Astronomicon 1: Inception Point (Finished)

43 - Morning

It had taken Chris almost an hour to get to sleep. The nagging expectation that the movement outside the module would return at any moment kept him from relaxing but, eventually, exhaustion got the better of him and he passed out.

He had no sensation of time passing when someone shook his arm. For a moment, he thought Lucy was waking him for his shift, but then he heard Kate speak.

"Chris!" she spoke quietly but urgently.

"Is it my turn on watch already?"

"No, you got a lucky break," Kate laughed. "Lucy conked out lying on the ladder, so you've been asleep right through the night."

"Nothing happened?"

"During the night? No," she replied. "Whatever's out there seems to have given up."

He struggled to get up off the floor. The coldness during the night, combined with lying on a hard surface, had stiffened his muscles and made everything ache. As the light level within the sealed module was unaffected by the daylight outside, there was no sign that it was now morning out there. By the time he was up on his feet, a sheepish-looking Lucy was helping to wake Anil and Amanda. Fletcher was already eating a food sachet while sitting on the bottom of the ladder.

"No-one's heard anything up there?"

"Not a peep, Commander," Fletcher announced.

"Let's have breakfast before we do anything else."

"Already ahead of you there, Commander!" Fletcher laughed.

Once they had all finished eating, Fletcher wiggled the end of the ladder out of the hatch wheel and held it read for the next stage. Chris told everyone to keep silent, then he listened for any trace of sound from outside the module. Ten seconds of total silence confirmed that there was no movement of any kind. That did not solve the problem of there being no way to tell the difference between the source of the noises having left or just stopped moving. It could just be asleep for all he could tell. There was only one way to find out for sure, so he tightened his zip then pulled on his H.E.P.O. gloves.

Unsealing the hatch only took moments, allowing a cascade of icy air to pour in around it. Chris took a deep breath, realising for the first time that the air inside the module was stale, then pushed the hatch tentatively upwards. Pinkish-tinged daylight streamed in through the expanding crescent gap. He braced to yank the hatch back down if anything moved above, but nothing did.

Fletcher slid the ladder into position, poking up through the open hatch, then Chris padded quietly up it, inadvertently holding his breath. He paused as soon as his head was high enough to see over the rim of the hatchway. Turning rapidly, he scanned the area all around, but the only thing attacking him was the icy morning air stinging his face.

Still moving quietly, he climbed the rest of the ladder and stepped off onto the outer hull of the module. There was no trace that anything had been there at all; no marks, no damage, and the rope dangling down to the side ladder was still in place. It would have been easy to dismiss the entire event as a hallucination.

He signalled to the others to wait below, then he stooped down and picked up the rope. Gripping it tightly, he leaned out towards the downward ladder to get a better look at the terrain below. As far as he could see, the buggies were still parked in a row where they had left them and even the parachute shelter was untouched.

He stepped back up to the top of the module and, as a precaution, pulled up the rest of the rope before signalling to the others to climb out too. Fletcher and Lucy joined him first.

"There's no easy way to tell if anything is waiting for us down on the ground," he explained. "It could be sitting under the curve where we can't see it. I think the best way to do this is if I climb down and check out the area around the module. Meanwhile, you pull up this rope so that nothing can get up here."