The fury of the storm lasted into the early morning and, because of the stress, none of them got much sleep. Their eyes tired as they watched the satellite weather feed until it cut out, and they lost contact with all the remote survey stations. But the base’s power never failed and none of the domes depressurized.
She told Pancho and Brad that she wanted to immediately conduct a survey walk. She knew they needed to start early to have any chance of completing the post storm survey by the end of the day – the first step in getting their site back on a research schedule. They would likely need tomorrow too. She expected difficult terrain.
“We should wait until it’s light outside,” Brad said. “We can get a good view of our surroundings then. And Dr. Tanner’s help will give us a bird’s eye view. And then we’ll have a better idea of what to prioritize.”
“And what are we to do until then?”
Brad shrugged. “Clean the habs and setup to resume work.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s not going to take all of us all day.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But it’s safer. And we don’t know if there’s anything left out there.”
“He has a point,” Pancho said, diplomatically. “This site might be devastated. We might not have anything left to study.”
She nodded. She was also aware that was likely the case, but hoped some of the nearby areas might have fared better in the storm. And even if the worst had happened, they still needed to set the site’s equipment to a remote status to facilitate when they came back to the area after regrowth.
She opened the airlock’s inner door, showing her determination to go on. “We still have to go out there per our relocation procedure.”
Brad shook his head but walked into the airlock to prep.
“I too am persuaded by your boldness,” Pancho said. “And I do love your sense of adventuring.” He went into the airlock and, after dressing for the EVA, began handing out supplies. “Although we aren’t going to be climbing steep slopes, we won’t have good footing either. The ground will be outright nasty.”
They packed rope, carabiners, hammers, hammer drills, and trekking poles. Together with sixteen hours worth of oxygen it was a considerable weight. Pancho secured a shovel on his back too. She didn’t ask why even though she thought it was better to wait for the ground to dry before conducting any excavation.
“I’ll lead on all the slopes,” Pancho said as they were going through the airlock cycle.
“How bad do you think it is out there?” Brad asked, his voice was heavy with apprehension.
“Like hell right out the door,” Pancho said. “And the devil’s throne will be set up right on your golf course.
Brad nodded with quiet acceptance. He had made something of a golf course in a green clubmoss covered valley half a kilometer from the camp. And they were all certain that it wasn’t fit for play.
The airlock door slid to the side following decontamination and revealed a nearly waist high wall of piled mud and ash which immediately creeped into the airlock and clogged the entryway. More of it slid down the side of the dome and collapsed in front of them as an avalanche. She had expected that and wondered why she hadn’t planned for resolving the problem. Too little sleep, I guess.
“I’ll fix this,” Pancho said without further explanation. With impressive speed, he lifted himself up using one of the handrails attached to the ceiling and slung his feet out on top of the dirt pile. It collapsed more under his weight. He awkwardly pushed more of his body out, and when he was able to rest his butt on the dirt he simply rolled out. Although the sand and ash was waterlogged, it held the weight of a person so long as they sat or crawled.
“Can we close it like this?” Brad said while trying to kick the seal clear.
She didn’t think it could be done, but why not try? She pressed the actuator to close the airlock. The normal yellow caution light for “airlock sealing” illuminated and the door tried to slide into position. But it quickly halted and flashed the red alarm lights. The system was too smart and wouldn’t take an action which could degrade the seal.
Her teammates back in the hab dome got the alarm indication too. “What’s wrong with the airlock?” Kari asked.
“It’s just some debris,” Carmela calmly said. “We’re clearing it now.”
She joined Brad in trying to kick the filth clear of the doorway, but it came in even faster. The rain water within the pasty mud began to seep out and spread out on the deck. And she began to wish they had shovels while sweeping out the mud. No, that could damage the seal.
She called for Pancho to come back and help them. He had only crawled about twenty feet away and was now digging into an ashy sludge pile about where they kept their outside storage bins. And she then had a guess about what he had done.
She and Brad were both overjoyed when Pancho flipped the lid open and lifted a pressure washer out of one of the storage bins. Brad and her kept the airlock as clear as they could until he made it back to them. And their earlier frustration faded away.
