Arrival (11 page)

“Fun, ain’t it?” Mac stated as he helped her to her feet.

Lynn looked around for herself. Mac was right, the fog seemed awfully thick. Gray and mysterious, it hung motionless, except for a slight swirling as the wind rose and fell. The ground was wet and muddy, and it squished beneath her boots in a strange way that she had never experienced. It didn’t feel solid. She had never walked on anything but a solid deck before now, and she found the sensation unsettling.

There was some sort of grass covering the ground. A bizarre greenish-blue color, it sprawled out across the ground in uneven patches. It wasn’t at all like the grass she had walked on in the garden deck of the Daedalus. It was much stiffer and more resilient, refusing to remain flattened against the ground after she stepped on it with her boot.

The wind was warmer than she had expected. She had never experienced a storm firsthand, but she had seen many photographs and watched old Earth movies, most of which depicted storms as being quite cold.

The rain was especially intriguing to her. Water was a carefully controlled commodity where she came from, with every drop counted and carefully dispersed. But here, it came down in buckets, unrestricted, unencumbered, and unmeasured. And it wasn’t the sterile, bio-electrically cleansed water to which she was accustomed. It had its own smell, its own taste. In fact, it made everything feel fresh and clean. And it seemed to activate something; a pungent aroma that filled her nose, overpowering everything else.

Tony slid down the hill, startling Lynn, almost knocking her off her feet.

“Jeez, Tony!” she exclaimed. “You scared the hell out of me!”

“Sorry,” Tony apologized as he got to his feet. “Man, would you look at this.” The sensation of being outdoors, with no walls anywhere near him, was overpowering, leaving him feeling incredibly small and insignificant. He suddenly felt unsafe, and swung his rifle around off his shoulder and held it ready at his side.

“What do you need that for?” Lynn asked.

“I don’t know,” Tony admitted, “but it makes me feel better.”

Frank dropped down through the hatch and slid down to join them. “First thing in the morning, we’re gonna have to break out a shovel and dig out a better access path than that!” Frank shook the back of his rain jacket to get off the mud that had accumulated during his slide. He pulled his hood back and looked up at the sky, letting the rain strike his face. “Wow!” he laughed. “Isn’t this something?” Frank lowered his head once more, and looked at the others, all wet and muddy. “Well, we’re quite the rag-tag group, especially on this auspicious occasion.”

They looked each other over for a moment. It was indeed a momentous occasion in the history of humanity. As far as they knew, they were the first humans to set foot on an extrasolar world.

Lynn wondered if it would have felt as unusual had she been born and raised on Earth. Living her entire life on a spaceship whose only purpose was to get here, it didn’t seem such a strange idea to her that they actually
were
here.

“Maybe we should take a picture, or something?”

Lynn looked at him with reproach. “Maybe later, Mac. For now we’ve got work to do.” She turned to Frank. “Why don’t you go aft and do a quick scan of the reactor systems. Make sure the anti-matter containment bottle is still intact.”

“The reactor displays show that it’s fine.”

“Just humor me.”

“No problem,” Frank answered.

“Mac, do a visual check of the starboard side for damage,” Lynn continued. “Tony, you take the port side.”

“Gotcha,” Mac replied.

“What are you gonna do?” Frank asked Lynn.

“I’m the smallest one here, so after I check out the nose, I’ll crawl around underneath and check out the gear and the underside as best I can.”

“Sounds good.”

“Everyone stay on comms, and stay as close as possible to the ship. We don’t need anyone getting lost in the fog.”

“Yeah, and let’s not forget, we
are
on an alien world, here,” Frank added.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Tony commented. “But aren’t all worlds alien to us?”

Lynn smiled. “Let’s get to work, and make it quick. We’ll assemble back here in twenty minutes, okay?” Lynn checked her watch. “It’s thirteen-forty now, so fourteen hundred?” Lynn looked at the others to see if there were any questions.

“If it’s thirteen-forty, why is it so dark outside?” Mac pointed out.

“That’s a good point, actually,” Tony said. “How are we going to measure time here?”

“We can figure that out later, guys,” Frank suggested.

“TC Five has a twenty-seven-point-four hour day, which we’ll eventually switch to. For now, we’ll just stick to the shipboard time on our watches,” Lynn instructed.

