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The Heavenfield
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“These suits were never designed with women in mind,” complained Pattie, struggling under the weight of her backpack, whilst attempting to fasten the seals on her gauntlets.
“You wanna swap?” grinned Stuart Nicks. He was wearing the sample claws on his suit; two bulky mechanical arms, sprouting from a framework on his back. The claws were used to carry heavy rock samples or equipment — two hydraulic arms that folded up either side of his air tanks. An exoskeleton of leg braces took the load, and he was counterbalanced by computer-controlled gyros. The arms were able to carry huge weights, as Nicks himself had demonstrated one Christmas, when he’d attempted to lift Grace’s Mini as a bet. If Colin James, the Maunsworth base commander, hadn’t happened to be driving past at the time, then Nicks swore he would have got it fully off the ground.
A technician helped Pattie on with her cumbersome helmet, clicking it into place. The locking bolts gave a thump, and the displays on her visor flickered into life as she ran the suit’s diagnostics. When the systems checks gave her the green light she followed the others out of the locker room. The five figures, struggling under the weight of their suits, made their way towards the array chamber and another journey into the Heavenfield.
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Nobody could recall who had been the first to give it that name. Grace Palmer had claimed it was her, but she would do anyway, just for devilment. But whoever had thought it up, the name was certainly apt. Officially it was titled, an Upper Order Standing-Point Particle Cascade, which Pattie always thought sounded far too clumsy. But it was probably the greatest scientific discovery of the century, and with everything still so new, there was so little that they really understood about it. This was only Pattie’s fourth journey, and at five hours, her longest. She had been in one of the earliest groups to have ever witnessed it, but Grace Palmer, along with Pattie’s companions on this trip, Saul Davisson and Stuart Nicks, had the honour of being the first.
Pattie was following the others into the chamber now. This fraction of the vast structure was like some wartime bunker, and she had to stoop to get through the low hatch. Beyond the opening was a featureless steel and concrete cylinder, just part of the massive accelerator array which branched off for miles and miles into the distance. Pattie strained to crane her neck upward in the clumsy suit. She knew that, disappearing into the blackness, the chamber rose up for around one hundred and fifty feet, acting as the intersection for the many tunnels of the accelerators. On the lowest level, where they now congregated, only a small metal bench set into the curved wall and the untidy pile of scientific equipment they needed, broke the monotony of the chamber.
Then the hatch was sealed behind them; eighteen-inches of steel and toughened glass, and the dim lights on their suits were the only thing holding back the darkness.
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Pattie listened to the frantic chatter of personnel in her earpiece as she sat uncomfortably between Starling and Nicks.
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“If anyone needs to pee, then it’s too late,” she heard Nicks over the open channel, and she giggled nervously. The knots in her stomach threatened to do somersaults, and she felt Nick’s leg twitching rhythmically. The countdown commenced, and Pattie closed her eyes.
“Aw, Pattie, I never knew you cared,” whispered Nicks. Pattie realised she was clutching his arm; she released her grip a little.
“Sorry, Stue, I just —” but she didn’t get to finish her sentence.
The strangest feeling of calm — of floating at an incredible speed without moving.
She felt as though she was suddenly extremely drunk and the world was spinning. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, rather like slowly drifting out of her body. She concentrated hard now, and strained to keep her eyes open in the blackness, determined to see the transition into the Field. The lights and readouts in her visor swam, and she heard a faint gasp from Starling to her left. She realised that she was staring blankly at nothing and turned her gaze towards him.
She was standing in the Field.
“Damn, missed it again,” she muttered to herself. No matter how hard she tried, each time she had missed the transition from out of the chamber and into the Field. It was as if the brain just blanked out for a split second, and then there you were, staring at paradise.
“Oh my lord,” she heard O’Keefe gasp. “It really is heaven.” It was his first trip through; everybody’s reaction contained the same disbelief and wonder, thought Pattie.
She was standing on a smooth blue-grey granite surface, flecked with orange veins, which seemed to glow in the strange sunlight. A beautiful silver formation of crystal shimmered nearby. Ahead, the ground dipped down to a plain of tall lush grasses, rolling away towards mountains, hazy in the distance. The nearby tents and piles of equipment which made up base camp looked ugly and incongruous in this idyllic setting. She stared back across the plains, and just stood for a long while, taking it in. The beauty of it all was familiar, and at the same time, strangely alien. Everything she looked upon was like an extreme example of something she might find back on Earth. The rock underfoot was exquisite in its form and colouration. The grass — every blade seemed perfect and unearthly, and the air — it was clearer somehow than seemed natural.
Yes, the Heavenfield was a good name, she thought.
When Grace and the others had made that very first journey, they later described how the environment had seemed to materialise around them from out of their imaginations. And as their joy and wonder had unfolded, so too the Field had solidified into the land they explored now. It was as though they had stepped into a dream.
Pattie breathed deeply and let her thoughts return to the work at hand. She put all the questions and possibilities to the back of her mind. She tried to put Alex to the back of her mind. She had a lot of work to do. The others were already gathered around the boxes of equipment and were taking them down to the base camp. Nicks was setting up the geological survey equipment, whilst Starling unpacked the atmospheric testing apparatus.
This was to be a momentous occasion, as they could finally, and unequivocally test the nature of the Field’s atmosphere. Up until now they had had all sorts of trouble with equipment failures, and had spent the last four weeks redesigning various tools to suit the environment. Although the Field looked benign and beautiful, the teams had found that any sensitive electronic equipment simply didn’t survive the journey. Circuits were fried, or just failed for no apparent reason, and their suits had needed to be radically simplified and strengthened to avoid any danger. Therefore the expeditions had so far been confined to simple tests; collecting samples, exploring the terrain, and trying to work out just where in hell they were. There were many hypotheses, but no one really had a clue.
But now the environment testing equipment seemed to have survived the journey, so they might at least know if they could discard their horribly cumbersome suits. Pattie was dying to feel and smell the grass of the great plain, and the cool air, so pure and clean. She hated the weight of her environment suit, which in particular hampered her job.
As well as collecting and noting samples of various species of grass and rock in the vicinity, Pattie had the task of drawing records of their views, since for the time being, photographs taken on any medium were destroyed upon returning to the chamber. The samples also, when collected in the Field: grasses, plants and flowers, seemed alien or perfect instances of their species. But on return to the labs they would turn out to be mundane versions of their earthly equivalents, much to the surprise of all who had returned.
So, Pattie, who was more used to working on picture archives for archaeological digs, was now drawing a diary of their experiences in the Heavenfield. She was getting used to the difficulty of manipulating the stylus with her heavy gauntlets, etching away at the carbon-coated zinc sheets that she had to use instead of paper.
She sat herself down on the flat rock and started sketching Saul Davisson and Gary Starling as they worked unpacking boxes of various equipment. She would do a few rough pictures of the team, she thought, before starting work on the more precise diagrams the geology department had requested.
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