He set the pressure washer down inside the airlock once he made it back and set it for a wide angle spray. Even with its force, it took several seconds to begin to make an impression, driving it out the airlock and over to the edge of the platform. The pasty mixture would pile up on top of itself in heaps as it was pushed away. And then suddenly it would lose viscosity and collapse, trying to push into the airlock once more.
She recognized the danger in its unpredictability. And there would be even more of the quicksand in the lowlands. Any place that wasn’t exposed rock was suspect. But they could likely avoid most of it by staying on higher ground.
He sprayed the mud well clear of the entryway after a tenacious back-and-forth fight and they cycled the airlock to ensure it functioned. Then they finally stepped outside. They left the pressure washer inside the now water filled airlock for the others to use later for cleaning the base habitats. They walked across the clear deck towards a light pole and used its leverage to climb atop the sludge layer.
The ground gave a little under their hands and knees, but did support their weight. Of course, she knew that there were places nearby where it wouldn’t. But, near their base camp at least, they had actual solid ground underneath the one to three feet of deposited sludge. And she was glad the surface gravity of the world was only 0.89g. They couldn’t sink as much into the mire as back on Earth.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Still, Brad and her would be sore by the end of the day from the hours of awkward crawling. And it would just get worse if they sank into the viscous sludge and had to fight their way out. It was best to get to the top of the ridge where they may even be able to stand.
The sky normally radiated a faint glow by this time, but the remaining cloud cover blocked the advent of dawn. They crawled on their hands and feet in darkness without taking any vehicles or supply carts. Those machines wouldn’t fare well in the soup that awaited them. They would likely trigger mudslides on the slopes and sink deep into the lowlands.
The entire platform was covered in at least a foot and a half of dark, ash-filled mud. It was thick and heavy, and slowly seeping over the sides of the platform. It covered every domed structure beyond recognition. They surveyed their camp with their suit-mounted lights. Nothing looked like it was damaged. The lighting fixtures stood upright and there were no obvious cave ins of the habitation and supply domes, judging from the size of the piles.
The remaining crew would perform a more extensive check after sunrise, but it seemed like the engineers who designed these habitations back in Gliese 667 had done well. The findings from this event, although positive, would still be studied for program improvements. Preventing contaminants from entering alien environments was crucial for all the programs studying xeno-ecologies.
She clamped climbing rope to her suit with a D-ring and then handed it to the others to do the same. They had to be able to pull each other up from sinks, falls, and slides. She wouldn’t let anyone, not even the android, explore without a safety line. They couldn’t drown in the quicksand, but they might not be able to free themselves from it either if they were pulled in. In fact, it might even be better not to try and await Tanner’s help. However long that took.
Satisfied with both the camp’s and her crew’s condition, she addressed her team. “We’re never really going to be ready for this so let’s just go.” Pancho agreed with that suggestion, which wasn’t surprising. Brad did too, which was.
They crawled down the visible part of the ramp which was still above the new “ground” and then turned right to test out the sandy-ash layer which rested on bare soil. The new volcanic terrain rippled under them but held their weight. Of course, this was here at the base camp – which was situated on a gentle ridge slope.
They surveyed their immediate surroundings with their headlamps. All that appeared before them was soaked sandy ash. There was no sign that sparse clubmosses and other flora had ever been here. The scale of the destruction here didn’t bode well for the more populated streambed valleys.
Nor did it bode well for them getting the area cleaned up and operations restored over the course of the day.
“We’re heading out now,” she radioed to those still in the camp. “We’re going to be dirty when we get back and so try to set up a station for cleaning us off outside of the airlock.” They needed to preserve the airlock’s integrity.
“We’ll do that,” Shanita answered back. “Just watch yourselves. The ground doesn’t look very stable, and it might even be worse in places.”
No kidding.
Shanita and Kari would get the platform and hab domes cleared up. At least get a start on it. Dr. Tanner should send them additional help to do so shortly after the sun fully came up and they could spot potential landing sites. With luck, their camp would be in working order by the time they got back. And then they would launch their local flotilla of drones to assess the scope and extent of the environmental damage.