As the others dispersed, Lynn briefly examined the nose of the LRV. Satisfied that it was intact, she moved to the other side and inspected the port forward gear. It was jammed into the small rise where the LRV’s nose was resting. It looked a little bent, but otherwise appeared sturdy enough, for now.

Dropping down to her hands and knees, Lynn crawled under the nose of the ship just aft of the port forward gear’s back strut. The mud was deep here, and she sank several centimeters with every move. It was an unusual feeling, the mud squishing between her fingers. Just like everyone else raised on the Daedalus, Lynn had spent her share of duty hours in the agricultural bays, tending the crops that made up the bulk of their diets. She had felt dirt and mud before. But that mud had been very smooth, filtered, and free of most imperfections. The mud here was quite irregular, clumpy and soft at the same time, packed with small rocks, pebbles, and pieces of dead vegetation. For a moment, she wondered if it was safe to be crawling around in the muck on this alien world.

She and Frank had discussed this prior to exiting the LRV a few minutes earlier. The nature of their arrival would not allow them to take the cautious step-by-step approach outlined in their mission protocols. With their ship in an unknown state, they had no choice but to venture outside for inspection before extending the habitat bays that were designed to give them a living and working space safe from the planet’s environment. And until they located and retrieved all the cargo drop pods, they had neither the equipment nor the facilities to maintain a separate living environment while they awaited either colonization or rescue. If they were going to survive, it would have to be out here on the planet’s surface. So they had agreed to jump in with both feet and expose themselves to the natural elements of this planet with far less regard to safety than the mission protocols dictated. Short of drinking the water or eating the plant or animal life here, they would treat this planet as if it were Earth itself. There would be ample time to test the food and water here before they ran out of consumables.

Lynn crawled over to the starboard forward gear strut. It was snapped clean off, as if someone had bent it back and twisted it until it broke. The back strut had been jammed up into the gear well in the fuselage, and shorted out the bay door motor. No matter, as she doubted they would be trying to get the LRV airborne anytime soon.

Frank arrived at the aft end of the LRV after trudging through the rain, mud, and wind. If this was what living on a natural world was going to be like, he wondered why anyone would ever want to leave the comfortable interior of the Daedalus.

He pulled his data pad from his shoulder and opened it up. After turning it on and setting it to scan mode, he adjusted the scan beam to a narrow field and pointed it at the back end of the LRV. A maze of multicolored lines and shapes appeared on the data pad’s screen, a confusing jumble of geometric patterns that were impossible to sift through. Frank adjusted the depth of the display, filtering out layers until he reached the depth of the reactor’s antimatter containment bottle.

Now, the image on his screen was discernible. Frank scanned across the reactor plant, checking the containment bottle across every depth layer. The electromagnetic bottle that separated the anti-matter from all the other matter around it was intact, powered by a battery that would last several decades before losing power.

Satisfied that the reactor was stable, Frank began scanning the other systems. Power distribution, communications array, sanitation systems, reserve fuel cells, all of which were as critical to their survival as the reactor plant itself, and Frank knew it. Lynn was just afraid of a reactor accident. Everyone who didn’t understand how the containment system worked was afraid of it. True, a sudden collapse of the containment bottle would be catastrophic, but the odds of that happening were slim, considering all of the safety back-ups that had been designed into the system by the Eden Syndicate back on Earth more than seventy-five years ago.

Mac looked over the starboard side of the ship, checking for anything that looked out of the ordinary. Mac wasn’t a flight mechanic, but he was a general systems mechanic, and he could tell if something was not right. He had also spent countless hours studying the ship’s schematics and technical specifications, just like everyone else, during their long voyage.

Tony checked the port side, looking for the same things as Mac. Cracks in the hull, signs of severe stress, internal fires, or other damaged systems. Mac was the real mechanic, but Tony had enough training to handle this simple external inspection. Besides, they weren’t planning on taking off again tonight. They just needed to be sure that the LRV was safe for the night. If not, they would be forced to ride out the storm somewhere else.

Suddenly, something startled Tony. A rustling noise, like something moving in the distance. Tony spun around, tipping his head up to point his headlamp into the foggy night, toward the direction where he heard the noise. “Mac,” Tony whispered into his comm-set. “Did you hear that?”

