Day 32:
Back to digging out that vein of granite I found under the KILLER PONY SPIDER the other day. My arms and neck and shoulders are sore even without the help from the local fauna.
BUT! The granite was sitting on top of andesite, and the andesite was sitting on top of iron ore, and the iron ore was sitting next to some coal, so all said the strange locked-up killer pony spider turned out to be the guardian to quite a haul of excellent rock.
BUT! the walls in this area of my cavern are warmer than they should be. I mean, I don’t have a thermometer, but I do have two years fieldwork in mining, and it seems to me that the stone shouldn’t be warm to the touch when I’m well below ground.
Plus, there’s this ominous bubbling sound.
(Side note: there aren’t a lot of sounds here that aren’t ominous and there are days where the only thing I want to do is blast the new age screamo prog rock bands I grew up on so loudly that I can’t hear this planet trying to sneak up on me to kill me.)
There’s a chance that this vein of ore I’m chasing is near a magma chamber. But that seems silly. Magma chambers aren’t usually this close to the surface unless we’re sitting on a volcano, and I would like to think The Company would’ve warned us during prep if we were going to be drilling into geologically unstable areas.
The growing cynic in me figures this is just par for the course – a new way for the planet to try to kill me.
(Second side note: whoever decided to name this snothole “Serendipity” should be fired out of an airlock at light speed.)
The one benefit, if there is a benefit to being inside a geologically unstable hellhole, is that at least I finally found a chamber that’s warm. I’m considering dragging my sheepskins down here to sleep on tonight. Might actually wake up with warm feet for the first time in a month.
