2 - The Surface

For the first time in months, I was surrounded with other human beings. I had so far woken five crew members from cryo, all essential personnel to get us planetside. We stood in a circle, around the command console in operations, debating what to do next. When I say we were debating, I mean that they were debating; my job was to handle the cryogenics operations and nothing more.

"We should at least go down and have a look," Clint, the environmental scientist was eager to get his boots on the ground.

Zander, the crisis response specialist interjected, "are we not even going to address the psychopath in cryo at the moment?"

"She's not a threat while she's in there," the lander pilot, Scarlett spoke next. "And on that, how do we even know that she's the psycho? Jacob over here could have easily made up any story he wanted."

That was when I spoke up, "wait a second, since when did this become about me? I brought you out of stasis, remember. If I had wanted to harm you then I wouldn't have woken you up."

"He has a fair point, Scar," said Elysia, she was the medical officer assigned to the arrival crew.

"This isn't helping; we need to focus on establishing a home here. There are over a thousand people in cryogenics right now and we can't wake them up until we have somewhere for them to live," the chief engineer, Thomas had been the voice of logic and reason recently. Everyone in the operations room agreed that finding a sustainable new home was the top priority.

"Could we find out if the air is breathable?" I figured it was the most logical place to start.

"Yes actually, one of the first things I did when we arrived was begin a scan," Clint smiled. "It seems that the air is, as far as I can tell, safe for us to breath, the gravity is Earth norm and there is also a substantial amount of water down there. The main issue I can see is the fact that we will have zero immunity to local viruses and bacteria."

"I agree that this is a very serious roadblock," Elysia had been complaining about foreign diseases since she awoke.

"Well," I said. "We could always introduce air from the surface into the stasis pods gradually to allow the sleepers to build up an immunity. I'm not sure what to do about us though."

"So you are a real cryo tech."

"Do you really not trust me, Scarlett?" I had enough on my mind without being treated like an enemy.

"Your story is just a little too convenient for my liking."

"Enough," Thomas, once again the voice of reason, raised his voice. "This isn't the time for bickering, regardless of how honest Jacob is being, he needs a home as much as we do. We will all work together until we have a sustainable settlement, after that, I couldn't care less what each of you do."

"So what's the plan?" Elysia piped up.

"We prepare to go planetside," said Thomas. "Think of absolutely anything that could be an issue and find a way to solve it. You are all specialists in your chosen fields and I expect you all to act like it. If anyone needs me, I'll be giving this landing module a thorough once over to make sure we arrive safely."

"I'll help you," Scarlett rose to her feet and joined Thomas as he strode out of operations.

I made my way to cryogenics to check on the stasis life support systems one last time. Methodically, I inspected every inch of the cryo bay, after all, the module needed to survive atmospheric entry after the arrival crew located a suitable settlement site. The environmental seals on the pods were all serviceable and the auxiliary power unit in the cryo module was operating at one hundred percent. I was anxious to get to the ground and see trees and rivers and clouds, there was only so much space I could deal with in the observation deck. Footsteps could be heard moving towards cryo bay; Zander stepped into the bay and made his way over to me.

"Quick question, Jake, I've spoken to the others and majority think that it would be best for you to remain on the rocket as you're a cryo tech and the pods are here on the rocket."

My heart sank; I didn't want to remain behind whilst the others went to the planet below to find our new home.

Zander put a hand on my shoulder, "don't worry, buddy. I think we do need you, I'm an expert on managing crisis situations and I feel that you will need to be there when the pods arrive to organise the awakening effort. Can you activate the cryogenics module by remote?"-

"Absolutely. One hundred percent. Uh, how long do you think until we will ready to wake everybody else up?"

Zander smiled, "shouldn't be any more than a month, I reckon."

It was settled, I was joining the arrival team. Everyone seemed to accept Zander's decision, except for Scarlett. I lost count of how many times I caught her green eyes staring at me. It took almost another day to make sure we were all ready to go, we agreed that we needed some shut eye before the biggest day of our lives. With only one bed, we decided that we would sleep in our stasis pods. I rigged the system to ensure none of the pods would close and send anyone back into stasis. As I was the only one without a stasis pod, I took the bed. I had slept in this bed alone for almost two months, ever since I wrangled Katie back into cryo. Now that I wasn't alone, the bed felt larger and more lonely than ever, especially because of Scarlett's demeanour towards me.

