With the thumping drumbeat of the propeller it was almost inaudible, but beneath all the noise I could hear the sound of the waves crashing on the shore of Ruby Isle. I’d been told it was called Ruby for two reasons. First, 581g had been first charted by the Irish, apparently an Irishman with a sense of humor. Second, the mat of red lichen that covered the slopes of the Dagger gave it a faint crimson tint, even from here in the stratosphere.
As the prop-plane wound its way down onto the flattest piece of ground it could find, I was carefully examining the approaching shore. I could see a strip of black sand surrounded Ruby on every side, giving the appearance of ash surrounding a burning ember. Which, looking back it, wasn’t too bad as comparison.
You had to use propellers to get between the scattered islands and settlements because 581g was a young world, only two billion years old. The scattered outcroppings of algae didn’t produce enough oxygen to run a decent jet engine, just barely enough to breathe. So old Terra had a bunch of these solar powered prop-planes shipped out here a year or so ago. I was the first actually qualified researcher to venture this far away from what passed for a continent on this waterlogged world.
By the time the prop-plane had brought itself to a landing, I already had my whole course of research planned out. First sample the rocky edges of the shores, then the sand, then work my way slowly up the slopes of the Dagger to the crater lake on top.
The first hour or two was uneventful. Besides a few new species of prokaryotes, there was nothing on Ruby that couldn’t be found on its neighbors. While the red lichen was especially prevalent here, it seems that it had been a colonizer from another island. Probably Burke, or maybe Aldrin. Or maybe those outcroppings had come from Ruby, but that was for some grad student back on the continent to figure out. It was only after I was almost half the way up the Dagger, grabbing a sample of olivine for the geologists back at the institute, that I felt the first rumbling. My head whipped around and I saw a few rocks fall in the distance. That was good to know: I would have to tread carefully from here on up, but at the time I thought that was it. The rock slide had made the rumbling, and nothing more.
As I continued my hike up the slope, I saw what looked to be the catch of the day. On the shore of a bubbling hot spring, a neat yellow ring of what looked like a slime mold basked in the escaping steam. This was sure to be a new species: I hadn’t seen a slime mold since I was on Curie ten days ago. After looking to confirm this was one colony, I dropped a piece into my sample kit and continued the walk up.
By the time I passed a few more hot springs I had concluded that the Dagger must be over a mantle plume, like the Hawaiians back on Terra. Feeling proud of myself for remembering my geology (it had always been my weak point, but my biology acumen more than made up for it in my mind), I trudged up to the shore of the crater lake: there was always something interesting in an isolated body of water, although it was hard to imagine anything better than a new species of slime mold this far out.
This is the part where I would like to tell you that my spider senses were tingling and I was feeling a dark premonition, but in truth it caught me totally by surprise. It’s not like in movies, you understand. It’s not lava spraying out of the top of the volcano and burning everything around you. Lava is actually pretty easy to outrun if you don’t get trapped in a corner. No, it’s the gasses that get you. A stream of hot gas and ash burst out of the side of crater, straight at where I was standing. Acting on instinct, I dove into the lake. I know, all the experts told me later that I should have called the plane over first, but I didn’t think of that, okay? Let’s see you wait a second to call for a ride while a stream of doom is coming at you, even if you “know” that you have the time.
In any case, it’s not like the lake alone would have protected me very well. Hot water can burn you just as easily as hot air. What did happen to protect me was the wave rushing away from the expanding gasses, pushed by the wind they made. Fortunately, the wave carried me out into the middle of the lake. Unfortunately, I was now in the middle of a lake on an erupting volcano. I knew another pyroclastic surge like that and I could be considered a well done roast. There was no way I was swimming back to the closest shore, where the lichen mat was now distinctly ablaze, so I swam directly opposite it, across the entirety of the lake. I was fairly well exhausted by that point, and I reached in my pocket to call my prop-plane up to the crater early. But the radio wasn’t there. It turns out that some brilliant mind had decided that our radios, including the transmitter to our planes, should be made out of something particularly heavy and liable to sink to the bottom of a volcanic lake. Real clever engineers we have at the institute. In any case, I had had the prop-plane programmed to find me and pick me up about two hours from then, after it had fully charged and after I had completed my sampling. With the ash cloud blowing over where my plane was parked, however, I doubted that it would be able to get a good charge anyway. In any case, I just had to sit here and wait two hours for the prop-plane to pick me up.
If two hours seems like a long time in class, try it on top of a volcano. Suffice it to say that for the first part of the time I ate my emergency ration, in the middle I puked up my emergency ration, and for the last part I was running for my life.
As I said earlier, lava is easy to outrun. It flows slowly like you would expect for molten rock. Fire, on the other hand, is not. Lichen doesn’t have a huge amount of mass to burn, and the oxygen content wasn’t anything to make an inferno either, but even a small fire can be deadly. The fire had spread all the way around from the other side of the lake. I considered running back into the lake, but I realized there would be nowhere for the plane to land with the entire shore burning.
So I began the trek back down the slope. That sounds too dignified. I guess it would more accurate to say I began frantically scrambling away from the fire, wheezing with the combination of altitude, low oxygen in the atmosphere, and smoke from the fires. On a planet with more oxygen like old Terra there was no chance of outpacing a fire, but here it was possible, although not easy. More than once the fire almost caught up to me, but I made sure to stay on the rocks with the least algae I could find. After just a bit of this I was in such a daze that I didn’t notice my foot was on loose gravel until it was too late. My leg slipped and I fell down onto the ledge below, and I heard a crack. It wasn’t looking as though I was going to scramble down any further.
Just then I heard the familiar thump of the propeller. Had it been two hours already? I didn’t think it had been, but I saw the plane screech to a halt on the short patch of rock just below me. Cringing, I dangled down with my hands into the open hatch. Thank you, self flying plane.
As my broken leg hit the floor of the cabin, I cringed. The pain came to me in full force. Just before I blacked out, I heard a message on the plane’s radio.
“…signs of volcanic activity on satellite data. Evacuate immediately. We’ve picked up signs of volcanic activity…”
I laughed. You can always count on base camp to intervene the second you no longer need any help.
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