Gaia 3

X. Wonder

The entire crew had decided to sleep outside, and so the next morning, they all awoke with the sun. The only exception was Jaleah, who had the uncanny ability to sleep through almost anything. 

Finally, she awoke to Liyan shaking her out of her sleeping bag. 

"Rise and shine, Professor," Liyan said, grabbing her makeshift mattress out from under her. Jaleah rolled off it and into the sand. 

"Just how everyone wants to wake up," she grumbled, picking herself up and brushing sand out of her hair. 

"Yeah, yeah," Liyan said, rolling her eyes, "Breakfast is being served. And you should probably take a shower to get all that sand off you." 

Jaleah glared at her but followed her to the table Karmyne had set up for breakfast. 

"So what's the plan?" Jaleah asked, quickly eating her food. 

"We're going to head west like you suggested," Daviron replied, "We'll go about five hundred miles, which should take most of the day, and then we'll stop in the middle of the zone you gave us." 

"The one where Lucioni's crew probably is?" 

"Yeah, that's the one. We'll set up camp there, and then tomorrow, we'll start looking for their remains. With any luck, you'll be right about their location, and we'll find them quickly enough." 

"And once we've found them, I'll examine them for cause of death," Kyndle added. 

Jaleah nodded but quickly tuned out the conversation. She was anxious to start exploring this planet and discover the hidden wonders it had to offer. Everything else was secondary; finding Julius Lucioni, surveying the land, or even figuring out why the planet didn't support life didn't even hold a candle to the prospect of just seeing the beauty the planet surely had to offer. It was this deep desire to appreciate beauty that had led her to study the stars and the planets, and it was this beauty she was most excited for now that she had the chance to see it.

"Jaleah, don't tell me you're sleeping again," Liyan said, rolling her eyes. Jaleah jumped and shook herself out of her trance. 

"I wasn't sleeping," she argued. 

"Sure. You were just resting your eyes while smiling weirdly," Liyan replied. 

"Liyan, give it a rest," Zax said, "We're all pretty tired. It's been an eventful fifteen hours." 

"More like twenty now," Carsin jumped in, "Can you believe we've been on this planet that long?" 

"I know, it's great!" Daviron said with a huge smile, "But we've got a long way to go today, so I suggest we pack all our stuff and get a move on!" 

"Davi, don't you need to send a message back to the Union? I think they would probably like to know that we actually landed on the planet," Karmyne reminded him. Daviron paled, swore, and ran off while Karmyne rolled her eyes. 

"It's going to be like that every day," Zax said, "I don't know why we let him be in charge of sending those messages. He forgets half of the time." 

"Probably because he's paying for the expedition," Karmyne replied, "And he's better than any of us at making mundane things sound interesting. If any of us tried that, we'd probably focus too much on boring details." 

--<<>>--

About an hour later, the crew had packed their belongings and were off. Their vehicles, which hovered about a foot off the ground, went fairly quickly, but not so fast as to deprive them of the amazing landscape around them. 

The first hundred miles were all the same; just miles and miles of desert in every direction. On the one hand, it was admittedly a little boring. Yet there was a certain beauty to the vastness of the desert. The dunes of golden sand soon gave way to darker rock formations that jutted out of the dusty ground like monuments to the burning sun. As the crew began to approach the mountains on the horizon, they began to take on a bluish tint that almost twinkled with spots of dark green and purple. The tops of the mountains were snowcapped, and Jaleah was surprised that anything was able to freeze in the sun's heat. 

Slowly, the landscape around them became redder and rockier. Jaleah had never seen anything like it. Everything as far as the eye could see was redder than blood, and yet the mountains in the distance still sparkled in blue, green, and purple hues, dusted with a fine layer of pearly white snow. Meanwhile, dark clouds began forming in the distance. Jaleah thought she saw a flash of lightning, and sure enough, a clap of thunder could be heard a few seconds later. The sun was hidden behind the storm clouds, but its light formed a ring of light by the edges, forming what Jaleah thought looked like a silver wedding band.

She looked back towards the mountains. She found it perplexing yet awe-inspiring to see these mountains sparkle. What was there that made the light bounce around, so that at this distance she had the impression of watching fireflies chase each other? Most likely, it was some unknown mineral or mountain stream that caused these reflections, but soon enough, Jaleah's imagination got the best of her, and she began dreaming of spirits chasing each other through hidden caves and high peaks. 

--<<>>--

After a few more hours of contemplating this beauty, Jaleah was jolted back into reality by the sudden stopping of their vehicle. 

"What's going on?" she asked, looking at Liyan questioningly. 

"It's amazing how you can still have your head in the stars on a foreign planet," Liyan replied, rolling her eyes, "We're stopping for the night. We're in that radius you drew us, and we don't want to travel into that storm just yet." 

"In the meantime, we're going to try to figure out exactly where Julius Lucioni's remains are," Zax said, "Which we could use your help with. We need you to do the math." 

"You can do the math," Jaleah responded, "You're a geologist." 

"But you're an astrophysicist. Math is ninety percent of your job," Zax replied, "Besides, I want to take soil samples." 

He walked away, and Jaleah sighed. Then she joined Karmyne and Carsin, who were hovering over a bulky instrument. 

"What's that?" Jaleah asked.

"It's just something we use when we're trying to pick up some kind of signal from ancient artifacts," Karmyne explained, "But it's a little less reliable on foreign planets, which is why we need you to double check the math. I've got some of the basic formulas written down there, and this should give us the numbers." 

Jaleah nodded and sat down, ready to determine the exact location of Julius Lucioni's crew.  

--<<>>--

Jaleah had spent her afternoon doing calculations for Karmyne and Carsin, but as soon as it started getting darker, she immediately abandoned them. She wandered away a few hundred feet and climbed to the top of one of the rock formations to watch the sunset. She had fallen in love with the planets sunsets after seeing just one the night before. That night's failed to disappoint. The red and pink streaks were projected onto the storm clouds, turning the sky into a bright shade of fiery red. Had she witnessed a sunset like this at home, she might have thought the apocalypse was coming. But here, the blood red sky was not only appropriate but also exceedingly beautiful.

==<<>>==<<>>==<<>>==

PSA: You know that one person in your friend group who's good at math? They're not always good at arithmetic. Just be warned: math and arithmetic aren't always the same. Just because Jaleah happens to be good at both doesn't mean we all are.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, please vote if you're enjoying the story so far, or if you agree with the above statement.