prompt: Write a story in the form of diary entries, written by an explorer as they make their way through what they thought was an untouched location.
available at Reedsy
12 Garn
I arrived in orbit around the heavy world. I’m not the first to discover it, of course. Others have placed orbital observers (OOs) around it, but if anyone has sent landers, they haven’t shared what they found. That’s why we decided it’s better to send a person down there.
Because of all the OOs, it took a while to calculate a safe orbit from which I can descend to explore and return to at the end of each day. There’s no way I could survive down there for more than a few days, despite my high-gee training.
Tomorrow, I test out that training, and this new grav lifter. It’s got an impulser stronger than even most heavy freight lifters, with a body light enough to be a racer and strong enough to be a ramming vessel.
We know there’s life down there, but what it’s like, no one’s sure. The exobiologists think they know what life will look like down there. Low plants, broad, squat animals — all small and probably exoskeletal — if there are any, with the possibility of large animals in the oceans. Honestly, I think they’re just assuming life like home with but with twice the gravity.
One thing they probably have right is that the chance for intelligent life to evolve under such extreme conditions is near-enough to non-existent. It isn’t likely to happen for this world any time before the death of their star.
The planet itself is beautiful from orbit. The blue oceans and the play of clouds reminds me of home, but the cloud formations are different, more violent.
13 Garn
One complete rotation of the planet below is equivalent to about two-thirds of a day. I figured it would be a good measure of time while I’m there. I decided to stay for one rotation then return to orbit to sleep and recover. The idea was to cover a lot of ground and gather a great deal of data and samples, while maintaining my health.
I didn’t make it through half a rotation. Just how wrong the exobiologists were was apparent before I even touched down. The “short, ground-hugging plants” were there, of course, but there were also massive, tall plants spreading their light-gathering parts high in the sky.
I took some samples of the low plants, and a dead, fallen part from one of the tall plants. There was no way I could reach it to get to the live parts.
The animals…. I don’t know where to start. Yes, the small, exoskeletal animals were everywhere, and some of them fly! The flying ones bite, and some of the others do as well. I don’t know what sort of venoms they possess, but the suit hit me with a broad-spectrum antivenin the second I got the first bite. It still hurt like fire. How could something so small hurt so bad?
Those annoying little things weren’t the only animals, though. There were tall creatures with four limbs, and a head on a long neck, able to eat the live parts of the tall plants. Knowing how hard my hearts were working even in my exosuit to keep blood to my brain, I thought it must have a chain of hearts to push blood that far against this gravity.
There were animals flying, running, walking, slithering, you name it. All of them were far larger than what I was told to expect outside of the oceans.
The thing that made me quit early for the day was the largest animal I’ve ever seen. Nothing at home even comes close to its bulk. The long-necked animal was taller but looked fragile. Not this.
It had huge flaps on the sides of its head, a thick body, four stout legs, and a tentacle on its face it used to bring things to its mouth. On either side of the tentacle, large, curved horns extended, promising quick death.
I thought that with its size it would be slow and lumbering. When the largest one waved its head-flaps and charged for me I thought I was about to die. They are not slow, and I learned that fear is a good motivator to run even under double gravity.
14 Garn
I stayed on the ship, in orbit, and rested. The few samples I collected have been analyzed and recorded, and the samples themselves disposed. The collection containers have been sterilized and I’ve been through decontamination twice.
Tomorrow, I’ll be landing far away from the giant monster animals. I’ve picked a spot that seems to have more of the tall plants. They probably don’t squeeze themselves in there. Maybe there will be more of the tall animals. They were rather amazing.
The spot I’d initially chosen for tomorrow is being hit with a massive storm. The best guess the ship’s sensors and computer can come up with is winds strong enough to blow the ship about like a mote of dust. The wind force is more than three times higher than any ever recorded at home.
15 Garn
Writing this from the surface of the planet. When I make it back to the ship, I’ll have to head home. I’d hoped for more time, but I fell, and in the heavy gravity injured myself. My leg is broken, I’m sure of it. It’s not a compound fracture at least.
When I stop and rest, like now, the world around me is filled with hoots and howls and whistles and cries. The noise is everywhere and nowhere at once. It’s as if every creature has something it wants to tell every other creature.
I’ve managed to gather a few specimens. One of them was a large, segmented, exoskeletal animal with a pair of legs at each segment. It was kind of cute until it bit me and my suit responded with antivenin again. If I thought the bite of the other creature hurt, this was on a whole different level. It still burns all the way up my arm even though my suit says I’m safe from that.
It was while I was reeling from the pain of that bite that I tripped over the base anchor of one of the tall plants. I heard it as I landed with the lower part of my leg across another one of the base anchors of the plant. It was a clear snap, followed by my howl of pain.
The rest of the creatures fell silent then and stayed that way until I got myself calm and quiet. I had a momentary fear that something was creeping up on me and I was going to become some animal’s dinner until the noises resumed as they had been.
The sheer diversity of life in this extreme gravity well is bound to have an effect on what we think we know about biology. I’ve seen plants with brightly colored organs that small flying animals drink from with long protrusions from their face. There’s one above my head right now as I lay here trying to rest.
