JANEK: Allright Mr. Ravel, Mr. Chance, let's take her down.

CHANCE: Roger that.

RAVEL: Yes, captain.

SHAW: How are we doing?

JANEK: Great.

CHANCE: Allright, Boss.

JANEK: All personnel, this is the captain, brace for entry. . . That means you too, Vickers.

COMPUTER VOICE: All systems online.

JANEK: What's the atmosphere?

RAVEL: The atmosphere is 71% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, traces of Argon gas.

Everyone strapped into chairs - except Janek, who stands gripping a stanchion, his boots planted on the deck.

JANEK: Whoa . . . now that's weather.

HOLLOWAY: Just like home.

FORD: Only if you're breathing through an exhaust pipe. C02 is over 3%, two minutes without a suit, you're dead.

LV-223 fills the window: a gray orb of mist. The ground invisible beneath the clouds. Sporadic lightning flickers.

The display paints data on the moonscape as the wavefront comes back, terrain rendered in luminous colors.

FORD: Peak . . . port side . . . whoa! 52,000. Makes Everest look like a baby brother.

JANEK: Allright, take us around. We'll use that as our point of entry.

The Prometheus sweeps on around the gray moon, radar emitters humming, antennae and telescopes open wide. The gas giant fills the sky behind LV-223. The display fills with light: a wave of terrain data sweeping across the moon's surface as the Magellan orbits.

CHANCE: Closing up. We got a couple of hard spots, maybe metal.

A jolt of excitement pounds through everyone on the Bridge. The prospecting ship descends through buffeting grey clouds. Telescopes and antennae stowed away. Hull streaming vapor as it cuts atmosphere.

Lightning flashes and booms around the descending ship. The landing engines roar. Wind screams over the hull. Mist whips across the Bridge window, obscuring any view. The Magellan breaks through the cloud cover into clear air. Below the ship, a vast and eerie landscape is revealed. Wide valleys mottled with thin dark ground cover. Barren crags and spires of rock. Waterless and wind-swept. The Prometheus thunders over valleys and craggy ridges of rock. Shaw stares at the grim and foreign country.

RAVEL: No radio, no heat source.

MILLBURN: Nobody's home.

DAVID: There is nothing in the desert. And no man is nothing.

FORD: What was that?

DAVID: Just something from a film I like.

Before them stretches a dry barren plain. Scattered rocky peaks rise from the desert floor - an alien Monument Valley.

JANEK: Let's go through that gate way. Reduce air speed by a hundred knots. Going through, nice and slow. . . . Keep it steady, boys.

Holloway points to a smaller mountain peak. Oddly regular.

HOLLOWAY: There!

SHAW: Charlie, what are you doing?

JANEK: Mr. Holloway, why don't you take a seat!

A structure with flat faces, clean edges - but cracked and timework. It glitters like coal.

HOLLOWAY: Right there. God does not build in straight lines. Starboard side, this valley. Captain, do you think you put us down there?

JANEK: Yea, I wouldn't be any good if I couldn't. Mr. Ravel, starboard ninety degrees.

Janek takes the helm, he expertly swings the Prometheus, nose pointed inward, guiding the ship down the valley as if it were a helicopter. A pilot born.

JANEK: One mile, port bow.

RAVEL: One mile, port bow.

More oddly regular peaks, as decrepit as the first, sit on the brink of a vast canyon.

JANEK: Engage landing sequence. Switch to manual.

Vickers stares at the pyramidal peaks, nonplussed. Teetering on the brink of belief. Shaw scans the data readouts. The ship drops between the canyon walls to approach the mounds.

CHANCE: Commence landing.

RAVEL: Roger.

The Prometheus purrs over the landscape, dwarfed by the scale. The ship descends, a stunning panorama unfolds before them: circular, hundreds of meters across, connected by trenches, a timeworn peak. Like a pattern of crop-circles sunk in the rock.

JANEK: Yeah, baby, yeah. Bringing her down in five . . . four . . . .

In the middle of the central mound - a huge angular peak. It's awe-inspiring. Cryptic. Huge.

CHANCE: The time to fire RC. . .

The Prometheus lands near the canal - half a kilometer from the central mound.

JANEK: Two . . . easy does it.

They stare out the window, down the wide straight canal at the pyramidal peak in the distance. Holloway looks around, staring in rapture, its eroded facets. Holloway and Shaw begin to get over the shock. Thinking like scientists again.

HOLLOWAY: Captain, would you please tell the survey team to suit up and meet us in the airlock.

JANEK: There's only six hours of day left, why don't you leave it till morning.

HOLLOWAY: Oh-no-no-no-no. It's Christmas and I want to open my presents. You, boy, you're coming with us.

DAVID: I would be delighted.

SHAW: Hey Jackson, what's that for?

JACKSON: Expedition security. My job is to make sure everybody is nice and safe

SHAW: This is a scientific expedition, no weapons.

JACKSON: Allright then, good luck with that.

HOLLOWAY: David, why are you wearing a suit, man?

DAVID: I beg your pardon?

HOLLOWAY: You don't breathe, remember, so why wear a suit?

DAVID: I was designed like this because you people are more comfortable interacting with your own kind. If I didn't wear the suit, it would defeat the purpose.

HOLLOWAY: Making you guess pretty close, huh?

DAVID: Not too close, I hope.

COMPUTER VOICE: Attention, gravity field adjusting in 15 seconds. . . Attention, gravity adjust in five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .

The expedition party emerges from the airlocks - riding Cargo Rovers. The rover's beds are loaded with gear. The explorers ride on running-board seats.

HOLLOWAY: Hey, this is just one small step for mankind.

SHAW: Seriously?

HOLLOWAY: Wooo! Come on, you ready to do this, I know you are! . . . . . Hey Fifield, I want a spectral-graph on that structure. I want to know if it's natural or if somebody put it there, allright?

FIFIELD: I can't tell you if it's natural or not, but what I can tell you is it's hollow.

The trench grows deeper as they follow it toward the central mound - the pyramidal peak framed ahead of them like a monument on a triumphal avenue. They cross a perpendicular canal.

They pass through the shadow of a high promontory of stone atop one bank of the canal.The far side of the promontory has a Sphinx/Skull-like face of monumental size. So eroded that its artificial nature is uncertain. The crater floor is a vast enclosed plain. The pyramidal mount looms in the center - colossal in scale. The rovers enter the crater, trailing plumes of dust. They circle the pyramid. A huge construction.

SHAW: Prometheus, are you seeing this?

Janek and Vickers watch the explorers' progress in the main holographic display: their tinny voices echoing over the comm link. At the sight of the huge pyramid, both Janek and Vickers stare in blank astonishment.

JANEK: Affirmitive, we see it.

The explorers are transfixed in awe. All skepticism banished.