The Abyss of Time

Chapter Twenty Two

     The impact caused both the cockpit and the passenger cabin to instantly fill with flash foam, which evaporated seconds later leaving the occupants of the Orchid dazed but unharmed. Alarm blared all through the lander and the light's flashed red, except around the emergency exits where they blazed a bright, lambent white. "Evacuate the vehicle," said a male computer voice. "The vehicle must be evacuated immediately."

     The cockpit door opened and Pangiran appeared, looking pale and wobbly. "Everyone okay?" he asked.

     Miller looked around and was relieved to see his family staring back at him. "Are we down?" asked Lucy.

     "We need to get off this ship," said Miller. "The cyborg satellites will have seen exactly where we came down. They're probably on their way already. Let's get the mules out of storage and loaded up. Jack, see to the quads. Everyone else, get off the lander and find somewhere a few hundred metres away to gather, in case there's an explosion."

     "Are you in charge again, then?" asked Pangiran.

     "Yes, I'm in charge. Anyone got a problem with that?"

     Nobody did, and so they got to work. Miller opened the nearest emergency door, admitting the deafening sound of pouring rain. He saw that mud, pushed up by the lander's slide along the ground, half blocked the exit. He grabbed the nearest passenger, a young woman, lifted her up by the waist and pushed her through what remained of the opening. She gave a little shriek over their shared intercom channel as she slid down the mud to the ground. Elsewhere, other people were helping other passengers out of other emergency doors. Miller was the last to leave. He took a last look around at the passenger cabin, littered with forgotten personal possessions and stained with dried flash foam, then followed the others out.

     He had expected the surface of the planet to be dark, and it was, but it was dark not like a cave but like the abyssal deaths of the ocean. There was bio-luminescence everywhere, mainly coming from the undersides of large fungal caps, bright enough for them to see clearly once their eyes had adapted to the light level. Strange forms of vegetation unlike anything they'd seen before grew everywhere, including things that looked like strings of pearls but standing several metres upright from the ground, every pearl of which shone with a pale, white light. Beside him was a vast pillar of the tree the lander had crashed into. It was twenty five metres across and entirely covered by smaller living creatures except where streams of running water ran down it like vertical rivers through a forest. It rose up and up an impossible distance, eventually disappearing into the darkness above. Where the lander had damaged it a red liquid ran, looking unsettlingly like blood.

     There was water running everywhere in a thousand little rivulets that had carved channels in the ground, and thin streams of water fell from above, creating small, circular ponds in the ground for themselves. Miller assumed it was rain, hitting the forest canopy above and running along branches, many merging together to form sizeable streams until they found a place they could fall to the ground. The water all flowed away to the south, towards the lake they'd just flown over. The sound of hammering rain came from that direction, where there was no vegetation to keep the rain from falling all the way to the water's surface. There was water just hanging in the air as well. One hundred percent humidity that had already covered Miller's surface suit with beads of condensation. It severely limited visibility. A grey haze hid everything more than a few dozen metres away from view.

     Miller remembered that the cyborgs were on their way and cursed himself for wasting time staring at the strange, alien jungle. There was work to be done. He scrambled down the slope of mud that lay against the side of the lander, noting that one entire wing had been crumpled and almost torn away by the impact. The mud also half covered the entrance to the cargo bay and Jack was already organising the youngest, strongest men to scrape it away with shovels that someone had gone back inside to fetch. Miller grabbed a spare shovel and went to help, noting with distaste that the mud was crawling with long, white worms. He ignored them and began to dig. Within a few minutes they'd uncovered enough of the hatch for it to open and the great curving sheet of steel pushed the remaining mud out of the way as it lowered itself with a low hum.