Class Zero Planetarium: Landfall
Trank made them hover over their landing space and quadruple check the surface for Placa traps. It's from his soldiering days.
It was the way that the purple sand seemed to ebb and flow that bothered him. Maybe the surface is an ocean? Is that not what a Desert is? An ocean of solids?
The land is soft. None of the crew even knew they landed officially until SALEEM confirmed it. Even Trank, who was acting "pilot", wasn't certain, even when the blue landing gear light had come on. The crew sat quietly for several moments.
"Are we going to go meet these Placas or what?" Dr. Bella Gunderson asks with a sly grin.
"What?" Trank asks loudly. His tinnitus must be acting up again. Mechaster ignores him;
"You guys go on ahead," Mechaster says, not looking up from his screens, "I'm going to figure out what's wrong with our equipment. We should've scrapped the mission as soon as we saw the surface."
"But my research!" Sharon crows.
"Alright, let's go," Trank says finally. He's been largely left out of the conversation and not liking it one bit. He's a slim man with the energy of a bigger one; like most things, it's from his soldiering days. He's also the crew's secondary doctor, secondary pilot, primary Xenologist and primary Astrobiologist. If it has a pulse or a hydroflux he can realive it almost as fast as he can unalive it.
"Why, yes!" Dr. Hoffen pipes up, remembering suddenly he's the crew's mission captain. Often the actual leadering comes from Trank, as is happening now. "We are here now, so let's see what this 'water' planet has to offer!" He does not bother hiding his mocking tone.
It was the way that the air had a blue tint to it, that bothered him. The suit and ship sensors both concurred the air was breathable but nobody trusted that. He also didn't trust the sand he dug his hand into, kneeling and holding a fistful by his face plate. Up close the cubic speckles are a brick red. No, he does not trust this at all.
"Why did we land here, again?" Dr. Bella Gunderson asks, spinning around amidst the endless purple desert and blue... mist? Aura? "The dune over there is hardly interesting," she doesn't gesture anywhere. There's dunes all about.
"The altitude and planet tilt are great for my research!" Sharon responds as she gently sets a box down in the cubic, purple sand. Red flecks begin sticking to its outer shell. Trank helps unload a few more boxes as Sharon sets them up.
"I suppose you're comparing your ground data against what you've been collecting en route?" Dr. Bella Gunderson asks. Sharon does not respond to such a heedless question and Dr. Bella Gunderson does not ask again.
Dr. Hoffen turns to him.
"Dr. N, can you have TEZMEEN fire probes around the planet at different altitudes so we can run data comparisons?"
It's the way the radio waves bounced through the atmosphere, that worried him. They bent just like the light. TEZMEEN did not respond.
Class Zero Planetarium: Landfall
Pt. 2
Class Zero Planetarium Pt. 1:
https://theprose.com/post/798338/class-zero-planetarium-pt-1