“You’re right. Maybe we should try the northern hemisphere. This planet, it says right here”-Calum pointed to the entry from Galactic which was displayed on another screen- “has little axial tilt, so it stays more or less the same temperate climate year-round. Hmm.”
As they got closer, into the atmosphere, they spotted larger lake areas than were apparent in the official entry orbital scans. “What could have happened?” Acorna said. “Floods?” “Sure looks like ‘em,” Calum had to agree. “But planetwide?
That just doesn’t figure into”-he tapped out some directions to the screen showing the Galactic – “the sort of weather they’re supposed to have.”
Then they overflew a vast wasteland with withered trees which had given up the struggle to survive without the rain they required. “If they don’t do something quickly, erosion will ruin this land forever,” Acoma said, for she had studied ecology along with many other subjects during her years aboard the mining ship. They continued on, over a low range of mountains, covered with sun-seared vegetation.
“Noah, you been at it again?” Calum said facetiously, to cover his shock at the devastation: one area of land drowning next to one that had been sun-baked to extinction.
“There’s a sizable settlement over there, to the right, Calum. And what looks like an airfield.”
As they closed the distance, Calum snorted. “A very wet airfield, but safe enough for us to land on. The settlement s not far away.
“Not far for aquatic animals,” he amended later, when they opened the outer hatch and surveyed the lake which was the field: a rather muddy lake since their landing had stirred up the drowned soil.
“Phew!” Calum said, turning his head away from the smell that now rose to their nostrils. Acorna s nose twitched, but her main concern was food, not water.
“What’s happened?” she asked. “Think the soaking’s reached the sewage-disposal units?”
He pinched his nostrils. “I’ll just get me a set of plugs.” He paused as he passed Acorna: there were no plugs for her wider nostrils. But then she wasn’t as particular about smells, bad or good, as he was. She seemed to like them all-the more intense, the better.
“There’s no one around, either,” Acorna said, shielding her eyes to peer around and adjusting to the odor. “I don’t understand this.”
Her digestive juices gurgled in complaint. She hadn’t seen a need to ration what remained edible on board and had really been looking forward to a decent graze on Rushima. As far as her far-seeing eyes could perceive, there wasn’t that much to tempt her. But she needed to eat something.
“Trees, over there, Acorna,” Calum said, pointing beyond and behind the ship toward a distant hillock. “Look! You go see if there’s anything edible there. I’ll”-he looked down at the water surrounding them-“wade over to the buildings and see what I can see. Maybe even ground transport … delete that:
what we’d require is aquatic transport.” He looked at the landing ramp. “Doesn’t look all that deep.” The ramp’s edge was only centimeters into the flood.
Blithely he stepped off, into water up to his ankles. The next step had him in water up to his knees. And he grinned sheepishly back at Acorna.
“Must’ve been a rut or something,” he said.
“Well, I can at least help us see where we’re going,” she said, and, kneeling on the ramp, bent over so that her horn touched the water. A few swirling motions and the silty, smelly floodplain cleared magically. She dropped her nose into the clear water and drank. “Hmm, rather nice without the effluvium. There were fertilizers dissolved in the water, too.”
“Really? They must be in bad shape here. One-half the planet burned to a crisp and the rest of the real estate underwater. Something’s peculiar. That’s unnatural.”
Acorna stepped off the ramp. “It feels cool around my hooves.” She grinned with childlike pleasure. She rarely used footwear on the ship. “I shan’t be long. Now that I can see -where I’m going, it’s all about fetlock height across to the hill.”
With that, she started off, splashing through the water at a dead run, occasionally leaping a few strides, her delighted laughter trickling back to him. Now that he could see through the water, Calum stepped over the minor ruts that had nearly sunk him before Acorna purified things. The grooves in the dirt had probably been made by vehicle wheels on the soft ground of the landing area. Odd that they wouldn’t have paved this area over with something solid. Still, this was a new colony, and most likely it didn’t have time or money for refinements.