We’ve been on the slushy surface of Conamara Chaos on Europa
for a few days now. The station needed more repair than we anticipated, and so
we are still, mostly, stuck inside the ship, which has anchored itself to a
hatch protruding just below the surface. The ice was only 2 kilometers thick
here, so it didn’t take us long to drill through the surface.
Even that is not tightly sealed, and we have to be very careful to move into the decompression chamber and seal it behind us before opening the hatch, with our helmets on. Everything is made of metal, not a combination of stronger carbon filaments and metal and silken fibers, and so our technology does not quite fit into the existing systems. The thick red-brown crust of rust around the outside does not help matters.
The first step into the colony was physically painful. We all descended, as per the precautions we were taught, with our helmets on and oxygen flowing into them from tanks. The lower we moved into the colony, the more I felt sluggish, tired, like I was moving through syrup, when it occurred to me that I was finally feeling real gravity again, after a month without it. The pressure of the ocean around us creates enough of a sensation like gravity that I could keep my feet on the floor without magnetic boots, I felt a pull on my muscles and I wished, so hard, that I could breathe the fresh air of this new life, to go along with the aching pull down, down, down to the center of Europa.
Ghadir collapsed, and we let her lay on the floor, soaking in the sensation. Budur’s breath became tense as she pushed her arms over her head, but she was smiling.
As we got used to the gravity, we began walking around. The rest of Rabbah was not what we had hoped.
Haven has hardly spoken since we first dove into Rabbah, examining the antiquated computer system. Zariah and Yuda have talked of nothing but the system, spending every meal bent over blueprints and every day huddled deep inside the colony’s computer systems.
In a way, I had expected cobwebs, but the only sign of the previous inhabitants are faded buttons, rubbed where human fingers pushed or turned them, and a little dust in some corners, which is most likely made up of desiccated human skin flakes.
Our algal colonies are producing a good amount of oxygen, to supplement the tanks that we brought with us. I’m glad we decided to start those while traversing the asteroid belt. It not only kept our minds off things, but it has come in handy as we were not prepared for the state of ill repair we encountered. Durada, Natsuki, and Vivien have taken turns cleaning corrosion out of corners, and monitoring our budding ecosystems on our ship. Samira and Chloe are busy attempting to replicate the fine mesh of the air filtration screens, because we will need more of them than we have, and it would take too long to ship more to us. The rest of us are installing the filters, soldering and gluing and weaving, like moles in long, dark tunnels day in and day out.
We did find a fortunate system we were not expecting, however – a water wheel, that uses the gravity-driven daily tides to spin a wheel and generate electricity. Yuda found the batteries attached to the system, and they had exploded, covering the area in a greenish sheen of metallic acid. Aside from the batteries, nothing was eaten away. She thinks we could hook the old system up directly into one of the computers, so rather than storing energy for later, we’ll use the set-up to directly, and constantly, power the main communications system.
Meanwhile, our own ship’s batteries are beginning to run low, so our work day has from 16 to 20 hours a day. We sleep in shifts so we can get a minimum of 5 hours, but then we work 20 hours straight. I am fortunate that my fingers are growing used to the work and my mind can wander to thoughts other than the rhythmic welding and weaving.
I dreamt of dawn and dusk last night. The lights on the ship try to mimic the sensation, but since we exist in a greater-than-24-hour cycle these days, it hasn’t made much difference. Everything feels unreal, but the unreality is now my reality.
It will be nice to go back to a regular sleeping pattern. I hope I can.
Even that is not tightly sealed, and we have to be very careful to move into the decompression chamber and seal it behind us before opening the hatch, with our helmets on. Everything is made of metal, not a combination of stronger carbon filaments and metal and silken fibers, and so our technology does not quite fit into the existing systems. The thick red-brown crust of rust around the outside does not help matters.
The first step into the colony was physically painful. We all descended, as per the precautions we were taught, with our helmets on and oxygen flowing into them from tanks. The lower we moved into the colony, the more I felt sluggish, tired, like I was moving through syrup, when it occurred to me that I was finally feeling real gravity again, after a month without it. The pressure of the ocean around us creates enough of a sensation like gravity that I could keep my feet on the floor without magnetic boots, I felt a pull on my muscles and I wished, so hard, that I could breathe the fresh air of this new life, to go along with the aching pull down, down, down to the center of Europa.
Ghadir collapsed, and we let her lay on the floor, soaking in the sensation. Budur’s breath became tense as she pushed her arms over her head, but she was smiling.
As we got used to the gravity, we began walking around. The rest of Rabbah was not what we had hoped.
Haven has hardly spoken since we first dove into Rabbah, examining the antiquated computer system. Zariah and Yuda have talked of nothing but the system, spending every meal bent over blueprints and every day huddled deep inside the colony’s computer systems.
In a way, I had expected cobwebs, but the only sign of the previous inhabitants are faded buttons, rubbed where human fingers pushed or turned them, and a little dust in some corners, which is most likely made up of desiccated human skin flakes.
Our algal colonies are producing a good amount of oxygen, to supplement the tanks that we brought with us. I’m glad we decided to start those while traversing the asteroid belt. It not only kept our minds off things, but it has come in handy as we were not prepared for the state of ill repair we encountered. Durada, Natsuki, and Vivien have taken turns cleaning corrosion out of corners, and monitoring our budding ecosystems on our ship. Samira and Chloe are busy attempting to replicate the fine mesh of the air filtration screens, because we will need more of them than we have, and it would take too long to ship more to us. The rest of us are installing the filters, soldering and gluing and weaving, like moles in long, dark tunnels day in and day out.
We did find a fortunate system we were not expecting, however – a water wheel, that uses the gravity-driven daily tides to spin a wheel and generate electricity. Yuda found the batteries attached to the system, and they had exploded, covering the area in a greenish sheen of metallic acid. Aside from the batteries, nothing was eaten away. She thinks we could hook the old system up directly into one of the computers, so rather than storing energy for later, we’ll use the set-up to directly, and constantly, power the main communications system.
Meanwhile, our own ship’s batteries are beginning to run low, so our work day has from 16 to 20 hours a day. We sleep in shifts so we can get a minimum of 5 hours, but then we work 20 hours straight. I am fortunate that my fingers are growing used to the work and my mind can wander to thoughts other than the rhythmic welding and weaving.
I dreamt of dawn and dusk last night. The lights on the ship try to mimic the sensation, but since we exist in a greater-than-24-hour cycle these days, it hasn’t made much difference. Everything feels unreal, but the unreality is now my reality.
It will be nice to go back to a regular sleeping pattern. I hope I can.
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