“
Hear what?
” Mac responded.

“I heard a noise off the port side.”

“
All I can hear is wind and rain.
”

“Well I heard something,” Tony insisted as he continued to search the fog with his headlamp. “It sounded like something was moving out there.”

“
Try scanning in the direction of the noise, Tony,
” Lynn instructed, joining the conversation.

“Yes ma’am.” Tony pulled out his data pad and set it to long range area scan. “What should I scan for?”

“
Start with infrared,
” Frank advised.

“Copy that.” Tony set the scanning parameter on his data pad to infrared only and began sweeping from side to side. A few small red blips appeared and quickly disappeared, but mostly the display screen stayed green and blue, indicating that nothing was giving off significant heat. “Nothing hot out there that I can see,” Tony announced.

“Maybe it’s not warm-blooded,” Frank said as he stepped up beside Tony.

Tony nearly dropped his data pad. “Jesus, Frank! You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry.” Frank reached over to Tony’s data pad and made an adjustment. “It is an alien world, after all. Maybe you should set it to detect movement. If it isn’t moving, it’s probably not a threat.”

Tony continued to pan back and forth, but the scanner showed no signs of movement, and he heard no more noises.

“Find anything?” Lynn asked as she crawled out from under the ship.

Frank looked Lynn up and down. She was covered with mud from head to toe. “Jeez, Lynni. You’re a mess.”

“Nothing,” Tony answered. “No movement, and nothing on infrared.” Tony turned off the data pad and slung it back over his shoulder. “Guess I’m just hearing things, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lynn assured him. “We’re all gonna be a little nervous here until we get used to it.” Lynn wiped her hands on her shirt and turned her attention to Frank. “How’s the reactor look?”

“Fine. No reason we can’t fire it up right now. In fact, the whole engineering section looks undamaged. How’s the gear?”

“Right nose gear is gone, probably behind us somewhere. The strut got shoved up into the wheel well and jammed the door motor as well.”

“So I guess we won’t be going back up into space in this thing anytime soon.”

Mac came around the tail to join them. “Find anything, Tony?”

“Nope,” Tony admitted, still a little embarrassed.

“Well, there’s not much use in standing around getting soaked,” Frank said. “How about we go back inside and set up housekeeping?”

Lynn pulled off her head-cover and tipped her head back, allowing the rain to spill across her face. It was such an unusual feeling; little cold droplets pelting her forehead and cheeks. It felt similar to a shower, only colder, and it was more refreshing and natural.

“Lynn,” Frank urged. “Shall we?” he added, gesturing toward the nose of the ship.

“Yes, of course,” Lynn answered. “Let’s get back inside.” Lynn put her head-cover back on and turned to head in. “We can go over our inspection results after we open up the habitat bays.”

They trudged through the mud and rain, groundwater splashing under their boots with every step. The squishy, sloshing sound was new to them, and Mac found it quite delightful to stomp forcefully downward, splashing water in all directions.

Lynn watched Mac splashing playfully a few steps ahead of her. She felt exhausted, and a bit apprehensive out in the open. She was soaked right through to the bone, and cold. It was all rather uncomfortable. She had never felt cold before. Where she lived, the temperature was a constant seventy-two degrees. Not too hot, not too cold. She remembered once, when she was working in the galley to earn extra simulator credits, going into the walk-in freezer to fetch a box of synthetic beef. That was cold, but it wasn’t wet. And being wet somehow made it even colder.

The last hour had been grueling for her, the most difficult time in her young life thus far. The adrenaline that had gotten her through it all was beginning to wear off, and fatigue was creeping in behind it. The physical exertion of their first EVA in normal gravity in four months was making matters worse. At only one hundred and sixty centimeters and fifty kilograms, Lynn was the smallest of the group next to Adia. She watched the men ahead of her in line as they trudged easily through the mud and water, and envied their physical strength and endurance, even after four months in microgravity. She felt like she couldn’t take another step, but she refused to show any weakness, especially now that she was in command. She would have to be strong if she was going to be a leader. Jack was strong. Strong and decisive. She wished he were here now. She had never really wanted to be in command. She just wanted to be a pilot.