Chapter Twelve

"Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and we all thought Terra Two was beautiful. Not as we see it now, with lush fields of soy beans and corn and orchards weighed down with fruit, but as we first laid eyes on her, dusty, sparse and vulnerable, an empty field open to all possibilities, a place for dreams to come true."

"Maybe we were all crazy, too daring  for believing that we could breathe life into a mineral world just through the power of our resolve but once there we didn't have the luxury of fear because it would have been useless and defeating. How does one fear the world one lives in, the sun(s) that sustain it, the sky overhead? We loved Terra Two and she loved us back, furthering a new frontier for the human race with her unmatched plenty."

 

The shuttle touched the ground gently and everything became very quiet. A sense of permanence crept in, a feeling that this was no longer a daring adventure but their reality from this day forward. Even though they haven't yet stepped foot on the soft brick colored dust they could feel it under their soles, after all they had spent years puttering in Terra Two's dirt back home, half a galaxy away.

The words 'back home' were going to linger in their vocabulary for months or years to come until each and every one of them realized that 'back' was not home, Terra Two was home, their real home. They had all lived and breathed the vision of her despite disapproval, concern and ridicule and became so attached to the possibility of this brand new mysterious world beckoning to them from afar, a world they all knew they could reach but didn't really expect to, that living on earth was but a shadow, a preparation for fulfilling this dream.

Finally the dream turned into reality, here they were, on their long awaited promised land, and it was barren! As beautiful as the chocolate raspberry jewel looked from above, picture if you please a completely deserted expanse of ruddy dirt dotted by brick colored boulders in an atmosphere of uneven density that made light and sight lines bow and buckle in weird ways.

The group paused for a second before deciding to step foot on their dream world. It looked so eerie they were a bit afraid that once they took the leap of faith out of the shuttle airlock their collective hallucination would disappear, they would fall into a gaseous mass and keep falling through it until they reached the other side.

It was warm on Terra Two, a constant 82 degrees that didn't drop much at night, and the balmy thin air made them lightheaded. Breezes moved oxygen dense pockets around and breathing felt almost like having to share an oxygen tube under water at times, courtesy of the problem with the methane stratification that the terraforming team was so familiar with.

Terra Two's dirt was solid enough though, just as silty and rusty as they remembered, squishing softly under their shoes without one particle of dust sticking to them. As they stood in the middle of this desolate land, a few feet away from their small shuttle, they looked like the only fish in an endless ocean.

Seth maintained her usual composure as if being stranded light years away from Earth without food, water, shelter or emergency assistance was normal. She gathered the sisters around her while the engineering teams designated scouts to survey the terrain.

"Sister Joseph, after it's being decided where we set the base camp please get Jesse and Mary-Francis and start assembling the tuna cans. Sister deAngelis, find the food rations, I'm sure they're buried under Sarah's earthly possessions. Sister Roberta, please use your magic and get the communication devices and the power generators running as soon as you can. Sarah, are your plants still alive?"

Sarah didn't respond, so Seth continued.

"I assume that means yes, start bringing the trays outside, it would be nice to get everything started before sunset, whenever that may be", she said tentatively, looking up at the two suns that danced their completely random pathways across the sky.

"The air is too thin", gasped sister Joseph, uncomfortably.

"It's the only air we have, the sooner you get used to it, the better".

"I don't know what I was thinking coming here. You're never to old to be a fool", sister Joseph mumbled, frowning at the methane containers that moved gracefully over head. For any other person that image would have been a poet's dream, but the sister was not particularly impressed by poetry or fond of the great outdoors. Roughing it brought back memories of homelessness and starvation for her, so she took as little time as possible to do her work and ran back into the relative comfort of the shuttle to snuggle under her blanket.

Seth turned to Sarah, to the dismay of the latter. Sarah had learned that whenever Seth was tense she would act out by demanding unholy amounts of detail from the person closest to her, and at this point Sarah was that person.

"Where are the lima beans, I thought we started lima beans. Do we have them? I want to see them now. I think we should start with those, they are the most resilient. Sarah, where are the lima beans?" Sarah was holding two trays of lima beans right under Seth's nose.

"Right here." Seth stared intently at the tiny plants, healthy and green in their peat pods.

"Set them down in a place with full sun exposure, I want to make sure they get the best growing conditions". Sarah feared for Seth's sanity because there was no object taller than fifteen inches that could possibly cast a shadow on Terra Two except for themselves. She almost expected Seth to ask her to move so she doesn't block the sun.

"Tomorrow we start brewing slime to mix in the soil. Do you have the bacterial cultures? We can't brew without yeast". Sarah had the bacterial cultures.

"Bring the bedding borders", said Seth.

"Where are the power tools?" asked Seth.

"Do we have a light source?" asked Seth.

"Are we done?" asked Seth.

Sarah nodded, dragging out the last of the supports for what was to become a large trellis. The object was about a foot by a foot by eight foot long and weighed her down like led.

"Have you seen my laser meter?" asked Seth. Sarah shrugged, dragging the very heavy pole and wondering if it could possibly occur to her mentor to lift the other end.

The suns set abruptly as they were almost done.

"Great work, sisters, a lot more to do tomorrow". A choir of groans, moans and mumbles accompanied the comment. Sarah couldn't feel her feet and was painfully aware of every muscle fiber in her body. Her pounding headache intensified at the thought of the herculean work to be continued tomorrow.

"Rest, you're going to need it", Seth said, and then retired to the shuttle. By the time the sisters followed she was already out like a light, in a slumber so deep that a foghorn couldn't wake her.