Culpepper watched out the window as Guerrero brought the vehicle to a hover over a large clearing. The sun was just beginning to peek over the treetops to the east. In the dim light of dawn, she could see orange and green fruits covering the trees beyond the clearing.
I hope today’s results are better than yesterday’s.
These stops were necessary, but the riskiest part of the mission. In the air, they had almost unlimited visibility and were out of reach of anything that could do them harm. There were still too many unknowns on the ground, especially now that they’d moved well away from their base camp.
Culpepper stared out the window of the vehicle as they cruised a thousand feet above the crests of the canyons. The view was spectacular. Steep canyon walls striped in varied earth tones with a mostly dry streambed in the bottom. Small patches of several different types of cactus sparsely dotted the landscape. Beautiful, but useless. Nothing in sight that would help them survive. No good reason to land the four-wheeler here.
Alex Guerrero wouldn’t admit it, but he was cold. Working outside for more than four hours in blizzard conditions had chilled him to the bone.
How would it feel to wake up with two feet of snow covering your camp? To hear blizzard-force winds blowing in the darkness the night before? To watch as structures and equipment critical to your survival are destroyed by the gale? To be eight people marooned on an alien world with no way to get home and no way of knowing when—or even if—home would be coming back for you?
