Fiasko
Piloting a large mechanical strider, Parvis searches through a massive foam glacier known Birnam Wood for a lost comrade. He passes through a field of non-organic crystalline structures that resemble the remains of once living creatures.
"This truth, gradually penetrating the observer, was more unsettling than the impression that he was witness to a cosmic mimicry of death, or that these were in fact the mortal remains of unknown beings that lay beneath the stormy horizon. So one had to turn upside down one's natural way of thinking, which was capable of going only in one direction: these shapes were similar to bones, ribs, skulls, and fangs not because they had once served life—they never had—but only because the skeletons of terrestrial vertebrates, and their fur, and the chitinous armor of the insects, and the shells of the mollusks all possessed the same architectonics, the same symmetry and grace, since Nature could produce this just as well where neither life nor life's purposefulness had ever existed, or ever would." .
Part II: Arrival at Quinta
Hundreds of years later, humans have embarked on a mission to explore a planetary system where an abundance of radio waves has been detected. They make use of "siderial engineering" and gravistics to warp a black hole into a toroid for safe passage over 300 light years. Traveling at relativistic speeds, the crew will age only days while 300 years passes for the distant planet, known as Quinta. When they arrive, they try in vain to make sense of their observations about the alien solar system.
The crew's first encounter with the alien technology is a gigantic cybernetic moth-like machine, tumbling towards the edge of the solar system. When brought on the ship for dissection, the artifact shows catalytic corrosion from artificial microparasites programmed for selective aggression.
As suspected by the now distant Earth, the planet is encircled by an equatorial ice ring. Seen up close by the Hermes, the planet's ring is seen to be highly unstable. Chunks of ice continuously rain down on Quinta, which causes equatorial pluvials and continuous rainfall.
Millions of strange machines orbit the planet in erratic paths.
Some of the orbiting machines have inscrutable forms
The radio emission is yet another mystery. Quinta appears to jam all radio frequencies with pure noise.
"DEUS illustrated for them this electromagnetic state of affairs by shifting the radio spectra to the visible zone. The white, tranquil face of the planet was replaced by a scene of multicolored vibrations. When DEUS made the coherent emitters green, their transmitters white, and the "counteremitters" purple, Quinta became a variegated ball of contending hues. Spreading purple engulfed the relays, reddening their white, and at the same time green flooded in. A blurring spiderweb of color ensued; at times one color would peak, then immediately fade away. "
The solar system, later referred to as the "war sphere" is subjected to intense analysis by DEUX, the ship's AI, and the scientific teams. Uncertainty reigns and frustrations mount as the observations elute logical explanation.
"Sometimes it seemed to the scientist that he saw among the misty blotches microscopic
threads brighter than the background, like a frozen Holbein dance of death photographed through a telescope. And that, if he increased the magnification a little, he would be able to see the skeletons in fact, and they would cease to be what his mind added to the trembling fibers, that were so indefinite and fleeting—like the canals seen by the ancient observers of Mars because they wanted so much to see them. When he stared too long at the groupings of weak, motionless sparks, his fatigued vision yielded to his will and then he could make out—almost—the milky dots of skulls and the hair-thin bones of spines and limbs. But when he blinked, his eyes burning from the strain, the illusion dissolved."
Part IV: Vision
After months of frustrating silence, the Quintians finally send a message to the Hermes, allowing for an unmanned reconnaissance ship to land in a designated spaceport. The lander returns with a strange series vision transmitted by the alien world.
"Out of a heavy green mist emerged a vast surface, seen from a great height. It gleamed dully, like frozen mercury. Incredibly slender needles stood upon it at regular intervals,like pieces on a chessboard: stalagmites immaculately white, sharply pointed, and growing." Imagined with "concealment" in mind.
Something blue, weakly flickering, in the center of a robotic eye.
A scene of ruination
Incomprehensible remains
A strange diadem, made to fit no human head.
Part V: Descent
After a series of cataclysmic exchanges, the Quinta agrees to allow a single human to land on the planet and receive a "greeting."
"It was not the crowns of trees that merged to form a dark-green, shaggy surface, but dry, lifeless, bushlike tangles tangles of grotesque barbed wire, or knotted tubes of some type, or cables. Forced to abandon the image of a wooded hillside where the light of occasional clearings shone through a gray-silvery mass of conifer needles, he saw the artifact of an alien technology whose skill renounced all earthly canons."
A giant, cyclopian eye watches the descending lander from over the horizon.
Red sparks hover above the spaceport, lashed with fierce storms.
Entering a mammoth cathedral-like space, Tempe is greeted with a display of crystal flowers, who blossom momentarily with explosive color before returning to ash. The words "Greeting concluded" hover above the despairing astronaut.
Frustrated, maddened, desperate for answers but short on time, Tempe ventures beyond the boundary of the agreed upon landing zone
Beneath giant spiderwebs made of cable, he sees large, grotesque mounds covering the hillside.
In frenzied desperation, he uses one of his tools to crudely break the surface of one of the mounds and witnesses what rests within
"The Hermes, opening fire on the antenna masts outside the spaceport, pierced straight through the clouds. The rain instantly evaporated in white steam. A laser sun rose. In a wide radius a thermal blast swept the entire upland slope free of mist and clouds. As far as the eye could see, the slope was covered with throngs of naked, defenseless warts, and as the towering spiderweb and the antennas, breaking, fell upon him in flames, he realized that he had seen the Quintans. "
