Earthshaker

This work is entirely fictional. We ask all experts in the field to go easy on us.

On the ice field of planet Zeta-Ω, Caius's compass needle kept straying from its course. It wasn't broken. The planet was “guiding” him.

An interstellar surveyor, he landed with the brass compass his grandfather had left him, only to discover a heartbeat-like resonance hidden beneath the ice. Night after night, tapping sounds came from below, as if someone were gently knocking on the cabin door with a fingernail. The star chart on his compass altered itself, pointing toward an unknown ravine. And the black-haired boy who called himself a “native” always vanished into the icy mist whenever Caius turned around.

“Don't touch the ice in the ravine,” read a note the boy had left behind, its edges rimed with frost. “It will remember your fingerprints.”

But Caius went anyway. The moment the ice cracked and the compass sank into the abyss, he saw countless glowing lines spreading across the ice walls, like someone had drawn a gigantic treasure map deep inside the planet. And those tapping sounds weren't a warning after all. They were an invitation.