The Station, Part 16

19/6/2207

Can the day really be over already? If I didn’t have a chronometer I would have sworn it wasn’t even close. But computers don’t lie they tell me. I missed an entire sleep cycle with all my running around. Curiosity, fear and adrenaline can keep a body going only for so long. Just sitting down now, I think I could pass right here. I’, still on the beach, well away from the newly dead bodies, the casualties of the strange orgy from the red night before. I made a lot of assumptions about that, not exactly sure where it al came from, but I do think I got a lot of what I saw right. I was never the best biological sciences student. Never had a real drive or interest in it. I suppose I absorbed more than I thought over the years. My teachers would be proud. I can hear a chorus of “I told you you’d need this someday” flittering through my head. Okay, you win imaginary teachers. You win.

I know I’m not supposed to, but I’m going to eat something before I finally decide to bed down. Just a little paste. Got hungry and wasn’t going to do anything about it until I’d slept. But my stomach didn’t agree with that decision and has been making some noises in protest. Somehow I think I’ll burn off the calories, and then some, tomorrow.

Okay, I feel better now. I’ve picked a spot on the beach to take a nap and dimmed the faceplate to block most of the green light. The place I’ve picked is close to the wall, by the tunnel opening. I wonder how good a sleep I can get inside this tin can. Well, based on how exhausted I feel it shouldn’t be a problem. I do have some concern over security though. I’ve seen things in this place, while nothing overtly hostile, is still a big unknown. There’s no real satisfactory solution to that. The best I can do is to rely on my suit’s proximity sensor alarm and hope for the best. It’s meant for space-going objects, but it should work the same in a gravity environment. No sense worrying about it too much. I’m going to have to sleep sometime. Might as well be now. I’ll set the alarm radius for maximum. If anything gets curious about the snoring bipedal creature on their stretch of beach, I’ll know about it right away.

You know, the sand feels very soft, even through the suit. Must the contours of the sand grains. Not a course one among them. I wonder what sort of environmental action shaped these minute peddles? Ancient wave action? Wind? Who knows? Lying next to them with my helmet pressed into it I can see their colors. They look uniform when you’re standing up, but down here, so close to them, there are subtle color variations. And look at that, there’s something living among them as well. Little crablike beings climbing in between grains that, at their scale, must be like boulders. They can’t be more than a millimeter long. Probably even smaller than that. I’ll take a guess and say they’re the cleanup crew for the beach, helping clear these beautiful sands of any detritus that makes its way into their home. They must be really good that then, because I don’t be a bit of seaweed or other flotsam anywhere. But then again, I could be entirely wrong about them. I could be entirely wrong about the giant mollusks that all lie dead or dying back there on that stretch of curved beach. I think before I start back exploring the tunnels later I’ll take another look at them. See what has transpired during my time off. Something tells me their story isn’t over yet. Just one more chapter in a very long tale. I just started reading the book somewhere in the middle.

Good morning. Or is it evening? I don’t know. I woken up to a deep red sky. Everything is bathed in it. The sand looks like countless rubies. The ocean, well, that might as well be blood. It is not what I would ever want to wake up to. But I feel refreshed. More so than I thought inside the suit. I’ll have to mention that to its designers someday. I think they’d like that. Although advertising it as “the excursion suit you can sleep in” might not go over well with Navy R&D.

Breakfast is over. Before I head back into the tunnel, I want to take another look at the carnage from last night. I don’t know why I’m this interested but it’s not too far a walk. I won’t stay long.