Astronomicon 1: Inception Point (Finished)

43 - Morning

"If there is something lurking down there, Commander, I don't want to end up trapped like a rabbit in a hole," said Fletcher.

"I'll give Lucy my handgun," he replied, reaching in to his H.E.P.O. pocket.

"Won't you need that?" Lucy replied, looking surprised.

"If something's down there and it gets me, then you'll be up here and the gun will be down there. That's an even worse situation. Plus, if something chases me, you can pick it off while I get back to the ladder."

He handed her the gun and both spare clips. She took it in her still ungloved hands and held it ready to fire. Fletcher looked down first the nearside of the module and then the other, but said nothing.

"You do remember how to use one of those?" Chris asked.

"I remember my training," she replied coolly.

"Here goes then," Chris announced, taking hold of the dangling rope and walking slowly backwards down the curve towards the tied-on ladder.

He split his attention between watching where his boots were landing and the area close to the module below him. He could not shake off the anxiety that something would leap out at him from under or behind the buggies or even the underside of the module before he made it to the ground.

His boots clanged worryingly loudly when he stepped onto the top rung of the ladder, but still nothing below moved. After pausing for a few seconds to listen for sounds from below, he took the next few steps. Soon, he was low enough to grab the sides of the ladder with his hands, so he signalled to Fletcher to wind up the rope.

He could now see under the side of the module, but there was nothing lurking; nowhere for it to hide. After looking around one more time, he dropped the last few steps onto the surface. The areas of gravel on the rocky surface showed signs of foot indents, but both they and the other team had walked over much of the area, so that meant nothing. There was nothing to prove that something had been roaming around there during the night.

He had a cursory look at the buggies, but they and their cargo appeared to be untouched. Still feeling nervous, he walked all the way around them and then set off towards the far end of the module. He slowed to move cautiously around the end until he could see it was clear on the other side too. Whatever it had been, it was no longer in the area.

He was about to walk back the way he had come, but then thought better of it. After trotting quickly along the other side, he slowly rounded the other end and was relieved to find nothing there either. He still did not know what had visited them during the night, but it had evidently not stuck around for the morning. Chris called up to the others to bring their stuff back down to the buggies.

They ferried the boxes of supplies and most of the heaters back to the buggies. Chris decided they should leave four of the heaters inside the module and reseal the hatch. It could still serve as an important shelter in the future.

As he arrived back at the four-seater buggy, Lucy jogged across to him and return his handgun and clips.

"Chris, come and look in Fletcher's shelter."

"I didn't check in there. Are the bodies okay?"

He followed her to the entranceway, and she pulled open a flap so he could see inside. The two bodies lay, exactly as before, side-by-side in the centre of the floor. Nothing seemed amiss.

"So..." he started.

"Look closely," she urged. "But don't get too close."

He stepped tentatively into the shelter and peered at the frozen corpses. At first, he could see nothing unexpected, until he got a better look. The exposed skin on their hands and faces appeared almost furry. He took another step closer, then thought better of it. Tiny, tall, thin mushrooms coat every square centimetre of their exposed skin. There were thousands of them, all beige and all identical.

He swore quietly as he stepped hastily backwards, then hurried out of the shelter.

"You see?"

"Those look the same as the ones at the sphere," he said, pulling the flap out of Lucy's grip and tugging it closed.

"What do we do?" she asked. "We can't leave them like that, can we?"

"No. No, we can't. They're spreading. I'd say that poses a threat to us," he replied.

They both moved a few more steps away from the shelter.

"Do you think they're contagious?" she asked, keeping her voice low.

"I'm not sure that's the right word, but I reckon we need to stop this."

He turned towards the buggies and shouted, "Fletcher, can I borrow your expertise for a moment?"

"Sure, Commander," Fletcher boomed back, immediately dropping out the flatbed buggy's driving seat.

"If we need to burn something, I mean properly incinerate it, here, using whatever we've got to hand, what would you suggest?"

"What do you need to burn, Commander?"

"Your shelter and everything in it."

Fletcher looked surprised, then he thought for a while, looking first back at the buggies and then the module itself.

"Are you aiming to cremate the bodies in the shelter, Commander?"

"As much as possible, yes," Chris nodded.

"Do we need to do that? They're not gonna go anywhere!"

"You know the mushrooms we found around that silver sphere? The bodies in there are coated in them. We need to incinerate them. So, any way to do that?"

"Aye, Commander," Fletcher replied slowly. "The retro rockets on the module shouldn't have burned dry during the descent. There will be a few gallons of fuel left in the tanks."

"And it's conventional rocket fuel..."

"Indeed, Commander. I can bleed some from the tanks into an empty water bottle or two. All we need then is an igniter to kick things off."

"Have we got anything to do that, Fletcher?"

"Aye, I've got a few ideas. Leave it with me, Commander."

Chris kept his team watching the horizon for signs of movement, while Fletcher filled a water bottle with leftover kerosene from a retrorockets. Leaving the access panel on the rocket open, he walked to the shelter, liberally sprayed kerosene through the opening, coating the mushroom-sprouting corpses and the surrounding area. Then he returned and refilled the bottle.

With another two litres of kerosene dousing the bodies, Fletcher turned his attention to one of the improvised heaters. He pulled the heating element away and left it on the front of the nearest buggy, then he set about twisting two individual short lengths of electrical cable around each of the contacts on the battery. By holding the rubber flex and pressing the multi-stranded ends of the wires together, the current from the battery superheated the tiny wires, causing some of them to glow bright yellow.

Holding the glowing plume near the pooled kerosene on the shelter floor caused it to light immediately with a flickering blue flame. The flame spread rapidly, jumping from pool to pool. Within moments, the bodies and most of the shelter were ablaze. Fire engulfed the whole structure which quickly collapsed into the flames.

"That won't damage the module, will it?" asked Kate.

Fletcher smiled and shook his head.