The Silent World

The ship is almost destroyed by a gamma-ray burst from one of the thousands of satellites surrounding the planet. Attempts to contact the civilization on the planet are met with silence; why will the planet not acknowledge their attempts to talk to it? Does it have something to do with the scattered debris of what once were spaceships or the mysterious flashes of light from a distant asteroid belt? These are the questions that must be answered if the crew is to make contact with the first alien civilization that humans have encountered. Instead of answers, they get more questions; what is controlling all the people and the satellites on the planet? Why does it decide that the ship is evil and must be destroyed?A few crew members manage to get past the satellites and onto the planet. There they find a strange civilization ruled by an unknown presence that seems to exist in some of the residents, in the satellites, and almost everywhere on the planet. Whatever this entity is, it came into existence in an instant long ago, taking control, making decisions for the people. In solving the dilemma of the entity, the crew and the ship itself are put in danger again and again. To survive, they must discover what is this entity, why does it want to destroy anything coming from space, why is the planet silent?