Green Grow The Rashes And Other Stories

by William Meikle

  ~-o0O0o-~

  It started well enough, despite my apprehension at heading out. The flyer they gave me hadn’t been upside for thirty years; nobody had. Too cold, too dark, no point. Until now. I had to wait for two days while the bots fitted an ore probe and a drill and that just gave me more time to fret. I was actually happy when I strapped in and took the flyer into the tube.

  The five-minute ascent to Hell soon put paid to that.

  I felt cold before we got halfway up. Of course I knew about Hell. No light for three hundred years, thirty foot thick ice shelves and no life bigger than a patch of lichen. I knew that. I just didn’t realise what it meant in real terms.

  At least the flyer had a heater. I pushed it up to Full and it still wasn’t going to be enough. We punched through to the surface a minute later and I immediately forgot about the cold.

  They’d taught me about Hell. But they hadn’t mentioned the sky. A carpet of stars hung from horizon to horizon - a glittering jewel that had remained unseen for decades. I felt humbled in the face of such immensity. More than that, the open space filled me with such dread that I had to lower my eyes, unused as they are to looking at anything more than ten feet away.

  I switched on the ore probe and let it run. I had nothing to do for hours now except hang there in the sky and try to ignore the stars that now seemed to be falling ever closer, threatening to wrap themselves around me, engulf me and drag me off to the black beyond.

  I say this to give you some idea of my thought processes in those early hours. I know I am speaking of things you have been taught, things you have seen on the holovids for most of your lives. But nothing has prepared you for what is out there, what must be faced if we are to survive the time that is left to us. It is vast, it is empty, and it does not care.

  It just does not care.