The flying animal has a soft covering of some sort, and its wings are vibrating so fast it can hover in place while it drinks. I wish I could get a sample from it.
16 Garn
Yesterday, I had almost made it to the ship when I saw them. They were similar to the other animals, but I knew right away they were intelligent. They wore what could only be described as clothing and carried tools. Not simple sticks, either.
They communicated to others that were nowhere to be seen with small, hand-held devices. One of them made noises at me. I guessed it was trying to talk. It kept its voice soft and pointed at my leg and held up a container it carried.
I was too frightened by their predatory eyes and size to do much. They were bigger than me, bipedal, and social animals. If they wanted to disembowel me and eat me then and there, they’d have a better chance than even the giant creature I’d see the first day.
I froze in place while the creature set the container down next to me and examined my leg. It was gentle as it prodded along it with its bare fingers with no claws. When it touched near the break though, I couldn’t keep silent. It made a hissing noise and then went back to its soft voice.
It opened the container and I saw a myriad of tools I couldn’t begin to comprehend, but it pulled something out, measured it against my lower leg, then pulled out a roll of some sort of cloth. It continued with its soft voice. I couldn’t tell what it was trying to say, but it sounded like it was trying to be soothing.
The creature used the thing it had pulled out as a splint on my leg and wrapped it with the cloth. The cloth was elastic and stuck to itself. When it had finished the splint and closed up the container, it gestured as if to pick me up. The gravity had so worn me out by that point that I couldn’t fight back.
I expected to be carried back to the creature’s lair, but it carried me to my ship. It helped me into my seat and then the creatures began to chatter at each other. The tone was clear, and it seemed the one that had helped me and carried me to the ship disagreed with the other two.
I told the creature I needed to get back to orbit and go home, that the gravity was too much for me. I did my best to use gestures to make my meaning clear. The other two creatures left, and the one that had helped me sat on the floor of the ship and refused to move.
With no other choice, I ascended back into orbit. The relief from the steep gravity well was welcome and I passed out in the presence of the creature that I thought still might eat me. What would intelligent life on this planet be like? When everything else is lethal or harmful, right down to the gravity and the weather, they must be terrible monsters.
That’s what I thought yesterday, anyway. When I awoke, the creature was checking my leg. It had carried my samples on board and figured out how the sample containers fit into the analyzer and had fed them in.
I stripped out of my exosuit, and the creature removed the splint while I removed the legs of the suit. It then re-splinted my leg after checking it. It held up a small round of compressed powder and did some miming. I think it might be a medicine of some sort.
I took the compressed round and fed it into the analyzer. It was a potent analgesic that would bind to certain protein coupled receptors to cause hyperpolarization. This, in turn, would block pain signals on that path. It seems they have a similar nervous structure to our own. When the analyzer told me it was safe, I took it. There was no way I was going to anger the creature.
The pain relief was far beyond what I would’ve expected. Before I became too tired to stay awake any longer, the creature and I mimed back and forth for a while. Its name is Anee and I told it my name. I figured out their head movement behaviors for yes and no.
When I tried to tell Anee that I was going to return it to the planet it moved its head in the “no” gesture, sat on the floor, and crossed its arms. The ship’s sensors are telling me that if I don’t head home within the next day for medical treatment I will be in dire straits.
I’ve set the controls to take me home, and I’m trying to stay awake to see how the creature reacts. Perhaps I can learn
17 Garn
I passed out while writing yesterday’s journal. I woke when the analgesic wore off, and I realized the pain was far worse than I had thought. Anee seems to be worried about me and is showing me the pictures it took on its communication device.
It took several moving and still images of the OOs in orbit around the planet. It was chattering about a large one in particular when I saw it. The markings on the OOs were the same kind of markings as those on the communication device. Those weren’t other stars keeping their secrets from us after all. The creatures had managed to climb out of their hellish gravity well.
The creature also seemed enthralled by the moving image it took out the window in warp space. I see it all the time, so no big deal, but this creature had just gone faster and probably farther than any other of its species.
The creature has been trying to copy our language, and has managed to say a few words already, though its accent is exceedingly thick. It managed to say “food” when it was hungry and even seemed to enjoy the meal ration.
The automed numbed my leg, set it, and filled the area with pain killers and bone growth agents. Throughout the entire procedure, Anee held one of my hands in its own. They were warm and rough, though the touch was gentle.
Someone from the science division sent me a message that they planned to dissect Anee. I told them that if they tried, I’d kill them. I think, however, that they’d have a difficult time even containing Anee. This is the same creature that splinted my leg, then carried me in twice normal gravity to my ship.
I’m closing this out for now, as I, my ship, and Anee are in quarantine. Because of Anee, of course. I no longer feel threatened by it. It does a thing with its voice where the tones and rhythm make a pleasing sound, even though I don’t understand the words at all, and it has been spending most of the time looking after me as though I was a child or invalid…not that I mind.
Anee saw me recording my diary and made the noise Hooman while pointing at itself. I’m not sure if that is its full name, or maybe the name of its people or its species. It seemed important to Anee, so I’ve added it here, so I don’t forget.
