Terror on Terra 5 (excerpt)

When questioned on the incident later, Bee would say it was the sheer human terror contained in the scream that compelled them to act.

"But wasn't a horrifying scream a good reason to stay in the Safe Zone?" the incident investigator asked. "You're only students."

"You would have thought so," she replied with a shrug that conveyed more bravado than she actually felt. "But here we are."

* * *

Bee sat beneath a tree, the warm sun shining through the purple leaves above her creating dappled patterns of light on her dark skin. Realizing her fingers were cramping, she reluctantly made a gesture, closing down the digital projection from the small, portable data pad sitting on her lap. She cracked her knuckles and looked up at the sky, trying to judge the time based on Alpha Pictorus' position. After a couple of weeks on Terra 5, she had gotten pretty good at guesstimating it, despite the fact that Terra 5 didn't have a twenty-four hour day like Earth did.

Regardless of the time, her sore fingers and the crick in her neck told her it was time for a break. Unfortunately. Bee loved her work. She loved almost everything about this internship, where she was finally getting the chance to catalogue flora on a real extrasolar planet. It was the fauna she wasn't so sure about. Mostly because it was still somewhat of a mystery.

The first exploratory parties to come through the wormhole had landed here on Terra 5, the unimaginatively named fifth terrestrial planet out from Alpha Pictoris, a perfectly average star. Their first base, Freya Station, had been on the other side of the planet, resulting in that particular region and ecosystem being better explored than the newer Loki Station, which is where Bee was now. Initial readings of the planet had shown no sign of intelligent life, tech, or pollution—but humans had only been studying it for the nine years since that first landing. And nine years isn't a lot of time to fully explore something as large as a planet.

However, part of the mission of the Space Academy for Technical Arts and Sciences was to train the next generation of scientists and explorers, and with that training came an accepted level of inherent risk, even for teenagers. The protective equipment set up at Loki Station had been deemed adequate to ensure the safety of the science teams and now students, who were here to study this strange new world.

The students in particular, while unescorted, were trusted to stay in the so-called Safe Zone. Bee had no complaints—there was plenty to learn about and to catalog within the Safe Zone's generous parameters. Nor had she been here long enough yet to explore it all.

She dumped her data pad onto the soft, pale purple grass beside her and stood up to stretch. You couldn't beat spring on Terra 5 when the weather was good. She turned her brown face up to Alpha Pictoris, enjoying its gentle warmth, and then ran her fingers through the Afro that bloomed around her face like a soft black halo. The purple-leaved trees above her tended to shed pale pink pollen when the breeze went through their small blossoms, making her feel like she constantly needed to dust off her head.

But she didn't care. This place was magic.

And the best part, (as if anything could be better than getting to do nothing but study plants from another planet) was that she got to share this with her friends.

Bee shoved her data pad into her jacket pocket and set off through the woods, towards the rugged, rock-ringed clearing Mike was excavating. If Bee Williamson loved plants, Mike Lopez loved rocks. She knew that when she found him, he'd be tapping away at a boulder, his sample bags and camera close by.

Bee felt a hand on her shoulder and jumped.

"Sorry, Iowa," a low voice said in her ear. "Didn't mean to sneak up on you."

It was Alicia Callahan, another one of her best friends and a fellow SATAS student, using the nickname Bee had been given three years ago at Lunar Camp. She'd hated it then, but now it just reminded her of her home state on Earth, and also of the summer she'd become friends with Mike.

"You're actually taking a break?" Alicia's green eyes widened in mock surprise.

"Forcing myself to take one. I needed dusting off anyway." Bee grinned and gently swiped at her friend's dark brown bangs.

Alicia bent her head over and swished her long ponytail for a minute, before flipping it back. "That felt good—I think I needed to shake off the dust, too!"

"How's your project coming?" Bee asked.

"Good! I've almost got the old spectrometer working, and I made a few mods to it to give us readings for longer wavelengths..."

Alicia was interrupted by a warning blast from the loud klaxon of the emergency weather siren.

"Crap. Now I'm not going to get the chance to try it out this afternoon." Alicia sighed. "Why don't you drag Mike away from his rock sampling, and I'll stow my stuff and meet you at the south entrance of the station?"

"Sounds good. How long do you think we have this time?" Bee looked up at the sky again. Alpha Pictorus was now obscured by some very benign-looking, wispy, pink clouds.

"No idea." Alicia shook her head, starting to warm up to one of her favorite subjects. "There's so much variation between storms. The data set I downloaded showed that onset of forecast rain could be a couple of minutes to over an hour, but there's no real pattern. We just don't have the kind of weather satellites here that we have looking at the Earth, so there's not much information to go by. All I know is that it apparently gets weird when it rains, and exactly how is not well-studied."

"Well, it can't be too bad—the station's still standing, right?"

"That's something better than nothing!" Alicia replied cheerfully. "And you know how early exploration anywhere goes; there are lots of things that can kill you besides the weather!"

* * *

The full story will be available in the 2017 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide, which will be available for pre-order soon.  It is a sequel to Lunar Camp (excerpt on my Wattpad, full story in either Athena's Daughters or the 2016 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide) and Land of the Lost (full story on my Wattpad).