It was hot and tiring business, mining for Eurictinite on this arid landscape. Climbing down into the dark craters, some of them so deep the sun never reached the bottom. In those, even with the specially enhanced traction on the boots, it was hard to keep your balance, sliding around on thick slabs of ice. It didn’t help that the suits you wore were so big and bulky that it was hard to perform even the simplest of tasks. But Eurictinite had to be mined; this new mineral was used in almost every type of technology and machine on the planet!
Will didn’t like the job at all. He was young though and desperate for money, so he decided he would work this until he obtained enough money to get him a formal education. He had dreams of becoming a major scientist or space explorer and become famous for his discoveries. Right now though, he was stuck doing this astonishingly boring work.
Sweat weld up on Will’s brow, trickling down his already sweaty face. Despite the cooling system’s enormous efforts the heat still managed to seep through the suit. It was especially bad under the hood because the glass visor did little to vent the sun’s rays. Living on the closest planet to the sun did have its disadvantages.
Will hefted the heavy mining tool out of the Magnetic-Hover Craft. The tool was long and cylindrical. Many levers and buttons for the operation of the machine spotted the sides. On the bottom of the object were three holes in which the material being operated on was loosened and vacuumed out. Will struggled for a few seconds before getting it into a comfortable position and heading down the steep incline of the crater. Once at the bottom he quickly set up and was soon joined by his partner. They didn’t much talk during this, there was a voice COM connection between the suits, but the noise made it much to loud to hear, so the work was usually done in silence.
The machine sputtered to a loud life as Will touched a few buttons and angled it towards where the detector device was instructing. Within a few moments a large chunk of the rocky terrain was removed and underneath a blue, slushy liquid was revealed. This was Eurictinite. A computer inside the mining device immediately switched to retrieval mode and the substance disappeared into a holding tank within the miner. Only an hour and a half left to go, then they could head back to civilization.
An hour and a half later Will scrambled, well more crawled, out of the crater. He was dirty, sweaty, hot, extremely tired and definitely wanted to go home. Inside the cockpit of the Magnetic-Hover Craft (MHC) the temperature was kept at a much more reasonable heat and there was air to breath, so Will and his partner could finally strip out of their clumsy suits.
"Your turn to drive." Will’s partner Jeremy said, slumping down into a deep, cushion chair.
"But… Ya I guess it is." Will replied, somewhat reluctantly positioning himself in front of the wide window that stretched across the front of the ship. You didn’t actually have to drive the MHC, but you did have to keep an eye out for any malfunction. Crashes at high speeds could easily end up in major injury or even death.
"Thanks." Jeremy mumbled through closed eyes.
The vehicle quickly picked up speed. Hills and dunes of gray rock whizzed by outside. Occasionally the ship would give a little jerk if it ran over any kind of large object, but other than that the ride was smooth. In less than half an hour they were already pulling up to the Community. The Community was basically a gigantic building. Not that tall, but stretching for around 3 miles in each direction. Aside from a few small outposts around the main structure this was where the entire population of Mercury lived. The gray outside fit in very nicely with the surrounding terrain, but the inside was a lush, controlled environment.
As Will walked along one of the many corridors towards his room he sensed some sort of disturbance in the people he passed, an unspoken urgency, but he was much too tired to investigate. The next morning the news was quick to find him.
Will woke up stiff and sore from the previous days work. Luckily this was his day off, so he could spend it relaxing. He decided to go for a little walk to loosened up some of his tightened muscles.
When he got to it he glanced up at the notice screen and continued on. Stopping abruptly though as the information hit his brain. He backed up and read the brilliant red message again.
Calling all strong, young, intelligent men. A mission to Earth will be launched Friday. Volunteers needed. Report to the Science and Tech labs if interested, first come first serve.
It was short, but multiple emotions flashed through Will as he read it. Confusion, amazement, doubt, wonder and finally excitement. This was great. What better way to start a career than volunteering for this. He would have to hurry. Not many people would actually want to go, it was too dangerous, no one knew who was on Earth and what they were capable of, but volunteers would probably still be plenty and there had to only be a few spaces left. He broke into a jog running towards the labs. People glanced wonderingly at him, but he didn’t care.
Not many people knew much about Earth, just that long ago Earthiens had colonized the surrounding planets from which this civilization had come from. But Mercury had lost communication with the rest of the units a few years after colonization. For all they knew the other planets could all be extinct.
Will knew they probably weren’t going to really land on Earth. They had been talking about sending a party to a space station located just above Earth’s atmosphere and apparently they’d been able to finish and plan the project.
He could tell at once that he had reached the Labs when air turned to a strange chemical, acidic smell, very hard to describe. Inside there was a large domed room. Scientist in long white uniforms bustled about conduction all their scientific things. Will went up to one of them. "Excuse me, but could you tell me where I should go if I want to volunteer for the mission to Earth?" He asked.
"Ya, he’s over there behind that door," the scientist said in a gruff voice pointing to an ordinary door. Will walked over to it and knocked.
"Come in," a voice replied from inside. Will walked in.
