The Alien Planet

I am a commander on-board a large space vessel. It does contain military personnel but this does not appear to be a military vessel and it contains a huge civilian population and their families.

The dream starts from outside the vessel looking down onto it. It is a large, old ship that has seen many years of service. There are no obvious features to it.

We are travelling towards a rocky planet and appear to be trapped in the gravity of either the planets or the star. The old engines are struggling to keep up so we decide to throttle back and go into orbit to give the engineering teams time to work on the ship.

Fast forward and we have landed in one of the boats on the surface of an apparently habitable planet. We do not need any special equipment to breathe, for example. We have landed near an abandoned modern village but the buildings are in disrepair. The groups consists of military personnel and a small group of families who needed a break from their time in space. It is dusk at our location. We take shelter in the abandoned buildings and settle down for the night.

At night, things take an altogether odd turn. Unusual light effects fill my room and seem to walk along the walls. At first I wonder if it is an alien intelligence but I feel it must be an hallucination. I feel no threat or danger from these effects. It is obvious from the noise in the area that I am not alone and this reassures me, but also worries me. What could be causing these hallucinations? The children seem to be enjoying the light show.

The night seems to be over quickly and one of my men enters my room to tell me that they are preparing to move on. As I am still experiencing the hallucinations I order him to go on ahead and take the families. The sun is starting to rise.

As the sun rises the hallucinations slowly die away and I prepare myself to move on and catch up with the rest of the group, which I can see in the distance out of the window. I have a better view of our location and it is a dry, dusty planet. While I'm getting ready another soldier enters the room and explains that he also stayed behind for the same reasons that I did. We both leave together and start running to catch up with the other group.

As the sun rises the temperature of the planet starts to rise dramatically. It becomes clear that the group will not survive the daytime temperatures without water and shade and so we increase our speed to catch up.

During our travels the light becomes brighter and brighter. It becomes obvious to me that the intensity of the light could damage our eyes and we have not brought any eye protection with us for the civilians. We are now too distant from the landing boat to return before the heat becomes a serious problem.

The sun rises fully above the horizon when I notice that there is a smaller, redder star alongside it. We appear to have landed on a planet with a binary star system: something I should have been aware of as the commander of the mission. The temperature of the planet is now intolerable as we reach the larger group. I am concerned that it could even be a trinary system and so prepare to give the order to take cover for the day.

I arrive at another abandoned village and cannot see any of the group. Myself and the other soldier enter an abandoned building which has very small windows. There is a group of families already huddled inside. I shout out of the door to the rest of team and receive an answer. The whole group have taken cover in the various buildings. I tell everyone to breathe through their noses and keep their mouths closed to reduce dehydration, and to use a rag to reduce the amount of dust they breathe in if possible. Via our radios I inform the soldiers that we will have to stay in the shade for the majority of the day and wait for the suns to start setting before moving on. It will be impossible for us to leave the building in search of water given the high temperatures, but that the team should keep an eye open for a possible route out of the town, and not to put their eyesight at risk.

There is some cloth covering the window to reduce the amount of incoming light. The families seem scared as they huddle inside the buildings. It comes to mind that the baking heat may cause the temperature inside the building to increase dramatically, and we may need to abandon the buildings altogether. There is no obvious route out of the village while the suns are still up and we have no idea how long the days last.

And then I woke up.

But what does it all mean?