I awoke the next morning before anyone else, I was too excited to get back to sleep so I went and sat in my usual sofa chair on the observation deck. The planet below was very similar to Earth, but instead of a few large continents, it was peppered with thousands of small islands. Two small moons floated just above the planet, one was slightly bigger that the other but both were far smaller than the Earths moon. Upon my final approach to our new home, right before I woke up the others, I noticed the thin ring around the planet. The ring looked like a piece of string, hovering around the blue sphere; now that we were in orbit I could see the ring in greater detail. It was made up of rocks, the same shade of grey as the two moons.

I thought about new beginnings and the life I would have with my wife on our new world; that was if she wanted a life with me after what I had done. Anxiety crept over me at the thought of telling her what had happened. I hadn't told anyone yet, I had explained the events of the past six months to the crew but I neglected to tell them about what Katie and I had done together. For all they knew, that baby in her womb could belong to anyone, I wanted my wife to be the first person to know the entire truth.

"Jacob, we're suiting up in five minutes."

I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn't notice Elysia enter the observation deck. Hastily, I got out of my sofa chair and followed the medical officer to operations, everyone else was already getting the exosuits out of the storage cabinet. The white and blue suit was very tight fitting and rather uncomfortable but I'd rather discomfort than dying.

Zander walked behind Scarlett and pat her shoulder, "I hope you don't land us in the ocean."

"I wouldn't be here if I couldn't," she responded with an overconfident tone.

She tapped away on the control console and my stomach lurched as I felt the maglocks disengage and everything forward of the cryogenics bay separated from the rocket. From the viewport in operations, I could see the planet growing larger and larger as we made our landing approach. A bright orange light distorted the view as we began entry into the atmosphere.

The fiery journey through the planet's atmosphere was smoother than I had expected, the inertial dampeners were doing their job remarkably. At first I had been apprehensive about freefalling from space without being strapped into a seat. For about fifteen minutes we fell through the atmosphere, the ablative shielding preventing the lander from burning up.

"This atmosphere is extremely thick," Scarlett continued to tap away at the command console. "I don't think this planet will support us for long. A few generations perhaps."

Clint stepped up beside her, "we have a couple of atmospheric processers in the cargo bay back on the rocket, they won't reverse the greenhouse effect but they will at least prevent it from worsening. Sorry to say guys but I doubt we will ever see snow again."

"I've never even seen snow," Elysia looked at her toes.

Zander put an arm around her, "don't worry, you aren't missing much. Snow is overrated."

The bright orange flames retreated from the viewport and Scarlett activated the manoeuvring thrusters. The tiny green islands vanished from the viewport and were replaced with a clear blue sky as the landing module flipped. When the parachutes launched, I felt sick from the sudden reduction in speed. The inertial dampeners may have been good but they didn't stop stomach drop.

It wasn't long before Scarlett set us down on one of the larger islands. Everyone had agreed that the bigger the land mass, the more likely we were to find what we needed to start a colony. We figured the chances were that it would take us years to be able to safely cross to another island, therefore we needed to get this right the first time. Even though the chief engineer, Thomas, had taken charge back in orbit, it was Zander who became the team lead for our first steps outside. He led us to the airlock and instructed the five of us to stand in a line against one wall. The crisis response specialist put a code into the locker that sat beside the airlock inner door. The locker door swung open to reveal several long, black rifles.

One by one, Zander handed a rifle to each of us, "what I have just given you is a semiautomatic carbine. It fires nine-millimetre caseless ammunition, which we only have two magazines on sixty rounds each."

He then handed us two full magazines from the locker, "as far as weapons a concerned, my word is gospel. No one takes their safety off without my say so. In the future, we will have the capacity to manufacture more but for now, this is it. Ideally, I don't want a single shot fired, but we don't know what to expect."

