Primordia 11: Excursion

Tiernan stepped outside onto the surface of the alien planet. If, having digested Claire’s positive analysis, he’d expected to find a world of vibrant living greens and blues then he was to be bitterly disappointed, disenchanted, disillusioned, depressed. The alien sky was rusted, tainted by its proximity to the dwarf red sun Cacoethes itself obliterated by an all-concealing bank of rust red fog. His heart sank at his final humiliation, after an eternity spent in hibernation, his treatment by Claire, the loss of contact with Earth, the comatose imprisonment of Rose. The scientists, he, should have heeded the implied warnings by Elektra:

CONDITIONS SUPPORT LIFE…

Only: ‘conditions support life’. That didn’t mean lifeforms actually existed on Primordia. He despaired. If Rose was dead he might be the only living biological organism left. There was no way of knowing if Carmen, let alone Celeste, possessed the capability to transport him again, or if neurotic Claire would allow him to be hibernated, leaving her to endure twenty-five years of loneliness without her lovechild.

He felt weak, disabled by poor visibility. The searing heat scorched his nostrils when he breathed. The humidity was overwhelming. Pouring with thick sweat, he stripped off his fatigues, heavy boots, socks. Beneath his bare feet the ground was soft and springy. Tiernan knelt and felt the ground, felt a vegetative leaf-form, light, feathery, waxy to the touch, like a cross between a fern, lily pad, a cactus without spines. His mood lightened.

Life! There’s some kind of plant living on Primordia. If there are simple plants, what else might survive here?

From where he was standing, Tiernan could vaguely make out shapes: rusted red, jagged rock formations, unworldly fleeting shadows in the fog, a deep rift valley. The vista was an undulating wave of peaks and troughs, worn round boulders, sharp ridges, ruddy crests shrouded in fog, rusty savannahs, flat plains. Something moved. The air was still, lifeless. Something moved, indiscernibly, in the murky distance. The dwarf sun burnt the blanket off the alien landscape. The fog began to lift. The rust-red fug cleared, making a sapphire sky. Tiernan crossed the living field of mustard yellow leaves, a ridge of crimson rocks, its scree of bronze-burnished shale, the scarlet sandy beach. Until he reached the rippling, coral sea.