It took a full week for the crew to realize Marilyn wasn't in the astronauts' quarters, or as close as they'd been since leaving Earth. Despite their insistence, she had not been with them in the morning upon waking. The personnel on board Astronaut Mission Control knew something was amiss.
By the time the sense of failure crept over the crew, they were already caught in a web of deceit. After everyone had had their leisure time at the small cantina on the side of the ship that was part of the crew's living quarters, a small gathering of abnormality erupted when the crew took to the ship's helm.
The ship's systems responded as normal. The lights, the air, even gravity seemed to be operating normally. The crew held an all-hands meeting, after which they began actively searching for Marilyn. The knowledge that she wasn't in her room or on the ship was spreading, and everyone began to become more distressed and agitated.
"If a ship of this size doesn't have a tracking system, then whoever brought Marilyn here must've put a tracker on her," Dwight was saying as they stood in the sparsely-furnished control room.
"I'm not sure we have time to worry about that," Lida stated. The rest of the crew gave her a questioning look. "She's beautiful, and we're only men. If they aren't black-market traders, then we'll have a small problem. No matter what the price tag, I don't want to be the ones taking her for ransom!"
"Lida is right," the crew unanimously agreed. "We should focus on finding her before it's too late."
"I don't think they would be that cruel or stupid," Dwight counters. "It's been a week, and she's gone missing after the events of the cantina. So we definitely need to consider that it has to be a criminal. Marilyn loves partying, and often gets drunk. I should have watched her more closely!"
"No, I should have!" Otis shoots back.
"We can't blame ourselves for any of this." The crew was becoming agitated. "We voted to hire her in the first place. We agreed it was for the good of the mission."
"Hold on! There's no cause for alarm." Dr. Daniel hadn't spoken much until then. "It's possible that she's part of the crew, and returning to take care of some personal business. Why not explore the most logical place? The control room. I was the one to assign her here. There's no doubt she'll be returned shortly. We've got to do something!"
"Do we?" Dwight was angry. "Why? You want to wait around for the kidnapper? Look, if this doesn't end soon, I'm putting out an alert to the Alliance."
"Why don't you do that?" Lida scoffed. "It's not like they'd suspect a space ship would be on board when they look for her."
"The Alliance has a lot more resources than we do. Surely they can think of something."
"Well, we're all here, and we're going to do something," Drew said, cutting off Dwight. "We're the crew! We can't just let this go!"
"It should have never happened!" Otis, still seething, was now shouting. "We told her to go, and she ignored our warning. So now it's us who have to find her! We can't buddy this up to some black-market criminal! We have to do something!"
"I'll go get the cameras and trackers online," the doctor volunteered.
"They'd have to find a way to patch Marilyn's brainwave signature through," Lida argued. "Unless she was out of earshot, which would be difficult, even if she'd stayed in the area. And that would only expose her location. If she stepped one foot outside the ship, we'd never find her."
"I think I have a better idea." Dr. Daniel had expected to be sending them on a wild goose chase, but now that he had everyone's attention, he spoke. "We could use the smallest tracker, and focus on the area below. If they bring Marilyn in and out again or step outside and, say, two people walk away, then we scan for them by their footprints."
"If she was on board the ship when it started out, she'd most likely have landed on the planet, on our landing platform. And her footprint would be obvious. We could keep scanning from there. We could even search different areas."
"It's worth a try."
Dr. Daniel sent out the voice command to begin the scanning and tracking process. He requested that they scan once every 12 seconds to prevent the system from becoming overrunning. He also asked the tracking device to work for three hours, and then to go into standby mode until signaled.
It took a lot longer than anticipated to find a base average of footprints. The scans were sporadic, coming in at several intervals and fluctuating wildly. And when they came in low, indicated a high number of footsteps, there was no evidence of where they'd been. After the first three hours, the system stated that it had completed its scanning function. It was now ready to track the movement of any nearby footprints.
Dwight was disappointed, but he accepted defeat. "So it's no use, huh?"
"I can't believe it out of all the planets in our quadrant, she ended up here," Lida was annoyed.
"It's certainly not any where I'd choose to spend my free time," Dwight said, disappointed.
Eagerly, the doctor renewed tracking and scanning the moment it was powered on. "Well, obviously, that's not a good lead. We have to look further. I guess there's nothing we can do but search outside."
The crew spent a good amount of time going to various places, scanning and tracking. With the help of a few local younglings, they gathered up a variety of footprints, and managed to map out the surface of the island for miles around.
When all was said and done, they had uncovered a strange chain of events. Apparently, Marilyn first arrived, and then in short time after she disappeared, there were a ton of visitors. Everyone was looking for something, and there were aliens from all genres of worlds. Humans, cats, and a few other beasts stormed through the island and surrounding beaches, covered and continuing to cover every inch.
