Scene 3.03 - Crash Landings
EST: EXT. Surface of Planet Tellusia
MLS: Swamp-covered Tellusian Wetlands -- gentle purrs of nature; serene
(Note on Tellusia: There is nothing living on Tellusia to suggest alien origin. All life is Earth-based, although extremely exotic and independently-evolved and very-unlikely to be able to co-exist on Earth in similar habitation zones. Treat it like a Galapagos Island with plantet-sized proportions.)
RACK-FOCUS
(ONE TIMELESS SHOT: A fiery ship lights in the sky, popping through the clouds -- first white, then blue, then the red hue of it is seen. It is heading straight for the camera. As you can just make out the shape of The Archimedes burning and trailing black-and-white smoke against the blue-and-sporadically-clouded sky, a much larger, dragon-shaped after-image pops through a thunderhead and a much darker, fiery Eliza follows The Archimedes, pushing through the clouds and trailing slightly to the left and out of frame a few seconds before The Archimedes hits the watery Tellusian Surface. The Archimedes glides across the horizon, skips across the water -- like a flat stone -- eight-consecutively-shorter times before it tilts just enough to start a forward spin. We see a man cradling a woman eject from the cockpit on the seventh bounce where they continue shooting upward until they are out of the frame. The ship gets its nose caught in the water and it verically flips end-over-end three times in mid-air before it thuds into the water and skids across the lagoon toward the camera, causing a cutting wake to part before the conical front of the ship. The dented nose of the ship creeps just below the frame as the American flag and the letters U-S-A come into perfect focus, screen-printed across the undamaged part of the ship’s pointed front. It stops and water immediately-turns-to steam, fogging the lens.)
CUT TO: MS of ship.
(Ejection seat lands in foreground on pile of soft, puffy ferns and moss. VERNE and AZALEA thud to the ground; him and the seat is facing right, her riding side-saddle across his lap, facing the camera.)
VERNE
Are you okay, sweetie?
AZALEA
Yeah.
(A loud crater-making thud is heard as The Eiliza strikes the planet many miles away. A moment later, the ground slightly shakes. The first of many large waves crashes and moves the barely-floating ship ashore/underwater later in the scene. Someone might as well have detonated a nuke nearby.)
VERNE
The Eliza...
AZALEA
Do you think they’re-?
VERNE
(Getting out of seat, standing his baby upright before brushing-himself-off.) I don’t know. We’ll have to find out.
AZALEA
The Archimedes. It’s sinking.
VERNE
Lovely. We’ll have to hoof it. Wanna piggyback? It’s pretty muddy here.
AZALEA
(Jumping on his back:) Drive on, Sweet-pea.
VERNE
The Eliza must have crashed in the water. We’ll need to get to higher ground or farther-inland. The Eliza is quite large, it’s bound to have made waves. I imagine we can expect a small tsunami within the hour. See how the water’s suddenly receding?
AZALEA
Yes.
VERNE
That means there’s a wall of water coming this way.
AZALEA
Do you think we’ll find the others?
VERNE
We’ll head up that hill over there. We can get a better look.
AZALEA
Do you think they’re all right?
VERNE
Probably so. Knowing Mr. Clarke, he’s probably got everything under control.
CUT TO:
LS: ELIZA, half-submerged, slowly bobbing upside-down in the water, charred and slightly damaged.
MS: Cargo Bay.
(CLARKE, no longer in his orange environmental suit, eventually awakens the men from their coffins and upon waking the men, WELLS, SIMAK and HEINLEIN, in their regulation boxer-briefs, attempt to close hatches and seal holes as water pours in from nearly every direction. CLARKE soon calls them over to climb to some padded scaffolding to a big turnstile, and after his exclamation, the four men manage to turn a wheel and close a main doorway that was the source of a raging river. Spouts of water pour throughout the scene. At the end, all is quiet and the normal, electronic sounds of the ship can be dimly heard as the flashing, red alarm is finally deactivated, although the ship remains on red alert. The women’s coffins are not seen clearly until the right moment. For now, they are colorful blobs in the background of the shots.)
CLARKE
Help me! Help me!
SIMAK
There. That outta do it.
CLARKE
Mr. Simak, damage report!
