Free The Blue People of Cloud Planet by Brian Wolfenden

thick cloud with our instruments for a detailed topography. I can only analyse the day / night delineation as our instruments are interfered with by the light shafts.’
     
     ‘And the signal? Is that still flashing? Alison asked.
     
    ‘Yes, but you won’t be able to see it until we are much closer and I will be able to analyse all the shafts of light in more detail – there are thousands of them. For information, our estimated time of arrival at high orbit above Cloud Planet is 10 days.’
     
    ‘I can’t wait,’ cried an excited Olivia, ‘can’t we go faster?’
     
    But AJ just smiled; he was well aware of Olivia’s impatience. ‘We’ve taken over 20 years to get this far – a few more days seems nothing and we’ve got work to do.’
     
     
     
    ‘There is a lot of retraining planned for our astronauts during the coming days. They take the two ROL’s into space to practice manoeuvres and re-docking with LifeSeeker-1 – after all none of them has flown for over 20 years. Finally, all the astronauts practise using the emergency shuttles.’
     
     
     
    Every day Cloud Planet grew in their visual field of view and with 2 days to go to orbit, the astronauts were in the command dome and Zec-C was giving a more detailed analysis of the planet.
     
    ‘The atmosphere is a very healthy 30 per cent oxygen with nitrogen being the volume gas and small levels of carbon dioxide. The ice caps at the poles are approximately 1000 kilometres in diameter and are surprisingly symmetrical. The oceans are massive and extremely deep at over 200 kilometres for most of their area. The seas have high salt levels and are cold, cycling from minus 1-2 Celsius from night to day. The cloud collar is 30 degrees at the top but falls in temperature quickly. I estimate nearer 5 degrees during the day dropping to near zero at night. I predict that it is continuously raining during the day and pouring down at night with high winds.
     
    Below the clouds is a 2000 kilometre continuous land mass which encircles the planet and is equally distributed either side of the equator.’
     
    As Zec-C continued, the facts were illustrated in the dome with computer simulated drawings and diagrams and now the topography of the land mass appeared.
     
    ‘There is a 1000 kilometre wide central plain, mainly clay based, around the equator and about 22 kilometres above sea level. This is flanked on both sides by mountain ranges rising up to 20 kilometres above sea level and punctuated by valleys with large water flows running to the seas – these are irregular in shape and can be assumed as ‘rivers’ – there are many hundreds of them on both sides of the central plain.’
     
    The computer graphics continued to paint the picture of a very uniform planet with its narrow equatorial land mass directly pointed at its star at all times.
     
    ‘Initial data shows that the mountains and valleys are completely covered in organic vegetation but I will detail this when we get nearer.’
     
    Zec-C paused, ‘and now the symmetry gets intriguing.’
     
    And parallel lines appeared across the plain and perpendicular to the equator.
     
     ‘These lines represent water and each runs the full width of the plain – 1,000 kilometres in a dead straight line. Each water course is 50 kilometres apart and there are exactly one thousand straddling the equator – I can only presume they have not been produced by natural forces and that they are ‘canals’!’
     
    The mimic display then drew two thicker lines around the equator.
     
    ‘These equatorial lines are wider watercourses and like the others they are perfectly straight and are 25,000 kilometres long – the equatorial circumference of Cloud Planet!’
     
    There was a buzz of excitement among the astronauts but the best was yet to come.
     
    ‘The shafts of light appear to originate from points directly along each lateral canal and are 50 kilometres apart. There are 20 along each canal symmetrically