The firearm was heavy in my hands; I had passed the weapons component of my induction training but had yet to actually fire a weapon. The training was primarily focussed on safety and basic care for the carbine.

Zander continued to speak, "now when that door opens, if I say stop we stop. If I say move, you move. If I say nothing, then I you will all do what you are here to do. I am only here for emergency purposes and with some luck, I won't be needed. Now let's go find us a home."

We donned our exosuit helmets and Zander pushed the button to open the inner airlock. In an orderly manner, we stepped into the airlock and the door closed behind us. My heart felt as though it was about to beat out of my chest, excitement mixed with a fear of the unknown, like that feeling you get when you board a rollercoaster. When the outer airlock opened, I held my breath. Light flooded the airlock, it was so intense, I had forgotten what natural light had looked like. Even through the tinted visor, I had to squint to cope with the bombardment of sunlight. As my eyes adjusted to the strange light, I saw green, more green that I had ever seen in my life. One at a time we stepped out of the lander. First was Zander, then Clint, Elysia, Scarlett, Thomas and finally, it was my turn. My boots sunk a couple of centimetres into the dark soil. Only one thought could be found in my mind. We were home.

Green, there was green everywhere. The twisted alien trees were green all over. The leaves looked to be part of the green branch itself, almost like wiry hair. I was in awe and didn't speak as I followed the rest of the arrival crew away from the lander. The ground was covered with soft, dark brown dirt that reminded me of potting soil. Small, spherical shrubs lay scattered around the ground; these were the only plants that weren't completely green. There were round shrubs of all colours, there were colours that I had never even seen before. If I was ever asked to describe them, I doubt I would be able to find any words to do them justice. Clint took the lead; it was his job to assess the environment. Zander followed closely behind him and the remainder of us followed in twos. Thomas and Scarlett walked just behind Zander whilst Elysia and I followed them. The forest was alive with various strange sounds, I wondered if all these odd noises were being made by local fauna or whether it was something even stranger. We slowly made our way through the thick forest, being careful not to damage anything. Clint had instructed us to be wary as we had no idea how our presence would effect the planets ecology.

"How exciting is this, guys?" Elysia's voice emanated from the exosuit that walked beside me. "We are the first humans to ever see life outside of Earth."

She was right, it may have only been plant life but it was still life.

After nearly an hour of clambering over fallen trees and weaving around vines that hung from somewhere in the canopy, high above our heads, Zander stopped and raised his hand above his shoulder, indicating for us to halt. His head tilted as if listening for something.

"Do you here that?"

"What?" Scarlett asked the question that was in all our heads.

"I hear running water, this way." Clint started moving into the foliage on our right and we all followed in suit. Only about thirty meters into the thick brush, we came across a large river. The water lapped at the rocky bank on our side as it flowed past and washed over the sand on the far side.

"Look," I pointed to the sandy bank, my heart began to race, I couldn't believe my eyes. "It's some kind of huge lizard-thing."

Clint pushed through the group to get a better view, "my god, look at that. Notice how it's lounging on the warm sand with its tail in the water. It's absorbing the water through its skin, much like some reptiles back on Earth. The warm sand must be regulating its temperature; if it's cold-blooded like Earth reptiles then it would need to take in a lot of warmth from the sun."

"Clint, look at its legs," Thomas spoke softly and raised a finger to point towards the creature. "Its front legs are longer than its rear legs."

Clint dropped to his knees in awe of the beast, "the formation of the legs is kind of similar to an ape or gorilla back home. It's extremely odd to find a reptile with larger forelimbs than its hind legs."

I almost jumped when Elysia let out a sudden gasp. My head jerked to the direction she was facing to see a smaller creature emerging, cautiously from the forest and onto the sand on the far side of the river. It was another reptile, it looked like it was about two meters tall and was very slender. The moment it placed a scaly foot onto the sand, the larger creature opened its eyes and raised its head. Upon sighting the smaller animal, it rose to its feet hastily and rushed away into the foliage, leaning heavily on its muscular front legs.

"Why was that massive thing afraid of this scrawny lizard?" Scarlett raised a very valid question.

