Beneath the shade of thick vegetation, she maintained a constant scan of her surroundings as she ran, wary of even a single Hynka roaming about. But, as always, her thoughts soon narrowed into a tight beam, focused straight up.
If Minnie were in an EV at that moment, somehow still alive, adrift or settled into some crazy high elliptical orbit, would she want to go on living? To have survived this long would’ve meant purifying and drinking urine, gathering condensation, or possibly having had the forethought to kill her podmate on day one, thus keeping all water and solid sustenance for herself.
There remained only two possibilities: Aether was dead, or she and Qin successfully made it to the surface. If the latter were the case, they’d likely try the same things Minnie intended: attempt a link to the BH or—and Qin would be the one to think of it—hack the supply pod network to post a message. Without an EV, Minnie was limited to her suit’s comms which reached a mere 3-5K in this sort of terrain. Aether, or any crewmember for that matter, could’ve been broadcasting for days and Minnie wouldn’t know it.
She stopped at a broad trunk, placed her hands on the back of her helmet to stretch her ribcage and lungs, and gazed up the tree as she caught her breath.
She tested the lowest “branch,” a thick, circular pad nearly the size of a rooftop helipad. It bent a little from one foot, but when she stepped all the way on, it actually touched the ground. But it was still quite sturdy. She crept along the squishy surface and found a sweet spot. A meter from the central trunk, the “leaf” lifted off the ground. Minnie bounced, gently at first, then tried to actually break the thing. It wasn’t going to happen.
One of the next pads sat at shoulder height, overlapping the first. She dug her fingers into the mossy teal matter, planted a boot against the rubbery trunk, and carefully pulled herself up. Fortunately, the distance between pads decreased as she climbed.
Minnie hadn’t given up on comms after all this time, but would others? Would Aether? It depended upon environment and survival concerns.
Anyone landing in an arctic region would probably remain focused on the bare necessities of living. But anyone making it to Threck Country, a land full of wild fruits and fungus—plenty that were low on arsenic, though Minnie couldn’t speak to the taste—plus rivers and coastline loaded with healthy, presumably edible vertebrates, and no significant predators. A person landing there could afford to split their attention.
Finally perched atop Epsy’s equivalent of a redwood—the towering, lichen/fungi that Angela named epsequoias—Minnie slowly scanned the landscape. The closest Hynka roamed more than 5K south of her, which was about 7.5K from the EV landing site. There were three of them on the move even farther south. In search of other life forms, she surveyed the area with various optics, spotting only scattered rodentia until something paralyzed both her mind and body. A monstrosity so ghastly that any thought of Hynka evaporated to nothingness: the Giant Flying Spider Monster.
It had been a big laugh on the station. Those with a healthy distaste for arachnids cringed and squealed when Tom Group-M’d the sped-up loopvid to everyone. One of his dragonflies had caught the thing on camera on an island the team called Badagascar, but which was officially tagged LI 52S-232.
The autonomous dragonfly had clamped itself to a vine about a meter off the ground and aimed its sensors toward a cave. A short time later, a bristly creature emerged from the darkness, skittering on ten long, multi-jointed legs. Its body alone was the size of a beanbag chair, with a single shiny eye as big as a human head. And it moved with unnerving speed, even without the loopvid’s playback doubled. But the worst part, the part of the vid that inspired more than one crew member to shriek, laugh, and attempt to flee their own skin, was what happened next.
The hellspawn folded four front legs, leaning forward so its cycloptic head almost touched the ground, extended two pairs of hind appendages, and began excreting a viscous yellow-green fluid, like snot, from some glands in its backside. Saturating its rear legs with the substance, the goop kept coming, and soon after, the thing began inhaling through a wide-open mouth where one would expect a neck, shooting the air out its backside, and inflating the thick fluid like a soap bubble. After a couple minutes, the bubble had grown to twice the creature’s size and the light breeze lifted the horrific thing off the ground and out of sight.
There were GM’d replies of Noooooo! and Welp, nothing left to do but burn down the planet. And, of course, Ish—the self-appointed champion of all that nature had to offer—later blasted the group with a thousand-plus-word finger-wagging on why they’d all come in the first place, asking how they can rate by appearance one species’ right to exist over another’s, that everyone should be ashamed of themselves, blah blah blah, blah blah. She’d pretty much sucked the fun from the moment, and John had to send out an oh-so-serious brief on respecting each other and the research subjects.
Now, from her supposedly safe position, no more than 6m away, a dangling spider monster drifted slowly by, hanging from its bubble, wide-open mouth sucking air as it passed. Minnie froze in place, turning her head with it, unblinking eyes tracking the thing until it disappeared into a stand of mushpalms.
Several years had passed since the original discovery, back when they were finding hundreds of new species a day, and the Giant Flying Spider Monster was known to be a harmless consumer of root worms. Despite this fact, and a mind that strove for logic over emotion, seeing one in person had Minnie’s neck hairs standing on end.
After she was certain it was gone, and after verifying it was not the point-monster for an entire air force of unholy miscreations, she reminisced and enjoyed a smile. Briefly.
Oh, Ish, did you strand us all on purpose?
From her lofty vantage point, Minnie studied a recommended course through the forest. A thick red line marked the path, tapering thinner all the way to the EV’s previous resting spot. The app flashed warnings in areas where topo was either unknown or known to be hazardous, and she adjusted accordingly until satisfied with the route.
On to mapping a backup option.
JOHN: How’s it going out there?
MINNIE: Good morning! I didn’t want to wake you. Want to see where I am?
JOHN: I see where you are in the mapping app. Congrats on making it up the rope.
MINNIE: Yeah, thanks! But I meant optics.
JOHN: Oh, yes please!
Minnie shared her optics with him and, beginning with a distant shot of the sinkhole entrance behind her, she slowly panned across the scene. He’d yet to see it all in daylight.
JOHN: So far away. Beautiful. Hynka?
MINNIE: None close to the EV site, though I can’t seem to pick up the EV itself. Worried they might have taken it somewhere.
JOHN: The beacon?
MINNIE: If you recall, the beacon hasn’t been up for over a week. Either too far or they destroyed it.
JOHN: Right. Sorry. Forgot. Well, carry on. Don’t let me distract you. Be careful.
MINNIE: Yup. I’ll leave optics up for you as long as you don’t backseat hike.
John replied with a sealed lips emoji and Minnie began climbing down the flat “branches.” She mused that a skydiver with a parachute malfunction would need only target an epsequoia on the ground. Slamming into 100 layers of thick, squishy pads would probably slow them to a safe stop, while breaking off half the pads on the way down.