[The Eliza looks like a metal version of the monster in Godzilla. Except it has flapping wings and a cooler-looking head. It’s got the cool multi-pronged, fat spikes on its back just like the monster in the movie. It’s made of that prismatic chrome-color that changes color as you pass it. It’s every color of the rainbow, and usually reflects the darkness of space. It’s blue-grey in the water. The ship’s sections are laid out as follows: Alpha) The braincase, jaw and eye sockets --the bridge of the ship. Commander’s Station. Science Officer’s Station. Security Officer’s secondary post -- when no one is in the brig. Helmsman’s Station. Ready-room, main turbolift hub, secondary plasma laser and the secondary quantum generator. Bravo) The neck and main turbolift corridor of the ship. Sickbay, the Chief Medical Officer’s Station, and the shuttle bays -- where the escape pods were before LEAH ejected them -- are all in the Bravo section. Charlie) The chest. Cargo bay and main shuttle door. The docking port for The Archimedes. This is where the cargo units and the crew’s coffins are stored. Delta) The ship's back and spine. Gravity for the inhabitants of the ship is diverted from there, and is apparently offline, as they are affected by the gravity of the planet. The computer’s neural-hub is located there, near the heart of the ship. Astride that, the fusion engines and quantum generators are housed -- where the lungs would be. Along the spine is the Delta Corridor, a secondary turbo lift that is really a open-air cart that moves along in what looks similar to a long, flexible mineshaft. Blackstar dust is coated on the sides of the shaft and makes it a near-zero-g and frictionless environment. Emergency lights, and minimal life support is all that is operational in the Delta Corridor. Echo) Wing sections -- secondary propulsion, detachable. Secondary fission impulse coils are housed there. Foxtrot) The belly of the ship -- main engines, computer arrays, spare storage, spare armor, weapons, ammunition, torpedo stores and a secondary turbo lift, built to transport freight and cargo. Chief Engineer’s Station. Golf) The forearms of the ship. Torpedo and laser fixed armaments, and five-fingered rotating talons to assist in docking or moving debris from path of the ship. Hotel) The legs. -- Primary warp coils and primary trinary matrixes. Primary fission thrusters. Housing for rovers, probes and bio nodes. There is minimal life support in the two Hotel sections. Indigo) The pelvis. The Jiffy Tube is where a vagina would be, and has access to outside the ship from there and is unaffected by gravity due to the blackstar coil, which literally coils around the Jiffy tube and terminates where the anus would be if the ship were an actual dragon. Two secondary, emergency quantum generators are installed where ovaries would be and each chamber is large enough to accomodate one person. These chambers extend from the hallway at the end of the Jiffy Tube. The remaining sections are in the tail, and are increasingly smaller in size and importance, the last, Zulu section, is barely able to accomodate a small man. Juliet) The Brig and secondary defense post. Lockdown mechanism, environmental stores, and quarantined cargo is housed there. Security Officer’s Station. Kilo) Captain’s quarters. Lima) Science officer’s quarters. Mike) Chief Engineer’s quarters. November) Chief Medical Officer’s quarters. Oscar) Security Officer’s quarters. Papa) Helmsman’s quarters. Quebec) Crew Lounge. Romeo) Mess hall and canteen. Sierra) Secondary communications, computer neural node terminal. Tango) Secondary life support and portable science station. Tool room. Any known tool can be manufactured here. Uniform) Breakaway shelter and sled, a mobile groundcar. Victor) Emergency supplies and blackstar-compressed oxygen tanks. Whiskey) Emergency bio stores. X-ray) A portable quantum generator. Yankee) Signal Bouy and secondary sensor array. Zulu) Aft plasma inducer and inert blackstar fission array -- Like a bee’s stinger, a one-shot poly-nuclear payload that can make anyone regret tailgating The Eliza. In all, the ship is in good shape, and has been worse-for-the-wear before.]
SIMAK
(Looking at engineering display panels:) Sir, the Golf and Hotel sections of the ship are completely flooded. Charlie and Romeo sections took much of the impact and if it weren’t a-for this sea-water dousing the fires, Foxtrot and Zulu sections would-a been lit-up like a Roman candle. I stand corrected, Hotel section is only half-submerged. All in all, I’d say we’ve been mighty lucky.
WELLS
You call this lucky? (To HEINLEIN:) Are we still sinking?
HEINLEIN
Negative, sir. The ship has sealed-off the damaged sections of the ship. (Closely examining LOTUS’ bright-lime-green coffin, looking at the back of her head, not giving away the humor of it:) The women’s vital signs are stable. Should we awaken them, Mr. Clarke?
CLARKE
Negative. The captain’s orders still stand. For now, they’re safe in here.
WELLS
We can’t leave them floating around like that! Just look at them!
CU: Several coffins bumping against each other with small, rhythmic waves, legs intertwined, faces between legs, all undulating from the bobbing waves, suggesting something obscene.
(It seems the manufacturers of the concubine’s coffins had more leeway in design than that of the military. The individually-colored, plastic-easter-egg-colored coffins are perfectly molded to the womens’ bodies. All women appear to be mouthing the “o” shape while spread-eagled and are cupping their breasts while sleeping in cryogenic hybernation. Their names are engraved on the forehead of the coffins. It must have been a marketing thing, and obviously the ladies had no say concerning the construction of the coffins. They are floating knees up, bobbing as they come in contact with floating foam, etc.)
CLARKE
For now, they are in the most structurally-sound compartment in the ship; in a molded, biocoffin that will protect them from nearly any furthur hazard that may come their way. They are safe. We must focus our attention toward more vital matters. Our first-and-foremost mission is to assess the scope of the damage, regain control of this ship, analyze the condition of The Archimedes and learn the status of Captain Verne.
