Aphelion

Here's another one that suffers from preachiness. And, by the third or fourth paragraph, I had a pretty good idea of what was coming, so the ending was no surprise.

This one's got a big plot hole, too: what keeps these beings stuck to a planet once they've evolved into creatures of pure energy -- and, further, why do they even want to? Hell, if I could do that, I'd be out exploring the cosmos -- at the speed of light!

Sorry, Noel, to me, this one fell short.

Mebbe their energy patterns require a planetary magnetic field to remain coherent... without it, they would just 'spread themselves upon the winds', like Apollo in "Who Mourns for Adonais?" (ST:TOS). (I'm trying to remember if Mars HAS a strong magnetic field. Not every solid astronomical body does...)

Robert_Moriyama wrote:Mebbe their energy patterns require a planetary magnetic field to remain coherent... without it, they would just 'spread themselves upon the winds', like Apollo in "Who Mourns for Adonais?" (ST:TOS). (I'm trying to remember if Mars HAS a strong magnetic field. Not every solid astronomical body does...)

The Martian magnetic field is practically nil due to its core being frozen. It allows a lot of radiation in. That's largely why Mars is a dead planet in the first place.

Their little plot to poison us wouldn't work anyway. Extraplanetary samples are typically handled as though they are active disease vectors, but that's mostly to prevent the samples from being contaminated more than for our own safety. I'm pretty sure that an artifact would be treated with a great deal of extra care.