For the most part, life for Carmela Alamilla was quite ordinary for a career-minded, thirty-one year old botanist working in the far Outers of the early 24th century. She was used to frequent travels and the cramped quarters available on the far edge of civilization. Food amounted to clever mixes of a few staple items and synthesized nutritional cubes which, no matter what skill of preparation, became monotonous in both taste and texture. She was driven and tough because she had to be. But what wasn’t ordinary was being on an alien world of wonder.

  She carefully walked through one of the many valley shrub forests on the planet “Alderaan” under overcast sky. She kept her sight fixed on the ground and foliage in front of her. Nearly all the plant life on the world reached less than a meter in height and so there wasn’t any risk of bumping her head. But long winding plants resembling vines with short needle-like leaves stretched across the ground and could ensnare her feet.

  Her exosuit had a fair amount of cushion, and the gravity on Alderaan was slightly less than Earth. So there was little risk from falls outside of slides down steep, rocky cliffs. And although those were plentiful enough, they were also easy to avoid. Even still, she would take no chances. Work in outer space and foreign planetary environments was always considered dangerous. And the standard procedure was to examine even minor mishaps in microscopic detail to better try to avoid them happening again. And she didn’t want that microscope on her.

  She also wanted to best guide the rover driving behind her, which she had named Juan. It’s rugged wheels and all wheel drive system allowed it to traverse any obstacle within her team’s valley region. But it could hurt the plants.

  She paused to let the rover catch up and also to look back at her teammates after clearing a patch of growth. They had all separated by quite a bit to fulfill the daily tasks. And, although the number of tasks they had for today were fewer in number than typical, they also had less time available for them. But, though distant, she could make each of her teammates out. Their suit helmets were painted orange to be easy to spot, and they stood out clear above the foliage.

  Life on this world could best be compared with those on Earth from the Devonian period, some 400 million years ago. The ground was littered with patches of native analogs of algae, mold, clubmosses, hornworts, and liverworts, and she was determined to avoid hurting them. Elsewise there was bare dirt; there was no grass. And no creatures flew the sky. There wasn’t yet much in the way of terrestrial animal life in general.

  And the ecosystem of Alderaan was fragile. Some three and a half thousand miles away, a great large igneous province (LIP) was erupting with a fury that Earth had not seen since the Deccan Traps contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs near the end of the Cretaceous. Life on this world wasn’t as diverse and robust as it had been on Earth during that period. It would struggle to survive the unfolding disaster. She wasn’t going to make that struggle any harder.

  She and the other researchers could already see Vulcan’s work in the withered and browning stems and leaves. This was evident even here; closer to Vulcan everything was already dead. The dying introduced a new danger to the world’s biosphere – excessive sandblasting from storms.

  Alderaan was a more arid world than Earth already. Water covered less than two thirds of its surface and the landmasses were concentrated into two great supercontinents which plant life was still trying to cover. Each possessed deserts which made the Sahara look trifle. And each year they reclaimed more of the land.

  Between these supercontinents there was a narrow sea. Surrounding them was the great Panthalassic Ocean. Although it wasn’t as great as the ancient ocean of the same name on Earth, it was impressive from orbit. And it was a great interest for some of her colleagues.

  Dr. Mike Watanabe, the team’s marine biologist, had told her that aquatic life was enduring the ecological disaster better, but it would be hit with a great dying in time. Vulcan had been intermittently erupting for a hundred thousand years and likely would continue for half a million more. And the oceans would eventually acidify. They were witnessing a mass extinction.

  Her colleagues stressed that this was a natural factor in a planet’s evolution, and they were here to observe the event without changing the outcome. The process would give the scientific community insights on what happened in Earth’s distant past, as well as refining predictions concerning the probability for intelligent life and ideas on how to shape new worlds for human colonization. Outwardly, she served the Expedition as a good observer. Inwardly, she hated watching the dying unfold.

  She waded between patches of horsetails, some of which were nearly as tall as herself, and came upon a damp lowland which was part of a seasonal stream and where several organisms which had no Earth analogues were present. They looked mostly like mushrooms. They each consisted of a central bulb which dug into the soil and sprouted mycelium for nutrients – much like a mushroom – but then the bulb would sprout several meter-long trunks which each produced a fruiting body cap containing chlorophyll for photosynthesis. Because of that pigment and others within the cap, they were a beautiful deep blue-green. They were large too, easily standing out in the low field of brush.

  And they were multiplying; they endured the acidic rains better than most other “flora.” They continued to grow wherever there was moisture. The researchers classified these organisms as plants for now but were still debating on how best to create a proper classification. They weren’t really plants since chitin, not cellulose, was their structural constituent but they did photosynthesize, unlike proper fungi.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She had studied these extensively after discovering them and had already sent back her recommendation for a scientific name. But who knows what the review board at Penrose University back in Gliese 667 would decide on? Right now everyone colloquially called them “Alderaan mushrooms” and one of her grad student assistants had asked (certainly in jest) whether he could get a high from them. She then analyzed its chemical constituents and – one could from the caps. But it would be very easy to take a fatal overdose.

