed the communicator. Endeavor is on the line! You should listen to this..."

There was a click, and the anxious voice of Miko Drazic, the frigate's captain, shouted:

"Eric, get out of there immediately!"

"Captain, I haven't even seen the city's outskirts yet..."

"Forget the outskirts!" interrupted Drazic. "It's not a city! Hell, it's not even a planet! Get on the shuttle and get out before it's too late!"

* * *

"Several power shields are punctured, the third and sixth propulsion units and several auxiliary systems are damaged. Thank God none of the crew were hurt," said Drazic. "We were lucky."

Eric finished his tonic and placed his glass on a low table.

"The Precursor computer?"

Drazic nodded.

"Yes. Our primary scanner broke through at the last moment. An AI with a quantum-singular core controlling a massive cloud of nanobots, which can create three-dimensional copies of any object. Airships, cities, planets. Or giant octopuses with tentacles thousands of kilometers long, trying to catch the shuttle and frigate flying away from them."

"But why would he want us?" Helga asked.

Drazic shrugged.

"I don't know, although... the Precursors disappeared over two hundred million years ago. He must have been very bored."

Erik giggled.

"He was dreaming about some new toys," he said.

Dream Planet

Nik Hein

The Power of Imagination

Nik Hein

Nik Hein