The Station, Part 13

16/6/2207

I’m suited up. I’ve checked and rechecked every seal and every sensor. I want nothing out there to get past me. And I’ve triple checked the headlamp that’s built into the helmet. I’m bringing along an extra handheld flashlight, just in case. The helmet microphone is working apparently as I see my speech is being transcribed in real time by the suits translation program. Good. I’m not about the try and type using the portable keyboard. These gloves are not coming off. I don’t care what the sensors tell me about there being nothing harmful in the air. And just on the one-in-a-million chance, I’m sending real-time visual feed out too. Maybe you all will have one hell of a movie night. It’s pitch black out there, and even with the station’s navigation lights still active I want to be sure that if I turn down a dark bend in this Leviathan, I’ve got light all the time. Forgot to tell you earlier, that’s what I’ve name it. Leviathan. After the whale that swallowed Jonah. At least I think that’s what it was called. I’m not well versed in Biblical myths so forgive me if I’ve gotten that wrong. Not that you or anyone else really cares about that stuff anymore. But I couldn’t just keep calling it “it” or the “thing”. Think that’s appropriate.

I’m walking to the airlock now. Can’t say I’m looking forward to this, but what else am I going to do? Maybe I should wait to you guys and then we can form a proper exploration team, but by then I think I might have gone stir crazy. What would you do? I mean, this is the whole reason I’m out here right? Discovering intelligent life and all. Listen to me, talking as if I’ve already found something. (laughter) Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but hell, it’s better than thinking about being a full-grown man pissing into the excursion suit diaper is just ridiculously funny.

Okay, I’m at the airlock now. Opening outer door and going inside. Haven’t seen this part of the station since coming aboard. Seems like a million years ago now. Could use some knick knacks or something. Pressurizing now…and…opening outer airlock hatch.

Okay. And now…drum roll please…I’m stepping out. Wow! Did you hear that? No, wait. Sorry. Of course you didn’t. You’re reading. I’m talking to you like you’re listening. When I put my boot down, there was one hell of an echo. Scared the shit out of me. I should have thought of it before. This place is acting like a gigantic sound board, bouncing sound all over the place. It’s not a vacuum in here by any means. I’m going to tread lightly from here on out. That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. Heh. You knew it was coming. Speaking of stepping, the ground, for lack of a better word right now, is just as black as everything else, smooth, with rippling that makes be think it’s volcanic in origin. Hey, is there a geologist in the house?

So, where to from here? If you can’t see what I see right now, I’ve trained the helmet light straight ahead away from Frontier and towards the far wall. I’m activating the suit’s visual enhancements and getting some magnification. The far wall looks much like the ground, except there’s a series of ovoid dark patches that are irregularly spaced apart. Can’t tell much else about them right now. I’m walking now. Damn that’s still a loud echo and I’m practically tiptoeing. Hey, I just realized I’ve never looked up. Heh. My light only stretches so far. Too dark. Nothing to see. Moving on.

The ground is sloping upwards slightly. But not so much that walking’s still relatively easy. Which is good, because as efficiently designed as this suit is, it’s not at all meant for mountain climbing.

I’m approaching the far wall now, and I can make out more details. There’s a somewhat different texture to it, like it was molded or something, kinda like how they used to make walls in homes and other buildings in the days before nanocrete. It’s not all that uniform as I see large patches that looks like they were applied with a huge brush, other places appear to be completely smooth. I need to get closer.

It is so quiet in the here. My audio pickups to turned up to maximum and I other than my own speech and the footsteps, there is nothing else. It’s like the whole world is asleep and I’ve gotten up way too early. It reminds me of a time when my parents took me to a cave back home on Earth. We had shuttled over to a small nature preserve near his hometown in Florida. What was called again. Habana? No, Havana. Yeah, that was it. Knew it was a Spanish sounding name. Anyway, he took me to this cave in Havana, Florida. A tour guide took us down into this cave and it was so quiet. It was the middle of the day, and down there it might as well have been midnight. To demonstrate how absolutely dark it was in this cave, he shut down all the artificial illumination in this one room, and the since that day, I’ve never seen darkness that complete. And the other people on the tour must have been just as impressed as me, because nobody talked. All you could hear was their breathing. I thought then, what if you didn’t have any light with you, how could you ever find your way out of a place like that? I guess you didn’t. That’s what’s it’s like in here. Except I’m not turned my light out to see just how dark it can get.

I’m just a few feet from the wall now, and it’s not exactly what I expected. Those dark pock marks I might have mentioned earlier are actually holes, oval and about ten feet in height. The walls look like cooled molten rock similar to the floor, but the texture is certainly different. More like a sculptor’s interpretation of what molten rock should look like. I know that’s probably hard to imagine from your vantage point out there, but I have no idea what you see on your side. Uh…think of black clay being smoothed by hand, and I think you get the picture.

I just turned around and looked back at Frontier. She just a faint whiteness out there with her nav lights blinking on and off in their normal pattern. If, God forbid, I loose both of my lights, I can at least use the green, white and red coming off her hull to find my way back. You just keep on blinking there, girl.