She expected her group would have some aerial observation by midmorning. That would help them plan safe paths for travel. And she hoped their ground penetrating radar transceivers would help them identify waterlogged soil. Until then, they had to use their best judgment based on what they saw. And, of course, stay on higher ground wherever possible.
They crawled in a single file with Pancho in the lead and herself, and then Brad, behind. The android’s quick reaction time was most suited for feeling out the ‘solid’ ground under them. And he didn’t feel fear. He also didn’t tire. They had picked a gentle slope up to higher ground. The ridge tops were rocky before the storm. Of course, that wasn’t necessarily the case now. Still, they would get a better view from there once the sun pierced the clouds.
She watched her hands pressing down on the mud as she crawled forward. The quicksand buckled under them, sinking down and spreading away from her fingers. Like pressing down on Jello. And then black, ash filled water seeped out of the colloid around her fingers when it bore her weight. The shallow puddles then disappeared when she lifted her hand and the quicksand slowly sprung back, looking as it first had.
It was so easy to imagine her fingers disappearing beneath that black water and then all her limbs just rapidly plunging into the mire. And then the black water would cover her helmet’s visor and her forward camera. And then she would be lost in darkness while in a hopeless battle to escape. And those with her couldn’t pull her out without endangering themselves.
Her heartbeat monitor started to ramp up on her HUD. A little warning to not think of such things. Brad noticed it too.
“Stay calm, Carmela,” Brad said. “Press down carefully each time you extend a limb and you can tell whether the ground will hold. And keep a wide spread.”
“Thanks,” she said. She had already discovered that. But the watching was both necessary and the cause of her concern.
But HD 172051, their sun (and a star that was not all that different from Sol), had now fully risen above the horizon and its light streamed through the broken cloud cover. All the landscape in view was black. They weren’t at the summit of the ridge yet, but she could already see there wasn’t much chance for any of the native ecology to have survived.
“My golf course is gone,” Brad said. There was no hint of surprise in his voice.
“I reckon you’ll have to relocate to another spot that’s green,” Pancho said.
“I don’t mind relocating, or taking a break from the sport” Brad said. “But I’ve got plugs and hole liners buried down there.”
“They won’t hurt anything by being there for now,” Pancho said. “I suggest waiting until the ground has dried out and then we can retrieve them using a ground penetrating radar survey.”
“I second that,” Carmela said. It would be far easier to do such work once the ground had dried.
Brad had made the course about a kilometer from their hab, and not just for physical recreation. He filmed himself playing using their observation drones. And afterwards he cut and edited the recordings to an upload file that he sent back to Gliese 667 on their biannual supply ships. From what her other students said, the videos that he had linked to his Spacepage account using their message traffic routes attracted quite a number of views, and it had been cloned in other systems.
He wasn’t a bad golfer. Pretty good for an amateur, actually – especially considering he was handicapped by needing to wear a spacesuit. But it was him playing on an alien world’s green that really attracted interest. He didn’t have much competition in that group. He would likely never attain as much fame from scientific work.
He was the only one who she thought might not be in this venture for the long haul.
Pancho had gained an appreciable distance ahead of them and was nearing the top of the ridge. She hoped he could confirm better conditions up there. “Can you tell how it looks up top?”
“Not yet,” he said. “Soon.”
There was no way they would finish even half if restricted to crawling. Maybe they should just give up on the site with this devastation. They still had a whole world to discover. And Brad could have another golf course. It could be best for all of them.
She kept her eyes on him while continuing up the ridge. The incline had increased a little as they got further up and her hands and feet sometimes slipping. She tried memorizing where Pancho went to do as he did. She pushed the danger of a mudslide out of her mind. They were so near to the peak of the ridge.
Pancho stopped and brushed the mire off a bulging lump at the top and revealed solid, white rock. He began to drill into it to install an anchor for them. And then there would be little risk in sliding away in a mudslide.
“Alright!” Brad said, excitedly.
“Now, how’s it look?”
“I think we have a walking path both ways,” Pancho said while putting the drill away and brushing out the hole to prepare for an expansion bolt anchor. “I don’t see a good path for crossing the stream bed.”
One thing at a time.
