Moon Disaster

How to survive here?

The progress with rehabilitation is moving along quite quickly now the physiotherapists have us running which is quite amazing as the gravity here is 10% less than that on earth, we can run much faster jump higher and do incredible things we never thought possible. The swimming in the freshwater lake is another thing it is impossible to sink, laying still you float as the gravity will not pull you down so swimming is quite easy and it would be almost impossible to drown here.
We are enjoying the new challenges that the less gravity brings in this amazing place we now call our New World even though it is not like our beautiful earth our new planet has hope for us to survive here so we look forward each day.
Our engineers have built twenty small two-man pods to be manned by the crippled people their task is to travel this enormous planet which is almost twice the earth's size they will be mapping the land and oceans.
With this data, our control centre will decide where to set up colonies in our New World.Archaeologist and geologist have set out to do research and drill core samples and look for signs of early life cavers are exploring the many caves looking for signs of any fossil fragments. The agricultural team have planted many experimental crops around our landing site here at Happy Valley, the crops were all going very well in the first week they've grown more than three times the speed of that on earth.
After three weeks the crops are almost ready to harvest and it was hard to believe the progress in these crops of all different species.
We couldn't believe what we saw the next morning at all the crops have died they were all lying flat on the ground.
The agricultural team had never seen anything like it so they rushed outside and I pulled a few with the plants up and inspected the roots and found they were covered with worms.

They had never seen worms like this before they're about an inch and a half to two inches long and they had teeth just like termites so we name them the termite worms.
The next morning there was no sign of any of the vegetation it's just as if they had never been planted just dry earth was left.
This was the absolute disaster all the plans we had for growing crops, the soil was fertile, we had water, light and heat but these amazing new creatures were just destroying the crops.
New colonies have been set up in many locations throughout the new world, some of these colonies had tried the farming process only to find the same thing within eight weeks all crops had been destroyed by this termite worm.
There didn't seem to be an answer but one of the investigators suggested that the planet would have been covered in vegetation at one time. The termite worms had devoured all the vegetation and then as there was no vegetation left they buried themselves deep in the earth until vegetation grew then they would emerge to devour the vegetation once again.
The core samples from the research team may prove this so we are waiting on the researchers to get back to us with their findings.
The research team soon came back and advised us on the core samples, indeed did show that the planet had lots of vegetation about three and a half million years ago.

Then the planet had been barren it also showed these tiny termite worms at various levels so it would appear that the vegetation would sprout up from time to time and then the worms would cut it down.
These worms may lay dormant for millions of years waiting for new vegetation.
This indeed is a massive drawback, how to solve this problem, what do we do and how do we do it, we do not wish to make the same mistakes as we did on earth and create pesticides and herbicides and kill everything in sight just for the sake of it.
We must find a way to solve this problem it would appear that these termite worms had been brought here by an asteroid at least three and a half million years ago because there was evidence of asteroid strikes around that time.
The planet would've been heavily vegetated before the introduction of these worms from who knows where.

One of the mapping pods returning from a faraway landmass found an island at least 5000 miles from any land, it was a small island with two large extinct volcanoes and a canyon running through the centre.
The island was surrounded by a black sandy beach; on closer inspection they found footprints on the sand. 
At first, they thought was one of our team exploring but as they look closer they saw they weren't human footprints they had two big toes and the footprint was an unusual shape.
The research pod followed the footprints which disappeared into the canyon.Just what were the strange creatures that lived in the canyon we had to investigate further as these are the first real aliens ever discovered?
The pod arrived back at the control centre and showed their findings, there was much excitement so a specialised team with a flying robot which is big as a Bee, it had an infrared vision camera as these creatures may only come out at night.It would follow and only observe these aliens and record their behaviour, find out what they eat as the island was barren like the rest of the planet.
The new world colonies were set up with monitors to keep everyone up to date with the latest developments and everyone was extremely anxious to see the aliens.
Mission Control was careful not to contaminate this precious site so only the Bee drone was to get close to the island.
Meanwhile, all the mapping pods were sent to search for other small remote islands that may be home to these creatures.
The Bee drone started to search for the aliens and followed the footprints into a cave system deep inside the canyon, the cave opened out into many paths.

The drone followed the footprints and soon found twelve creatures processing what appeared to be a type of seaweed, these creatures were short and stocky, around four feet tall with orange hair all over their bodies except for their heads.
Their heads were bald and box-shaped; yellow in colour they had very large eyes and small mouths.
As they separated this seaweed, they laid it out on a flat rocky surface then hammered it with stones then stored it in rock crevices. The drone ventured further into the cave system and found another eight creatures sitting around eating the dried seaweed, they communicated to each other with popping sounds.
Further in the drone found tracks leading into many different tunnels, upon searching them all the drone counted forty-eighth creatures in total. Some were infants of different sizes, it wasn't possible to distinguish male from female.
As the drone returned to the cave's entrance, darkness was falling, all of the aliens emerged from the caves and wandered down to the beach. They walked very slowly on their short stocky legs, as they wandered around the island they gathered up the seaweed that had washed ashore, this task took them most of the night then they returned to the caves.

Back at mission control the team discussed the findings, and concluded that these creatures gathered up the precious seaweed each night before the termite worms got to it, they stored it on rock ledges as it was safe from the worms there.
Some of the cave explorers returned from various parts of the planet with fossil evidence of these creatures that were millions of years old. It is believed that the termite worms had brought an end to their species by eating their food supply.
Just how the population managed to survive on the Twin Peaks Island is a mystery.
The other mapping teams finished searching all the planets remote islands but no evidence of these creatures was found.
Mission Control needed to find some answers as to how the seaweed survived on this island so they sent a team to take core samples all around the island during daylight hours.
They had full-body suits so as not to leave any contamination and they covered all traces of them being there.
The core samples showed a different type of termite worm, they were larger, their heads were twice as big and their teeth were different.

The research team had several glass observation tanks set up, they put some vegetation into the tanks to revive them as they had done with the other termite worms but didn't get the same results.
They then put some of the other dormant worms in, they were revived and started eating the vegetation, then all of a sudden the twin peaks worms came to life and quickly devoured the vegetation worms, then their numbers quickly expanded so the team kept feeding them and watched in amazement.
Nature will always find a way, what has happened on the island is that the termite worms quickly devoured all the vegetation so a mutant worm developed to eat the other worms as it was the only food source.
The small population of aliens had survived here because they gathered the seaweed before the worms could get it, this seaweed only grew in the deep water around the island.
Our agriculture team now have the answer to defeating the dreaded termite worm; simply introduce the twin peaks worms into the ground before sowing the crops.

The trials were an outstanding success, soon there were crops of all types growing all around the new world, we even had forests planted in the mountain regions so soon our new world will look like our old world.
It has been almost three years since we first landed here and the last people are now being processed, twenty-three pods didn't make it they were caught up in a ring of enormous lumps of ice orbiting the star, these ice rocks were as big as mountains and had caused the pods to collide with each other causing them to explode.
The total death toll was fifty-seven million from the lost pods and the people that didn't survive the trip.

We get communication for the Mars settlement they now have a steady population and have managed to live in this harsh environment.
The Titan settlement was a failure so they joined the settlement on Jupiter's moon which is thriving.
They have had communication with seven of the underground colonies which are struggling with the conditions and confinement. The earth is a frozen foggy wasteland so only creatures living underground or in the deep sea would have survived the catastrophic event we left behind us.
They were pleased to hear that we found a new home although these people were distant descendants of the people we left behind.

Read part 11                Building our new world

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