"My theory," began Clint. "Is that the smaller creature must have some sort of evolutionary trait that makes it dangerous to the larger species, similar to how larger animals on Earth tend to know that snakes are dangerous. What I find interesting is the legs, do you see how when it walks its ankles to not touch the ground. It's a digitigrades, like cats, dogs and birds. You would be hard pressed to find a lizard on Earth that isn't a plantigrade, like a human. It's also interesting that it's bipedal, look how it has bent down to gather water into its cupped hands. It's drinking almost like a human does; I would have expected it to lap at the water."

Clint was correct, the small, skinny creature was kneeling down at the edge of the river and with cupped hands it sipped the water through its short snout. The clouds above shifted and the large, yellow star above projected more light across the river and the surrounding area. This allowed me to make out more detail on the lizards like creature. It seemed to have more fingers than a human but only two long toes. Its pale green scales were highlighted with the occasional bit of red. Suddenly, the reptile looked across the river, towards where we were crouched behind the bushes and darted back into the forest, lightning fast.

Zander turned to the rest of us, I could see his eyes, wide behind the clear dome on the exosuit helmet," did you guys just see that?"

"See what?" a number of us spoke in unison.

"I could be seeing things, but I swear that it was wearing some kind of cloth around its waist."

We decided to move onwards to find higher ground. Once we had a better vantage point we would be able to narrow down the possible settlement locations. My mind continued to race with excitement after what we had just seen, I wished that my wife could have been there to share the moment. I missed her but was also afraid of what would happen when she woke up. No matter how many scenarios ran through my head, I couldn't figure out a way to tell her without losing her. My thoughts were interrupted by a scream; Scarlett went flying, feet first into the sky. A vine or rope, I couldn't tell which from here, was wrapped around her ankle and had hoisted her towards the canopy. Zander raised his weapon towards the line that suspended Scarlett about five meters above the forest floor. He instructed everyone to get beneath Scarlett and be ready to catch her. Not everybody was happy with this plan; an argument broke out about Scarlett's safety. I didn't bother arguing with anyone; instead I slung my carbine onto my back and started to climb. The furry green tree was much easier to climb than I expected. The wiry hairs that grew from the trunk allowed my hands and feet to grip with ease. I quickly scaled the tree until I was in line with Scarlett. A few thin branches stretched out towards where she dangled, still screaming. I placed a foot onto the thickest of the branches, which still wasn't very thick, to test its load bearing capacity. The hairy branch seemed stable enough so I knelt down and shimmied along it. It bent slightly under my weight but showed no signs of breaking. Climbing the trunk was the easy part, sliding along this thin branch was nerve wracking. Finally, I reached a point that was within arms reach of the line and reached out towards it. Grasping the line I realised that it was vine, but multiple thin strands of vine weaved together, similar to a plat. Scarlett looked up at me when she realised that I had managed to get a hand onto one of her boots and was trying to pull her closer to me. Instantly she knew what I was doing and cooperated. She swung her arm up towards me, our fingers touched but she slipped down again.

This happened a couple of times before, finally, my hand managed to grasp Scarlett's. I pulled her upwards until she was able to hold onto the branch herself. My muscles burned from lifting her weight, I have never been what you would call a muscular person. I could see Scarlett's face straining behind her exosuit visor as she held onto the branch. I hastily pulled the utility knife from the holster on my leg and began sawing at the braided vines. The moment the vines were severed, I quickly took hold of Scarlett's forearms to stop her from slipping and pulled her onto the unusually sturdy branch. Together, we descended from the alien tree and made our way safely to the ground.

"Good work, Jacob," Zander smiled.

"Yeah that was amazing," Elysia spoke as she tended to Scarlett.

"Is she hurt?" I asked.

Elysia moved her hands along Scarlett's leg, "doesn't seem like anything is broken. "A sprained ankle from the jerking motion at most."

It was clear that there was definitely a sprained ankle; Scarlett inhaled sharply whenever Elysia's hands pressed on her ankle.

Zander picked up the end of the vine that had just been removed from around Scarlett's leg and examined it closely, "this vine has been twisted into a form of rope, and it is obvious that someone set it as a snare trap."