  The bulb and stalks, however, were edible once properly prepared and had a seafood-like taste. She and her team had conducted many culinary experiments on the world’s flora. Even though they had a whole alien world’s worth of life to catalogue, they always seemed to have free time on their hands. The weather frequently prevented outside excursions and there weren’t many options for entertainment this far from civilization.

  She positioned herself in what looked to be a good spot and turned back to the rover. “Take a core sample here, Juan,” she said, and then she stepped aside. She wanted to see how the soil had changed since the mushrooms had taken over the area.

  “Commencing dig,” Juan said in a happy voice. It extended its arm to the exact spot where she had been standing and bored into the soil with its drill. Finishing quickly, it pulled the drill back out and ejected the 0.3m sample into a free cylinder on its back. “Would you like another?”

  She considered that the team probably wouldn’t get another chance for core samples for many days. So, she marked a couple more locations while they were in the mushroom patch.

  Her destination was a tall tower out past the stream’s floodplain and a ridge. And that would bring her out of sight of the others. She radioed to her companions. “I’m headed out past the ridge to Tower 5. Finish your remaining tasks in a timely manner and get back to base station. I want everyone inside at least an hour before the storm.”

  She wouldn’t make it back before then, but that didn’t matter. She was in charge of the ground team in this sector. She had some leeway to do what she wanted.

  “Roger that,” came the first reply, and all the following ones were similar.

  She detoured around the rest of the mushroom filled floodplain and trekked over the steep incline of the ridge on the far side. She managed it without having to utilize her ice axe and was proud of that fact. Another few dozen meters of soggy flat soil and she was at Tower 5.

  It was a two-hundred meter tall lattice work tower with solar panels fitted near the top and many docking stations for aerial drones below that. Most of her research was performed remotely via video recording. But she liked to come down to the planet’s surface occasionally to gather spore and tissue samples, and just to walk amongst the weird forms of life. She justified these excursions by claiming that she was better at collecting those samples and to inspect the base of the tower.

  Mold had grown on the tower’s concrete base. The clean white concrete could now hardly be seen. The mold couldn’t negatively affect the tower’s operation, but the interaction between the native life and a man-made material was worth personal observation. She wirelessly linked with the tower’s processor through her EVA suit’s terminal and received a normal systems health report.

  That was good. Bad weather was coming. The volcanic ash and aerosols from Vulcan weren’t the only things wreaking havoc on Alderaan. The lack of any significant plant life over much of the land surface allowed devastating sandstorms to combine with that ash and sweep across the continents. The tower would need to go into a harsh weather mode to survive that. But it should endure it fine since all systems were working properly.

  She bent down and collected a sample of the mold for detailed study back in the lab. She did this every few weeks for a running record. This mold had made the concrete its home and she would determine if the long-term exposure to the (manmade) material was causing any somatic changes in the organism.

  She stood up and looked at the cloudy sky once done. The planet’s sun tried to shine through the heavy cloud layers. She, and the rest of her team, suspected this was a sunnier world centuries before they arrived – and before the Vulcan large igneous province spewed gigantic amounts of ash high and aerosols into the atmosphere every day.

  Now the sky was cloudy for most of the day almost every day. And it could be this way for hundreds of thousands more years. The researchers on the world wore EVA suits during excursions to prevent cross contamination. But one also wouldn’t want to breathe Alderaan’s air. Vulcan had filled it with high levels of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and chlorine gas. The plant life of this part of the world were managing these pollutants for now. And Dr. Mike Watanabe had reported that marine life were also holding up. She hoped this rare bastion of life could endure.

  She liked to imagine that intelligent life would develop hundreds of millions of years from now. They would walk in these same valleys (although unrecognizably changed by weathering and plate techtonics) and even conduct similar controlled observations once they had acquired a scientific mind. But they would have no knowledge that she had done the same before so long ago. Her team’s infrastructure was atmosphere based. Ground based artifacts like the tower’s foundation were few in number and thus easy to dispose of once their usefulness had ended.

  Nobody in the future will ever find evidence that we were here. They’ll dream…as we once did about whether aliens ever walked on Earth. But their civilization will be their own. And I was here…long before them.

  And then one day they would also walk new worlds.

  She pushed her fantasy out of her mind and checked the latest information on the incoming stormfront using her suit’s comms unit. A belt of sand, ash, and rain that would fully black out the sun was now only five hours away. Global wind patterns were channeling almost the full force of Vulcan in her site’s direction.

  If this world’s life somehow just finds a way to survive this.

  She sometimes wished the Expedition had arrived here to terraform the world in favor of its developing life. She came with the Expedition because it offered her a chance to earn early tenure. And she also understood the value of it. But watching a tragedy unfold sometimes hurt.