SIMAK
Aye.
WELLS
I heard the blackstar protocol. Why in blazes didn’t we implode?
CLARKE
For one, I overloaded the system’s G-matrix with an intermittent phase pulse and thereby temporarily deactivated the computer’s higher functions, for another, the blackstar coil may have been damaged from the descent to the planet and finally, the fact that Captain Verne inadvertently imploded the rest of The Universe while we remain in a polyparadox may have somehow have affected the time-space continuum.
SIMAK
Aye, not to mention that the trilogic array’s been out since Foxtrot got hit in that little battle I told you all about. The ship couldn’t blow herself up if she tried a hundred times!
CLARKE
(Pause.) Well, that would certainly be a logical explanation. It still does not answer how the blackstar protocol was activated in the first place. For a concubine to know the precise sequencing matrix of the-
HEINLEIN
The three of us activated it when we were being boarded by our counterparts.
CLARKE
Of course. I’ll use your codes to deactivate it. Peculiar. There’s only the two of you.
HEINLEIN
Yeah, well it was me, Smokey, and... oh yeah, where’s Asimov?
WELLS
I hardly missed him.
SIMAK
Aye, all the joyous silence and normal activity was-a gettin’ me worried now. I thought it was me.
CLARKE
I believe we can all agree that we’re all a little more sane when Ensign Asimov is absent.
(They do. The Silicon Velley Girls is heard playing on the monitor high above, near the floor. It keeps playing throughout.)
WELLS
Well, what in blazes happened to him? I’ve got to write something in the personnel report.
SIMAK
On our way here, he said something about his hair and ran to the tail section.
CLARKE
List him as missing-in-action, Doctor; in the meantime, we’ll find our way to the neural hub.
SIMAK
Much of her is underwater, Mr. Clarke, if we can’t-a get the computer online again, we’ll hafta climb to the Jiffy Tube and-a getter turned right-side-up from there.
CLARKE
Very well. Doctor Wells, you and I will go to the computer neural hub. I will attempt to remove the blackstar protocol and restore normal ship operations while you attempt to reach the captain through our communications array. Mr. Simak, take Mr. Heinlein and get to the Jiffy Tube. (He extends a hand to stop them momentarily.) If you find Mr. Asimov’s body, call us.
SIMAK
Aye, sir. He was a cheerful ol’ laddie. We’re sure gonna-
(He trails off when he realizes he’s talking about ASIMOV. He can’t think of anything else to say that would have finished the sentence, so he just shakes his head.)
CLARKE
Use the time without Mr. Asimov’s infallibly-inept assistance to its maximum.
WELLS
Call it a vacation. With his luck, he just might have survived the crash, who knows?
HEINLEIN
(A little morose, as he resigns to the fact that he's lost his best friend...) I doubt that very much. We were going over a thousand knots. We’ll probably still be finding parts of him hidden throughout the ship for days-on-end. Call you when we get there.
(They all exit in two different directions, the coffins floating between them.)
WELLS
He’s gotta point, Asimov’s surely a goner. And on that note, how did you manage to survive, Mr. Clarke? You weren’t in your coffin during the crash.
CLARKE
With my crude understanding of duo-dynamic electromagnetic fields and holographic plasma arrays, from the neural hub of the ship, I was able to hastily-construct an equation that allowed an inverse force-field to shield my body from the impact.
WELLS
(Not understanding a word of it:) I see.
CLARKE
(Faking modesty, even though LEAH gave him the idea:) Actually, it was my prior study into the gravometric relays that truly spawned the discovery.
WELLS
(Moving on:) And a fine discovery it is, Clarke.
CLARKE
In fact, with more study, my stasis array could be the basis of a new kind of sheilding mechanism, one that could rid our need of coffins altogether. A Clarke-field array...
WELLS
That sounds delightful, Lieutenant Commander, and I’d love to discuss it at length with you, perhaps when you manage to find time to again, re-schedule your overdue medical examination.
CLARKE
Perhaps. (Pause.) Do you think Captain Verne may have survived?
WELLS
Who knows? We know nothing about this planet, nothing about anyone’s whereabouts and very little about what in heaven’s name is going on around here.
CLARKE
A situation that Captain Verne would call business-as-usual. There may be a possibility that he's still alive. I saw him open Azalea’s coffin shortly before I created my stasis array.
WELLS
Well, that might have given him a chance. Do you think he used it?
CLARKE
If he did, he may be injured from the discrepancies occurring between the shape of cargo-unit Azalea’s form and his own.
WELLS
Yes, and that’s only assuming he had time to chuck out the body and get in before he crashed.
CLARKE
He was fond of Azalea, it may have been difficult to cast her aside, even to preserve himself.
WELLS
No, you’re right. I doubt he could rough her up, even if she was a corpse.
CLARKE
True. He may be dead after all. No, he wasn’t the type of man who could just toss a body aside, he was a man who always treated women with the upmost tenderness and respect.
CUT TO: