Re: Chapter 3: The Thing in the Ice
Yermak Maru and Archaeologists' Camp
Location: Rogue planet, between the Outer and Perseus Arms of Mutter's Spiral, the Milky Way Galaxy
Date: 26th June 4031 CE
The Yermak had made a smooth jump through hyperspace, soon arriving in the lonely dwarf star system. Finding the rogue planet in an erratic, elliptic orbit, they made their approach to the lost, ice-encased world, finding an unremarkable, rough blue-grey sphere. They made a few rapid orbits so the archaeologists could conduct ground scans, finding a dense mass of metal Ortega excitedly presumed to be a city, buried under the ice. He gave orders to set down on top of it.
They'd glided into the atmosphere, entering blizzard-like conditions. Fortunately, Borys was a skilled pilot and negotiated their descent with only a little cursing. The ship touched down, the landing gear crunching and compressing the snow and ice beneath. Already, the heat of the ship's engines and atmospheric friction melted the ice around, leaving thick slush.
The crew and archaeologists started unpacking and preparing their gear. Archaeologists like Vax and Hali weren't afraid to lend a hand and work hard, though Ortega spent rather more time supervising. Working together, they rolled out of the cargo bay doors four self-erecting geodesic domes. These bounced about, popped open, and settled neatly on the ground, forming four tents from within which they could work outside out of direct exposure to the elements. Heaters would be installed to keep them warm enough inside.
And those elements were intense. A chill wind blew constantly on this planet, a product of one side being warmed by the sun while the other remained in the cold of deep space, causing a temperature differential that drove comparatively warm air around to the colder side, and there was no moon's gravity to provide drag. The temperature was well below zero, survivable with protective gear, but still colder than anyone but Stirix had experienced before. The ground was slush, snow, or ice, but the Martian warned not to expect ordinary water ice: this was frozen air as well: nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Even what seemed to be liquid water could actually be liquid nitrogen. It was all cold enough to burn.
'Icehot.' Sky Light summed up sagely.
Once they were all set up and apprised of the dangers, work began on the archaeology itself. Vax Kent drove around in the all-terrain buggy, performing ground scans that produced some fuzzy maps and shapes only the archaeologists seemed to know how to read. Ortega confirmed his city hypothesis and they selected up likely spots to start their excavations, which necessitated a small relocation of the Yermak and the camp.
Now, the crew had to reorient the engines so they faced at downwards angle and blasted the snow and ice into oblivion, acting as a thermal drill to create their initial borehole. Although the engines could rotate normally as a part of take-off, they weren't designed to fire continuously at that angle, and so required numerous mechanical readjustments to lock them in place and prevent explosions. This didn't seem a big problem, though some might note they wouldn't be leaving in a hurry.
There was also the matter of connecting the plasma torches, via their long flexible insulated tubes, to the engines as well. Its heat output would also power these.
Other labour-intensive tasks included carrying out archaeological equipment, setting up the camp, and mopping away slush.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:29, Sun 26 July 2015.