Sol 91
346 kTi
Made good progress back to base today. I actually stopped a good ways before I needed to, mostly because I happened upon a pretty good vista point. I left the living quarters in place by the warp gate, which I suppose is now Eta Base, so that if I go back into the desert this direction I'll have something to operate from. After that I headed out southwest a bit, then heading directly west. It turns out my instinct was right, and this way I've got a clear shot right towards Beta Base since I don't feel like navigating the Aluminum Hills again.
The sand firmed up after a while which made walking easier, but before night came again I ended up at the top of a large hill that overlooks a basin that must be directly north of the Hills. I think I could navigate well enough from here, so tomorrow I'll make a beeline for the plains that I left Beta Base on. But I didn't go any further, even though I could probably have gotten down the slope before it got dark.
I got caught up with the view. This is the first time that I've really had the chance to just stop and look at the place. The sky is blue, and I'm coming up on clouds becoming a permanent feature of the planet. They're too thin and wispy to really trigger rain, which if memory serves is the next milestone I need to be looking for. But there's plenty of high-level clouds up in the sky right now, which when combined with the blue sky makes it feel...almost like home.
Y'know, I thought that them setting different milestones at things like "Blue Sky", "Clouds", and "Rain" was a bit trivial, but I suppose it's probably more of a psychological thing than anything else. Something that I remember from my engineering classes is that terraforming has a lot of important psychological aspects, among the most important of which is making a planet increasingly familiar. There's obviously some more exotic planets like Rhayth or Ankhra that have different skies (purple and green respectively, if you were wondering) but those are basically tourist trap worlds that people visit to see something unusual. By and large 95% of humanity lives on planets with blue skies that have white clouds.
And that's just something ingrained into our psyches. It's a little hard to keep in mind that our species has only been in space for about 1100 years compared to the roughly 200,000 that it's existed overall, and all of that preceding time was spent on a planet with a blue sky. Hell, even Mars wasn't really that "red" when humans colonized it, it was closer to a sort of greyish-butternut color before it was terraformed.
There really isn't enough appreciation for the psychology that goes into space travel. Granted, spaceships and stations are a lot roomier these days than they were at the start of our travel, but all the same humans are still not good at being cooped up in little metal boxes. We need to wander, and I'll admit that it kills me to not be able to just pull off my suit and walk around outside. I know what this planet smells like, even with the dust repellent properties of my suit some still gets brought in every time I go through the airlock so I know what the dirt smells like. If you're curious, it smells like someone farted in an abattoir, with overtones of chalk. Probably to do with the composition of the atmosphere, but once I get a chance to start actively tinkering with the composition of gasses I'll probably get it to smell nicer.
Man, I've really been going off on these tangents a lot lately, haven't I? It's been almost 100 days since I last spoke to another person, so I suppose I've just had a lot of thoughts building up in my head. Suppose that's what this whole log system is for, so I might as well ramble.
Sol 92
355 kTi
Alright, by Sentinel's metrics I've officially crossed the threshold for Clouds. I don't remember what the next one is, I'll have to check when I get back, but I think it's somewhere around 800 kTi or something like that. Things are really getting going now.
I spent almost a full hour this morning just staring out at the view. The dust had almost entirely cleared up from the last sandstorm, and I could see for miles and miles. If not for all the moons, it would almost look like Earth, maybe somewhere in the deserts of Jordan or something like that. I really need to appreciate what I'm doing a lot more. Anyways, after that it was time to get going. It was easy enough to get moving. Actually, really easy. It might have been a bit reckless, but the A-frame is loaded down with enough salvage that I let it go first and drag me along, it was like letting a dog pull you down the street.
It was...fun? Is that the word? I almost forgot what fun was like, I've been so focused on all of this. God, I'm so happy I got these data files. Hopefully there's something worthwhile to watch. Anyways I'm down in the basin at the foot of the hill now. The soil here is clay, so it was probably a lake at one point and it probably will be one again once I get to a point where stable bodies of liquid water can exist. If I had some proper analysis equipment, I would probably dig for fossils.
Time to rest. I'm making great time.
Sol 93
364 kTi
Still making excellent time, I could probably make it back to Beta Base by Sol 96 if I keep this pace. So I decided to just sit in place for a while and just try to rest, I've been walking almost constantly. I still have plenty of rations, but to make matters better I found another crate just laying out in the dirt with an extra day's worth of rations, so I could indulge in a full 2500 calories for dinner tonight and still have enough left over to last me another 7 days.
Y'know, I should probably work out some sort of calendar to use. A Sol is 25 hours and 17 minutes, which I could probably divide down into 20 blocks of around an hour and 15 minutes each, 10 for day and 10 for night...or something like that. Y'know, back at Beta Base the computer I have to monitor the output of the equipment has a calculator on it, so when I get my hands on that I'll work out a proper calendar for Steve. The Stevonian Calendar will surely be adopted readily by whoever colonizes this godforsaken rock.
Sol 94
373 kTi
The problem with an atmosphere this thin with a suit that doesn't really give you an indication of what the outside world sounds like is that if a meteor happens to be falling behind you, you don't really notice until it hits the ground. Now don't panic, I wasn't in the direct path of it, but it's extremely unpleasant when the ground decides to do the Macarena and you're suddenly hit with a concussive blast that knocks you onto your face.
Much as the last time, I managed to land on a rock and crack the faceplate, but thankfully it was another pressure crack and I have resin on hand. I'd wanted to try and conserve it, but now I'm here for the next day or so with another camp set up while the resin sets and fixes up my helmet. A few other meteorites hit too. Tomorrow I'll check to see if there's any iridium I can get out of them, though how much I could take with me I don't know. The A-frame is pretty loaded up as it is, and hauling too heavy of a load will expend too many calories.
Sol 95
382 kTi
I'm about a day out from Beta Base. The air's still pretty clear, I can see Beta Base over the horizon. I really need something more engaging to do than just walking, walking, walking, so I've tried to make little stories in my head. The trouble is that I'm not the most creative person, so stories like that aren't exactly my forte. I did remember a story about myself, though, a story about a story. Back when I was 7, there was a little contest at my school to write a poem and submit it. A bunch of kids from a bunch of schools in my town submitted their poems, and I did too. It actually got first place, and I remember the ceremony pretty well.
Now, the thing is that I actually stole it. My great-aunt was a teacher, and she'd help me with my homework after school. She had all these posters in her classroom with stuff about grammar and syntax and stuff, and one of them had this little four-line poem on it:
There is nothing I love better
Than the sound of gentle rain.
Pitter pitter patter
Against my window pane.
That was the poem I'd submitted. Evidently no one bothered to poke around and see if I'd actually come up with it. So apparently my criminal career began long before I was condemned to terraforming Steve. I suppose I should have seen it coming, really. A poor at-risk youth, locked onto the path of a Planet Crafter from a young age.