Category: One Among the Dead

Day 518:

The good news about spiders the size of ponies, especially on this low-gravity rock, is that they don’t weigh much. I mean, in general, spiders don’t weigh a heck of a lot, and even with the square-cube law in place. it’s hard for a spider to weigh as much as a pony. If their exoskeletons weighed as much as bone they wouldn’t have the strength to lift their own legs, so we’re talking much lighter weight material, multiplied by the low density of anything formed on  Serendipity, the Planetesimal of Hollowness.

So maybe thirty kilos for a really big one.

Granted, when thirty kilos decides to drop on your head and try to bite your helmet off, it’s noticeable, but it would be so much worse, like over 100 kilos.

So hooray for lightweight arachnids and not falling horses.

Also, I need to figure out how to make ice packs.

Day 517:

I was attacked by what could best be called a warren of rock rats today. Five of them squeezed out of all-but invisible cracks in the rock to attack my ankles, and five of them ended up on the end of my blade.

(Where they promptly disintegrated, which, gotta admit, still creeps me out.)

Anyway, when they were all gone I realized that the area they’d squeezed out of had also disintegrated, and there was a really big sinkhole where it had been.

At the bottom of that sinkhole, I found iron ore.

So that was either good planning or good luck.

Day 516:

Found a cache of diamonds. They were buried under some dirt under a seam of diorite under the water flow from the spring, just to the side of the lava lake.

Some day I’d like them to be, I don’t know, just, like, on the surface? I mean if there’s any geological activity here (and the lava lakes point to yes) then theoretically some of the diamond caches would have gotten pushed to the surface occasionally.

Then again, they might be difficult to find under all the trees.

But still. This “down into the depths of the planetesimal just to grab some shiny rocks” thing is a bit old even for an experienced miner like me.

Day 515:

Good news, I was able to refill my water skeins using an underground spring down here.

(Bad news: it tried to wash me off my feet into a lava lake. Good news: I didn’t let it. Tying one’s to a secure stalactite is always a good idea when exploring unusual places.)

So I don’t have any burn cream but I do have all the appears-fresh-and-clean flowing water I want. And that’s a good thing any day of the week.

Day 514:

I’ve been mostly eating dried fish while I’ve been doing this current set of diamond hunting because it’s more convenient than traveling back to my main base for fresh vegetables.

But I’m starting to dream at night about carrots, and craving carrots. I look at the stalactites and stalagmites and think, wow, I wish they were parsnips.

I think that’s a sign that my diet’s a bit off.

Maybe it’s time to head back to base soon and count my current diamonds and decide what to do next.

Or at least go back and make a good hearty carrot stew with fresh ducken. That might be nice too.

(I bet it ends up raining and I eat dried fish again.)