He fiddled with the knot that made the loop in the vine before dropping it to he ground, "do you think that scrawny lizard thing set this?"

"What makes you think it was the lizard?" Thomas spoke up.

"Well," Zander explained, "I am sure that it was wearing some sort of cloth, perhaps it's this planets dominant species."

"Hmmm," Clint raised a hand to his chin, "that would also explain why the larger creature was cautious of it. Maybe it is this planets human equivalent."

"Can you walk?" Thomas put out a hand to help Scarlett to her feet.

"Yea, I think so," she took one step and almost collapsed.

Elysia caught her, "you shouldn't be putting too much weight on you ankle for a while."

"Someone should take her back to the lander to recover," Zander spoke the truth; she would slow the entire group down and wouldn't be much help anyway.

"I'll take her," the climb had made my leg ache. "As much as I would like to continue on, my leg is acting up again."

Elysia frowned at me, "you should be taking it easy, and I told you not to do anything that would jeopardise it. It didn't receive actual medical attention until it was too late, remember."

"I know, I know," I put an arm around Scarlett's waist and she placed hers on my shoulder. Together, we limped back in the direction of the landing module.

Once back inside the lander, Scarlett and I removed our exosuits and donned fresh flightsuits. I retrieved a tube of anti-inflammatory cream from the first aid kit in operations and rubbed it onto her ankle.

"Thank you," this was the first thing Scarlett had said to me since we left the group.

I smiled up at her, "you're welcome."

"I'm sorry I haven't thought you to be trustworthy, your story just sounded so incredible."

"Well, sometimes the truth can be stranger than fiction. I sort of understand your scepticism, I literally could have made up any story I wanted, but I didn't."

"I just can't believe that woman in there is pregnant, did you know? Did she say anything to you?"

I hesitated. My mind became void of all possible responses.

"Oh my god," Scarlett put her hand to her mouth, "it's yours?"

"What? I didn't say that."

"It was written all over your face. Why didn't you tell us before?"

"Because I'm ashamed of what I did, my beautiful wife is in cryo and I betrayed her. I never meant for any of this to happen. Katie seemed so nice until I told her we couldn't ever do it again. That was what made her snap."

The sky outside the lander became a vibrant pink as the alien sun set over our strange new home. Scarlett activated the exterior lights around the airlock in preparation of the other returning. She seemed more comfortable around me ever since finding out the entire story of me and Katie but that didn't stop her from occasionally giving me a sideways glance. Clearly, she didn't fully trust me yet but at least it was progress. The sun had completely vanished by the time the others made it back. Elysia skipped into operations with a beaming smile, "how amazing is this place? It's like nothing I could have imagined."

"Did you guys see anything else?" Scarlett sat up in the command chair.

"Nothing like those two creatures," Thomas sat on the floor, kneading the muscles in his legs. "We did however find a cave, at first light tomorrow we are going to go check it out. It may not be anything more than a deep indent in the cliff face but I'm hoping it will be deep enough to provide us shelter in the short term. Constantly returning here cuts a good few hours of possible exploration time out of our day."

Strode into operations, his mouth was stretched from ear to ear, "let's hope that cave isn't currently inhabited by some animal, although it would be exciting to be able to study the local fauna more closely."

We decided to let Scarlett sleep in the queen bed since her ankle would cause her discomfort to be cramped up inside a stasis pod. She tried to act tough and say it was fine but the grimace that her face twisted into every so often told us the truth. I double checked that the interlock was still active on the stasis pods before everyone climbed in. As my head contacted the soft padding of the stasis chamber, I heard Thomas' voice, "Hey Jacob, you did well today. Zander was right to bring you, I want you with us again tomorrow. It seems that you are capable of a lot more than just maintaining cryogenics systems."

No one saw the smile that stretched its way across my face. It was nice to be accepted by the others, especially after the solitude of the rocket journey, even more so after how the Katie situation had ended. My mind began to fill up with questions about her. Who was she? Why was she here? What happened to D. L. Phillips? I managed to push these thoughts to the back of my mind; they were all questions that could be answered later. Katie was safely stored in stasis pod 375, in orbit five hundred kilometres above me.