The Haunted Traveler Vol. 1 Issue 1

35
Base.
Luck was on my side. My ticket got me on Ark II. It took off
safely, landed safely and we didn’t choke on our first breath
of artificial air. The handful of SSP officials who were on our
flight guided us through the basic plans and we set to work
immediately. We located the probes and cargo shuttles that
had been sent during the previous year, all scattered across
the rocky expanse of the planet. We built the first shelters
and set equipment up and running.
They had thought of everything. Communications with
Earth were established in no time and we prepared the
ground for the arrival of the next Space Bus. Small cargo
shuttles continued to arrive every few weeks with sundries,
livestock, data files and occasional passengers.
When Noah’s Ark III landed 12 months later, Area B was
a living, breathing replica of a little slice of Earth. Complete
with approximately 500 inhabitants and an unusual conglomeration
of flora and fauna. Sheep and antelope grazed on
genetically modified patches of grass surrounded by sprouting
olive and palm trees. Kiwi birds and chickens pecked at
bugs brought from the African plains near the SSP Base. An
engineer had collected a few in a box while waiting to board.
They had multiplied in weeks. We even had small vegetable
gardens growing, which we irrigated with canals from our
first artificial stream.
Ark III unloaded its bewildered passengers and together
we continued working on making this planet our new home.
We built New Earth City with the first basic shelters becoming
our houses. Even though the atmosphere had been
oxygenated, we took precautionary measures. In threes and
fours, shelters were enclosed in a shared oxy-dome, a kind of
plexi-glass bubble which could be sealed in an emergency.
Each shelter also had a sky-dome, a curved clear roof to allow
light in. This remained a feature on all N. Earth houses built
later on.
A parrot flies over my oxy-dome, a flutter of bright green