Read Online The Unscheduled Mission by Jonathan Edward Feinstein - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jonathan Edward Feinstein
Tags: Science Fiction/Fantasy
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finding mostly gneiss and quartzite. At least that’s what they look like. I’ll let the petrologists do their chemical analyses and find out for sure. And to the west we’re finding a lot of slate.
“I honestly think we’re missing a lot and that slate could be old ocean floor for all I know,” Park admitted. “That’s why we need to take more samples further east. I doubt I ever knew what sort of rocks existed in Africa and I’m not exactly sure just what part we’ve bumped up against here. In any case, in two hundred and fifty million years there has been plenty of time for new rocks to form and change, so it will be a while before we know what we have.”
“So we’re gradually emptying all those boxes of equipment and filling them with rocks,” Dannet observed.
“We’ll only fill one at best,” Park chuckled. “And we can store it in the spare bunk area. Cheer up. We’re almost done and then we can go on safari.”
“Safari?” Dannet asked. Park just laughed.
Sartena turned out to have a knack for finding the small animals of the mountains to photograph and under her tutelage, Marisea learned quite a lot. They returned with hundreds of pictures of the miniature postmammalian and postavian species that lived in the high, forested valleys of the Atlantic as well as an almost cute and small land squid.
However, the most successful species they found in the mountains were a type of land crustacean that looked like a cross between a crab and a shrimp and ranged from one quarter to one half an inch long. They appeared to occupy the ecological niche once held by ants and were equally well adapted to breathing air and fresh water, often living beside small pools and puddles. Park concluded they were the primary scavengers of the Atlantic Mountains .
As Iris had feared, the buggy could not directly fly over most of the mountains and even many of the passes between them were too steep for the vehicle to climb safely. The explorers rapidly made a habit of wearing their seatbelts whenever traveling and after two kitchen mishaps, made sure all the pots and pans were carefully stowed before taking off.
In the middle of the range, it became normal for the buggy to tilt alarmingly as Iris gunned it up the side of a pass and then back down again on the other side, but after another week of threading their way through the range they suddenly came out over an expanse of foothills that soon evened out into the dunes and rocks of Pangaean Africa’s great desert..
“Looks dry down there,” Dannet remarked.
“Probably a good spot for those who need to breathe dry air,” Park agreed. “Well, I did expect this. Satellite photos and other readings showed us this was a desert and we’ve wandered a fair way to the north. The environment is a good deal damper to the south.”
“The south?” Sartena asked. “That’s even further from the ocean than we are here. Why should it be damper there?”
“Yeah, that had our scientists concerned too for a while,” Park admitted. “We know from our own studies that in general supercontinents like Pangaea, tend to be dry. That’s because most of the moisture precipitates out before it reaches the interior. The area around Van Winkle is semi-arid these days but was actually quite wet in the Twenty-first Century. The only reason we have the moisture we do is that wet winds filter down from The Bay of Coolinda – Hudson’s Bay we used to call it – and then precipitates out against the Atlantics, forming the head waters of the Zontisso River .”
“That’s the longest river on Earth?” Dannet asked.
“It certainly is these days,” Park nodded. “So some of the humidity in the south of Africa now is what’s left after it makes its way down from the north and west and then gets squeezed out by the Atlantics and that eastern range that we haven’t named yet. Come to think of it the Atackack live to the southeast of those other mountains. They probably
“I honestly think we’re missing a lot and that slate could be old ocean floor for all I know,” Park admitted. “That’s why we need to take more samples further east. I doubt I ever knew what sort of rocks existed in Africa and I’m not exactly sure just what part we’ve bumped up against here. In any case, in two hundred and fifty million years there has been plenty of time for new rocks to form and change, so it will be a while before we know what we have.”
“So we’re gradually emptying all those boxes of equipment and filling them with rocks,” Dannet observed.
“We’ll only fill one at best,” Park chuckled. “And we can store it in the spare bunk area. Cheer up. We’re almost done and then we can go on safari.”
“Safari?” Dannet asked. Park just laughed.
Sartena turned out to have a knack for finding the small animals of the mountains to photograph and under her tutelage, Marisea learned quite a lot. They returned with hundreds of pictures of the miniature postmammalian and postavian species that lived in the high, forested valleys of the Atlantic as well as an almost cute and small land squid.
However, the most successful species they found in the mountains were a type of land crustacean that looked like a cross between a crab and a shrimp and ranged from one quarter to one half an inch long. They appeared to occupy the ecological niche once held by ants and were equally well adapted to breathing air and fresh water, often living beside small pools and puddles. Park concluded they were the primary scavengers of the Atlantic Mountains .
As Iris had feared, the buggy could not directly fly over most of the mountains and even many of the passes between them were too steep for the vehicle to climb safely. The explorers rapidly made a habit of wearing their seatbelts whenever traveling and after two kitchen mishaps, made sure all the pots and pans were carefully stowed before taking off.
In the middle of the range, it became normal for the buggy to tilt alarmingly as Iris gunned it up the side of a pass and then back down again on the other side, but after another week of threading their way through the range they suddenly came out over an expanse of foothills that soon evened out into the dunes and rocks of Pangaean Africa’s great desert..
“Looks dry down there,” Dannet remarked.
“Probably a good spot for those who need to breathe dry air,” Park agreed. “Well, I did expect this. Satellite photos and other readings showed us this was a desert and we’ve wandered a fair way to the north. The environment is a good deal damper to the south.”
“The south?” Sartena asked. “That’s even further from the ocean than we are here. Why should it be damper there?”
“Yeah, that had our scientists concerned too for a while,” Park admitted. “We know from our own studies that in general supercontinents like Pangaea, tend to be dry. That’s because most of the moisture precipitates out before it reaches the interior. The area around Van Winkle is semi-arid these days but was actually quite wet in the Twenty-first Century. The only reason we have the moisture we do is that wet winds filter down from The Bay of Coolinda – Hudson’s Bay we used to call it – and then precipitates out against the Atlantics, forming the head waters of the Zontisso River .”
“That’s the longest river on Earth?” Dannet asked.
“It certainly is these days,” Park nodded. “So some of the humidity in the south of Africa now is what’s left after it makes its way down from the north and west and then gets squeezed out by the Atlantics and that eastern range that we haven’t named yet. Come to think of it the Atackack live to the southeast of those other mountains. They probably
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