The meeting went surprisingly well. It turned out that he had gotten the last spot. The interviewer had seemed to take a liking to him and been pretty easy with the questions. After that Will just had to sign his name and he was ready. The few days leading up to Friday he would skip work (what a relief) and complete a training course. Machines and experienced crew did most of the technical work, but there were a few things he had to know for space travel and missions.
All in all, Will was very excited. Even though they weren’t going there they would still get a pretty good view of Earth. What would it look like? People said trees 100’s of feet high cover parts of the surface and that huge ponds stretching 1000’s of miles also covered areas of Earth. He wasn’t sure he believed some of these tales though; they were just too strange to be true.
The next four days were actually fun. At least a lot better than it would have been had it just been a normal week. The trainings were hard and rigorous learning to move in zero gravity and work with the small landing crafts, but most of the new crew was nice and he got along with them very well.
Finally it was Friday, the day really had come! Will got up very early and packed the few belongings he was going to take before heading down to the launch site. At the site there were already quite a few people up and about working on last minute preparations. He noticed a table on the floor below him, two of the eight men were eating their breakfast there. Will climbed down from the balcony to join them. This meal was specially prepared so as to give the least amount of queasiness during take off.
An hour later everyone was tightly buckled into their seats aboard the rocket, nervously waiting blast off. 1 minutes left and then… "Three, Two, One." The ship leapt up from the planet’s surface with a thunderous power and a blast of flame. Within seconds it had dwindled to just another speck of light in the still dark sky.
In the rocket everyone was concentrating on just adjusting to the new change of speed, but it didn’t take long to adjust once the ship reached space, and after that, the trip would go a lot smoother. The ship gradually picked up speed; the whole trip was estimated to only take a few days in the frictionlessness of space.
Once he was allowed, Will quickly unbuckled himself and glided over to one of the windows. Outside it was an eerie kind of beauty. He could barely see Mercury around the ship. It was now a glowing red globe. The bright star behind it glared almost menacingly at him and he had to look away from the radiance. The rest of the Universe he could see was a dark black speckled by millions of tiny pin pricks of light. He looked away; there was work to be done.
Inside the gravity was kept relatively low. Once you got used to it, it made moving around quite a bit easier and more efficient. The first day Will got put to work moving and preparing supplies into the landing crafts, which would be used to get to the space station. They expected to reach it sometime the next day.
That night they ate a small packaged meal and the 1st officer was kind enough to give a tour around the main sections of the ship. It was incredible how many functions had to be run to fly the vessel and how many different instruments there were for measuring and calculating things.
The next day at 3:00 PM the ship started to slow down and at 4:00 PM Earth became visible. All the men crowded together at the windows, staring out at the new planet. It was everything people told and more. Will could easily pick out all the distinct color. Greens, large expanses of blue and white wispy things surrounding the planet. Gasps of awe and wonder spread through the men, but they were pulled away just as fast by a short order of "Get back to work!" from one of the officers.
The large metal structure hung, suspended in space. Another smaller object shot out of the gloom, attaching itself to the larger. Inside the landing craft, 10 men prepared to board the station. Five men were still on the ship. One of the men picked up a radio. Sending back to the ship that they had all made it safely and they were going aboard. The doors opened. A blast of frigid air entered the craft. All the men were wearing suits, but they still shivered and it wasn’t all because of the cold.
Crossing out into the vacuum of space was very dangerous. Any sort of slip and you might be lost forever if the safety line broke. The troop made it across fairly well, a few near losses, but no fatalities.
Inside, the environment was a little more forgiving. There was even enough air to take off their helmets. Will looked around. It wasn’t quite as he had imagined it, just a bunch of different corridors with doors branching off of them, at least that’s what he could see. One thing that seemed weird though was that all the lights were burnt out. Shouldn’t they have been maintained?
"This is strange." One of the men said, "It appears to be uninhabited." And when Will thought about it, it did. Even the computers screens were dark and dead. They continued on, but a little more alert. Their footsteps echoing in the silent, deserted hallways.
Soon they reached what looked like the main cabin. There were many different computers and controls. The technician pulled an object out of his pack. In a few moments he had it hooked up and suddenly all the screens lit up, creating a light glow around the room. "We’re hooked up to the central control system." The officer radioed the main ship again.
"Good, see if you can get into the communication system then radio down to Earth," a voice replied out of the gentle static. The man turned to the controls, punched a few buttons and spoke into a speaker, "Earth, this is Space Station Alpha, we have an urgent message, come in." Nothing answered. The man spoke again and then twice more, still nothing happened.
From behind him, Will heard a shout, everyone turned and then ran towards the noise. Inside the next room was the man who had shouted, he must have gotten bored and wandered off. But what was in the room was the most disturbing. Piled up and around the chairs were at least ten bodies and they were definitely dead, apparently they had not been dead for long because they were surprisingly well preserved. The officer took one look around and ordered everyone to get out of the room; they had no idea what had killed these men.
Back in the control room they urgently radioed back to the ship and asked for a life scan of the planet. It would only take a few moments.
In less than a minute they got a reply. "We’ve swept the whole planet. Asides from the plants there’s no source of life forms. In short, the planet is extinct."