Chapter 14
As the women rested, Caroline spoke. "Sharon, you're new to this invulnerable superwoman life, aren't you?"
"Yeah, I am. Unlike you, I didn't become super all at once. I've just slowly gotten stronger over time. It's the same way with invulnerability, slowly becoming more so. What gave it away?"
"It's just the concerns you raise. If you're totally invulnerable like me, nothing can hurt you and you know it, so you're not worried about snakes or sinking in quicksand. You know you'll survive no matter what."
"That may be true," Amazon Girl said, "but even for someone like me who was born super, I can understand that she would be frightened at the thought of being trapped in quicksand."
"Granted," Caroline said. "I didn't mean to be harsh on you. By the way, what have you decided on the capsule?"
"Well," Sharon replied, "before we built the capsule, you were saying that we could just jump back to the ship. Do you still believe that?"
"Considering the effort it took to jump in the pool, it will be far more difficult than I thought. I will be able to do it, but I doubt that the rest of you could."
"Here's what I'm thinking then. When we get back to the landing site, I'll have you jump to the capsule with your sample containers. Once on the capsule, you can press the button to bring the reactor to full power. Since it is holding position at 98%, the increase should make it begin to pull away from the planet.
"In the meantime, the rest of us will be on the ground watching the cable. When we see the cable start to move, we'll begin climbing the cable one by one."
"Sounds like a plan to me," Caroline said. The others all agreed.
"Now there's something else to discuss," Amazon Girl said. "Does anyone have any ideas as to where to begin looking for whoever placed the plants and animals here?"
"I would think that there would be tracks in the ground around these oases," Sarah said. "But I can't see any."
"Good point," Amazon Girl agreed.
"Perhaps they were brought in by air?" Sharon suggested.
"No," Amazon Girl replied, "I don't think so. The snakes are way too fragile to withstand being dropped."
"What can we say about the time frame?" Sarah asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Was everything placed here at once, or were there several trips made? In other words, were the plants put here as seeds, or were they put here as fully grown plants?"
"What difference would that make?"
"If the plants were put here as seeds, then whoever put them here would have had to make another trip later, after the plants had matured, to put the centipedes and snakes here. If the plants had been put here fully grown, then the animals could have been put here at the same time."
"You know," Amazon Girl responded, "if the plants were put here fully grown, that would explain their roots. They were probably grown in some type of nursery with limited ground space."
"Hold on," Sharon cautioned. "There has to be an atmosphere for the animals to survive. So the animals must have been put here later than the plants, to give the plants time to produce oxygen for the animals to breathe."
"Well actually, the plants need carbon dioxide to grow," Amazon Girl said. "It's like the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg."
"According to the Bible, God created the animals, then gave them the command to multiply and replenish the Earth," Sarah said. "So the chicken came first, then the egg."
"True," Amazon Girl replied, "but this isn't God's doing here."
"I think we can agree that the atmosphere had to be present here before either the plants or the animals could be introduced," Sharon said. "And that once there was an atmosphere, that the plants and animals could have been placed, both fully mature, in one trip."
"Agreed."
"So now the question becomes, how do you create an atmosphere? Or did an atmosphere already exist here?"
"Well," Amazon Girl repled, "the only planets I know of that have a breathable atmosphere are those with life on them. Most other planets have no atmosphere at all; the few that do, usually have poisonous gases."
"Can you use a chemical process to convert these gases into something breathable?" Sharon asked.
"It depends on the specific gas," Amazon Girl replied. "I know some have methane, for example. You can get carbon dioxide and oxygen from it, but the problem is that once you start mixing methane and oxygen, you wind up with an explosive mixture. Also, of course, on this planet you run into the problem of the gravity. How could you transport a chemical plant here?"
"Maybe this is what the grays are looking for," Sharon suggested. "Someone has terraformed this planet."
"They don't impress me as that sort of race," Sarah said. "They are more likely to be interested in the technology used to transport a chemical factory into a planet with this much gravity. Although for them, they would be more likely to use it to transport a weapon."
"Which means that if we are able to find out anything, we should keep it from the grays," Sharon said as she thought of her mother's words on the tape about technology.
"What about the samples?" Caroline asked. "Do we turn them over to the grays?"
"I would say no," Sharon replied. "If the plants have been placed here, then the grays could determine their natural planetary home and from that determine who put them here. It would be better to leave the sample containers here and say that they were destroyed during landing."
|