Going Bold

As the duo began maneuvering around the large trunks of fungus Lin focused on scouting with the mini-drones. She sent one over the canopy to gain an overhead perspective and look for gaps in the canopy of the mushroom forest she fanned several more out in front of Andrea to help keep an eye out for potential hazards. The remaining 6 mini-drones continued to map the edges of the cavern and accumulate more detailed scans of the area around the entrance. As she entered the forest of mushrooms Andrea noticed that the ground appeared to be a loamy soil, soft and deep, it made walking a bit more of a chore but would make identifying and/or tracking any large fauna far easier, assuming they needed to touch the ground. The blanket of rich earth also served to deaden much of the sounds that were filling the forest, the buzzing, clicking, and singing of insects, or creatures much like them, made the air alive with sound while also having an odd muted quality. Glowing pulsating lines of blue and green bioluminescence ran through the stalks of various mushrooms and the occasional glowing insect flying through the canopy created a shifting kaleidoscope of shadows and dim light that would have been quickly disorienting where it not for Andrea and Lin’s large diversity of artificial senses.

The deadened sounds as well as the shifting blue and green light lent a further surreal tinge to an already literally alien environment. Soon however the familiar sound of running water became audible as Andrea and Lin moved deeper into the mycelial landscape. Following the sound of water would have been difficult with the acoustics of the mushroom forest, but with Lin’s help using the mini-drones triangulating the direction of the running water was made trivial. Once Lin confirmed a long gap in the canopy in the same direction with the drone flying overhead Andrea adjusted her course towards it. Andrea reasoned that one frequently found the most interesting animals and features near water of some kind and it was a good arbitrary goal to set for her limited exploration time regardless.

As the leading mini-drones swept ahead, both Andrea and Lin began to notice various tracks from fauna, some familiar from the surface and others unknown. None of the traces seemed to indicate any creature larger than about 30 centimeters in length, though first impressions of that sort could be deceptive. In any event while the tracks were plentiful, neither Andrea nor Lin spotted any of the creatures themselves. This lack grew more odd the longer it persisted, as some of the recognizable tracks were of creatures that had proven to not be at all shy about being near humans or drones. The traces weren’t that old, but they weren’t fresh either, not knowing a great deal about the climate of the cavern meant it was hard to pinpoint how long the fauna had been absent from the area but Lin guessed no more than a week. “Wonder what’s scared everybody away?” Andrea wondered as they entered the clearing and the source of the water sounds into sight.

Breaking through the edge of the mushroom trunks Andrea found herself at the edge of a clearing surrounding a sharp cut in the soil through which rushed a vigorous torrent of water that had carved a channel into the rock below. Looking around Andrea mused to Lin “I wonder why there’s a clearing here? I can’t see an immediate reason for the mushrooms to not grow right up to the water. Let’s send a mini-drone in closer and test to make sure there isn’t something hazardous in the water.” As she spoke Andrea took control over one of the flanking mini-drones nearest the rapids and tasked it with scanning for radiological hazards while grabbing samples to test for chemical properties and microorganisms.

Lin joined Andrea’s brainstorm while sending two mini-drones up and down stream. “There are so many possible reasons that we might have to live with not knowing, though so far the water appears to show nothing unusual that would explain the fungus avoiding it, the microbial life appears to roughly match samples from the fungi in the area and there doesn’t seem to be any substantial difference between the water in the stream and in the fungi.” After a moment considering Lin’s observations Andrea raised a possibility, “It might be a mechanical explanation, something sweeping through in a narrow swath around the stream and scraping away the fungi but leaving most of the soil.”

“That rules out flooding then” Lin remarked “not only is the topography wrong to cause such a narrow band of flooding but the fact that most of the soil is still here, despite lacking fungal growths to bind it in place, wouldn’t make sense if a flood surge swept through. The whole clearing should be scoured closer to the rock and the soil subsequently deposited in banks downstream at the edges of the clearing.”

The growing mysteriousness of the situation excited Andrea “This is great, this is exactly the kind of weird stuff I love finding!” Andrea began to move upstream herself looking at the ground to see if perhaps the tracks of some creature or creatures might explain the cleared region around the water. While there were various tracks and traces of unknown fauna none of them stood out as different from what they’d noted marking the rich soil under the fungal trees.

“The water appears to be draining into a small fully submerged opening in the cave floor about 500 meters down stream” Lin suddenly mentioned “I’m bringing that mini-drone back to us, since it doesn’t look like the passage is navigable by the standard scouting drones.”

“A dead end for us then, huh?” Andrea sighed “I left the aquatic drone back at camp and we’ve got 20 minutes left here anyway, lets pick up the pace a bit and see if we can spot something interesting a bit farther upstream, we might get lucky again.” Breaking into a light jog Andrea began rapidly winding her way through the fungal forest tracing the path of the water up a gradually steepening incline that appeared to be leading towards the top of a shallow hill, based on what Lin could determine with the drone peering down from overhead.

“The water is neither unusually warm nor cold and it doesn’t contain the sort of usual chemical traces you might expect in a spring, I wonder how the water is gathering at the top of a little hill like this?” Andrea wondered.

Her query was soon answered, though it only led to much more bizarre questions. The mini-drone scouting ahead began to orbit something at the top of the hill gathering data from multiple angles. Lin quietly cautioned Andrea “Slow down a bit, there’s something up ahead that we’ll need to be cautious about. I know you don’t like spoiling the surprise of first seeing new things with your own eyes, but I think we have evidence of deliberate construction at the source of the stream up ahead.”

Andrea immediately slowed from a jog to a cautious prowl, stepping up her scanning of the surroundings and redeploying the scouting drones to begin a more detailed sweep of the immediate area around the hill. The Surveyor Corps’ standard training for potential contact with an unknown intelligence included an emphasis on caution and gaining as much intel as possible covertly before attempting peaceful contact. The Corps recognized that while peaceful contact was ideal, the most dangerous beings in the universe are intelligent. Therefore even a hint of construction in an alien environment was cause for excess caution.

Andrea’s training led to her cautious approach but her personal feelings quickly became obvious as she gushed silently to Lin. “Wow!, I can’t wait to see this, we’re totally going to be late for that com call, and I don’t care, I have to explore this myself. It could be unknown humans or even aliens, I hope it’s aliens. I don’t care so much about getting in the history books for the first known contact with intelligent aliens, they would just be so interesting!”

Andrea was almost to the top of the hill, she hunkered down by the trunk of a fungal tree a short ways from the edge of the clear area around the stream. Together Andrea and Lin began an expedited but still thorough sweep of the area within 100 meters of the hill looking for anything else of particular note, or possible danger. After 20 minutes of a tense coordinated examination of the area, Andrea stood up and carefully advanced the last stretch along the flowing water until a frankly surreal sight stopped her in her tracks once again.